Someone stood next to her; she opened her eyes and glanced to one side.
Gabriel Black cleared his throat politely.
‘I’m so sorry; I didn’t want to interrupt your communion,’ he said, holding out his arm formally; as before, he was dressed impeccably in a well-cut black suit and crisp white shirt undone at the neck. ‘But when you’re finished, I wonder if you’d like to come to my shop for a cup of tea?’
Sixteen
Fortune’s was down a narrow street opposite the museum, with a pub at the end of the road and a small café opposite. Next door to the shop there was another bookshop with statuettes of Egyptian gods in the window among many leather volumes. On the main street outside, regency terraces lined the road with black cast iron railings, smart against white walls that featured a blue plaque here and there, remembering the great men and women that once occupied their high ceilings and graceful reception rooms.
‘Come in, come in!’ Gabriel swung the shop door open and ushered her inside. ‘I’m so happy that I ran into you. Providence,’ he said, smiling over his shoulder. ‘Or something magical at work, more likely. Don’t worry about wiping your feet.’
After she’d run away from the coven at Mabon, Faye was pleasantly surprised at Gabriel’s friendly invitation to his shop. She’d convinced herself that all of the group would think she was a lunatic.
Faye knew that Gabriel’s shop sold new and old occult books; he’d told her at the ritual. She glanced at shelves heaving with a mix of garish occult novels, old hardbacks with cracked spines and new, luxurious slipcases adorned with mysterious symbols in gold foiling. Her feet squeaked on the dark floorboards; the high-ceilinged shop was lit cosily by a Lalique-style pastel-green glass lamp which stood on a mahogany desk that was slightly bowed in the middle. Two dusty crystal chandeliers hung from the plastered ceiling, adding their milky luminescence to the atmosphere. An ornate incense holder, like a small silver minaret, scented the shop with the meditative, churchy aroma of frankincense.
‘Everything from ritual magic to druidry, crystal grids to spiritual healing, Atlantis to grimoires of the damned and famous.’ Gabriel smiled as she scanned the shelves. ‘Open eighty years and they haven’t closed us down yet. Do you know this area? I don’t suppose you do.’
‘No, not at all. I read a book about the museum years ago, so I recognised it when I…’ she frowned. ‘It was the oddest thing. I just… happened upon it.’
Gabriel smiled and offered her a teal leather armchair with bronze studs around the edges. Faye sat in it gingerly; it looked ancient, but as she relaxed into it, it tilted backwards slightly and seemed to hug her in an unexpectedly comfortable posture.
‘Bloomsbury’s chock full of magic, dearest Faye. Secret societies, covens, antiquarian bookshops, magicians, strange antique dealers…. It’s no wonder you found your way here. It’s like a gigantic occult magnet to anyone with even the slightest inclination for the distinctly un-mundane.’
‘It’s lovely.’ Faye smiled. ‘I stock some books, but only a few shelves’ worth. This is such a wonderful collection.’ She looked around the shelves and saw a shelf marked Scottish Myths and Legends: she peered at the spines.
‘That was some introduction to the coven the other night. Talk about making an impression.’ He took out a brown hardback from the Scottish Legends shelf and handed it to her. ‘Here. This’ll be useful, I’d say. A gift from me.’
Faye took the book, surprised and pleased.
‘You don’t have to…’ she stammered, touched by the act of generosity. She looked at the spine: Faeries in Their Elements, by Reverend R W Smith.
‘It’s my pleasure. I didn’t know if I was going to see you again, after the ritual – you ran out of there like a scared rabbit as soon as the circle was closed.’ Gabriel placed his slim, long-fingered hand over hers as she held the book.
‘Was Sylvia angry? I got the feeling she was.’ Faye felt embarrassed.
‘Maybe a little. We all wanted to talk to you about it, more than anything. Make sure you were all right. I’m glad you’re here,’ he said quietly, looking into her eyes. Embarrassed at his intimate scrutiny, she looked away. She didn’t quite know what to make of Gabriel Black just yet.
‘I doubt I’ll be allowed back after that performance,’ she said, expecting him to agree, albeit kindly. She’d disrupted the whole ritual; granted, it wasn’t something she’d planned but, again, Faye’s faerie half had threatened her normal life, and any illusion she had about being able to control it was ruined. Her eyes strayed to a glass-fronted mahogany cabinet opposite, inside which a number of crystal balls sat on a velvety, mustard-coloured shelf. The shelf below held a variety of crystal skulls – large and small, and carved from black, clear and even pink stones. Faye got the impression that, if she asked, Gabriel would be able to show her some far more unusual magical artefacts and tools.
‘Of course you will!’ Gabriel reassured her.
Fortune’s reeked of old, occult magic in a way that was very different to her own cosy shop in Abercolme. Mistress of Magic was a place of dried herbs by the hearth, herbal soaps, wands and spell kits. It was a place where anyone could be assured of a warm welcome, advice if they asked for it, their fortune told and their worries assuaged.
Fortune’s was different, though Faye still liked it immensely: she could feel the long, complicated rituals that had been performed here, the invocations to old gods, the strange incenses burned and spirits summoned.
‘We told Ruby she had to ask you back. I mean, we were all a bit freaked out, sure…’
Gabriel was being kind, she knew. ‘Come on. More than freaked out. I saw their faces. They were terrified. So was I.’ Faye traced her fingertips around the brass buttons that held the turquoise-blue leather of her chair in place.
‘Well, it was… errr… remarkable. I’ll say that. But don’t worry about it.’ Gabriel pulled up a straight-backed black leather easy chair from behind the shop counter and sat next to Faye. ‘Come on. No-one who stands up to a faerie king like you did should be apologising to a measly bookseller. I mean, you’re… half-faerie? Am I right in saying that?’
Faye nodded. ‘Unfortunately.’
‘Then you should be firing arrows of flame from your fingertips at minions, in a castle somewhere,’ he consoled her. ‘We should thank you. I should thank you, anyway. I’ve never seen a faerie king before. It was… yeah. Wow.’
‘The arrows have gone in for their annual service,’ Faye joked, but she still felt mortified. She hugged the book to her. ‘And you’re not measly.’
‘No, well. Not glamorous, anyway. Sometimes days pass and no-one comes in here. All dressed for the ball and no-one to waltz with.’ He stretched out his arms and pulled at the deep cuffs of his tailored shirt; Faye noticed he wore monogrammed cufflinks.
‘You’re very… do you dress this smartly every day?’ She changed the subject, smiling at his well-cut clothes and precise black hair.
‘You never know when a faerie queen will drop by.’ He gave her that inscrutable smile again, and she looked away, not sure what to say. ‘Don’t change the subject. You can’t invoke the Elemental King of Earth and not explain yourself.’
‘Ugh. Where to start…?’ She sighed. Did she really want to tell Gabriel the whole story? He was a stranger, and Faye was used to keeping her business to herself. A life in Abercolme had left her with few other options, outside of Annie.
But if she was to have a life here, she’d have to open up sometime. And, she admitted to herself, she needed a friend. Especially one that didn’t think she was crazy if she talked about magic. Not that she could tell him everything; her hand went to her throat again, fearful of the choking sensation.
Faye chose her words carefully. ‘Rav and I moved down – to London – because some bad things happened, back in Abercolme. In the faerie realms, and in the village. He… he was badly injured.’ She met Gabriel’s gaze, expecting to see ridicule or disbelief there, but his
black-brown eyes showed only interest. ‘He wants us to… I don’t know. Have a normal life here. Be normal people. But I’m…’ she trailed off, aware that she sounded crazy.
‘But you’re not normal,’ Gabriel finished for her. ‘You’re half-faerie, and Lyr’s daughter.’
‘Yes,’ she said, and it was both a relief and a kind of dread to hear someone else say it. Her faerie half was like a dirty secret; it was the shadowy side of her; in faerie, she’d done things she would never do in her normal, ordinary life. And yet, now that she’d opened herself up to the shadow, she missed it.
Gabriel stared at her with a dark intensity.
‘He’s right. You’re not normal, and you never will be,’ he continued, his eyes never leaving hers. ‘You’re more magical than most people will ever be, Faye. If he can’t stand in your light, then he deserves to live in the dark. And you deserve someone who knows how to walk in the shadows with you.’
Seventeen
Gabriel leaned towards her. His eyes were intense, staring at her, but not in an unpleasant way.
Close up, he smelt of sandalwood and frankincense; a subtle, woody scent that went alongside something else, something that was just him: under his slightly foppish ways, there was a quiet, strong masculinity.
‘So… this Lyr thing. Aren’t you in the least bit curious about what he wants with you?’
Faye saw the fascination in Gabriel’s upturned face and allowed herself to imagine how he saw her. Her auburn-red hair was tied in a long ponytail and she wore a short, bright blue knitted dress with her ballet pumps; she’d taken off her black belted mac as she sat down. She was taller than average and, perhaps, there was a magical glamour of some kind about her that came from her faerie blood. She had the high cheekbones of the fae, and their clear, sharp bone structure. She knew she could enchant Gabriel if she tried: perhaps she already had.
‘Yes,’ she replied. ‘But the faerie realms are dangerous. I don’t want to… I promised Rav I wouldn’t…’ she trailed off. Here and now, Rav seemed far away; surrounded by so many magical books, she remembered how it had felt, being in Murias. How sweet and charged, and how full of power it was – how powerful she could be. Imagining that she’d never feel that again filled her with sadness.
‘Rav wouldn’t ask that of you if he loved you,’ Gabriel said. ‘I mean, I don’t know him. I’m sure he’s great and everything. But you know I’m right. If you’re half-faerie, what, you’re supposed to deny a whole half of yourself because he’s not comfortable with it? First rule of magic: know thyself. Faye, you can’t be a witch, or a faerie queen for that matter, without being at peace with who you really are.’
‘It’s easy for you to say. You don’t know the history,’ she muttered.
‘Then tell me.’ His eyes challenged hers. ‘All of it.’
‘So your friend’s still there? In Murias?’ Gabriel hadn’t moved throughout Faye’s whole story – of discovering Murias from the faerie road that bisected Rav’s beachfront house, of going through the labyrinth to Finn’s castle; of her own enchantment there, and her eventual disillusionment. Last, haltingly, Faye told him about the concert in Abercolme: when Dal Riada, Finn’s band, had whipped the crowd into a state of vicious, sexual fervour, and had disappeared, taking eight humans into the faerie realm, including Aisha. Her friend. The only thing she couldn’t explain was the bargain with Glitonea.
Faye looked down at her hands that twisted together with anxiety. ‘Yes.’
Faye continually asked herself if she’d run away from her responsibilities towards Aisha. And if she had, could anyone blame her? She went around and around with the thought, starting at guilt and ending in a kind of dejected defiance. No-one would blame her, because almost no-one believed the true version of what had happened. The story taken up by the papers was that Finn Beatha’s band, Dal Riada, had disappeared with several concert attendees in tow after their concert at the summer solstice; the first solstice celebration in Abercolme for hundreds of years. There had been a fire and general panic, in which many were injured. The papers seemed to suggest that the band were a kind of cult that had run away with locals they’d convinced to follow them.
Yet, the villagers knew, or suspected. Some of them – the ones that remembered the fae from the old lore their grandparents and great-grandparents had shared with them when they were bairns – they knew what Faye had done to try to save them, and knew where Aisha and the others had gone. And, perhaps, they were the only ones that had made their peace with the likelihood that the missing would be unlikely to return.
‘And you’re… what’s the word? Excluded from Murias now? You can’t go back?’ Gabriel’s voice brought her back from her worries.
‘No. I’ve tried. It’s cut off to me now, unless I go back to Finn. But I can’t. I don’t want to.’
Gabriel eyed her coolly. ‘Don’t want to, or are afraid to? Sounds like Finn had quite an effect on you.’
Faye breathed out a long sigh, got up and started pacing the small confines of the shop. The smell of old leather from the antique books was comforting; she leaned her head gently against a high shelf with her back to Gabriel. How could she explain what Finn had done to her? It wasn’t normal. He wasn’t human; all the usual frames of reference for relationships – he was controlling, he was emotionally unavailable, it was just a sex thing – were invalid. He was controlling and unavailable, and the sex was incredible. But it was so much more than that: Finn was a faerie king; his power was all-encompassing. He was faerie, who didn’t live by the same rules of love and compassion as humans.
‘It’s hard to explain. The fae… Finn is…’ she stopped for a moment, trying to think of the best way to describe the faerie king.
‘I’ve read the legends. I know they’re irresistible when they want to be,’ Gabriel added.
‘But it’s so dangerous there. For humans, that is. I’m half-fae. The effects of being in the faerie realm weren’t as strong for me, and I was… Finn’s consort, so I had special treatment, I suppose. But the humans that go there, to be lovers or to bear the half-fae children, they don’t survive. One way or the other.’ Faye shivered as she remembered the human bones littering the floor of the faerie ballroom; of the emaciated bodies there that weren’t quite dead, but too weak to move. She herself had danced on them without knowing, lost in her own enchantment. The thought still made her sick.
‘I read that sometimes they take women who have just given birth to breastfeed their faerie babies. Human wet-nurses,’ Gabriel added.
‘It wouldn’t surprise me, but I didn’t see any. But the castle’s huge. I only saw the areas Finn wanted me to. Or his sister Glitonea’s chambers.’
‘The High Queen? What was she like? They say that the faerie queens are too beautiful to be described.’ Gabriel’s eyes were wide, like a child’s. Faye remembered the rapt and dreamy eyes of Glitonea’s faerie lover as he danced in her arms, and the tortured gaze of the Frog Queen’s partner through his mask. She’d take everything from you, she thought, looking at him; she’d dance and kiss and love every ounce of your moon-cowed, human adoration and leave you to die when she’d drunk her fill. And you’d let her do it, because dying would be so sweet.
‘She is a beauty. Golden-haired, tall, strong; her eyes are the same as Finn’s. Like the ocean,’ she answered. Gabriel didn’t have to know about the horror of loving a faerie queen, and Faye didn’t talk about why she’d been in the faerie queen’s chambers in the first place: the magic she’d learnt there, or the bargain she’d struck with Glitonea to escape. ‘They’re both beautiful beyond description. But they’re also remorseless. Cold. Selfish. They’re only concerned with fulfilling their own desires.’
‘The Charge of the Goddess says I am what is attained at the end of desire.’ Gabriel was talking about a part of Wiccan ceremony that Faye knew had become ubiquitous; a call to the goddess, the symbol of feminine power in the universe. ‘Desire isn’t a bad thing. It’s the condition of being hum
an.’
‘Of course not. They’re fae. They are doing what’s natural for them, like cats hunt mice. It’s not our job to place human morality on them. But it’s sensible for a mouse to know a cat will toy with it, and kill it when it gets bored; the mouse knows to avoid the cat if it wants to live.’
‘To be a faerie queen’s lover, though,’ Gabriel sighed wistfully. ‘What a way to go.’
‘You’re serious, aren’t you?’ Faye frowned at him. ‘It’s not something worth wishing for. Really. Believe me.’
Gabriel made a dismissive sound. ‘Men like me – magicians, or ones that fancy themselves as something like it – have been obsessed with other worlds, and the delights we might find there, for hundreds of years. Come on, Faye.’ Gabriel picked up a dusty grimoire and waved it at her. ‘What is there for me here? Old books? If the opportunity arose, I’d take it. What’s a life worth unless you live it?’
‘But that’s just it, Gabriel! You’d die there,’ Faye exclaimed. ‘The fae are savage, amoral creatures. If you’d seen what I have…’ she shuddered. Gabriel was so naïve; she wished she could tell him exactly what Glitonea had forced her to agree to. Faerie queens might become a lot less desirable for him.
‘But I haven’t, Faye. That’s the point.’ He put the book back on the desk and sighed. ‘Anyway. If you need to get Aisha back – and the rest of them, I suppose?’ Faye nodded. ‘Finn will let you back in. You just have to be his lover again.’
‘That’s not a choice. It would ruin my relationship with Rav; I’m not going to be unfaithful to him. Plus, he doesn’t want me to be involved at all with the faerie realm. He wants to leave that all behind us.’ Faye sighed.
‘But you can’t leave it behind. It’s who you are.’ Gabriel frowned.
‘I know, I know.’ Faye began pacing again.
‘As we speak, Aisha’s been there, how long? Hasn’t Rav been helping you think of ways you could get her back? I mean, I know he’s not a witch, but maybe he has some ideas?’
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