Hell and High Water (Paperback)

‘Fionn!’

Jane’s voice, rising above the hubbub around me; I paused in pinning a rippling azure skirt to the model before me, and looked up.

There she was, shoving her way past the model wearing my summer lake-water ensemble, clutching her phone like a lifeline. She’d probably been calling me, and I hadn’t noticed.

‘Fi. Girl number eight’s put her arm through the morning mist shirt, and no one’s seen girl twelve in half an hour. Previously spotted heading for the ladies at an unseemly pace. What do you want to do?’

‘Right.’ I took a second to breathe. The show began in twenty minutes, if not less. Now wasn’t a great time for complications, but these were fixable problems. ‘Gina can do nothing with the shirt?’

Jane shook her head, emphatic. She has the kind of hair, buoyant and exuberantly curly, that has a life of its own; it adds emphasis to gestures like this one. ‘It’s a wreck. Only you can sort it, if anyone. And before you ask, I’ve sent runners to the bathroom. Can’t locate the girl.’

“The girl” had a name, but I swallowed my objections to the moniker; Jane had too much on her plate to remember everybody. ‘We’ll slot me in for twelve,’ I decided. Not a problem. The outfit the missing model was wearing would be a loss – sea-green tulle and frothing sea-foam, that kind of thing – but this wasn’t the first time something like this had happened. I’d got into the habit of making up a secret, additional ensemble with every collection, just for me. I took a great deal of pleasure in doing so, and usually I didn’t need to employ it for the show.

Times like this, I was glad of the custom.

‘As for the shirt.’ I handed over the model I’d been working on – Melly, a fellow selkie, though her colouring was markedly different to mine – to one of my sewers, and turned back to Jane. ‘Let me at it.’

We’d booked a stunning, urban garden space for the show, right at the top of the skyscraper they call the Walkie Talkie. Striding through the venue in search of the beleaguered shirt and its no doubt mortified model, I received a heart-lifting glimpse of stunning, gold-drenched London through the mile-high glass walls. The sun was on its way down; I’d timed the opening of the show deliberately to coincide with it. Golden hour, followed by twilight, and the rippling waters of the Thames only a short walk away; it did things to the soul. Mostly good things, though there were times…

Number eight was Jessamy, a dryad, and a regular at my shows. I’d used her several times before; she was reliable, so the wreck of the shirt could only be a mistake. I found her close to tears.

‘So damned clumsy of me,’ she said, looking at me like I might be expected to swing an axe at her face.

Not sure why. I’m not exactly known for flashes of temper.

‘It will be all right,’ I told her, though from the look of the thing I wasn’t as sure of that as I sounded. She placed the flimsy garment into my hands and stood by my elbow, gnawing a lower lip and looking hangdog.

I focused, filtering out the ruckus made by the swarm of people around me. It was a big show; we had thirty-two models set to walk, and a small horde of sewers, dressers, assistants, and set designers to make it all work. The milling about, chattering, panicking and last-minute organising of it all might get under my skin, were I to let it, but the hubbub rolled off me like water.

Pity that it had to be the eighth in the line-up to throw out complications, though; were it the twenty-eighth, I’d have had more time.

‘Might have to cheat a bit,’ I murmured, for half the sleeve hung free of its armhole, and there’s no darning fabric that fine in a hurry. ‘Can you get me Sunny?’

Jessamy nodded and dashed off, her mass of sage-and-grass hair flying. Ordinary humans thought it was dyed. It really wasn’t.

Sunny came sprinting up a few minutes later, Jessamy trailing after, and I stuffed the mess into her hands. ‘I know I said we wouldn’t do this,’ I told her with a rueful smile. ‘But needs must.’

‘You want me to witch it?’ She didn’t wait for an answer, but nodded and set to work. A subtle ripple of magic teased at the edges of my senses, and as I watched, the wispy fabric wove itself back together and neatly realigned with the armhole.

I wasn’t usually in favour of “witching” up the ensembles, as Sunny put it. It was risky; not everyone involved with the show, or the venue, was fae. And it didn’t seem right, somehow. A fashion show was a display of skill and artistry, not magic.

But the shirt was back on Jessamy in a trice, perfect again, and the smile was restored to her face. I ran a quick eye over her and nodded, satisfied. The shirt was ideal on her, wreathing her slight frame in puffs of gossamer like dawn mist. She wore a trailing skirt with it, all twinkling green velvet, and just the right skyscraper heels to elevate her diminutive frame. Make-up had done a fabulous job on her eyes, too.

‘Right, I must go, if I am to be walking twelfth,’ I said.

‘What?’ said Jessamy. ‘Where’s Narasel?’

‘Last seen heading for the bathroom,’ I said, already walking away. ‘Nowhere to be found.’

In truth, I was a little worried. Narasel, another of my selkie girls, was a regular. I had never known her to bail on a show before. But she couldn’t help it if she was ill, of course. I would send somebody to her house shortly, and make sure she was okay.

Print books are crafted to order and dispatched directly from the printer. Estimated delivery time is 1-2 weeks for standard editions, 3-5 weeks for deluxe editions.