Faye pulled the wand out from her bag, picked up a bottle of water from where it lay at the edge of the stage and splashed some of it onto the end. Standing, she traced the shape of the water-summoning sigil in the air and chanted the Gaelic words:
‘A rèir an tròcair mhòir, Glòir agus cumhachd do Rìgh agus do Bhanrigh Mhurias, mar a bha e aig an toiseach, agus a-nis, agus gu bràth!’
Now, Faye closed her eyes and tried to focus.
She had practised before with rain and streams, but now she knew that she had to summon something big. Something that could overpower Finn and the rest of the band. They were fae; they were powerful.
Yet, it was their element: would water even stop them? She didn’t know. But she had to try.
Faye thought of Grainne Morgan, tied to the stake, and the way that the water in the bay at North Berwick that day, hundreds of years ago, had risen up and flooded everything and everyone.
She turned to face the sea, and repeated the charm. She imagined the waves growing bigger, but she didn’t want the sea to flood the stage and kill everyone. She needed something else.
Faye imagined the sea growing tentacles; with a shiver, she remembered the fae in the white dress who had wrapped her tentacles around Rav and taken him inside her. Screwing her eyes shut, she imagined the tentacles growing longer, thicker, sinuous with seawater, and reaching to the headland.
One by one, she imagined the tentacles picking up Finn and his bandmates and throwing them back into the sea.
She opened her eyes to screams.
Above her, four vast, snaking tentacles made completely of water searched blindly for Finn and the members of Dal Riada. Finn stared in shock at the one coming for him, and then glared at her up on the stage. She saw realisation in his eyes: the knowledge that his own sister had betrayed him.
‘You worthless bitch!’ he cried out, as tentacles gripped the singer and the guitar player of the band and flung them into the sea. ‘How dare you use the faerie magic!’
‘I dare because I am half faerie, and it is my right!’ Faye shouted back, furious.
Finn pointed his hand at her, and Faye felt a wave of energy emanate from him and pulsate across the whole crowd.
‘You have no power, and no rights. I am taking what I want, and you will not get in my way any longer!’ he screamed.
Faye fell to her knees as Finn’s power knocked her off her feet. She dropped the wand, and the water tentacles disappeared. An unnatural golden light flashed in the crowd for a moment, on and off. The sudden darkness interspersed with light caught the jerking and flailing movements of the crowd in strange, monstrous angles and shadows. Faye blinked, shielding her eyes as bodies writhed and thrusted.
‘Too late, Faye Morgan,’ Finn smiled.
The golden light lit the whole crowd for one brief moment. A many-voiced scream, a chorus of the crowd’s violent, insane lust ripped through Abercolme, and then, just as suddenly, a dark and dead hush followed it, which was far, far worse.
42
Faye ran down the steps of the stage into the crowd. The villagers who were left looked around them as if they were waking up from a dream.
She tried to push her way through the crowd, but they were confused and disoriented. Many were hurt: people sat on the ground, holding arms that might be broken and with cuts and grazes to their faces, legs, anywhere with exposed skin.
Faye looked around in desperation, torn between her instinct to help the wounded and a sense of duty to rescue those who’d been taken. But then, Grandmother’s voice spoke in her ear, as if she was suddenly next to her.Don’t judge them for the things they don’t understand,Faye, she said. Faye felt that if she turned around, she’d see Grandmother there, short and round with her long grey hair twined up in a bun and the ghosts of a life of wisdom and kindness etched into her face.It is your job to help the people, Faye. Never forget that, Grandmother’s voice said.
‘But I am trying to help them. The ones who were taken by Finn,’ she protested.
Aye, and ye will. Grandmother’s voice seemed to come from all around her; she was in the wind, in the night, in the moonlight that bathed the chaos around her.But first things first.
Grandmother was always right; Faye had known better than to question her when she was alive, and she certainly wasn’t going to argue with Grandmother in spirit. For a moment, she closed her eyes and breathed in; in a half-second she felt Grandmother’s hand in hers, like Annie’s that first day at school.
Faye cast one last desperate gaze at the beach below and turned back to the people who needed her.
43
A few weeks later, Faye and Rav lay in Faye’s bed, their legs entwined.
‘If you go, I’ll make you a cup of tea every day for a week,’ Faye offered.
‘Make me one today, then.’ Rav snuggled next to her. ‘I don’t want to get up. It’s too nice in here.’
