by Helen Harper
The rest of the morning passed quickly. Although no would-be customers entered the little shop’s doors, there was plenty to keep me occupied. In fact, it was fairly satisfying work. The dust was thick in many of the little nooks and crannies and the many tomes, often as old and dusty as the building itself appeared, regularly caught my interest. The lack of passing trade met my first impressions, however. Clava Books wasn’t exactly full of the glossy bestsellers that would tempt most people to venture inside. Mrs Alcoon, for her turn, disappeared into another little room at the back from where I occasionally heard the odd clank and thud of things being dropped or moved around. The peace – and immediate trust that she’d placed in me – was reassuring.
By 2pm I’d managed to clear the worst of the dust away, leaving just a few motes dancing around in the weak winter sunshine.
“Goodness, you’ve done a grand job,” she exclaimed, emerging from the door at the back of the shop. “I’ll have to find you more things to do next time.”
I felt a brief wash of worry that the old lady didn’t need me in the slightest and had just hired me out of pity. Then I wondered whether I could afford to be bothered by that and if I should just accept the charity that was being offered.
It’s perfect, however,” she continued, “ as I need to run out tomorrow morning and pick up some supplies. This way you can stay and keep the shop open – otherwise I’d have to shut it up.” She smiled without a hint of self-deprecation at all. “And that wouldn’t be good for business.”
Was she reading my mind again and soothing my worry that I was nothing more than a charity case or was all this just coincidence? I smiled halfheartedly back at her, feeling a nervous flicker of bloodfire in the pit of my belly.
“So where do you come from, Jane?” she enquired with the air of someone who was barely interested.
I stiffened further. Why did she need to know that? I tried not to let my thoughts show on my face. “Oh, I’ve lived all over,” I said airily. At least I hoped it was airily and not with the growl that I really wanted to answer with.
“Ah, a wandering traveller! Part of me wondered whether that brilliant red hair of yours suggested a Scottish heritage. Your accent doesn’t fit with this little corner of the world, however.”
I smiled weakly again and watched as she picked up a few sheaves of paper and peered at them over her glasses before rearranging them slightly and then placing then back down in a messy pile on the shop counter. Her hands gave away her age, with papery white skin covering the visible blue lines of her veins within. Taking her in a fight shouldn’t be a problem, although I knew well that appearances could be deceptive. I’d bested the strongest looking muscle bound shifters down at the pack with ease and almost been garroted in the same week by a seemingly harmless looking pixie. I’d have to be careful here.
Mrs Alcoon’s eyes, for their part, betrayed nothing but warmth as she continued. “Myself, I’m a home bird. I like the idea of travelling and seeing the world, but truthfully I’d rather just stay at home. I’ve lived here in Inverness all my life, in fact.” A sudden shadow crossed her face. “You do have somewhere to stay, don’t you?”
“Oh, uh, yes, just on the other side of town. It’s very, um comfortable.”
“Mmm,” she murmured. “Well, that’s good then. Are you here on your own? No family?”
The fire in my belly crept up just that little bit higher. “No. No family. They are all…” I paused for a moment, trying to quickly, before giving up. Since leaving Cornwall, no-one had ever asked me about my background so I had nothing prepared. “I don’t want to talk about it really. It’s all just a bit complicated.”
She pursed her lips slightly and bobbed her head. “Aye, families are complicated things.”
“And you?”
She shook herself. “Yes, dear?”
“Your family? Your husband?”
“Oh goodness. No, he passed away years ago.” She touched her hand to her throat for a moment and I felt guilty for asking, but I’d needed to deflect her attention away from me. “We have no children either. I’d always wanted them, of course, what woman doesn’t? But it wasn’t to be.”
The melancholy look on her face prevented me from stating very firmly that there were plenty of women around who did not want squalling children running at their feet. It was clear, however, that there was no danger here. I was just being jumpy. She was probably just very good at understanding people. Probably.
I puzzled over it all the way home, stopping to pick up a couple of rolls and some cheese at the local cooperative shop. I havered slightly over some delicious looking quince and lime chutney, but the price was beyond my reach even in my surprisingly new gainfully employed status. Eventually, painfully small shopping spree over, I decided that I was reading far too much into her comments. I was hardly known for keeping my emotions to myself, after all. Way Directive 49 said that shifters should keep their more passionate emotions in check whilst in public. I’d never been very good at that one.
Once back at my little hovel, I pulled out my one and only plate from a drawer next to the stainless steel sink and broke open the rolls with my fingers. The blunt knife I used to cut through the cheese was far from perfect, but it did a good enough job and soon enough I was munching away, learning back against the wall that the bed rested against. My gaze fell briefly on my laptop in the corner but I decided that it was time for new beginnings. I wasn’t part of that world any more and it was time that I stopped thinking that way. Draco Wyr, Corrigan and the rest of the Otherworld be damned.
Chapter Three
As soon as I arrived at Clava Books the next day, Mrs Alcoon left on her mysterious errands. I was still somewhat baffled at her total trust in a complete stranger but I felt determined to fulfill her expectations. Casting my gaze around the shop, I tried to decide where to start. There was little evidence of a cataloguing system, although perhaps the old lady wouldn’t take too kindly to me moving things around very drastically. I could start cleaning the floor, I figured, if I shifted the piles of books around, but that would surely put off any customers who decided to suddenly appear. I threw a skeptical glance at the door; it really didn’t seem as if any people were going to come in, but of course maybe yesterday had just been a slow day. Perhaps if I washed the windows instead, the place might look more inviting.
I found some old newspaper under the till and a wrinkled lemon in the little fridge at the kitchen off the side and set to work. Glass, however, had never been my strong suit and it seemed as if I was creating more mess by just moving the dirt around a larger surface area. Hmmmm. I sat back on my haunches briefly and surveyed my efforts. “Could do better, Mack,” I murmured to myself. Perhaps it wasn’t lemon that you were supposed to use. Maybe it was vinegar?
All of a sudden a gloved hand pressed itself against the window from the outside. I was so startled that I gave out a little shriek and sprang backwards tipping over a pile of books on the floor next to me.
“Fuck!” I swore, peering out through the grubby pane to see who had interrupted my work. Whoever it was, however, they’d since passed on. There was a woman entering the little café opposite the bookshop and a pair of teenagers gossiping over some gadget they held in their hands on the corner, but none of them were wearing gloves and no-one else was around. Someone just wandering past, I supposed. Cursing at my clumsiness, I started to pick the mess of books up and put them right.
I’d almost finished putting the pile back to how it had been before when I had to reach out for the third last book. It looked similar to all the others, with a cracked leather cover and some faded gold inlay around the edges, but when I picked it up something about it felt different. It wasn’t a buzz exactly, or a hum, or a physical vibration, but my fingers tingled and I was opening it to flick through before I’d even realised what I was doing.
There was a beautiful illustration on the first page with vibrant colours that belied the book’s age. It was of a landscape, w
ith rolling hills and a dark turquoise blue river. I could just make out a structure that seemed to be painted to appear as if it were stone in the background, and what I took to be a pomegranate tree in the foreground. I gingerly turned the page, trying to avoid disturbing the old paper too much, and in the next instant threw all caution – and the book – away from me as if it had scalded me. Because the next page, the title page, wasn’t written in English but instead proclaimed itself loudly with a single Fae rune.
My heart was suddenly thudding. A Fae book? Here? In the depths of rural Scotland? I stared at it now lying on the other side of the room as if it might rise up and attack me and tried to think. It wasn’t beyond the realms of possibility that it had ended up here by accident. This was a bookshop, after all, and it housed old, in fact ancient, books within its walls at that. And it probably wasn’t that unusual that it was here in north Scotland either; what with the Celtic connections and everything, there were bound to be Fae creatures lurking around. I swallowed, trying to avoid the fire inside me rising in increased ire and pushing away the unwelcome thought that if I hadn’t been trapped inside a faerie ring back in Cornwall whilst my home was being attacked by Iabartu’s minions then Julia, and the others, might still be alright. And Anton wouldn’t be in charge, and I’d still be there and…
Enough. I tampered down the flames and watched the book warily as if it might suddenly attack me. Did Mrs Alcoon know what it was? Did she even know it was here? There had definitely been something off about the way she’d seemed to read my mind. Perhaps it hadn’t just been the uncanny wisdom of someone with experience at reading others. Perhaps she was…
“A witch?” A smooth voice asked from above me. “Or worse?”
This reading of my mind trick was becoming tiresome, I briefly thought, and then instinct took over and I was on my feet in a heartbeat. I’d stopped sheathing my daggers to my forearms – it would have been a bit difficult to explain that away in the bar where the uniform had been a white short-sleeved t-shirt and I’d just gotten out of the habit – but I wasn’t completely complacent, or stupid, and I used sharp silver needles to hold my hair in place at the back. Flipping them out with a flick of my wrist, I poised to stab them somewhere, anywhere, in the direction of the voice. The front door of the shop hadn’t jangled so whoever this was they hadn’t entered by any conventional routes - and they were making my skin crawl. This was most definitely an otherworldly presence. It was wearing a trilby hat that covered most of its face, although I could just make out a dark smooth skinned jaw, and overcoat. This was the thing that had been watching me from the side of the road the day I’d been fired by Arnie. It had been stalking me. The bloodfire that I’d controlled just moments before suddenly raged inside me, licking up my stomach and chest and throat.
“Whoa,” the suddenly clearly male voice stated without a trace of tension, “you might want to calm down there a little bit, Red.”
The old nickname registered briefly and, hot blood thudding in my ears, I suddenly lashed out. The figure leaned back in a blur of effortless motion and completely avoided my furious swipe.
“Have you become rusty since leaving the Pack?”
So the nickname had been no coincidence. But this was definitely no-one I knew from my former life so he had be someone – something – entirely more dangerous. It occurred to me that he may well have planted himself inside the little shop for the very same reason, my traces of Draco Wyr blood, that the demi-god bitch, Iabartu, had killed or maimed almost everyone I’d cared about for. Not gonna happen this time, buster.
I thrust forward again, this time pivoting on the ball of my foot at the last possible second to aim for his more vulnerable flank. To my abject fury, he bent his body back away again in a move a ninja warrior would have been proud of.
“Really, given what I’ve heard you’re capable of, I find this rather disappointing. I’d expected a more,” he paused, “impressive display.”
I snarled but kept my distance this time, trying to clear my thoughts and focus on the job in hand. Focus the fire, focus the fire, focus the fire. I wasn’t going to give in to the temptation to let the dragon part of me, whatever that entailed, take over. I needed to stay as human as I could because letting go would mean facing up to what I really was inside and I just wasn’t prepared to do that yet. I’d come close last year with Iabartu and I had no desire to go that way ever again. Even if it meant I couldn’t defeat whatever otherworldly thing was in front of me.
Focus the fire. The mantra ran through my head again and again as I fought to compose myself and control my blood to allow me room to think. The flames dampened down although the heat inside me remained.
“There now,” he softly cooed.
The bristles on the back of my neck stirred at the patronising tone of voice and I almost, just almost, lost my shaky control. I forced a deep inward breath, reminding myself that completely flaking out and losing my temper would not help me control this situation. I looked him up and down, realising that I still hadn’t seen his face clearly from under the shadow of his wide-brimmed hat. I might not be able to quite connect with his body but…
Tensing ever so slightly, I pulled one teeny tiny tendril of flame up through from the pit of my stomach and allowed its heat to swirl gently through my veins, before using its power to snatch forward with the very tip of one of silver needles.
He hissed in sudden surprise but I’d achieved my immediate goal. I’d snagged the edge of the hat and managed to take him unawares and pull it off his head. I found myself staring into a pair of deepset indigo eyes that flashed silver in a mixture of shock and fury. Damnit. My would-be attacker was Fae.
The obvious tension in his heavily coated body and in the muscles tight against his high cheekbones betrayed the Fae’s own emotions. I felt some momentary satisfaction that he had had to control his own temper at my actions and resisted the urge to chant, ‘nana nana na’ at him. Instead, I scooped up his hat from the floor and twirled it thoughtfully on a finger, returning the silver needles to their hiding place at the same time and keeping my eyes carefully trained on him. Silver would do me little good amongst the Fae; I’d need to find some iron instead. Life would be so much easier if all otherworld nasties had the same weaknesses. There was a limit to how many different types of metallic weapons I could realistically carry with me. The Fae’s eyes followed the circular motion I made with his hat whilst I forced myself to inject a lazy nonchalant drawl into my voice.
“Well, someone’s strayed far from the Unseelie Court. Why are you darkening my door, Fae?” I winced slightly at my own over-done cliché, but it did the trick.
Hissing again and baring back his lips in a surprisingly animalistic grimace that revealed a set of very sharp and very white teeth, his eyes returned to my face and deepened to almost black colour. Neat trick.
“I am Seelie, human. Do not think that you can compare me to the dark ones.”
Oh, well. I’d had a fifty-fifty shot at guessing right. With his midnight dark eyes I’d have sworn he was Unseelie – a member of the Dark Fae - although his golden hair did, to be fair, suggest otherwise. “And do not call me human, Fae,” I retorted calmly back. “I assume you are here because you know what I really am.”
“I know what you are not.”
I’m not interested in having this conversation with you. “And what is that?” I said, aiming for an air of almost boredom.
“You are not of the Pack, despite their Lord Alpha’s naïve convictions to the contrary. And, you are right, you are not human.” He leaned in close to me and took a deep breath as if inhaling my scent. “So what are you?”
I cocked my head, considering. I was relieved that he apparently didn’t know the truth after all. The records I’d found secreted away in John’s magically sealed drawer back in Cornwall with my pack had given away the truth – that, no, I wasn’t human, that instead running through my blood were the genetic traces of the Draco Wyr, an ancient dragon race whose
blood contained mysterious magical elements. There was the power of the fire that rose inside me whenever I was angry or challenged, and the addictive qualities that had been revealed when Anton had tasted my blood during the Brethren’s evaluation challenges and when Iabartu had tried to take me down to use my blood for her sinister nefarious purposes. She’d almost destroyed the entire pack in her hunt to catch me because she’d seemed to think that she could use it to control others. I was hardly going to reveal the truth of my origins to an untrustworthy Fae, Seelie or not, when total destruction might be the result. Besides, I still didn’t really know all that much about the Draco Wyr anyway; my Othernet research hadn’t really pulled up many answers.
“I have no idea,” I eventually answered, shrugging as if I had no answers. “I have some witchy qualities perhaps but, other than that…”
The Fae glared at me for a second and then rocked back slightly on his heels. His face took on a look of intense concentration and his eyes held mine, daring me to look away. Gold flecks danced across the pupils of his eyes and his voice deepened to a deep murmur. “You will tell me everything.”
“Errr…no, I won’t, because I don’t know anything.”
His eyes bored further into mine. “What are you? I won’t hurt you, little one.”
Little one? This was becoming annoying. He reached out an elegant hand, gently brushing my cheek with the tips of his fingers before I could manage to move away. His eyes reflected even more golden highlights, if that were possible. He smiled at me and softly repeated, “Tell me.”