“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.”