by Holly Ice
‘You’re always so damned closed off, like a bloody bank vault.’
‘Gads, drop it already!’
‘You can’t push people away forever.’ He stalked to his room and snapped the door shut.
Shite. I stared at the door for a minute, then left for work. I’d deal with it later.
* * *
I cut through Hunter’s Square onto the High Street. A black ghost tour bus passed in front of me, its windows fogged so I could barely see inside. Time for another night of rowdy tourists and local drunks. Whoopee.
Now that I was on the Royal Mile, people pressed in on all sides. I gritted my teeth after the third time I dodged a charmed visitor. They had an infuriating tendency to pause mid-step to admire a bagpipes player or the advertisements for walking tours or a new club opening. Anything, really. And every single time my heart jumped and I swivelled around, like a monster might appear at any moment.
I doubled my pace to the fake Irish pub that kept the roof over my head. Yet, at each tiny gap in the buildings, I peered into the shadows of the claustrophobic alleys. You couldn’t see most until you were on top of them. I clenched the handle of the wee penknife in my pocket. If I came across that creature again, I was not fighting it with my hands and blunt keys.
I was doing everything I could to stay safe, and I was only one of many people in one of the most populated, touristy areas of Edinburgh, and yet, right between my shoulder blades, I felt itchy, like I was being watched. I looked around at the bustle of faces but didn’t see anyone I recognised. Certainly no supernatural bears. I was just shaken up. That was all. Some decent sleep and healing time and… what?
It wasn’t like I could take back the supernatural bombshell. All this time I’d been searching for magic in tarot, psychic churches, and séances, and it’d found me. But what did that mean, or change? It wasn’t like I could ask the barghest questions. That creature had nothing on its mind but blood.
Though it wasn’t just me who was there. The screamer had seen something. And those guys who intervened had to ken something. But why had they wanted to keep me there?
‘Bianca!’
I almost pulled the knife. But I knew that voice.
‘Wow, you’re on edge.’ It was my other housemate. Rhea tugged her flaming-red hair out of her messily thrown-on scarf. ‘You’re late. Boss said to get in there and get your hands dirty. It’s going to be a busy one.’
‘Okay, thanks.’
Rhea held the door open but stood in my way. ‘I heard you got hurt last night. Are you going to be okay for your shift?’
Ugh, I didn’t have time for this. ‘No need for the kiddie gloves. It’s a scratch.’ I brushed past her, already unzipping my coat.
‘I can’t believe you didn’t see doctor or wake one of us.’
‘My body, my business.’
‘But we–’
‘Now I’m late.’
‘Fine, Bianca.’ Rhea put her hands up in surrender and left.
I’d apologise later. I hadn’t meant to snap, with either of them. But I needed time to think.
I sighed and grabbed my apron off the hook to begin my shift. At least I could only piss off tourists and drunks until I got home.
* * *
By the time my shift ended, the alleyways that were creepy before were pitch-black and dead silent. My boss made a quick exit into his girlfriend’s waiting car, not bothering to offer me a lift. So I walked home, hands in my pockets, one tight around the penknife. At least it was milder tonight, and the tall buildings on the mile sheltered me from most of the wind.
Hammered men and women staggered down the street in packs. Or alone, sunk into their phone screens. Hardly anyone looked my way for more than a curious or lustful glance. Though with my boring black polo shirt, bulky coat, and jeans, I wasn’t sure why they bothered. I avoided eye contact anyway, and they moved on. There were tarted up, drunker women out there who seemed far more likely to roll the dice with a drunk stranger than I did.
The street was much quieter when I turned onto Hunter’s Square. My phone buzzed with a text from Finn to ask what time I’d get home. It wasn’t worth replying. I’d be home in less than ten minutes.
A few couples passed me, carrying on downhill, until a quiet group of three approached. Their very quietness put me on edge, and when I looked at them more closely, my breath hiked.
Black cargo trousers, black reinforced boots, black padded jackets. They had a dangerous air to them, spines straight, head high. Muscular. Soldiers, maybe. They watched every person who passed them, inspected every noise, exit, and camera. They were not good news. And their gaze kept returning to me.
I clutched my knife while the other hand fumbled for my phone. I wasn’t going anywhere with these three. I upped my pace onto Blair Street. Hopefully, they’d pass me by. Continue down the street so I could get into my flat.
‘Evening,’ the leader said.
And there went all my luck. Should have known after last night.
The tall blond man was mid-thirties with sharp cheekbones, perfect teeth, and thin lips. Power radiated from him with a dizzying, gut-wrenching tug, the same instinct that led me to the barghest.
Sweat slid down my spine. These guys weren’t just human.
The blond faced me. His men covered my back, penning me in.
I tensed, adrenaline pulsing through my veins.
‘Sorry, my taxi’s waiting,’ I lied and turned downhill to make a run for it.
But the blond’s hand dropped onto my shoulder and held me in place. I closed my eyes and took a few deep breaths.
I had to get out of this. ‘Get off me.’
‘I’m sorry. I can’t do that. We need to talk.’ His accent was strange. Foreign. Maybe Swedish, with the blond hair?
I twisted out of his grip and tried to face the three of them at once, but it was impossible. And I couldn’t fight one of them, let alone three. I could scream, but the street was far quieter than it was before the pubs shut, and who’d take on the odds? They had at least three to four inches on me, and they were thick with muscle. Which left me one choice.
I clamped my hand around my phone. ‘Leave me alone, or I’ll call the police.’
‘No, you won’t.’
‘Want to bet?’ I pulled my knife out and moved to hit the emergency call icon, when I froze. I couldn’t move. To hit the button, or anything else. ‘What did you do?’
All I could do was speak and breathe. Every other move felt like I was lifting an elephant. Something pressed on the air, holding me in place like a statue.
Blondy watched me with an aggravating patience.
‘What. Did. You. Do?’
He plucked the puny knife from my hand. ‘I think we’ve both had enough wounds this weekend, no?’ He pushed up his sleeve and peeled back a bandage to show ragged, swollen claw marks a lot like my own.
Were these the guys from the kirkyard?
Blondy dropped the knife into his pocket and crossed his arms, head tilted to the side. ‘Either of you get a reading on her?’
The man to his right, out of my peripheral vision, said, ‘The air signature is the same. It’s her.’ He spoke through gritted teeth, almost grunting, as if he was concentrating. It was him. He was holding me in place. What were these guys?
My breathing sped. I tried to force my body to twist and face him, but it was pointless. I was helpless. ‘Let me go. I need to get home. I’ll be missed. Please.’ And I hated myself for that word. The pleading in it.
The blond prised my phone from my fingers and pressed my fingerprint to the scanner to unlock it. ‘Messages… ah. You text a Finn most often. Looks like you live with him.’ He typed a message. ‘Change of plans. Will be away for a few days. Xx. That’ll do.’
That’s what pleading got me. But Finn knew I didn’t have anywhere else to go, and if he wasn’t too mad about this afternoon, he might try to find me. But I couldn’t rely on that.
Blondy cupped my chin and stare
d into my eyes. ‘Now, Bee, like I said, we need to talk.’
I swallowed, wondering how he knew my nickname, and then sighed out my breath when I realised he’d read it in my texts.
‘Talk about what? I don’t even ken who you are. What any of you are.’
‘Exactly what we must talk about. But we’re running late. We’ll talk on the way.’
‘The way where?’
Blondy circled his raised finger, and the statue maker picked me up. He was younger than the other two, late twenties, with brown hair, a square jaw, round cheeks, and a button nose I’d be itching to poke if he wasn’t abducting me.
I tested his magical restraints. I could move again, a wee bit, but my limbs had no give in them, invisibly bound at the wrists, knees, elbows, and ankles. To anyone else I’d look like a stupid drunk getting carried home. And I was not that woman.
‘You can’t just take me off the street.’
‘No?’
‘It’s not like Button Nose here can keep me trapped in place forever. Where are you going to put me? A dark cellar? For what? An air signature? What even is that?’
Blondy sighed. ‘We’re trying to help you.’
Kidnapping didn’t go under ‘help’ in my dictionary.
He put a phone to his ear. ‘Is the car ready? Good. We have her, but we need to floor it to catch the plane.’
Chapter 3
I tried jumping from the car early on but failed. Yay, child lock. And my non-communicative abductors weren’t kidding about flooring it. Once we reached the main roads, they’d beat street racers at the speed they coaxed from the engine.
My pulse was going haywire. Emergency services had high-speed training for a reason. These guys clipped two wing mirrors in the first ten minutes.
I tore my eyes from the road and focused on my captors. All three had a stereotypical military build, a clean-cut face, short hair… They were average. Forgettable. But they wouldn’t show their faces if they planned to let me go.
‘Can we talk now?’ I asked, cursing inwardly when my voice cracked at the end. I needed to hold on to my anger. I couldn’t act scared, or they’d see me as easy prey.
Blondy was driving. He wasn’t going to give up any control to his henchmen. And yet it wasn’t him who replied.
Button Nose faced me. ‘We’re not the bad guys here. We want to help you, but it took so long to trace your air signature.’
‘Why follow me at all?’
He looked to Blondy for guidance but got nothing more than a glance in the rear-view mirror.
Maybe they released the barghest and tracked me to finish the job but… no. A plane journey left a trail, which was stupid when there was plenty of empty countryside around Scotland for murder and burial purposes.
I twisted my charm bracelet round and round my wrist. ‘You didn’t think this through very well. I can’t board a plane. I don’t even have my ID, let alone a passport. You should let me go.’
‘We can’t leave you on the street.’
‘Why the hell not?’
He shook his head. ‘I’m sorry, this shouldn’t be so rushed.’
The car slowed as it approached a secure gated area with a runway. We were maybe a mile or so out from the parking area.
‘I’m not going anywhere until I ken what’s going on.’ Okay, maybe I didnae have much choice, but if they cared at all, they owed me an explanation.
Button Nose blew out his breath. ‘Where to start… Okay. When you defended yourself from the barghest, you created an air signature. It was faint once you got in the taxi, but eventually we tracked you to the Royal Mile.’
‘So it was a barghest.’
‘What did you do, search it?’ the black-haired henchman asked, his cupid lips twisting into a sneer.
‘What else could I do? It’s not like I have a fiery-eyed monster handbook to look it up in.’
He snorted. ‘Great title.’
I glared at him and turned back to the less sarcastic one. Him, I might still get answers from before they forced me onto the plane.
‘What do you mean, when I defended myself? When I threw my hands up against its claws? Or when I ran? I did nothing special. Nothing like how you stopped me in the street.’
‘You might not have seen it, but what you did was exactly like what I did, only you didn’t hold something still. You threw it away.’
I… The creature had been on me, then metres away. I thought it moved back or teleported or something, but I’d flung it off? The creature wouldn’t have knocked its own head on the ground, but…
‘I don’t have special abilities. Trust me, I’d ken by now. I’m a standard human.’
Black Hair chuckled again. ‘You’d not be here, or have survived that fight, if you were.’
‘It’s not possible,’ I said.
Button Nose raised an eyebrow. ‘What, because you’ve searched for the supernatural all your life and couldn’t find it in yourself?’
‘How could you ken that?’ How long had these guys been following me?
‘All witches have that draw to the supernatural. It’s like an addiction until their magic bursts out. Like calls to like,’ Blondy said. He parked the car and turned off the engine. ‘We’re here. Let’s get her inside.’
The henchmen opened the doors, but I couldn’t bring myself to undo my buckle.
Witch. He’d said witch. I couldn’t be. Why hadn’t I known? Had some hint? Being obsessed with the paranormal didn’t make me more likely to become paranormal. And yet, here I was. Like calls to like. Was that why I had that tugging need to investigate the paranormal?
‘Come on!’ Blondy said, releasing my buckle and striding off over the concrete. ‘We can’t afford to miss our takeoff slot. Justin, get her.’
And that’s when I took in the private plane. We weren’t travelling commercial, and we sure hadn’t gone through passport control or any other security. Who were these people? They had to have real money, enough to hide me and stop me ever finding my way back home.
I swallowed hard. I couldn’t get on that plane.
Button Nose clamped me to his side in a bruising grip, one finger deep in my inner arm and hurting like hell. What happened to the ‘we’re the good guys’ speech?
I scratched his arms, but he didn’t even flinch. And when I went for his face, he moved me in front of him. I kicked back but only hit bone.
He guarded his sensitive spots well. And from the pain in my feet and his blank, focused expression, I’d done more harm to my toes than his shins. He didn’t just make statues. He was one.
Wind and rain swatted my cheeks as he frogmarched me across the airfield and up the metal steps to the plane. I dug in my heels and grabbed the railing, finally slowing us.
Justin grunted, and his eyes narrowed. A moment later, I could barely move.
‘Why won’t you let me go?’ And why didn’t my magic work when I needed it, if I really was a witch? My heart was racing as hard as it had in the kirkyard. The only difference was these monsters were human… well, witches. Close enough.
‘We have orders to get you on this plane.’
‘Why?’
He huffed, and his magic pushed me towards the door.
I fought with everything I had, but he didn’t slow. ‘At least tell me why. I deserve that much.’
‘Because you activated your magic. You know what’s out there, what you can do. We can’t leave you in the human world, untrained.’
‘Why not?’
Blondy peered around the door. ‘We’re leaving.’
Justin redoubled his efforts. The air turned into a solid, invisible wall, forcing me in the plane and over to the nearest seat. My knees buckled, and I fell against the headrest.
He held me there long enough for Blondy to close and lock the outer door. And then he let his magic go.
The engines were powering up. I wasn’t going to escape this flight. So I twisted around to see the rest of the wee cabin area.
Oth
er than the henchmen and Blondy, the only other occupants were another guard, and a girl around my age, maybe eighteen. She was Asian with an elfin chin and long legs, and she’d stretched out in the ample leg room, like she hadn’t a care in the world.
She waved. ‘Hi! I’m Kaylee. You must be the other girl from the graveyard. I hear we’ll be roommates.’
So, she was the screamer. I gave her a limp wave back.
Looking around was putting a crick in my neck, but she seemed happy enough that she might have answers. That should’ve put me at ease, but she didn’t look like the type to ask hard questions.
‘Roommates where?’
She frowned and smoothed her hair, showing her manicured nails. ‘They haven’t told you yet? Some place called Latvia.’
‘Latvia?’ I’d heard of the country but couldn’t place it on the globe. Wasn’t there some joke about it being backwards and small? And their five food groups being mashed, fried, boiled, roasted, and baked potatoes?
The engines were in full gear now, hurtling us down the runway.
Justin finished his conversation with Blondy and buckled into a seat across from me. ‘It’s a country around the size of Wales on the Baltic sea.’
‘Not helping.’
‘It borders Estonia, Lithuania, Russia, and Belarus.’
Well, the only one of those I was that familiar with was Russia, and that meant eastern Europe. Maybe that explained Blondy’s strange accent?
‘So why are we going to this tiny country?’ I lowered my voice. ‘And why do I need a roommate?’
Justin glanced at Blondy.
‘Tell her. I need to call ahead.’ And Blondy actually got on his phone there and then. On the plane. The privileges of money. ‘The headmaster, please. Thank you. Yes, we’re on our way now. We have the second girl. Yes, from the Kirkyard. Unusual, yes. You’re prepared? Good.’
‘You’ll be joining a school,’ Justin said, interrupting my eavesdropping.
Still, I’d get more from him than a one-sided phone conversation from a man that barely talked.
‘A school? I’m nineteen, not twelve.’ And where did they get off thinking they could force me into school anyway? Magic couldn’t make me listen in class or complete homework, could it?
