She wanted to see him. She wanted to hear the bell jingle as the shop door opened and see him there, in the doorway. She craved him, and she hadn’t been able to stop thinking about the dream. In it – if Finn had really been there – he had told her that she was half faerie. How was that even possible? She was human. Moddie and Grandmother were human. She didn’t look in any way unusual, or have unusual faerie powers.Sidhe-leth.Half fae. Now, she knew what it meant. She had looked it up.
The fae were an archaic Scottish legend, a part of Grandmother’s folk belief, nothing more. It didn’t hurt anyone to believe in the Good Folk, but Moddie had raised Faye to consider the fae as outdated. They weren’treal,not in the way that Finn Beatha was real: he had walked into the shop andtalked to Faye. She had watched him perform on stage. He had a solid, human body – albeit he was very tall and supernaturally good-looking. He dressed in normal clothes.
Yet, Faye had also seen a spectral being take Grainne Morgan’s hand just before she died, in her dream. And that spectral being had looked very like Finn.
What did that mean?
There was one answer, but she didn’t want to believe it.
Dreams and nonsense, she told herself. Yet, she didn’t believe in her own cynicism.
If she wassidhe-leth, half fae, what did that tell her about Finn Beatha? A man who was supernaturally good-looking and larger than life, who appeared in her life out of nowhere and had haunted her dreams. Dreams that were so powerful, Faye could hardly concentrate on her daily life.
She looked up at the door again, frowning. There was something else.
Grandmother’s hagstone charm was hanging in the doorway again.
It hadn’t been there when Finn Beatha had entered the shop. Afterwards, she’d looked for it for over a week to no avail: she’d asked Aisha and Annie, and neither had taken it down or noticed it had gone. Neither knew where it was. Faye had assumed that a customer must have stolen it, or that it had somehow got lost in the shop. And, now it was back. Nobody had said they had found it.
That was odd.It must have been lost, and one of the girls found it and forgot to tell me,she thought.
Faye returned to her reverie about Finn Beatha.
She opened her grandmother’s grimoire and flicked through it. She didn’t often read it, nowadays, but it was on the shop counter from when she had used it for the love spell and hadn’t put it back in its usual place on a shelf behind the till.
She flicked past rituals for the equinoxes, observances for the different phases of the moon, spells for money, good luck, to silence an enemy. Then she came to the section she had been looking for.
The Faerie Kings and Queens.
She traced her finger over their names, their royal crests and the illustrations of their crowns. She didn’t quite know what she was looking for, but something had been nagging at the back of her mind since seeing Finn on stage.
In Murias, the realm of water, the king and queen are Fintanaeon, Master of the Tides, and Levantiana, Mistress of the Cup. In Falias, the realm of earth, the king and queen are Lyr, Master of Mountains, and Moronoe, Mistress of the Stone. In Gorias, the realm of air, the king and queen are Raphaeleon, Master of the Winds, and Tyronoe, Mistress of the Knife. And in Finias, realm of fire, the king and queen are Attis, Master of Flame, and Thetis, Mistress of the Staff.
Fintanaeon, Master of the Tides, King of Murias.
It was a very close coincidence.Fintanaeon. Finn.Just a coincidence, surely.
Because Finn Beatha looked like he was in his thirties. Whichever Morgan woman had written and drawn the pages about the faerie kings and queens, it was either Grandmother or someone before her, meaning that Finn wouldn’t have been born then. It didn’t make sense.
Yet, something made Faye look more closely at the page.
Each faerie realm had a royal crest. Falias, the realm of earth, featured a tree and a mountain on its crest. Finias, the realm of fire, featured a blazing sword and what looked like a salamander or some other type of lizard. Gorias featured a bird’s wing and a tornado.
Murias’s crest was of a kelpie: a mythical water horse.
It was the same kelpie, the same water horse that Finn Beatha had tattooed on his chest. The same water horse that reared up his chest, its head resting on Finn’s muscular neck.
If Finn Beatha was Fintanaeon, King of Murias, he must be many hundreds of years old. That made no sense.
And Faye couldn’t think of any way that she could possibly be half faerie. Wouldn’t Moddie and Grandmother have told her? Wouldn’t she have noticed some odd traits about herself – though she didn’t know what they might be?
It was an outrageous suggestion. It wasn’t real life.
So, why did Finn Beatha insist on calling her half faerie?
The doorbell tinkled again. Faye looked up to see Rav enter the shop. She closed the grimoire, her heart beating. For a brief moment, she had thought that Finn Beatha might be the faerie king of Murias. What a ridiculous thought.
‘Good day, Mistress of Magic.’ Rav Malik tipped an imaginary cap to her and looked around at the shelves of incenses, tarot sets, books and a row of brightly polished brass cauldrons. ‘I hope I’m not disturbing you.’
