Chapter 5
Rowan couldn’t stop thinking about him, or his mother.
She stood at the window of The Magick Wick, watching the street without really seeing it.
Her reverie was broken when Janet walked into the shop.
“I needed to get out of the house, hen. Do you mind? Treat yourself. I’ll keep shop.”
“You’re a lifesaver, Janet. I need to go and see somebody. Can you close up and just leave the keys through the letterbox.”
“Oh, that would be fine, hen.”
Rowan grabbed her jacket and left.
The man and the woman were still in her head. She couldn’t shake them. Two people she couldn’t read, walking into her shop within a day of each other, both drawn to the same symbol. And David’s words kept circling back. He could be from the other side of the Veil.
She walked down Hyndland Road instead of cutting through Prince Albert Road.
There were temporary traffic lights near the bottom, and the traffic was backed up all the way from the pub to the cross at the top.
She could see drivers getting irate and cars pulling out of the various side streets, trying to find a way around the hold-up.
It was a bright, sharp day. The kind that should have cleared her head.
But the nice day couldn’t settle what was underneath.
She kept seeing the woman’s face. That clipped, measured way she’d spoken.
Nobody would know that symbol unless they’d been there.
Where was there? The Veil? And if the woman knew that, what else did she know? What else had she seen?
Byres Road was even busier at lunchtime.
School kids, students from the university, residents from around the area, all moving through the same streets.
Rowan loved it. The energy of the place, the energy of different generations coming together.
There was just something magickal about the West End.
But today she moved through it without quite being part of it.
Her mind was somewhere else. Somewhere older.
She nipped into one of the coffee shops and grabbed two Americanos. She and Isla were the only two in the group who liked plain, ordinary coffee.
As she pushed open the door to Moonlit Pages, the smell of old books and dust hit her immediately. She loved it. This was her kind of bookshop. Old and new together, the weight of history sitting alongside something fresh and alive.
Isla looked up from stacking a pile of books and smiled. She finished what she was doing before coming over.
“Okay, obviously there’s something up,” Isla said. “I can sense it straight away. I sensed it the other night as well.”
Rowan nodded. “I know. I just wasn’t able to formulate the words to describe what it was yet. And I think I know now.”
Isla nodded. “I get it.”
“You busy just now? Do you want me to come back later?” Rowan said.
“No, it’s not been that busy. I’m going to close for lunch anyway.”
Isla walked over to the door, flipped the sign to closed, and locked it. “Come on, we’ll go through to the back.”
“Got you coffee,” Rowan said, holding up the cups.
“Excellent. Just what I needed,” Isla said.
As they walked through the shop, Rowan noticed Isla brushing her fingers along the rows of books, as if she was reading them as she passed. A habit she’d seen before.
Rowan watched her for a moment. Intelligent, thoughtful, kind. It showed in everything she did. As were all the others in the coven. But there was something about Isla that was just wholesome. That was the best word she could find for it.
She sat down in one of the two brown, leather, Chesterfield armchairs that sat opposite each other at either end of a bookshelf. This was Isla’s reading place. She came here every lunch to get an hour of reading in. Every single day.
“I love this wee bit in the back,” Rowan said. “It’s got a really cosy, warm energy about it.”
“I know. My favourite place in the whole world. Alistair loves it too.” Isla said.
“How is Alistair? I never really get the chance at the weekly meetings to properly catch up.”
“He’s great. Still loving the research over in Edinburgh. He just comes over whenever he can. To be honest, he might as well just move over here and commute,” Isla said, laughing. She tilted her head to the side. “What about you?”
“Oh, you’re giving me that look,” Rowan said.
“What look?”
“That sympathetic wee tilt of the head to the side. We’re talking about relationships, obviously,” Rowan said, laughing.
Isla laughed. “Sorry. Is it that obvious? I’m just wondering how you’re feeling.”
“I’m settled,” Rowan said. “I’ve found my tribe. I’ve found my calling with the shop. Business is good. I don’t really have any worries. I’d just love somebody to share that with.”
And there he was again. Uninvited. The broad frame in the doorway. The low voice that said her name like he already knew her. She blinked it away.
“Anyway. That’s not why I’m here,” Rowan said.
She took a breath and told Isla everything.
The man she couldn’t read. The silver candle holder.
The symbol he recognised. His mother walking into the shop the next day, asking about the same symbol, and Rowan unable to read her either.
David and Jessica. David’s suggestion that the man could be connected to the Veil.
Isla listened without interrupting. When Rowan finished, Isla leaned forward.
“You’re joking,” she said. “His mother said that? That nobody would know the symbol unless they’d been there?”
“That was it. Word for word. And then she walked out.”
“Oh my God. So, David thinks he might be a Veil Walker?”
“He suggested it. And I hadn’t thought about it before. But it makes sense, doesn’t it? The woman was obviously wealthy. Well-spoken. Well-dressed. Living in the area. If she’s here with her son, there could be more of them. Living among us. And we’ve never known.”
Isla sat back and pressed her fingers together. She was quiet for a moment, the way she got when something was connecting in her head.
“Rowan, if these people are descendants of families who crossed through the Veil in 1960, that means the tear didn’t just let something in and close again.
It left something behind. In bloodlines.
In families that have been living here for sixty-odd years, carrying Veil energy, and none of us ever knew.
” She paused. “Jean sealed the Veil in those final weeks. But if this is what’s left over from the original tear, then it’s not just about the barrier.
It’s about the people. And we have no idea how many of them there are. ”
Rowan felt a chill go through her that had nothing to do with the weather. She hadn’t thought of it like that. Not as something that had been quietly spreading through generations while the coven looked the other way.
“Jean would have known,” Isla said. “If anybody had records of Veil Walkers, it would be her.”
“That’s what I was thinking,” Rowan said.
Isla set her coffee down. “We can go through her papers right now, if you want. I haven’t had a proper look since the investigation a few months ago. She left everything to me.”
“Do you mind?”
“Of course not.”
They finished their coffees and Isla pulled out two large boxes from a cupboard in the back. They were full of papers, old books, and photographs.
“Is the grimoire in here as well?” Rowan asked.
“No, no. I’ve got that safely tucked away somewhere. Do you want to see that as well?”
“No, no. I was just asking.”
“Okay,” Isla said, kneeling down beside the first box, the hem of her red dress touching the ground. “So, we’re looking specifically for anything to do with Veil Walkers.”
Rowan kneeled down on the opposite side. “Yeah. Just Veil Walkers for now. Anything else we see, we’ll set aside. How long have you got before you need to open up again?”
“About forty-five minutes.”
“Perfect. If it takes us that long, just open up and I’ll keep digging.”
They each grabbed a box and started working through the papers.
Rowan was excited. Not just to find something about the Veil Walkers, but to look through the history itself. Jean’s ancestry, the magickal line she came from, the world of the original coven laid out in handwritten notes and faded photographs. It was like finding out who your ancestors were.
“Is Alistair magickal himself?” Rowan asked, turning over a faded envelope. “I’ve always meant to ask you.”
“No, not magickal. But he’s sensitive to it. He’s spent so long researching this world that he can feel when something’s off. He was like that with my gran’s papers too. He’d pick up a document and just know if it was important.”
“That’s a gift in itself,” Rowan said.
“Yeah. I think so too,” Isla said, smiling as she pulled out a bundle of loose pages.
After around thirty minutes, they hadn’t found anything specific.
But they’d shared old photographs of their grandmothers back and forth and laughed together at the memories they’d both grown up with.
The stories were different, but the feeling was the same.
Two women raised by women who carried magick without ever fully explaining it.
Isla looked at the clock. “Sorry, Rowan. I’m going to have to open up the shop.”
Rowan nodded, “No bother. It’s fine. I’ll keep going here. Come back through when it’s less busy.”
Isla stood and walked to the front door. She turned the sign, unlocked it, and just as she turned around, a customer walked in.
Rowan continued rifling through her box. Papers, books, photographs. She was methodical, turning each page, scanning for anything that mentioned Walkers, the 1960 tear, or the families who might have crossed through.
About ten minutes in, she found a folded letter in Jean’s handwriting.
Her pulse jumped. She opened it carefully and read through it twice.
It was a record of the night in March 1960 when the original coven attempted to thin the Veil.
Jean’s account was precise, detailed, almost clinical.
She described what the seven women had done, the ritual they had used, and the moment they realised it had gone too far.
But there was no mention of anyone crossing through.
No mention of Walkers. No symbol. Just the tear itself, and the fear that followed.
Close. But not what she was looking for.
She set it aside and kept going.
She was just about to stop when she saw it.
A faded sheet of paper, folded twice, tucked between the pages of an old notebook. She opened it carefully.
The symbol.
The same symbol she had seen in her vision. The same one she had etched onto the candle holders. The same one the man had recognised without hesitation.
It was drawn in black ink. Beneath it, in Jean’s unmistakable script, was a single line:
‘They carried this when they crossed. March 1960.’