by Helen Harper
“It’s the penthouse.” He smiled lazily at me. “Fifteenth floor.”
Aah.
“I don’t suppose you’re well equipped for fire regulations and have a proper outdoor fire escape, do you.”
His smile grew broader. “Unfortunately not.”
He started to walk towards me. Fuck it. I didn’t think I could pull the old knee defense trick again and he was just too strong for me to fight, even with all my blood blazing. What now?
“Well, I hate to break up this little party but it’s time that we were going.” Solus appeared in a wink of purple shimmer from seemingly nowhere at my left and grabbed my arm.
“You prick,” I yelled, without thinking. “What did you do? Get me out of here!”
“With pleasure, my lady.”
And, with that, the air started to blur again and I could feel my stomach yet again churning. I just had the chance to see confusion and bewilderment cross Corrigan’s face – an emotion I imagined he didn’t feel all that often – and then hear his snarled, “Mackenzie!” before Solus and I were slamming back onto to a cold, grey and wet Inverness pavement.
“That WAS fun!” Solus said with a grin, just as I turned around and punched him in the mouth.
Chapter Eight
Solus’ hand immediately raised up to his cheek where my fist had connected and he rubbed it with a look of hurt on his face. I felt a momentary gleam of satisfaction that I’d finally managed to strike the stupid Fae.
“I don’t see why you’re so worked up,” he complained.
“Worked up?” I spat. “Do you have any idea what you just did? How many people you just put in danger because of some moronic stunt that you pulled just to show off? You’re lucky your head is still on, Solus.”
His eyes took on an innocent sheen. “Me? All I wanted was to give you a little demonstration of what could happen if you continued to hide the truth from me. Besides, you weren’t in any danger and neither was anyone else.”
“You fuckwit! He thinks I’m a shifter! If Corrigan puts his brain into gear and thinks for even a moment he’ll work out that I’m not. Humans aren’t allowed to know that shifters even exist. I lived with them for years – what do you think he’ll do to those people who hid me for that length of time? The Lord Alpha of all the freaking shifters on the British Isles is not exactly the soft cuddly forgiving type.”
“Jeez, you’re a bit stressed out, aren’t you? First of all,” he ticked off his fingers, “you’re not human. Second of all, it seemed like you were both having quite a good time. And thirdly, did he smell you? Did he notice that you’re not a shifter?” Solus glared at me demandingly. “Well?”
“No,” I sputtered, “but that’s probably just because he was too surprised to notice at the time. He’ll be sniffing around right now and then -”
“Seriously? You don’t give Lord Corrigan much respect for his abilities, do you? Whereas mine, naturally, are considerable. If the Pack Lord was going to realise that you weren’t a shifter, don’t you think he’s smart enough to have scented it on you straight away? Or do you really think he’s that dumb and vapid not to even inhale?”
I stared at him. Actually, no I didn’t think Corrigan was that stupid, falling for tall tales about diseases aside. I was still baffled as to how he’d not spotted immediately what I was – or, at least, what I wasn’t, anyway. I’d gotten away with it once, after Iabartu had been killed and Julia’s potion had probably mostly rubbed off, but the reek of her corpse and her minion’s had covered mine.
Solus continued. “Whilst I have no idea how you managed to hide your non-shifter stink from him and the rest of the Brethren before, it was patently obvious that you had. I’ve been paying at least a little bit of attention.” He folded his arms and looked smug. “I covered your scent up, Rambo. It is a simple thing. The Lord Alpha would not have been able to note that anything was different about you from the last time you were together.”
The wave of relief that flooded over me was almost overwhelming. “My name is Mackenzie.”
He shrugged. “Whatever. Rambo doesn’t suit you either anyway. Not unless you fancy putting stripping to the waist and sticking a bandanna round your head, that is?”
He leered at me suggestively. Lunging forward, I aimed for his solar plexus but this time he managed to dodge me easily. Fucking Fae and their stupid magic.
“Tsk, tsk,” he said, shaking his head. “You don’t have much control over you powers, do you?”
“I don’t have any powers, you freak.”
“Other than being able to break out of an impenetrable faerie ring, of course.”
I jabbed his chest with my index finger. “Stay the fuck away from me, Solus.”
Turning around, I stalked off in the direction of home. Then I realised that my home security was hardly tight and that Solus might decide he wasn’t finished playing yet. I spun round and passed him again, heading back towards Clava Books instead.
He called out after me. “Next time, I might not be so nice. I might not bother hiding your smell. You might want to keep me happy.”
His voice trailed off behind me. I resisted the urge to look back and kept on walking. At least Derek seemed to have crawled back into whatever hole he’d come out of, I thought darkly. I had a lot of pent up fury that I needed to expel somewhere and it was probably a damn sight safer for him if he was out of the way.
I must have marched in double time back to the bookshop because I seemed to arrive there before I knew it. I flung open the door, ignoring the furious jangling of the bell, and slammed it shut behind me. Leaning against the doorframe I took a moment to calm myself down, pulling in deep measured breaths. After a moment or two, Mrs Alcoon appeared from the back office. She took one alarmed look at my face and then gently took me by the arm and led me into the kitchen where she inevitably flicked on the kettle.
“Goodness, what on earth has happened, Mackenzie?”
“I…,” I looked at her calm reassuring face and dissembled quickly. I felt the urge to tell her the truth, and certainly trusted her enough by now to know that my secrets would be safe. I just couldn’t trust all the other irritants in my life not to concoct nefarious schemes to try to squeeze the information out of her. I opted for a half-truth instead. “There’s a guy. He used to hang out at the pub where I worked before here – he’s the reason I had to leave. Well, the reason I was fired, actually. He came upon me in the street on the way home and…”
She patted my hand, softly. “Oh my dear. How terrible. Did he hurt you?”
“Um, not really, I managed to get away this time but I’m worried about what he might do if I see him again.”
I hoped her strain of clairvoyance wouldn’t detect the slight lie. I had, after all, been set upon by Derek in the street. But I’d sort of swapped my pronouns when I mentioned the guy who I was worried about seeing again. Derek I could take care of easily myself – Corrigan, or indeed Solus, I might have a bit more trouble with. She’d foreseen before that Corrigan wouldn’t ever come to Inverness and that Solus meant me no harm. But that didn’t mean that he wouldn’t do harm ‘accidentally’ and that Corrigan wouldn’t just send some shifter minions in his place. Besides, if her clairvoyant skills were that strong and reliable, she’d probably have been a fully fledged member of the Ministry of the Mages and I was almost completely sure that wasn’t the case.
Still, concern was clearly written all over her face. Whilst I’d managed to avoid setting off her soothsaying warning system, I felt a bit guilty about not telling her the whole truth, especially when she was so obviously anxious about my welfare.
“Oh my dear Mackenzie, that sounds just awful, just simply awful. I’ve not felt that anything bad like that will happen but then my feelings, as I call them, are hardly an exact science.” Her face took on a pensive look. “I hope you won’t think I’m intruding but I have a friend who might be able to help.”
I doubted that very much, not unless they happened to be
a ridiculously powerful denizen of the otherworld . Still I tried to look interested, just to play along and be polite.
Mrs Alcoon continued. “She’s the one I was telling you about – the one who has been a bit sick. You collected the blisterwort for her. She has some, um,” she searched around for a word, “…tricks, that you might be able to use in case you get in trouble again. She’s very trustworthy, I promise.”
This would be a total waste of time. I dreaded to think what these ‘tricks’ might be – a bit of self-defence 101 perhaps? The old knee in the groin ploy had worked once with Corrigan but as a serious long term defense tactic it was going to be completely pointless.
“I…I’m not so sure that’ll help much,” I started to say, trying to think of a way to let Mrs Alcoon down lightly. Her intentions were well meant, after all.
“Please, Mackenzie, it will make me feel so much better. You look so pale right now that I’ll be worried every time you walk out the door.” She added a little quaver to her voice just for a bit of effect and widened her eyes at me in expressive hope.
I sighed. Manipulated by an old aged pensioner. “Okay, then. I know some self defence already though so it might not do a huge amount of good.” Well, at least when I said I knew some self-defence I could take down most otherworldly monsters if I managed to focus my bloodfire and concentrate hard enough. It was just unfortunate that Corrigan wasn’t most otherworld monsters and Solus was an uncontrollable Fae.
She beamed at me, full wattage. “This isn’t just a bit of karate. I’ll ring her right this minute.” With a light-footed flourish that belied her years, she immediately walked out of the kitchen. I could hear the sounds of her picking up the phone beside the shop’s till and the soft murmur of indistinct talk. I sat heavily back in my chair and wiped a hand across my forehead. Oh, what a tangled web we weave.
Moments later Mrs Alcoon wandered back into the kitchen with an even larger smile on her face. “She’s just on her way over. She only lives round the corner so it won’t take long.”
“What’s her name?”
“Maggie.” Mrs Alcoon laughed. “Maggie May, actually.”
“Like the song? Interesting.”
“Oh, I think you’ll find there are many interesting things about our Maggie.” She pulled the other chair up and leaned towards me. “You will keep an open mind, about her, won’t you Mackenzie? You’ve taken my funny little feelings in your stride so I hope you’ll continue to be like that.”
Hmm. Perhaps there was more that was interesting to Maggie May than just her name. “I can definitely promise you that I have no pre-conceived judgments to make. It would be good to know what sort of tricks I can expect though.
“Oh, if I told you that then there wouldn’t be any surprise now would there? At the very least you’re looking a lot brighter and perkier than you were before. There’s colour back in your cheeks.”
Hopefully not from embarrassment at thinking how I’d have to pretend to take Maggie May’s ‘tricks’ seriously.
A few moments of companionable silence later, the door jangled out the front and Mrs Alcoon virtually leapt out of her chair. “She’s here! Come out to the shop front with me, Mackenzie.”
Reluctantly I followed her out. The woman who stood in front of the counter and whom I presumed was Maggie wasn’t quite what I had been expecting. She was short, barely five foot tall, and incredibly round and rosy cheeked. Involuntarily I thought of a red apple before throwing the thought away as uncharitable. She hugged Mrs Alcoon warmly, thanking her for the ‘wonderful herbal tea’ and then cast a twinkly look at me, holding her arms out.
I stared back, nonplussed, wondering if she expected me to hug her too. Fortunately she just took hold of my hands and squeezed them tight.
“June tells me you’ve been having a few problems.”
June? I was momentarily nonplussed before realising that she meant Mrs Alcoon.
“Err…yes, a few,” I mumbled somewhat incoherently. Maggie, for her part, continued to hold my hands tight and look unsettlingly into my face.
“June, lock up the shop and turn the sign to closed.”
Mrs Alcoon sounded a bit nervous. “But we might have customers, Maggie. I wouldn’t want to turn anyone away.”
“Pssshaw! They’re not exactly queuing up are they? Besides, we won’t want to be interrupted.”
I was starting to warm to Maggie’s no-nonsense attitude. Mrs Alcoon – June – walked over to the door and slotted the top and bottom deadbolts into place and flipped over the ‘Open for business’ sign. Maggie meanwhile continued to look at me disconcertingly. After a few moments she finally let go.
“Right,” she stated briskly, suddenly all business-like. “There are a few things that I can show you that will help to solve any further…problems that you may have. June has told me that you won’t scare easily and that you’ll take my little tricks on board without questioning too much.”
I stared at her, wondering what on earth Mrs Alcoon had gotten me into, before blinking in reluctant acquiescence.
“Excellent. You don’t need any real power to perform these tricks; in fact most people have enough latent magic to manage quite easily.”
Umm…magic? Not ‘tricks’? I could feel coils of heat starting to swell in the pit of my stomach and tried to force them down. Rationally, this might prove to be more useful than a few basic self-defense moves. And I had to admit that I was somewhat curious to see whether I could in fact perform any magic. The research I’d done on the Draco Wyr hadn’t yielded any clues as to whether that was possible and I’d definitely been fascinated by what Alex had been capable of doing when I’d first met him down in Cornwall. As a ‘human’, I wasn’t supposed to know anything about the existence of real magic or mages though, so I tried to keep a confused expression on my face. It wasn’t too hard.
Maggie dug into the little brown leather handbag that she was carrying by her side and pulled out a fine silver necklace. She placed the bag on the store counter and handed the necklace out to me. For a heartbeat I paused without taking it. Silver was poisonous to shifters and after half a lifetime living among them, sometimes old habits died hard. Then I shook it off and reached out and grasped it. The metal was cool to the touch and buzzed slightly. I realised that it wasn’t actually silver after all, but instead some kind of odd alloy. Interesting. She’d clearly placed some sort of ward on the necklace so her little ‘tricks’ definitely did include some actual real magic.
“Place the necklace around your neck,” Maggie instructed.
Again I hesitated. I hadn’t been around the otherworld for years to foolishly walk straight into some kind of mages’ trap. John had used to warn all of the pack about accepting gifts from strangers and letting “meddling mages” as he sometimes called them, gain any kind of foothold of control over us. There had been tentative peace between the mages and the shifters for decades but that didn’t mean that either side wasn’t often keen to try for a little one-upmanship just to prove who was stronger.
Maggie smiled at me gently, eyes twinkling again. “It won’t bite, Mackenzie. I promise it won’t do anything that you don’t want it to do.”
I debated internally for another half second and then looped the necklace round my neck, bringing the clasp round to my front so I could do it up. I fumbled for a few moments and then managed to link it together. I looked back at Maggie and raised my eyebrows slightly. Mrs Alcoon was watching me like a hawk.
“Now, we need to key it to you so it recognizes your blood.”
I felt a brief surge of heat when she mentioned blood. If she wanted me to spill some of mine to complete this ritual then she was going to be getting the little necklace right back because I’d already caused enough problems by dropping my fiery red cells all over half of Britain. Fortunately for both of us, however, she didn’t mean blood literally.
“Hold the front of the necklace with your left hand and take hold of my right.” I did as Maggie bade. “N
ow, repeat after me – aye lee ch boil eeth aitch.”
I dutifully repeated her words, even getting the proper Scottish ‘ch’ sound fairly accurate.
She continued. “Reek ath boil eeth aitch.”
Again I followed her sound by sound, wondering idly if a little man with a TV camera was going to suddenly pop up from behind a bookcase to tell me that I’d been fooled by some elaborate television stunt. However, my fears in that direction started to fade as the necklace started to heat up. I thought I was imagining it to begin with but soon it was becoming almost painful to keep hold of.
“Ach leith fack aitch,” intoned Maggie.
“Ach leith fack…” I began. I didn’t manage to finish, however, as there was a sudden crack and hiss. I yelled in pain as the heat of the silver was suddenly ratcheted it up and dropped the necklace from my hand; it bounced painfully against my neck, searing the skin there. Instinctively, I raised my fingers to my mouth to suck away the burning pain when all of a sudden I saw little green flames sparking from my fingertips. I gazed at them, stunned, then wiggled my fingers to see what would happen. The flames wiggled along, shimmering in a cooking with gas haze. I jerked my whole right hand in a sharp snapping motion to see if I could get rid of the flames and was horrified to see a sudden jet of green flame arc out, hit a pile of books that was haphazardly placed on the counter top awaiting their chance to be inventoried, and completely incinerate them. My mouth dropped open and I stared at the smoking pile. A sweet acrid smell of burnt paper filled the store.
“Uh, Maggie, I don’t want to be put behind bars for accidentally combusting someone who tries to cop a feel.” I had enough trouble controlling my actions when I was angry as it was. I didn’t need the power of actual fire to tempt me.
I turned back to look at her. The small woman’s face was pure white and she stared at me in horror. Her hands were up in some kind of ‘ward off all evil’ position. “What the hell are you?” she hissed through gritted teeth.
