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, with 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.