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. “Now, 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.

Chapter Nine

I stared at Maggie in confusion and more than a little trepidation. “Umm…what do you mean? Was that not supposed to happen?”

She backed away from me as if I was carrying some terribly contagious disease, the twinkle in her eye now all but completely absent.

“Maggie?” Now I was afraid. Fuck it, this must be some kind of Draco Wyr spin off. The only thing I could do would be to plead abject ignorance. “What is it? What went wrong?” I tried to look baffled and scared. It wasn’t hard.

“You’re shooting green fire from your hands and you’re asking me what’s wrong? You are not human.”

Mrs Alcoon interrupted. “Maggie, are you sure? I mean I’ve not sensed anything at all about Mackenzie other than that there are some men looking for her.”

“Oh for goodness sake, June!” Maggie snapped. “You’re hardly clairvoyant of the year.”

Mrs Alcoon looked hurt at that, something which good old Maggie May clearly realised as soon as the words were out of her mouth because she immediately apologised. “I’m sorry, that was mean. But your Mackenzie is not normal. And I want to know exactly what she really is.”

Join the queue, darling, I thought tiredly. “Maggie, I’m sorry. I don’t know what I’ve done. All I did was follow your instructions.”

“Instructions which should lead to little more than a harmless repellent spell, not endow the recipient with full-blown attack capabilities.” She continued to glare at me as though I might start shouting flames and incinerate her at any moment.

“Well, here, then.” I started to take off the necklace, wincing at the residue heat, but her eyes widened even further and she looked alarmed.

“Don’t you dare take that off young lady! Who knows what might happen as a result.”

Young lady now, was it? I tried not to bridle although I could hardly call it an endearment when Maggie looked as if she might try to claw my eyes out. “Like what? Are you saying I have to keep this on forever or I might suddenly spontaneously combust or something?” I was starting to get angry. I hadn’t asked her to come over and start bespelling me; I hadn’t asked her to give me the freaking necklace or to make me suddenly able to seemingly control fire. Heat spiraled up through my aesophagus. Since when was I responsible for fucking everything anyway? I bunched my fists and took a step forward without thinking. Maggie raised up her arms once more in either some kind of defence or attack pattern – I couldn’t tell which and I wasn’t sure I cared - before Mrs Alcoon suddenly stepped in front of her, blocking my path and Maggie’s intentions.