‘You’re getting there,’ she said approvingly.
I clutched at my chest, my heart hammering against my ribcage. ‘I don’t suppose you’d like to take over,’ I enquired when I could finally speak again.
‘I could,’ she answered. ‘But then you’d never learn anything.’ She looked at me searchingly. ‘Your magic is running out. You need to take more.’
‘No, I have enough.’
‘Not for the whole Adair lands, you don’t.’ She took my hands in hers and squeezed. ‘Take,’ she ordered. ‘You have enough control.’
She had considerably more faith in my abilities than I did. I was tempted to refuse but her eyes were hard and insistent. I swallowed and focused on the glow inside her. It wasn’t that I could see it, as such, more that I could sense it. Like all acts of thievery, the more often I drew from the Gifts of other Sidhe, the better I became at it. I tugged at wisps of her magic, pulling them gently into myself as if by osmosis. I had to be careful – the last thing I wanted to do was to take too much. My soul hungered to grab and guzzle but I pushed down my primal urges and sucked in a breath, stopping when I felt the nausea.
‘You should take more,’ Morna chided gently.
I pressed my lips together and shook my head. ‘No. You need it. It’s yours.’
She let out a bark of laughter. ‘I’m an old woman. There’s a whole wellspring of magic inside me which is untouched. Better that it gets used than it seeps away into the ether when I finally quit this body.’
I glanced at her, alarmed. Surely she didn’t think she was at death’s door? Her expression was calm and placid. ‘How long till you go?’ I asked. Then I realised how that sounded and said quickly, ‘I mean how long till you go back home?’
She frowned as she considered my question. ‘Soon,’ she said eventually. ‘But we should conduct a field test first and see how adept you’ve really become at stealing.’
There was a certain irony in that, given what I used to do for a living and how good I’d been at it. I rubbed my chin. ‘I can’t be seen. And we should wait until after the next visit.’
Although Morna knew exactly what I meant, ‘visit’ was something of a euphemism. Delegations from the Clans had been appearing with increasing regularity at the Adair border. So far they’d given the trolls a whole lot of pleading mixed with some grandiose promises. They’d been little more than an annoyance up till now but, when the Sidhe finally realised the carrot was never going to work, they were going to switch to the stick.
‘They’re not going to stop, you know. The Clans want their security details back.’
I let out an unladylike snort. ‘I can’t see why it’s such a big deal. The Fomori have retreated back beyond the Veil. There haven’t been any attacks since Aberdeen.’
‘It’s about more than the illusion of safety, dear.’ Morna’s eyes were sad. ‘It’s about power.’
There was a sudden screech from above. I twisted round in panic, only to see the shining orb of the Foinse fly out from one of the higher windows, followed almost immediately by Tipsania’s scowling face. ‘You bastard!’ she shrieked after it. ‘You numbskull ball of idiocy!’
The Foinse somersaulted in a manner that could only be described as taunting and sped away. Morna raised an eyebrow. ‘Does the Scrymgeour lass know that she’s screeching at the source of all magic?’
‘Oh, yes,’ I nodded. ‘She has no qualms about who she yells at.’
Morna bent down and cupped a daisy. Its petals were white and delicate with just the hint of blush at their tips. I had helped to bring that to life. If I thought about it for too long, I was completely staggered by what I’d done. ‘It proves my point,’ Morna said.
‘You mean that by yelling and throwing insults, Tipsania feels like she’s more powerful?’ Tipsania had bullied me when we were kids so I was well aware that she had a history of wanting to feel strong.
‘Well, yes,’ Morna said. ‘But I was actually referring to the Foinse. The Clans locked it away. They hampered its power and clipped its wings. Look at what it’s capable of now that it’s free.’
I knew what she meant. As a warlock, Speck had access to some magic. Sure, it was unreliable and weak and had almost killed us on more than one occasion back in our good old thievery days, but it had always been there. The longer he spent near the Foinse, the stronger his magic grew. And, unlike the Sidhe, he wasn’t limited to whatever Gift he’d been granted at puberty. We had access to clean, running water as a result of Speck’s abilities – not mine.
The only person who didn’t seem happy with his burgeoning magic was Lexie. I suspected that was out of fear that she would no longer be good enough for him rather than jealousy. We were complex beings indeed.
I pointed at the ground and the now-verdant carpet. ‘How much of that is down to the Foinse?’
A trace of a smile crossed Morna’s lips. ‘I suppose we’ll never know.’
I muttered something under my breath. She looked at me expectantly and I shrugged. ‘The Fomori,’ I explained. ‘I can’t help wondering about their magic.’
‘You mean thedraoidheachdyou were told about,’ said Morna, pronouncing the worddreeochtand with a far better Gaelic accent than mine.
I nodded. ‘The Foinse is supposed to be the source of all Scottish magic. But if the Fomori have their own version locked away in Edinburgh Castle, someone’s screwed up. And if they have it, why don’t they do more with it?’
‘Their skies are black and their earth is scorched, Integrity. I’m not sure they care.’
