Samgan was halfway down the stairs to the cellar before he felt it. It was a spiky magic, prickling over his skin, and he didn’t like it. It couldn’t own him like it could own Hilary or Paul, but it tugged at him like a sharp, twisting breeze. He kept going. He owed so much to Hilary, he owed her his life. What was harder, she gave without demands. He paused for a moment, gathering his strength. Hilary was paying wages far more than he had ever expected as a pooka, and she was paying them freely. The glass of milk every morning was in a large, clean glass and the milk was fresh and cool. The food that was provided at regular intervals was ample and wholesome, more than he expected. He could feel the goodness soaking into his bones. He ran a tentative hand over his shirt sleeve. Hilary had admitted that the clothes weren’t new, but they weren’t rags. They were clean and without tears or stains and were obviously chosen with thought and care. Samgan thought back to the sackcloth he had worn in that dark prison.

It was the room, however, that caught his loyalty the most. Hilary refused to give him the room that he’d destroyed when he was ill, as she had said that it needed to be redecorated before it could be used again. Instead he had been shown upstairs to a room of his own, not too big, with furniture and a soft, warm bed piled with blankets. It was filled with light, facing south and the wide window opened up over the garden. It felt like a sanctuary, a safe place, even if it was under someone else’s roof. He could no more stop Bracken from cleaning the room than he could have stopped the sun setting in the West, but otherwise he was undisturbed. He had never known anything so good.

Samgan forced his attention back to the present. The cellar was just a few steps below him and darkness pooled around the foot of the stairs. That didn’t bother him. He knew that there was a light switch, just as he had a sack over his shoulder with portable lights and bags for any notebooks he could find. The magic worried him, though. It shouldn’t affect him the way it had Hilary, but he could feel the unpleasant sensation of malevolent energy flowing over him, and he didn’t like it.

He found the light switch without too much trouble. The light was dimmer than he expected, but that was magic, not faulty wiring. Otherwise, he was unsurprised. Hilary had talked about the cellar, and nothing had changed since her visit. All the notebooks had gone from the shelves, of course, but everything else was undisturbed. He marvelled at the tiny bathroom as he checked through the door, and paused at the entrance to the storeroom. With his sight, it was a wonderland.

Some shelves were bare of magic, some had it overflowing from the jars and boxes. Energy sparkled and danced around the room, glancing off mirrors and pooling in dishes and cartons. He went closer. He had to leave plenty of room between him and some of the stones and charms near the door, but there were racks and racks of herbs, and he knew herbs.

He trailed a light finger over the jars. Yarrow, rue and comfrey were all grown by witches, as was hyssop and valerian. Then there were huge jars of parsley, thyme and rosemary, suitable for the kitchen. He was familiar with all of these. He was unfamiliar with lemon verbena and American willowherb, but he could feel their energies. He could grow them here.

Samgan moved over to the non-magical shelves full of envelopes and labels, then a small stack of notebooks. He hesitated, then slid them into a bag. They may not be what Hilary wanted, but he was willing to risk it. He took a final look around before slipping out. Now he had to brave the workroom.

Samgan had expected the evil, but he’d not expected how it clung to him. He could feel the prickles of it in his hair and on the soles of his feet as he entered. The room was exactly as Hilary had described it. There was a circle in the middle of the floor, hangings on the wall, and a small desk at the far corner. Samgan nodded to himself. That had to be where any notebooks would be found. He took a deep breath. The air felt thick, like in a heavy rainstorm just before the first peal of thunder, and strange thoughts were swirling in him. He remembered the embankment. It had been easy to undermine the earth there. He’d needed to move a root or two, allow water to channel in a different way, and then a very small disturbance of the soil near the bottom at the right time sent tons of debris down, flowing around the car. It had felt exhilarating, like a wild wind in autumn, and he had been proud.

He clenched his fists. Alison had been in that car. She had been pleasant to Hilary when she had called in to see Tom, and her young sons were exactly the right combination of good manners and mischief to make any mother proud. He could have hurt them. Samgan felt shame flush through him. This barbed energy was no good. He had felt such deep satisfaction, watching the werewolves panicking as they dug to free the car, but what had it got him? It had left him drained, isolated, and any good that had happened since had been in spite of that malice. Too many of Lord Peregrine’s court were still wary of him, and with good reason.

Lord Peregrine had faded, Hilary had been transfixed, and now he was being corrupted. He couldn’t hang around. Samgan strode over to the desk, skirting the circle, then started to fill the bag with the notebooks. He could feel a stirring behind him, a cold prickle down his neck, and, snarling, swept the notebooks and papers from the desk into the bag, settling them securely into the bag before turning.

The shape in the corner was still unformed. When the hangings had been moved, a hint of energy had come through. It was less of a threat than it could be, and it was far from fully manifested, but Samgan could feel the darkness seeping into him. He didn’t want it! Samgan found himself panting. He thought of Hilary, who had saved his life, of Bracken, who was becoming like a little sister, of Tom and Paul and their calm strength. Grasping the bag in both hands, Samgan marched back to the door, his back straight. He felt his mind clouding over, and he fought for control.

The door seemed clouded and far away. Samgan staggered, knocking into a shelf, before grasping the doorframe and hauling himself through it. The clatter behind him felt muffled and distant as he placed his first foot on the stairs. Waves of fog washed through him, his eyesight blurry and dim. Samgan gritted his teeth. He didn’t need light. He held on to the handrail like a rope from a lifeboat and pulled himself up a step.

The feelings were still rushing through him, burning at the back of his eyes. He had been trapped in the dark, unjust and unfair, the prickles of the energy tormenting him, leeching into his bones and leaving him fevered. He pushed his hands further up the handrail and hauled himself up another step. Energy lapped around his feet, like fording a malevolent stream, cold and gnawing. He managed another two steps, pulling himself out of the rising tide, but he could feel it following him. He could sense the wards at the top of the steps, and if he could just make it that far…” For a moment, Samgan lost all focus and only his iron grip on the handrail stopped his fall back down the stairs. Fear iced through him, he couldn’t leave Hilary. He hadn’t paid his debt!

The thought pushed through the fog and Samgan held harder onto the rail, clutching frantically as he struggled to haul himself higher. The energy lapping once again around his ankles felt sticky, like tar, and pulling his foot up to the next step grew harder every heartbeat. There had been so few steps going down, he thought vaguely. And now there were so many going up. He dragged himself up the next step, his whole frame trembling with the effort. He wasn’t giving up, though. He had a debt to pay. He had to make it.

Samgan stumbled up the last two steps, his ears ringing with the effort, then fell out, through the secret door and onto the library carpet, curling his knees towards his chest to pull his feet through the ward and away from the dark magic swirling below. For a moment he lay motionless, aware only of the thudding of his heart and the soft, tufted, pile of the carpet under him. He took a moment to stroke over the carpet, feeling the wonderful ordinariness in its texture, before rolling slowly onto his feet, using the chairs and table to steady himself.

He looked back at the secret door and winced. His pride had taken him down there, and he wasn’t sure how he’d made it back. Now he needed to sit in the kitchen by the fire and feel the warmth of Hilary and her care of the home. He looked at the bag next to him, fallen haphazardly on the carpet. It had been a risk, but now he had more notebooks.

You can read the story so far from the beginning here

“If you’ve used a till like this before, you’ve probably got more idea of what it does than I do,” Tom said.

Alison Keasden managed a pale smile. “I’ve worked in a few shops, and this looks pretty standard.” She ran a hand over the till that had been plugged in for testing in the back room. “I don’t think that I’ll have any problems.”

“We open next week,” Tom said. “And there’s still a lot to do. All the fixtures are in place, and it’s kept clean, but I want to get everything stocked up and set out.” He sighed. “Lord Peregrine is determined to open a fortnight before Christmas and it’s going to be bedlam.”

“Most people shop online, don’t they?” Alison said. “Especially on the run up to Christmas.”

“There is always a rush for last minute presents,” Tom said. “Besides, we’re stocking a load of wrapping paper, cards, decorations and some Christmas food trimmings.”

“Do you think that we’ll sell them?” Alison asked.

“I’ll be surprised if we don’t run out of wrapping paper and tape,” Tom said. “That stuff always runs out. But it can last till next year if we’re careful how we store it. It’s the food side that worries me.”

Alison moved over to a stack of flats of cranberry sauce. “There’s a lot here.”

“And we’re only a small village,” Tom said. “The use by date is long enough that we can still sell it next Christmas, if we store it right, and we’ll have a bit of a sale in January…”

“Lord Peregrine got carried away again, didn’t he?” Alison said, relaxing a little. “Has he ever owned a shop?”

“Nope, and he’s not known for his caution either,” Tom said. “But the shop is likely to stay open for a few years, even if it doesn’t make much of a profit. It’s about him owning the gossip hub of the area.”

“I thought that was Farm Shop, up the hill,” Alison said.

“Lord Peregrine’s setting himself up as a rival for the gossip,” Tom said. “To be fair, he’s working with Jed and Marlene so that the shops don’t compete, or at least don’t compete too much, and he may be on to something.” Tom straightened up a pack of kitchen towels. “We’ve got a few months to find out what we can do, to find where we can be strongest. I suspect it will be food that brings people in, but we’ll have to find some sort of niche.”

“This village is miles away from anywhere,” Alison said. “That’s why I came here.”

Tom wandered through the store kitchen and out of the back door. “It’s all farmland out here,” he said. “And above that, you get the moors. There’s the houses on the road up to your cottage, and there are farms around, but it feels empty.” He looked morosely over the weed tangled patch at the back of the shop. “But we’re only an hour’s journey from Leeds, one of the biggest English cities. Lots of people drive out through the countryside. It can get busy.”

“They’d have to know we’re here,” Alison said. “We’re still off the main roads.”

“And Hilary has a background in marketing,” Tom said. He sighed softly. “I have a feeling that Lord Peregrine will make this work. He wants to bring his people back to the village.”

“You mean, like you?” Alison asked. She took an unconscious half step away from Tom. “Are there a lot of, you know…”

“There’s hardly any of us,” Tom said. “There used to be more, but it sort of faded over the years. Of course, Cabus remembers more. He’s been here centuries. As a vampire, he’s not as long lived as a fae like Lord Peregrine, but he’s more willing to talk. Hang on!” He darted forward as the colour drained from Alison’s face, taking her arm and guiding her into a chair. “Sit down and I’ll get you a drink of water.”

“That’s why I came to the countryside,” Alison said quietly. Her eyes were wide and her hands trembled as she took the glass from Tom. “I ran away from being hunted.”

Tom knelt in front of her and looked at her directly. “You won’t be hunted here,” he said. “That I promise.”

***

Samgan prowled around the library. He was feeling stronger every day and now he was starting to feel restless. Even more, he was feeling his debt to Hilary bite. It wasn’t just the healing. He knew how close to death he had been and she had pulled him back. He knew Paul had been there, and Paul was also owed a debut, but it was different with Hilary. She kept caring. She treated him with grace, more than anyone else ever had. Even before he started work, she was abiding by their agreement. He had a glass of milk set next to his plate at breakfast every morning. Hilary had come home with a large bag of clothes which she had washed, pressed, and insisted that he took. She had apologised that they weren’t knew, but that she thought he would need new ones soon as she fed him enough to gain weight. Samgan thought back to the patched rags that he’d often been left with. The jeans and shirts in the drawers in his room were far finer, without rips, tears, or stains. She had even insisted on getting him new boots.

Lord Peregrine had suggested that he took over the garden, as a way of earning his place in Rowan Cottage. That wouldn’t be work, it would be pleasure. The soil was good and the garden was well laid out. Samgan inspected a shelf near the window. There were a lot of gardening books in here, many of them old. It was a witch’s cottage and rare herbs had always been grown here. If he could get decent seed then he could make the garden flourish. There was plenty of space to feed the cottage with vegetables. He took an old herbal from the shelf and flicked through a few pages, stopping at an illustration of agrimony. He could grow that easily enough.

It would grow even easier if he could sort out the twist in the magical flow. There was a risk that food grown here could be tainted, and Hilary couldn’t use herbs grown near dark magic in healing. Something needed to be done about it. He’d heard Hilary and Paul talk about it, about moving the stones, but they were cautious. They hadn’t found all the details from the notebooks yet.

Samgan stepped closer to the bookcase that hid the stair down to the possessed cellar. There would be more information down there, he was sure. He’d felt the flow of energy down there, and the malevolence. He smiled thinly. He wasn’t exactly a dandelion seed himself. He owed Hilary so much. Clearing the flow of magic would go towards payment of that debt, even if it didn’t clear it completely.

He ran a hand over the bookcase, then paused as he heard Tom come in. Hilary would be out of her office and starting dinner soon. He wouldn’t discuss anything with her, as she would only worry. He stalked over and put the herbal back in its place on the shelf. Hilary and Paul were going to Leeds the day after tomorrow. They would almost certainly be gone most of the day, and Bracken would be busy down at the Village Stores with Tom. He could make his move then. He could start easing his soul and repaying his debt then.