Page 14 of A Dance with the Fae (Mistress of Magic #1)

The house was cold. That was the first thing she noticed.

The late afternoon light streamed through the floor-to-ceiling windows, showing up dust motes in the air.

Faye hugged her coat around her – an old dusty-pink one of Moddie’s with a rounded collar and big pink buttons down the front.

Faye liked it because it hung loose like a cape, and it had deep pockets for collecting stones and shells and feathers from the beach.

‘Sorry it’s cold. As much as I turn the heating up, I just can’t get it warm in here.

’ Rav ran his hand over one of the white-painted vintage radiators that sat against a white wall.

He pulled his hand away. ‘It’s boiling hot to touch.

Just won’t spread to the room. The perils of a house made of glass by the Scottish coast, I guess. ’

Faye frowned. ‘I’m not sure. It’s more likely that the cold is connected to whatever is happening here.’ She walked into the steel and glass kitchen; it still looked unused. The cold was worse in here, and as soon as she walked in, she got a sense of being watched, and a prickling on her skin.

‘Connected to the haunting?’ he prompted her.

‘Hmm. It very likely isn’t haunted. Real hauntings are pretty rare.’ Faye peered at the temperature on the modern display, mounted discreetly on the wall.

‘Are they? That’s not what film and TV would have you believe.’

‘Film and TV: that unassailable source of accuracy and fact.’ Faye raised an eyebrow and smiled.

‘Fair,’ he chuckled. ‘So, what do you think it might be?’

Rav opened the fridge and got some milk out. ‘Coffee? Think I still have enough.’

‘Coffee would be great, thanks.’

‘It could be anything. Old spirits attached to the house that need to be moved on. A poltergeist. A curse. A malfunctioning witch bottle.’

‘Witch bottle?’ He frowned.

‘An old folk custom. To protect your house, put rusty nails in a bottle, pee on them, close up the bottle and wedge it up the chimney.’

‘Nice.’ Rav raised an eyebrow as he spooned ground filter coffee from a packet into a silver cafetiere.

‘But my grandmother always told me that this house was built on a ley line. Faerie land,’ Faye continued.

‘I mean, I don’t really believe that, but…

you should never discount the old ways. I…

I have been reminded recently that magic isn’t something you can predict.

’ She caught his eye briefly, then looked away.

She still didn’t know if the spell had brought Rav Malik to her, but she felt it was more than possible that it had.

‘Or it could be you, sleepwalking. Night terrors,’ she added.

‘Well, I’ve never sleepwalked as far as I know.’ He poured hot water into the jug and let it stand.

‘Mind if I take a look around?’ Faye felt drawn to the glass hallway that ran down one side of the house, connecting the kitchen with the lounge that looked out to sea and three large bedrooms.

‘Go for it. I’ll come and find you.’

Faye stepped into the glass corridor, and her world changed instantly.

Instead of standing in a modern glass-walled corridor, she was ankle-deep in a sea of grass. Small, twinkling lights and orbs, like a child’s blown bubbles, bounced in the air and rose and fell in anarchic fashion on the grass, which was long and green-blue, like the shifting colour of the sea.

There was no glass on either side of her, but a metre or so away from where the outer edge of the house had been was a row of tall white stones, painted in blue spirals and other strange markings.

Faye saw that they marked a path towards a radiant green-gold light just over the brow of the headland.

To the left, the sea was still there, but the muddy, dark sand of Black Sands Beach glowed white.

She was also not alone on the pathway. As she stood there, adjusting to the strangeness of the vision, she became aware that the grass held legions of small faerie creatures.

Some of the ones in the grass were a little like the faeries she’d seen in the books Moddie had read her as a child: tiny, winged creatures with petals for clothes and twigs in their hair.

Some were half caterpillar, half fae; butterflies with faerie faces flew past her, and there were large, iridescent beetles.

But there were also taller creatures that pushed past her; some were singing, dancing, laughing; many didn’t progress in a straight line but circled around her, pulling at her clothes.

Some had a greenish skin. Three faerie-women passed her on horseback with a procession of courtiers before and after them.

They were beautiful, in draping, diaphanous garments, but their expressions were forbidding.

One horse was black, one white, and one was blood-red.

Each of the horses had silver ribbons plaited into their long manes.

One creature, a bearded half man, half goat, tweaked her nose, and then, unexpectedly, her nipple, through her coat.

Blessings, sidhe-leth , he said, bowing. We are honoured. You are as beautiful as the legends say.

Before she could respond, the half-man, half-goat creature laughed and ran away towards the green-gold light.

Sidhe-leth. Half fae. The same name as Finn Beatha had used in her dreams.

Was she dreaming now? Had she somehow slipped into sleep while at Rav’s house?

Rav’s hand touched her on the shoulder, and she blinked. The grass disappeared under her feet, and she was back in the long passageway.

Faye could only stare through him as she tried to process what had just happened.

‘What?’ He gave her a strange look.

‘I…I just…’ She couldn’t find the words – any words – at that moment. She felt outside herself in a different way than she ever had before, even when doing magic. Her hand went to her breast, which still tingled from where the goat-man had cruelly tweaked her nipple.

‘It feels weird out here, doesn’t it? I knew you’d pick that up.’ He handed her a mug. Faye took a sip, instinctively, and then again as she felt the drink reconnect her to her body again.

‘I just…I wasn’t here, just then. This is a faerie pathway’ – she pointed outside the house to the edge of the beach where scrubby grass gave way to the sand – ‘to about there, where the sand starts. It leads over the hill, there. To the headland.’

‘A what?’ Rav gave her a look.

‘A faerie road. I saw them. The fae, the spirits of nature. So many different kinds. This was all grass. It was…beautiful.’ She felt a wave of exhaustion come over her, and she slumped against the wall.

‘Wow. Okay, let’s get you to a seat.’ Rav took her coffee and guided her to the lounge where she fell back into a yellow leather sofa. He didn’t seem to have done much moving in except for a tall, wide box-shelved unit that held what looked like thousands of vinyl LPs.

‘So, I don’t really understand what you’re telling me. Faeries? I thought that was just made up for kids.’

‘Of course not. Few things that are talked about that much aren’t real. Even if they weren’t real to start with, they become it because of being so intensely imagined. Magic 101,’ Faye shrugged. ‘I’m the expert, you wanted my opinion. That’s my diagnosis.’

‘Faeries?’ He raised an eyebrow at her questioningly.

‘Yes.’ Faye stared at him, unblinking. Sidhe-leth. Am I really half fae? If that was real…which I am telling Rav it was…which I feel it was…then how did that creature know, and how did it know to call me that name?

‘But, like…and I’m not disrespecting you, Faye.

Really. But, as far as I know, faeries are these little, tiny, winged things.

Like the ones in the flowers. My sister had those books.

C is for the Cinquefoil Fairy, D is for the Dandelion Fairy …

It doesn’t feel like they’d be the ones trashing my kitchen and pounding the house so hard it sounds like an army passing through.

’ Rav sat forward, awkwardly, on the orange leather easy chair facing her and put his coffee down on a packing crate that was positioned as a table between them.

‘No. That’s not what they are.’ She felt exhausted, as if all of her life force had been sapped from her.

‘What are they, then?’ Rav asked patiently. ‘Sorry. I’m clueless with this kind of thing.’

‘Okay. Faerie is the realm of the spirits of nature. There are all kinds of faerie, but as I understand it, they’re organised into four elemental kingdoms: earth, air, fire and water.’

‘Right. I guess that makes sense. Have you seen them before? Or was that the first time?’ He sat back a little, and Faye could see that Rav was trying to take in what she was saying.

‘Not really. As I say, my grandmother was the expert. She taught me and my mum all about how to keep the Good Folk happy, otherwise they would cause havoc.’

‘The Good Folk?’

‘The fae. That’s the old name for them.’ Faye took a sip of coffee and felt some energy return to her body.

‘Is that what they’re doing in my house? Causing havoc?’ His eyes widened. ‘You saw them?’

‘Yeah. I saw a grass road. All sizes and types of faerie, walking along it, running, dancing…I could see them all. They could see me, but most of them left me alone.’

‘So…?’

‘So…I think that maybe this house is sitting on a faerie road of some kind. As weird as that sounds.’ Faye shook her head. ‘Believe me, when I came up here, I didn’t think that was what I’d find.’ She shivered, and Rav came to sit beside her and put his arm around her shoulders.

‘Faye. I’m so sorry. I had no idea,’ he said quietly.

‘I’m so cold,’ she whispered. ‘And…that was…really weird.’

‘I can imagine. It sounds weird. You went completely blank. Like your spirit had disappeared, and only your body was left. I was talking to you, and you didn’t respond.’ Rav hugged her to him. ‘That really scared me, too.’ He took off his coat and draped it around her shoulders. ‘Here.’