1

THE FAIRIES MAY HAVE taken Jane’s youngest and put a changeling in her place. This was never proven. Yet, I still lost my babysitting job and, regardless of whether it was my fault or not, or if it was fair or not, Christmas loomed inevitably on the near horizon and I needed a source of cash.

My name is Dara and I’m a half-witch. My father is the head of the de Teilhard Witch Kin - I get my magic blood from him but not his name, which makes me a half-blood and a bastard if things like that matter, and they seem to matter to a surprising number of people.

If I’d been born legitimate, I would be enjoying a full magical education with Spring breaks in the south of France, but as a mere half-blood witch, I would never be trained to use or develop my natural powers. After Mom disappeared, Dad stepped out of my life and returned to his wife and other children, regularly sending money for my upkeep and school thus fulfilling his obligations. The only stipulation was that I had to turn my back on my magic and pretend it didn’t exist.

Yet the magic remained in my blood and in my nature. Even if I didn’t actively use my magic, it used me - it pierced the veil between the Normal and the Alt, and Dad could never stop that no matter how deep he buried his head in the sand.

Old buildings are the worst for being portals into Alt, it’s got something to do with the stone structures not releasing the vibrations of past emotions, and Devon House was no exception. There were ghosts here, way up on the third floor, and there was also something nasty lurking in the far corners of the cellar where the clay studio was located.

Devon House was one of those landmarks that predated even the big fire of 1892 which razed most of the town. Perched over the harbour, the picture windows at the back looked right out through the Narrows and over the water to Fort Amherst. As I waited in the second-floor gallery to be called for my interview, I looked out at the Southside Hills all gray in the November drizzle, and I shuddered. The fairies lived there in that wilderness.

A woman called my name and jerked her head towards a narrow dark corridor. My first ever job interview. I pulled my shoulders back and glanced into a mirror to check there were no smudges on my nose, glanced at my boots and jeans to see that all was in order, and moved towards the small ill-lit space.

Strange how this interview had come about in the first place. I’d been moping about downtown one day, aware I needed to look for work but dreading the thought of working for minimum wage in a fast-food joint. That would be soul-destroying, but I was running out of options.

Leaning against a pole as I tried to force the nerve to bring my application into Tim Horton’s, I dislodged a piece of blue paper which had been hiding under a poster. It fluttered to the ground. It told me the Craft Council had a week-long job at the big craft fair. Contact Kim, ASAP.

So I did, and I was here. I took a deep breath and turned into the doorway.

But I couldn’t go any further, for I found the hair on the back of my arms standing straight out and a chill in my gut – suddenly, there was something terribly wrong in the air, like that feeling during an earth tremor when the light is misplaced and time wavers from its axis, your body not where it was the moment before in relation to your surroundings. And like a tiny earthquake, it lasted but a fraction of a moment, but that was enough to warn me. The atmosphere was darkening, I could taste it, and I knew that something bad was waiting for me behind that door, something or someone was lurking, anticipating, like a spider waiting for a fly to enter a carefully spun web. Was it a malevolent spirit in the house in the bricks and mortar, or an emanation originating from the Alt of the house? I’d never felt it here before, not this strong.

This presence, whatever it was, was more than an angry spirit unloosed from its body and time, much more. This was living and breathing... and hungry, voraciously so. I could almost smell the very need in it that made it so dark about the edges, lurking around the corners and searching for crevices in which to lodge itself.

I couldn’t force myself to walk across the threshold, so simply stood silently in dread, waiting for this feeling to pass. I found myself looking at a man with his back turned to me as he spoke with my future boss. Could the darkness be coming from him, that evil intent washing off him like waves? My hackles were on full alert, the hairs on the back of my neck shivering with that cold touch and I wanted to growl at this being and unsheathe my claws and lash out and tell him to get the hell out of my town.

But that was no way to begin a job interview.

I took a deep breath and at the sound he turned around, his pupils widening just the slightest at the sight of me as if in recognition, as if he’d been searching and just then realized what he was looking for when he’d found it. He sized me up and down with a glint in those pale gray eyes like he knew me. Time wavered again, slowing down then speeding up and I knew he saw the witch blood pulsing through my veins.

I hesitated in that doorway on the edge of the chasm, caught between fright and flight, and in his steely gaze I saw the depths I could attain with my inborn power. It was as if he offered the world to me, and I could choose to leap into the abyss and fly freely along the winds of magic like I’d never known, like I’d never dreamt possible for a half-witch like myself, a terrible future he laid out for me like a banquet for the starving.

Or I could withdraw, whimpering, from those dizzying heights, clinging to the solid earth and never claim the rights of my blood, never live properly. Ever.

All that happened in a second of time, the world offered up in his luminous eyes, silver gleaming in the dark and I couldn’t help but draw closer to the magnetic lure. I stood before him naked but not in a physical manner. It wasn’t my body he claimed. Power spoke to power, like to like - he wanted the still-raw magic in me that had been clamped down all my life, the part of me rejected by my father and his Kin. For the first time, I knew I was seen as the powerful witch I was, and I was desirable.

I truly believe he ripped a hole in my heart in that moment, opened up a crack to let the dark shine through, and I fought in my mind but it was too late, the damage done, and this is my only excuse for all that happened later.

Tearing my eyes from his awful promises, I stared instead at his shoes, shiny polished black leather that could never survive the weather in these parts. He was not a witch, and I don’t know how I knew that. Something about the cut of his coat, perhaps, or his lack of physical glamour.

I could feel him smile as that thought ran through my mind, as if he could see right into my head.

And with that, the spell was broken as if it had never happened.

‘Alright, then Willem, I’ll see you later.’ Unaware of what had just passed, the stocky woman behind the desk stood up and held out her hand, a look of simpering puzzlement still on her face. ‘I apologize again, I was sure the booths had all sold out, but I’m so delighted that it turns out we can fit you in. Your work will be a great addition to the fair. Just the sort of thing we love here at the Council.’

‘What luck for me,’ he said in a low voice, and his eyes met mine again. The menace was gone as if it had been merely a figment of my imagination all along, a momentary aberration brought on from lack of food and too much coffee, and before me stood a mild looking man of indeterminate age and sexuality. He was short of stature, non-descript to look at with his wispy blond hair and general colorlessness. There was no echo of what had just passed between us, nothing about him spoke of the terrible power of him. Had I imagined it?

I stood by to let him pass, and felt nothing more from him, just as if he was another laid back, ordinary crafts person.

‘You’re Dara then.’ Kim interrupted my thoughts and held out a sheaf of papers at me. ‘You’re free for the week of the craft fair? Great. I need you to fill out your information and pass these in to the front desk. I have some other work I need doing before the fair opens, like postering downtown. We’ll provide the tape.’

This was my job interview? I had the feeling the request to see me had just been a formality, as if the only requirement for the job was proof that I was a living breathing being.

Or as if there had been a supernatural hand in the selection, the way a booth had magically opened up for Willem, that dark figure. But I couldn’t let my mind go there.

SO THAT WAS IT. I had the job and would have cash for Christmas presents, for Aunt Edna and Mark and my best friend Alice. Maybe even a little something for Dad, although I couldn’t for the life of me think what I could get him that he didn’t already have ten of, or that would be meaningful for him. Maybe I’d get him a fancy hand-made card from the craft fair, and one for Hugh too while I was at it.

After purchasing and eating a KitKat bar, I was able to shove the incident with Willem firmly to the back of my mind.

I headed back down Duckworth Street. Funny thing about this road, no matter which direction you go, east or west, if there’s any kind of wind you’re always walking into it. I had battled against it on the way up to Devon House, and now again it was in my face as I made my way back along the route. I shoved my hands in the pocket of my heavy winter hoody and marched on.

Right at the very far end of downtown in the ramshackle wooden buildings backing on to George Street there was activity happening and I had to stop and watch.

Zeta’s House of Magick was undergoing a rebirth of sorts. The store had suffered arson in late September, back when the wave of prejudice against half-blood witches was at its height, and the building had sat empty since then, a plywood board blanking the window of the narrow shop. Zeta was only now getting back to sorting the place out.

She wasn’t a real witch as far as I could tell. Although she claimed to come from a long line of witches, she had never heard of the Witch Kin. Her store was filled with herbs and spell books, but also with plastic crap and unicorns, posters of pretty fairies, all that sort of thing, with hardly anything magical in the place.

Except the coin. I’d felt it when I’d last been in her store before the fire, the magic calling to me from deep within a basket full of junk. In fact, I’d been rummaging around with my hand in that bin and actually felt the tingle of power in my fingers when she’d diverted my attention. I hadn’t had a chance to revisit before she got burned out.

It wasn’t just the magic of the coin or talisman or whatever it was that had called me. The moment I’d touched the warm metal and felt the power, I knew it had something to do with my mother, and it was the first hint I’d ever found that confirmed my feeling that she might yet be alive.

I had to check out if the coin was still in Zeta’s shop.