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. F*ck 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 f*cking 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.
“There now,” she said soothingly. “I’m sure this is just all some kind of misunderstanding. Are you sure that the necklace wasn’t contaminated or something?”
I couldn’t see Maggie any more but I could hear her spat comment of denial.
“Mackenzie,” Mrs Alcoon began, reaching out to touch my arm. She didn’t get the chance to finish what she was going to say, however, because she suddenly recoiled away from me as if she had been burned. Her eyes were as round and as big as golf balls. “You’re a…” her voice trailed off and something flickered in her gaze. She turned back to Maggie. “You should leave.”
Maggie’s reply might have been muttered but I could still make it out. “I’m not leaving you here alone with that thing – whatever it might be.”
“Oh, it’s quite alright, she won’t hurt me.”
Mrs Alcoon sounded a lot more confident of that than I was. Her intervention had dampened down the flames inside me somewhat, but I was still scared and angry, and the enormity of what was going on was starting to hit me. Flames inside me was one thing – at least those I could keep hidden, after a fashion anyway, but actual flames sprouting from my skin was something else entirely. Was it going to happen every time I moved my hands? And what had I been planning to do to Maggie anyway? Something was very wrong with me. No doubt this was all some kind of f*cked up genetic thing and nothing to do with her spell in the first place. And yet for a flash I’d been prepared to, I didn’t know what, but prepared to do something. I couldn’t go anywhere without screwing everything up. My whole body sagged in defeat.
Mrs Alcoon moved to the side and relaxed her posture, putting on a smile for Maggie that even I could tell was somewhat forced. Maggie, meanwhile, stared at me with a hard expression in her eyes. I suddenly understood where the expression ‘eyeballing’ someone had come from. I swallowed nervously and cleared my throat.
“No, I’ll go. Being here was a mistake. This spell was a mistake. All of this,” I gestured hopelessly around the air, “was a mistake.”
“You’re not going anywhere, Mackenzie Smith,” Mrs Alcoon stated, pointing me towards the little kitchen. I noted that she was being careful not to touch me again. “There are no mistakes that have been made. We just need to talk, that’s all.”
“I will not…” Maggie started to bluster before she was interrupted.
“You will.”
The little round woman harrumphed loudly and glared at me, then stomped over to pick up her handbag. “If you do anything, and I mean anything, to harm June I will come over here and kill you myself.”
“I won’t hurt her,” I said, hoping that it was the truth.
“Maggie, I already said…,” Mrs Alcoon started.
“Fine! I’m going!”
She gave me one last hard stare and then turned, undid the locks, and left out the front door. The bell jangled loudly as she slammed it shut behind her, making me cringe. For a moment, a heavy silence hung in the air covering the entire atmosphere. Then Mrs Alcoon took a deep breath and spoke.
“You have dragon blood.”
I stared at her, mute, then looked down at my hands. Thankfully they were now green flame free.
“Maggie’s right,” Mrs Alcoon continued, “I don’t have brilliant clairvoyant powers. I don’t have any brilliant powers other than perhaps those of disorganisation. That’s why I haven’t sensed what you are until now, I suppose. The necklace’s spell must have magnified what already project.”
I continued to stare at her, my tongue cleaved to the roof of my mouth.
“I caught a glimpse of the future. There were a group of robed figures and they were talking about how you were a wyrm. You were with them.” At my suddenly alarmed look, she quickly continued, “You were with them, not being held by them. They seemed to, I don’t know, respect you, I think.”
I must have still looked worried because Mrs Alcoon continued in a reassuring tone. “You have nothing to fear from me, Mackenzie, I am not strong enough to be part of the Ministry so there’s no higher power that I am beholden to tell.” I started at her mention of the Mages. She nodded at me. “Yes, I know what they are. They’re not interested in me although I have no doubt they’ll be interested in you. These people you lived with before - the ones you learned about the Fae from – were they dragons too?”
I shook my head and found my voice. If I was really going to trust her, then I’d have to tell her the whole truth this time. “Um, no. No, they weren’t. And I don’t think I’m really a dragon. I’m a Draco Wyr. Well, only an eighth of me is Draco Wyr, the rest I guess is bog standard human.”
“Mm. I don’t know what a Draco Wyr actually is, dear. Something powerful though, that’s for sure.”
I went back to staring at her.
She smiled. “Go and put the kettle on, why don’t you? I just need to check something in the office – I’ll follow you in a moment or two.”
When I didn’t move, she raised her eyebrows and said gently, “It’s alright, Mack. Everything will be fine.”
That was the first time she’d ever called me Mack. Without saying anything else, I took myself off to the kitchen and sat heavily down on the chair. I lifted my hands up to eye level and scrutinized them but I couldn’t see anything different about them. No weird green fire. Gingerly, I touched the necklace with my fingertips. That was cool to the touch again also.
“What the f*ck is going on?” I asked myself softly.
Concentrating a bit harder, I focused on my fingers and this time willed the fire to re-appear, just to see if I could. After a second, my hands ignited. I waved them around in front of me. Un-f*cking-believable. I tried to will the fire to disappear and then, bit by bit, it did. The flames just winked out across my fingers, one after the other. I stretched out my index finger and screwed up my eyes and stared at it, trying to gain a little more control. It was a bit harder but after a few moments my one finger alone caught alight. I touched my other hand with the flame and felt nothing, no burn, then tried touching the wooden table. It immediately left a dark scorch mark. Hastily, and guiltily, I covered it up with a coaster, then reverted my attention to my finger.
I moved my finger down through the air and the flame followed. Then I smiled to myself and sketched out Mack in cursive script, just as I’d done years ago with sparklers on Guy Fawkes’ Night. I grinned. I stared at my finger again and tried to make the flame bigger. I’d only been intending to try for a couple of inches of fire, instead of my current centimetre. The result, however, became a ball of green inferno that enveloped half my arm. The fabric of my black top burned completely away within an instant whilst I shrieked and shook my arm in a sudden frenzy, attempting first to shake away the flames, then to stamp them out with my other hand. When neither of those techniques worked, I pivoted on my heel and shoved my whole arm into the small aluminium sink, awkwardly twisting on the tap. For a heart-stopping moment I thought that water wasn’t going to have any effect, then the flames hissed and were extinguished. A plume of smoke was rising up from the very pores of my skin.
I glanced at the door, expecting Mrs Alcoon to come in at any moment to see what the noise had all been about and to realise that whilst I might not be hurting her directly I was burning down her kitchen. The door remained shut, however, so I opened up the small grimy window to let in some air, and flicked on the kettle. Experimenting further in such a small space probably wasn’t a good idea.
By the time the kettle boiled, I was getting impatient. There was still no sign of Mrs Alcoon. I was starting to wonder if she’d gotten cold feet and had simply disappeared, hoping I’d just leave. She’d been so calm fifteen minutes before, however. After a few further moments of indecision, I poured a cup of her herbal tea and straightened my shoulders. I’d take it in to her and see where the land lay. If she was nervous about my presence, then I would make things easier on everyone and just leave. But then she’d just been reassuring me so why wouldn’t she have thrown me out before when Maggie was still here?
I picked up the chipped china mug filled with the noxious brew and exited the little kitchen. She wasn’t in the shop front and her office door was closed so I went straight up to it, balancing the tea in one hand, and knocked gently. When there wasn’t any answer I knocked again, but harder. Still, there was no answer. I steeled myself and twisted the doorknob, then pushed the door open with my free hand.
“Errr….Mrs Alcoon? Is everything alright?”
She didn’t answer. I peered round the door and saw her figure in the office chair, feeling enveloped by a surge of relief that she’d not left. And then, suddenly, I became aware of a faint yet lingering acrid smell that hung in the air. What was that? It could be some more strange herbal tea that she’d been drinking earlier but there was something else about it that didn’t seem entirely natural. I peered closer at the figure of the old woman. She wasn’t moving, in fact she didn’t even seem to be breathing, although she maintained a healthy glow about her cheeks. My stance changed and my muscles tightened. What was she doing? Was this some kind of trance? Perhaps she was contacting the Fae – or something even worse - to tell them what I was. I imagined a telepathic conversation in which the old woman gleefully proclaimed that she’d found a living breathing Draco Wyr with magical green fire properties whose blood could be drained straight away because they were sat in her kitchen drinking numbing herbal tea. I tried to shake away the residual paranoia.
Stepping forward, I gingerly stuck out my hand to prod her motionless body but, as soon as I drew close, the air cracked and snapped and an electric shock ran from the tip of my outstretched index finger right the way to my toes pulling me off my feet and slamming me back against the door, closing it against my back. The corner of my spine caught the doorknob and I yelled out in pain at the jarring streak of agony that ran across my back. I curled my fingernails into the palms of my hands and gritted my teeth, pulling myself upright and keeping my gaze steadily on Mrs Alcoon in case she moved. She didn’t.
My foot crunched against something lying on the floor so I scuffed it gently with my toe and risked a quick glance down. It was a small metal spherical object. I bent down to pick it up and realised that it was iron. Well, that ruled out any Fae then. I looked back at Mrs Alcoon.
“What have you been doing?” I asked her quietly.
She didn’t answer, just stared fixed at a point above my shoulder, unblinking. I followed her line of sight, turning around to see what was there. Behind me was the plain, unadorned office wall. When she went into this trance state she must have been looking at something though. Or, judging by the height of her gaze, at someone. But who? The owner of the little sphere? I held up the piece of iron and stared at it, hard. I’d not seen anything like this before but then I didn’t know much about magical objects, if that’s what this was. Suddenly, a flicker of black flashed across its dull surface and it started to grow cold, very cold. The tips of my fingers felt as if they were burning and I tried to keep hold of it but the pain became too much and I dropped it. Before it hit the floor, however, it vanished. Just winked right out of existence as if it had never been there in the first place. Rubbing my fingers against each other to rid myself of the numbing pain I stared at the spot where it had disappeared. Well f*ckity f*ck f*ck.
I might have been acting paranoid and jumpy recently with the drunk on the bus but I was pretty damn sure that now I wasn’t imagining things. Something magic was going on inside the little office of Clava Books and it wasn’t magic of the fuzzy David Blaine kind. Neither was it the weak kind of clairvoyant magic that Mrs Alcoon – and Maggie on her behalf – had professed to having. I backed out of the little room, taking care to avoid touching the door with my still pained back this time. I turned the doorknob and made sure it was firmly closed. Little flickers of flame shot up through my insides. There wasn’t any immediate danger – the shop was empty, I was sure of that – but this whole situation reeked of wrongness. I didn’t know if the old lady had tried casting some spell and something had gone awry but I couldn’t just leave her in this situation.
I picked up the bunch of shop keys that was lying underneath the till and re-locked the glass fronted door. Not that I expected any last minute customers but it was better to be safe than sorry. And if Maggie decided to return and thought that it had been me who’d put Mrs Alcoon into this state – well, it was probably better to avoid that situation if possible. I sat down on the floor cross-legged, facing the closed office door. Rubbing the spot on my back where the doorknob had attacked me, I settled in to wait.
Four and a half hours later, nothing had changed. The door remained shut and the shop remained silent. It was just a whole lot darker outside, that was all. This was a long time for anyone to remain in meditative stasis. Risking a quick glance, I stood up and opened the door just a crack to peer inside. Mrs Alcoon hadn’t moved. I cursed. She might have brought this entirely on herself by dabbling in things she should have left well alone but that didn’t mean she might not be in any danger. One or two of the pack members back in Cornwall had used meditation from time to time to calm themselves after a fight with some big bad otherworld nasties – and I’d never known any of them to spend more than an hour in an unchanging state. I’d never tried it myself – I’d always figured meditation for some kind of new age mumbo-jumbo, even if it did induce some kind of magical sensations – but even I knew that too long in a deep trance was not good for anyone. I sighed heavily and looked over at the phone that hung on the wall behind the till. This was such a bad idea but I couldn’t just leave her permanently stuck in whatever state she’d gotten herself into to.
Dragging my feet, I stumbled over to the phone and picked up. The dial tone hummed loudly and I stared down at it for a further second before completely making up my mind. Then I jabbed the number I’d memorised months before out on the keypad, knowing that I was probably going to regret this.
The phone rung several times. I started counting: six, seven, eight…if it reached ten then I’d hang up. The number was probably out of use by now. It would be a sign that I should work out a way to deal with this on my own. Nine, ten. Okay, then. My thumb moved to the disconnect button when suddenly a voice filled the line.
“G’day.”
For a moment I couldn’t speak. The pressure of the silence hung heavily for a heartbeat and I could hear his voice suspiciously saying, “Hello?”
Then I replied. “Hi, Alex. It’s, um, good to hear your voice.” And it was, it really was.
“Don’t tell me that’s…Mack Attack? Sheeeeit! Dude! How are you? Where have you BEEN? Oh my God, do you have any idea how crazy the pack have been trying to find you? I’ve had Lord Dark and Scary himself turning up at my door and demanding to know where you were. He wanted me to scry for you but the Ministry refused - you should have seen the look on his face. I swear there was a vein on his head that almost popped out and then, well, never mind. Why didn’t you call me? Why did you leave Cornwall? I thought you wanted to stay there forever. Shit, Mack.”
I swallowed. That was a lot to take in at one time. “Alex, I’ll explain everything later but right now I need your help.”
“Dude, whatever you need. WhatEVER.” He paused. “Hold on, you don’t need me to fight, do you?”
I laughed shakily. “No, I wouldn’t make you do that. I just need a bit of…advice, that’s all.”
“Mack Attack, advice I can do. You should come to London, tell Lord Shifty the truth and then everything’ll work itself out. The human thing isn’t an issue anymore because you’re not freaking human! In fact - ”
I interrupted him. “It’s not about that, Alex, it’s something else.” Before he could continue to regale me with grandiose plans for how I could risk the lives of the entire Cornish pack by exposing myself, I quickly filled him in with the details of Mrs Alcoon – how she had initially seemed slightly clairvoyant and the nameless suspicions I’d had about her that had since been confirmed, up till I found her in her weird semi-permanent stasis. I even included that she knew what I really was although I left out the part about my newly discovered fire power, because it didn’t seem entirely relevant and I wasn’t too sure that I wanted anyone else to know what I was suddenly now capable of just yet.
Alex was quiet for a few moments. When he finally spoke, his voice was solemn. “Describe the object to me again.”
“It was small, about two inches long and shape of a sphere. And made out of iron so it couldn’t have been anything to do with anyone from Faery. And I held it for a good few moments before it started to chill and freeze and then…”
“Mackenzie, you need to get out of there.”
I was momentarily befuddled. “Uh, what?”
“Get out. Now. Lock the door behind you and leave. And don’t go back.”
“I’m not leaving. She helped me out when no-one else would. So she’s meddled in a bit of bad magic and then messed up. That doesn’t mean that I shouldn’t try and get her out of it.” I paused. “Is this because she knows what I am now? That I’m…not human? Is she contacting someone like Iabartu?”
“No.”
“So what the f*ck is it, Alex? Tell me! I just need to know what to do. Alex, you know what this is, don’t you?”
This had to be connected in some way to the fact that she’d discovered my true nature, despite what Alex said to the contrary. Either her knowing what I was had put her in danger or she’d put herself into danger by trying to tell someone else.
“She didn’t do it to herself, Mack, that would be impossible. Your Mrs Alcoon is in enforced inhibitory gnosis. You can’t achieve that state on your own – someone has to put you in it. Someone from the Ministry has done this.”
“The Ministry? You mean the mages? You mean, you?”
“No, not me. Well, yes me. My group, at least. That’s what we do when there’s report of trouble.”
I had a terrible sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. “Trouble?”
“When someone reports that there is some bad magic around, the Ministry steps in to put a stop to it. The object you’ve described is a moot – it nullifies any magic user in the vicinity who might be a threat until a representative can arrive and deal with it.”
“I have a horrible feeling that dealing with it means acting first and asking questions later.”
“That is often the case, yes. Mack Attack, if whoever arrives to sort out your little old lady shows up and finds you there, you’ll be taken into custody. They’ll try to find out who you are. Which will take them all of two minutes given how hard the Lord Alpha has been trying to find you. If this happened hours ago then even with you in the wilds of Scotland, they’ll be there soon. Leave.”
“But she’s not a threat, Alex. She’s barely got any power.”
“She worked out what you are, didn’t she?”
“Only because…” my voice trailed off as the dawning realisation hit me.
Maggie. Maggie had called in the threat. And it wasn’t Mrs Alcoon who was being targeted, it was me. It should be me in that strange trance-like state, not her. Yet again I’d f*cked up and yet again I was dragging others down with me.
“They’ll hurt her.” It was a statement this time, not a question.
“Mack, they’ll just do what needs to be done. You have to realise how dangerous rogue mages can be. There’s a reason the Ministry exists.”
Out-f*cking-standing. First I was labeled a rogue shifter and now I was apparently being advertised as a rogue mage too. I wondered if Maggie fully realised just what she’d done. That stupid woman. My blood was already boiling when I heard the snap of the telephone’s outer plastic casing cracking under the weight of the pressure of my grip. I took a deep breath. Time to stay calm, Mack, I told myself.
Alex must have sensed my seething emotions from across the line. “I’m sorry, Mack.”
“Alex, I’ve come to you for help. To help her. There must be something.”
“She’s beyond help now, Mack. The only people who can remove the spell are from the Ministry’s Council. You need to get out of there before they decide that you’re mixed up in this somehow too.”
But I was already mixed up in it. In fact, I was IT. I exploded at him, instead. “For f*ck’s sake, Alex! She’s just a harmless old lady!”
“Who you yourself admitted to having serious suspicions about! There’s no other way. You have to see how dangerous this is.”
“She’s not dangerous. And I like her.” I was aware how stupid that sounded, and how true it was. I was going to have to do something.
Alex, for his part, was silent.
I took in a deep breath. “I have to go, Alex.”
“Wait, Mack, you can’t do anything stupid.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about. I understand that my friend has been put into this trance by some f*cking jumped up mage. Because she’s dangerous. Except I know that she’s no danger to anyone. And I also know that the Ministry is going to hurt her to find out just what kind of threat she actually is. Which will also probably reveal in the meantime what I am too. What stupid thing would I do?”
“You can’t save her. You’re strong, Mack Attack, and god alone knows what powers all that Draco Wyr blood has, but you can’t fight the Ministry. It’s too dangerous, and not just for you. And they’ll focus on the threat of her, anyway, not some harmless employee she happened to have.”
Except this harmless employee was the reason she was in this state in the first place. “I completely understand, Alex. “ My voice was distant and I started to hung up.
“Mack!” His voice burst through the phone. It was too late though – I slammed it down on the counter and moved to Plan B.