Chapter 6
Rowan walked out of Moonlit Pages in a daze.
Byres Road was noisy and bright. Lunchtime crowds moving in every direction, the smell of coffee and toasted sandwiches drifting from open doorways. Rowan moved through it all without really registering any of it.
She passed a shop that was being refurbished, its front window stripped bare and the door propped open. She wondered absently what it might become. A boutique. Another coffee shop. Perhaps something more interesting. She was thinking without thinking, the back of her mind still on the Veil Walkers.
And then she saw him.
He was inside the shop. Working. Hammering a nail into a shelf with easy, practised strokes, his shirtsleeves rolled up over his forearms, the tattoos catching the light from the bare bulbs overhead.
He hadn’t seen her.
Rowan stopped at the bus stop across the street and watched. She told herself she was just observing, just gathering information the way she would with anyone connected to the Veil. But she stayed longer than she needed to.
There were four other men in the shop, laughing and joking with each other as they worked.
He didn’t join in. He continued working at the back, diligent and focused, at ease in his own company.
There was something about that. The way he was comfortable being separate without being distant.
She recognised it because she’d spent most of her life the same way.
At one point he stopped and ran his hand along the edge of the shelf he’d just fitted.
Not checking it. Feeling it. The way Rowan ran her fingers along a candle to check the wax had set right.
She watched his hand move across the grain and felt something strange.
A faint warmth in the air between them, even from across the street.
Not heat. Not energy she could name. Just a presence, the kind she could feel when someone is thinking deeply about something and the thinking itself becomes almost visible. She filed it away and kept watching.
One of the other workers shouted from the shop door, “Callum! Do you want anything?”
Rowan held her breath.
The man at the back of the shop stopped hammering. Looked up. “No, no. It’s okay. Thanks.” He waved them away.
“No bother, mate,” the man said, and walked off down the street.
Callum.
She let the name settle in her mind. Callum. She tried it again. Callum.
Just then, he looked up from his work and looked straight at her.
Rowan was caught off guard and felt the heat rise in her cheeks. In the space of a heartbeat, she made a decision. She crossed the street, opened the shop door, and walked in.
He stood up and wiped the sawdust from his hands. He was taller than she remembered. The blue eyes were the same.
“You’re the owner of The Magick Wick,” he said.
“Yes.” She held out her hand. “My name’s Rowan.”
He smiled and nodded as he wiped his hands again on his jeans and shook her hand firmly. No hesitation. No gentle grip. He shook her hand the way he’d shake anyone’s. She liked that.
There was a rush as his hand closed around hers. Not magickal. Not from the Veil. Just the simple, physical jolt of touching someone and feeling it everywhere.
She reached out with her energy, the way she always did. And once again, there was nothing. The same silence. The same glass wall.
“My name’s Callum,” he said. “Callum Ross. I didn’t really get a chance to talk to you the other day.”
“No, you didn’t,” Rowan said. “You just bought a candle holder and walked out.”
He smiled at that. An easy, unhurried smile. Then his face shifted, and he looked around the half-built shop. “You shouldn’t really be in here when there are workers about. Health and safety and all that.” He glanced towards the door. “Do you want to grab a coffee? I could do with a break.”
“Yes. That would be lovely.”
He turned to one of the other workers. “Tommy, I’m just going out for a bit. Back in fifteen minutes.”
“No bother, mate,” Tommy said, and went back to his conversation without a second glance.
They walked to a coffee shop nearby and sat down at a table by the window, looking out onto the lane. Rowan ordered an Americano. Callum ordered a tea. She noticed that.
For a few minutes, they just talked. Easy, ordinary things.
How long she’d had the shop. What kind of work he was doing on the refurbishment.
Whether Byres Road was getting better or worse with all the changes.
The kind of conversation two people have when they’re circling around the thing they actually want to say.
“How did you get into joinery?” Rowan asked.
Callum thought about it for a moment, the way he seemed to think about everything.
Not slow. Just considered. “Started my apprenticeship at sixteen,” he said.
“I wasn’t much good at school. But I was good with my hands.
Always have been.” He turned his mug on the table.
“My granddad was a joiner as well. He taught me before I even started the apprenticeship. I used to sit in his workshop after school and just watch him work.”
“Is he still around?”
“No. Passed a few years back.” He paused. “But I’ve still got his tools. Use them every day.”
Rowan smiled at that. “That’s lovely.”
“Aye, well.” He lifted his mug. “It’s just wood and nails at the end of the day.”
That was Callum, she was already learning. He’d say something that meant the world to him and then flatten it with a shrug or a quiet deflection, as if the feeling was too much to leave sitting in the open.
“Do you know your mother came into my shop?” Rowan said, after the conversation had settled into a comfortable rhythm.
“Aye, she told me.” He paused. “She wanted to know about the symbol.”
“She did. Which I thought was a bit strange.”
Callum nodded slowly. He didn’t seem surprised. “How long have you lived here?” he asked.
“All my life. Grew up in the West End. Took over the shop from my gran about twenty years ago.”
“Same for us, more or less. My grandparents came here in the sixties. My mother’s stayed in the West End ever since. We’ve been on Hyndland Road for about thirty years.”
Rowan’s stomach tightened. The sixties. She kept her face still.
She liked him. That was the problem. She didn’t want to like him. She wanted to study him, to figure out what he was and where he came from. But he made it difficult by being warm and normal and easy to talk to.
“Why was your mother so interested in the symbol?” Rowan said, steering the conversation back.
Callum’s expression shifted slightly. “That’s what I wanted to ask you. Do you know where the symbol comes from, Rowan?”
She looked up at him, into the blue eyes that she couldn’t read, and chose her words carefully. “I’m not sure,” she said. She didn’t want to give anything away. She especially didn’t want to explain that it had come to her in a vision from the Veil. That would end this conversation very quickly.
“Ah,” Callum said, and something in his face fell, just a little.
“I was hoping you would know. My mother shut me down the when I asked her about it. She told me she’d gone to the shop, and when I quizzed her, she just closed the whole thing off.
Wouldn’t say another word about it.” He looked down at his tea.
“That’s her, though. She’ll give you just enough to make you curious and then shut the door. ”
Rowan’s shoulders dropped as she let out a quiet breath. He didn’t know. He genuinely didn’t know. He was looking for answers the same way she was, and his own mother wasn’t giving them to him either.
“No,” Rowan said. “I don’t know where it comes from.”
It wasn’t entirely a lie. She knew the symbol had come from the Veil. She knew Jean had connected it to the 1960 crossing. But she didn’t know what it meant for him. And she wasn’t ready to share what she did know with someone she’d only just met, no matter how easy he was to sit across from.
“Ah, right. Okay,” Callum said softly, looking down at the table.
A moment passed between them. Not awkward. Just honest.
“Are you married? Kids? Anything like that?” Callum asked, looking back up.
“God, no,” Rowan said, laughing. “Too busy with the business and living life to do anything like that.”
She caught it. A raised eyebrow. The smallest hint of a smile.
“What about yourself?” Rowan asked.
“No. Not married. No kids.” He turned his mug slowly on the table. “Just never really found the right one. I’m kind of what you might call a bit of a loner.”
Rowan laughed. “That’s a bit of a red flag, Callum.”
He laughed easily, and the sound of it loosened something in her chest that she hadn’t realised was tight.
“No, no. Not one of those types of loners. A loner by choice. I’m just very fussy when it comes to women.”
“Oh. Okay. I know that feeling very well,” Rowan said.
“I got the feeling you might,” Callum said, smiling.
That was the moment Rowan knew she was in trouble.