Cautiously opening the door a fraction, I gazed out. Well, well, well. It was none other than Dimples himself.
‘Hey!’ I said cheerfully. ‘Good to see you again!’
He threw me a look that was dirtier than the magazine picture I had shoved into the envelope and pretended to post. Okay, he was going to hold a grudge. That was a shame.
‘I’m here to ask if everything is to your satisfaction.’
He wouldn’t even look me in the eyes. He was probably being made to do this as a punishment for losing the Lia Saifire. I should feel guilty but he shouldn’t have been so naïve as to carry it around with him in the seediest part of Aberdeen.
‘The bed’s going to feel like I’m doing penance for my sins,’ I said cheerfully. ‘But other than that, I’m all good.’
‘Great.’ His expression wasn’t thrilled. ‘I’ll leave you in peace then.’
‘So I can rest?’ I punned. ‘But I’m too young to die!’ He gazed at me blankly. ‘Rest in peace,’ I tried to explain.
‘Is that supposed to be a joke?’
‘Obviously not a very good one,’ I muttered. ‘What’s your name, anyway?’ I didn’t think he’d warm to me very much if I went around calling him Dimples.
He grunted in response. ‘Jamie.’
‘I’m Integrity.’ I stuck out my hand for him to shake. He eyed it like it was a venomous snake. ‘Maybe we could start over, Jamie. I feel like we got off on the wrong foot.’
‘I got into a lot of trouble because of you. You stole from me.’
‘You mean the Lia Saifire? Byron mentioned something about that. What makes you think that was me?’
He threw me a doleful glance. ‘I’m not a complete idiot.’
I bit my tongue, waving my hand instead. He took it reluctantly, his grip tight and painful. I squeaked and pulled away. ‘While you’re here, Jamie, do you think you could tell me a little about this true name ceremony thing?’
His lip curled. ‘You don’t know?’
Would I be asking if I did? ‘No,’ I replied pleasantly.
Jamie sighed as if a huge burden had been placed on his shoulders. The sigh was followed by a strange burble. I blinked at him. ‘Are you feeling alright?’
The burble deepened. Jamie’s eyes widened and he stared at something behind my shoulder. Ha. I wasn’t going to fall for the old ‘look behind you’ trick. I was smarter than that. Or at least I thought I was until something coiled round my waist and dragged me backwards.
‘What the hell?’ I shrieked.
Jamie tried to back away but as I was dealing with the tentacle round my waist, another one snapped up round his wrist and dragged him inside the room. My fingers scrabbled, trying to loosen the damn thing’s grip. It wasn’t dry to the touch, despite its scales; it was slimy and wet, making it even more difficult for me to get a decent hold on it.
‘Tell me,’ I gasped, as I was flung against the far wall, ‘that you have a useful gift like telekinesis.’
‘Psychometry.’ He karate-chopped the tentacle that encircled his wrist. All he succeeded in doing was pissing it off because another tentacle appeared from nowhere and grabbed his other arm. ‘It means,’ he said, as he squirmed desperately, ‘that I can tell you this is a stoor worm. From the North Sea. It’s just a baby.’
What kind of a worm has tentacles? This was not good. ‘If it’s from the sea, then how the hell did it get here?’
‘Don’t know,’ he muttered as he was thrown up into the air then slammed down onto the stone floor with a painful thud.
‘Is this normal?’ By which I meant: is someone likely to work out what’s going on and come and rescue us?
‘No!’ He was face down so his answer was muffled.
‘Is it because of the Foinse?’
There was another muffled grunt that sounded like another no. The tentacle round my waist tightened until pain shot through me. If this wasn’t a result of the magic failing then it had to be because someone had conjured it up. Someone who wanted me dead. There was no way I was going to allow that to happen. Death by sea monster while three hundred miles inland was not the way I wanted to go.
