Internally, I knew the smart move was to get as far away from Inverness as possible. I was desperate to pick up my box, my laptop and my clothes from the bedsit, however. I’d had to cut and run and leave everything in Cornwall; I had no desire to do exactly the same thing again. I figured that the police and the fire brigade would have their hands full for at least the next hour putting out the blaze at Clava Books to worry about coming by to see where one of the bookshop’s employees were. They’d probably try and track down Mrs Alcoon as the owner first and there was no way on earth that they’d find her any time soon. A Fae’s word was their bond and, whilst I didn’t believe I could yet completely trust Solus, I knew that as far as she was concerned he wouldn’t let me down. The police would assume that she’d been killed in the fire, which would at least mean that they wouldn’t be looking for a missing person for the time being. I stopped momentarily in my tracks. Fuck. That did mean that they might be looking for someone who might have committed arson and tried to kill her, though. The logical suspect would be me. I started running again, scenarios tripping through my mind. There was no-one who would vouch for my good character. The regulars back at Arnie’s bar – and Arnie himself – would tell them that I had a nasty temper and was capable of violence. And as for Maggie, well, she’d been prepared to set the Ministry onto her best friend just because of the threat she believed I posed, so clearly I couldn’t expect any help from that direction. Alex had said on the phone that when Corrigan had asked the Ministry to set up a locator spell on me they’d refused. That was probably because they didn’t wish to involve themselves in shifter politics. I was pretty sure that they wouldn’t be so reluctant now that I’d almost killed two of their members.
Outstanding. I’d gone from having to hide from the Pack, to now having the human side of the law and the magical side of enforcers on my heels. How on earth I was going to get out of this, I had absolutely no idea. I supposed I could get Solus to help me hide with Mrs Alcoon in Tir-na-nog. But not only was there no guarantee that he’d do that – after all I’d already bargained away the only thing I had to offer – also, it was only a temporary solution. I had to find some way to put things right as far as she was concerned. I owed her a lot and I wasn’t about to let her languish in the land of the Fae for the rest of eternity because I’d fucked up.
I rounded the bend onto the main street. The sirens of the fire engines were now just a bare whisper on the wind. I could see the building of my bedsit up ahead and didn’t think I’d ever been so glad to get back to it. I slowed to a fast walk so that I could double check that it was safe to get in, grab my stuff and skedaddle. I still had no idea where to go or what to do – my options were fairly limited, let’s be fair – but if I was going to help Mrs Alcoon at all I had to make sure that I didn’t caught by any of the various denizens of both the human and the otherworld that were after me.
The street itself was silent and still. I scanned up and down its length but couldn’t make out anything. Figuring that I probably only had moments at best before either Martha and the Trekkie either caught up or contacted the Ministry who would send someone a damn sight faster – and stronger – than they already had, I jogged across, already pulling my key out of my pocket. I caught a moving shadow out of the corner of my right eye and spun around, attack stance already prepared. I had nothing left to attack with, however. My remaining weapons were inside and I’d lost the silver needles in the shop. It was fortunate, therefore, that it was just a cat, frozen in its tracks as it had caught sight of me. It had sleek black fur and green eyes that gleamed in the glow of the streetlamps.
“Corrigan,” I half-whispered to myself, watching it decide I was of no interest after all and slink off into the night.
Kitten.
I yelped aloud as the man himself entered my head.
What’s the problem?
Now I was frozen in place, clutching the keys in my suddenly very sweaty palm and barely daring to breathe. I composed myself and answered him back.
Problem? I have no idea what you’re talking about, my Lord. Now fuck off and leave me alone. There, that told him.
There was a moment of silence then his Voice reappeared. Except that this time you called me.
Errr…what? It was impossible to initiate Voice contact unless you were an alpha. I wasn’t even a shifter so there was just no way…
Stop playing mind games with me, My Lord. And with that I slammed him out of my head and walked up to the door, beginning to fumble with the lock. It must just be a coincidence that he’d decided to start fucking with me at this point in time. The bastard. He should just learn to leave well alone.
Once inside, I carefully and quietly closed the front door behind me. I tried to sense whether there was anything or anyone lurking around inside the entrance waiting for me but everything appeared normal. I waited for five beats and then took a deep breath and sprinted up the stairs. Fortunately the carpet was deep enough to mask the sounds of my hurried steps so I swung quickly round the corner and made for my own door.
As soon as I was inside I quickly reached under the bed and pulled out my box. I flipped it open to double check that everything was there and then opened up the drawers of the rickety wooden dresser, pulling out clothes and stuffing them into my backpack. I laid the box on the top, pausing briefly at the sink to grab my toothbrush and toothpaste and zip them into a side compartment, and thrust a couple of replacement silver needles in the loose knot of hair at the back of my head. Then I left without looking back.
Chapter Twelve
I really didn’t have the faintest idea where I was going to go. It was just as well that I left when I did, however, as moments after I’d shut the heavy front door after me, a large black SUV screeched up alongside the kerb. I managed to duck behind the row of cars on the other side of the street, heat coursing through my veins at the nagging worry that if these were mages and they decided to cast a locator spell right now, then it’d take them all of three seconds flat to find me. Fortunately for me, whoever they were, they concentrated instead on the door of the flat. What it definitely did mean was that I had to get as far away from Inverness as possible, regardless of the fact that it was after 2.30 in the morning. I started moving away from the street, keeping low, in case one of them decided to suddenly look up and notice a small figure scurrying away and unleash the powers of the magic otherworld upon me. Damnit, where was I going to go though?
I thought quickly. I needed to be somewhere the Ministry’s spells wouldn’t be able to reach me and where the police wouldn’t be able to find me. That meant another plane, effectively. The last time I’d been to one it had been through a portal that Iabartu, the demi-goddess, had opened. I didn’t think I was likely to bump into anyone of that kind of power who’d kindly let me into their otherworldly plane just to be friendly though. A gust of wind blew sharply against my face and I shivered involuntarily. It was just my fucking luck that all this was taking place in the frozen north of Scotland in the middle of winter. It would have been nice to have been on the run in the balmy sunshine of the Bahamas, sipping a cocktail and hiding behind the odd sand dune instead of frost laced cars.
The wind blew again, picking up and causing me to turn up the collar of my inadequate jacket. I turned the corner away from the long street that my little bedsit lay on and straightened up, starting to jog away so I could put more distance between myself and all those who were behind me. Trying to keep my wits about me, and my senses alert, I strained to catch any sounds behind me. From the street parallel there was the distant hum of a car engine and, for an instant, my whole body froze to the spot. Then everything went silent again and I managed to lift up my feet and keep going.
I considered whether running was the right thing to do. I’d always been much more of a fight girl rather than a flight one, but the dents to my confidence lately suggested that I might struggle against the wrath of the mages who would be furious that I’d dared to tangle with their own. And, of course, this was coupled with the fact that I was now responsible for finding a way to get Mrs Alcoon out of this mess along with not getting caught – because getting caught would mean no doubt that Corrigan would hear of it and get involved and find out that I was human (sort of) and then I’d have his inevitable repercussions on the Cornish pack forced on my conscience also. No, I had no choice but to run, much as it galled me.
With that thought I picked up the pace and began to jog faster. Which was my undoing. From the shadows of one of the parked cars, came a sudden streak of blackness across the pavement. My foot caught on the edge of it and I tipped headfirst down to the hard cold ground. Instinctively, I shot my hands out to catch myself, scuffing the skin on my palms painfully, knees knocking against the concrete with an unpleasant thud. A screeching yowl came from the shape, which then shot past me, turning to stare at me in hatred as it did so. It was the sodding cat that had decided not so long ago that I was a pathetic human not worthy of contempt. I harrumphed.
“Noticed me now, didn’t you, stupid moggy.”
The cat glared at me balefully again with its Corrigan green eyes and then slunk off. I shifted my weight, twisting my body to the side to get up from the ungainly position I was in on the pavement, suddenly mindful not only of my raw grazed hands, but also the other aches, pains and embedded wooden splinters from the attack at Clava Books.
“Fucking cat!” I swore, more at myself and my predicament than the animal itself.
As I turned to stand up, slowly, I caught sight of the night sky. Stars glimmered more brightly than I thought I’d ever seen them before.
“Fucking stars,” I hissed at the sky.
The wind began to blow again, whisking past my cheek.
“Fucking wind. Fucking night. Fucking Scotland. Fucking freezing,” I continued to curse. “Fucking longest night in the middle of the longest fucking winter, isn’t it?” I wasn’t sure who I’d been expecting to answer me, but just then dawning realisation providing me with the answer for myself hit me like the whack of a sledgehammer. Which was interesting because that’s kind of how my body felt.