Bloodmagic (Blood Destiny 2) (2 page)

There were numerous Gaelic tomes on the shelves, some incredibly dusty, as well as a sprinkling of the usual coffee table photo books of the highlands of Scotland.  I picked one up and flicked through, stopping at the pages of Clava Cairns, a 4000 year old group of burial cairns.  No doubt this was the bookshop’s namesake.  Kind of creepy, if you asked me, to name a shop after a cemetery.  Admittedly there was a rather beautiful full page photo that had been taken at night, with several people holding flames aloft and staring towards the back of a group of higgledy-piggledy stones. 
Druids perform the Winter Solstice welcoming ceremony
read the caption underneath.  On reading that, the vestiges of a thought flickered at the back of my mind.  Before I could fully form the words, however, my musings were interrupted by a series of clatters and thuds from towards the back of the shop. 

Eventually an older woman with graying hair tied up in a neat bun, emerged from a dark wooden door.  “Aha!” she said, with warmth in her voice.  “So you’re interested in the Cairns, are you?”

I gently closed the book and placed it back on the shelf.  “Of course,” I murmured.  It was important to appear as if everything about this shop was fascinating if I wanted to get a job here.

I clearly didn’t do a very good job of looking interested, however, because she gazed at me with somewhat of a skeptical expression on her face.  “Have you been to visit the Cairns yourself?” 

“Erm, no,” I admitted.  “But they are high on my to do list,” I quickly added with a hopeful smile.

“So it’s work you’re after, is it?”

I started.  How had she known that?

“It’s written all over your face, dearie.  Sorry, you don’t like being called dearie, do you?”

Okay, now I was getting freaked out.  Were my thoughts really that transparent? 

The old lady smiled benignly and patted my hand. “I’m Mrs Alcoon,” she said, warmly.

I couldn’t help smiling back despite her formality.  “Er…I’m Jane.  Jane Smith.”  I’d kept my surname since moving to Inverness; Smith was obviously a common enough name to arouse absolutely zero suspicion.  Using Mackenzie as well would have just been inviting trouble, however, so I stuck with the plain moniker I’d given myself when I’d found work at Arnie’s pub.

Mrs Alcoon raised her white eyebrows briefly before murmuring, “Really? Jane?  Funny, you don’t look like a Jane.”

I coughed slightly then cleared my throat, stirring myself to at least appear confident even if I was more than slightly alarmed by the elderly woman’s prescience.  “What can I say?  My parents just lacked some imagination.”    It occurred to me that if my name really was Jane, I’d be feeling rather insulted by myself right about now.

Mrs Alcoon raised a shoulder in a brief shrug as if to dismiss the matter.  “Well, Jane, you’ve arrived just in time.  As it turns out, I do need some help.  Not full-time, you understand, but a little helping hand here and there would definitely be welcome.  Perhaps a few mornings a week?  Cleaning the shop, attending to the customers, running a few errands?”

This was going considerably better than I’d expected.  “I…um…yes.”  I cleared my throat again.  “Yes, please.”

She smiled at me again.  “Then let’s brew a pot and have a cuppa and discuss your renumeration.”

She led me off into a small kitchen off the side of the main shop area.  The tiles were cracked with dirty grouting lining their uneven finish but there was a little fridge, a few cupboards and a kettle and toaster.  I supposed you didn’t need much else to get by.  There was also a little table with two wooden chairs against it in the middle of the small room so I took one and sat down.  I was still feeling rather shocked that this was going so well and I half expected old Mrs Alcoon to suddenly burst out laughing and tell me that she’d just been playing a joke on me.  To her credit, however, she busied herself with flicking on the kettle and pulling out a couple of chipped mugs and a teapot, humming away to herself tunelessly.  Turning her back to me, she started pulling things out of the cupboards and getting herself organised.

Once the kettle had boiled, she filled the little teapot and brought it over, along with some surprisingly tasty oat biscuits.  The proferred pot unfortunately wasn’t coffee but instead some kind of potent herbal tea that made my eyes water and my tongue sting.  I swallowed it down, however, to be polite; Julia had taught me well.  It turned out that Mrs Alcoon had been considering taking someone else on for a while, to help keep the shop running.  I did wonder if she was actually making any money at all, given the lack of customers that had so far ventured across the threshold but I wanted to work here, not to point out the lack of business that I’d so far seen so I refrained from voicing my question out loud.  She needed someone to come in four mornings a week and help out, and I promised that I would help “spruce the place up a bit as well,” as she put it.  We agreed upon the princely sum of one hundred and twenty pounds a week – which was actually not much less than Arnie had been paying me at the pub and would definitely cover my main costs, even it meant I’d be continuing to scrimp and scrape – and she set me to work straight away cleaning down the shelves.

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, 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…