‘I don’t know…’ Faye said, but she was wondering what had come over her. The glamour of faerie, maybe? That was a thing, wasn’t it? She thought she had seen it mentioned somewhere before. A glamour: a magical illusion that made its owner intoxicating in the eyes of others.
‘Actually, I wanted to ask you about the’ – he lowered his voice – ‘faerie problem. It doesn’t seem to have worked, leaving out the offerings.’
‘Oh, hasn’t it?’ she asked, deliberately coolly, though she was loving the way that he looked at her.What is this power I have over him?she wondered. ‘I’m sorry to hear that. I’ll come and take a look for you.’
‘Cool…Could you come tonight? It’s just that…the noise. I can’t sleep. Knocking noises. And it still sounds like they’re running through the house. Obviously, whenever I go toinvestigate, I can’t see anything.’ Rav rubbed his eyes; Faye could see he looked exhausted.
‘Of course I’ll come,’ she said, feeling sorry for him; the desirous, wanton Faye receded for a moment. ‘I close up around five. I’ll come over after. Okay?’
‘Thanks so much. It’s just, with the festival coming up, I’ve got so much to do. I could do with some sleep.’ He grinned sheepishly and yawned. ‘I thought the faeries liked music? Surely, they should be blessing me or something?’
‘Who can say what the faeries want?’ Faye responded honestly. The past days had been full of extremes, of dramatic emotions and oddness. She felt both wrung out and soaring out of control, hallucinatory, ill, out of sync with her own self.
What is this new, strange power I have over Rav?Was it connected to her visit to Murias? Perhaps enchanting Rav made her more like Finn. And she had no idea whether that was a good thing or not, only that it confused her even more.
She smiled reassuringly and gave Rav a chaste kiss on the cheek.
‘I’ll see you later,’ she said: a friendly tone, nothing more. He looked confused again, and she didn’t blame him at all. There was a brief second when she knew he considered kissing her again – she saw it in his eyes – but she stepped back.
Rav met her gaze for a moment, and looked like he was going to say something, but he just nodded. ‘Okay. Later.’ He let himself out the door, giving a friendly wave to Aisha. Fresh air cut through the shop from the street outside, but right at the edge of her perception, Faye could smell roses.
22
‘Can’t you feel it? It’s got colder. And there’s this loud knocking, like, pretty much going on all day and all night now.’ Rav hugged his arms around his chest and shivered. ‘If this goes on, I’m going to have to move. I can’t live here with it like this.’
Faye walked slowly around the circumference of the living room, which was still sparsely furnished. In her mind’s eye she had a sudden vision of what it could be like – golden shafts of sun slanting through the floor-to-ceiling windows, through diaphanous gauzy curtains that floated on the breeze coming in from the sea outside; soft chairs in neutral pink and silver velvet; elegant, simple furniture, with tall, rose gold lamps in the corners, ready to be lit in the evening when the windows would be thrown open to watch the moon rise over the waves. Above the modern fireplace, in which artificial logs were burning behind a glass screen, she imagined a seven-pointed star, made of opals.
She ran her hand over the leather sofa and caught sight of the opal ring on her thumb. The rose gold lamps were like the precious gold that sang on her skin. Her vision for this room was a kind of homage to faerie, she realised, or, perhaps, a move tobring the house in sympathy with the energy it rested upon and within.
Faye could not feel the cold of which Rav spoke; in fact, as she closed her eyes and saw the room as it should be, she was filled with a warm joy.
‘It feels fine to me.’ She made her way to the fireplace and stood in front of it, gauging the temperature. ‘In fact, I’m actually a bit hot over here.’ She took her jacket off and unwrapped her scarf.
Rav looked at her with an odd expression. ‘Faye. It’s freezing in here. Put your coat back on.’
‘No! Really. I’ll be too warm.’ She shook her hair over her shoulders. ‘But this house is built on a faerie road. We may have to do more to mollify the Good Folk.’ She wasn’t surprised that the phenomenon continued to happen, especially after what Finn had told her about the breakdown of the relationship between humans and faeries. Rav was probably lucky that his house sat on land belonging to Murias; if it belonged to one of the two kingdoms that wanted to wipe out humanity, he might not still be alive.
‘There! That sound! You couldn’t hear that?’ He pointed to the long glass hallway and stared at her expectantly.
Beautiful singing was drifting through the house now; Faye’s whole body responded to it with joy. It flowed through the room, a song made of delicate crystal and faint, tinkling bells. Faye followed the lone female voice out to the hallway with a pull of longing in her heart. She walked as if she was in a dream, her arms held in front of her, eyes half-closed. She knew that she was being called by this beautiful song, back across the sea, to the castle of Murias and Finn Beatha’s arms, and she felt the enchantment gather its strength again. She had to fight it, because she could feel Finn, under her skin, drawing her backto him. She could feel herself forgetting all the bad things he’d done, replaced with a longing to be back in his bed.
‘Ugh. Like someone dropping a pile of saucepans or something.’ Rav followed her out to the hall; immediately, the music stopped and Faye felt her connection to faerie severed, savage and sudden. ‘Didn’t you hear it?’
‘Oh, it’s gone. It was so beautiful.’
‘Beautiful? It’s a fucking racket!’ Rav shouted. ‘I don’t get it. What’s changed? You got it before, but now you’re acting like there’s no problem, Faye. I thought you wanted to help me?’
‘I do want to help you. It just sounded like nice singing to me. I’m sorry…I…It’s complicated. But I do understand.’ She shook her head, as if she could loosen Finn’s grip on her. The ring tightened on her hand, as if Finn knew that she was trying to resist him and was reaching for her, wanting to possess her.
Rav went to the faerie altar and pointed at it. ‘I did everything you said. Milk in the bowl every other day. Flowers, feathers, shells. I’ve even said a fucking prayer to the faeries every day to leave the house alone, but, if anything, it’s got worse. And then you come back here, floating around like some kind of princess, and act like everything’s okay! It’s not fucking okay, Faye! I feel like I’m going mad!’
‘I’m sorry, Rav.’ Guilt and frustration gnawed at her, at the way the enchantment Finn had her under was messing with her real life and her relationships.
‘I thought you…I thought we had a connection, something…I thought you liked me.’ He wiped his eyes in frustration. ‘But you’re being really weird with me, and I don’t know why.’
‘I’m sorry,’ she repeated.
‘I don’t know how you didn’t hear that banging sound. And the knocking is absolutely doing my fucking head in. I’m…I’m so tired, Faye. I’m not sleeping. And I’m trying to get this festivalsorted and all the bands are being completely pathetic, and…’ He trailed off and took a deep breath. ‘Sorry. You don’t want to know about all that. But I am sorry for shouting.’
