Free Bloodmagic (Blood Destiny 2) by Helen Harper Page B

the kitchen with an even larger smile on her face.  “She’s just on her way over.   She only lives round the corner so it won’t take long.”
    “What’s her name?”
    “Maggie.” Mrs Alcoon laughed.  “Maggie May, actually.”
    “Like the song?  Interesting.”
    “Oh, I think you’ll find there are many interesting things about our Maggie.”  She pulled the other chair up and leaned towards me.  “You will keep an open mind, about her, won’t you Mackenzie?  You’ve taken my funny little feelings in your stride so I hope you’ll continue to be like that.”
    Hmm.  Perhaps there was more that was interesting to Maggie May than just her name.  “I can definitely promise you that I have no pre-conceived judgments to make.  It would be good to know what sort of tricks I can expect though.
    “Oh, if I told you that then there wouldn’t be any surprise now would there?  At the very least you’re looking a lot brighter and perkier than you were before.  There’s colour back in your cheeks.”
    Hopefully not from embarrassment at thinking how I’d have to pretend to take Maggie May’s ‘tricks’ seriously.
    A few moments of companionable silence later, the door jangled out the front and Mrs Alcoon virtually leapt out of her chair.  “She’s here!  Come out to the shop front with me, Mackenzie.”
    Reluctantly I followed her out.  The woman who stood in front of the counter and whom I presumed was Maggie wasn’t quite what I had been expecting.  She was short, barely five foot tall, and incredibly round and rosy cheeked.  Involuntarily I thought of a red apple before throwing the thought away as uncharitable.  She hugged Mrs Alcoon warmly, thanking her for the ‘wonderful herbal tea’ and then cast a twinkly look at me, holding her arms out.
    I stared back, nonplussed, wondering if she expected me to hug her too.  Fortunately she just took hold of my hands and squeezed them tight.
    “June tells me you’ve been having a few problems.” 
    June?  I was momentarily nonplussed before realising that she meant Mrs Alcoon.
    “Err…yes, a few,” I mumbled somewhat incoherently.  Maggie, for her part, continued to hold my hands tight and look unsettlingly into my face.
    “June, lock up the shop and turn the sign to closed.”
    Mrs Alcoon sounded a bit nervous.  “But we might have customers, Maggie.  I wouldn’t want to turn anyone away.”
    “Pssshaw!  They’re not exactly queuing up are they?  Besides, we won’t want to be interrupted.”
    I was starting to warm to Maggie’s no-nonsense attitude.  Mrs Alcoon – June – walked over to the door and slotted the top and bottom deadbolts into place and flipped over the ‘Open for business’ sign.  Maggie meanwhile continued to look at me disconcertingly.  After a few moments she finally let go.
    “Right,” she stated briskly, suddenly all business-like.  “There are a few things that I can show you that will help to solve any further…problems that you may have.  June has told me that you won’t scare easily and that you’ll take my little tricks on board without questioning too much.”
    I stared at her, wondering what on earth Mrs Alcoon had gotten me into, before blinking in reluctant acquiescence.
    “Excellent.  You don’t need any real power to perform these tricks; in fact most people have enough latent magic to manage quite easily.”
    Umm…magic?  Not ‘tricks’?  I could feel coils of heat starting to swell in the pit of my stomach and tried to force them down.  Rationally, this might prove to be more useful than a few basic self-defense moves.  And I had to admit that I was somewhat curious to see whether I could in fact perform any magic.  The research I’d done on the Draco Wyr hadn’t yielded any clues as to whether that was possible and I’d definitely been fascinated by what Alex had been capable of doing when I’d first met him down in Cornwall.  As a ‘human’, I wasn’t