Old habits die hard. It wasn’t entirely my fault though; if the Sidhe from the Clan Carnegie hadn’t been quite so brash about flashing his wealth on the street I’d have left him alone. But when he stepped out of his chauffeur-driven, brick-red SUV, summarily pushing an elder Clan-less pixie out of the way and into a dirty puddle, then made an ostentatious show of adjusting his cuffs so we could all see his gleaming over-priced Rolex, I couldn’t resist. I’d only popped for a pint of milk but this seemed far more exciting than another conversation with the human who ran the small corner shop at the end of my road.

In the Highlands of Scotland, you were either Clan or Clan-less. The Clans were run by the Sidhe but other individuals could swear fealty and enlist. In return they received a modest wage, a degree of protection from all the ills the world had to offer, and long hours working at whatever the Clan deemed necessary. Not everyone wanted to become a Sidhe slave though. Avoid the Clans and you were left to scrub out an earning on the cold, hard streets. Neither option was perfect. I might have been the only Clan-less Sidhe in the entire country but until recently I’d always been proud to call myself Clan-less. We might be the bottom of the rung but at least we were free.

I tracked the pompous Carnegie Sidhe along Oban’s main street and down towards the harbour. He strutted along like he owned the place. It didn’t help his cause that he had a skinny Bauchan, a sort of Scottish hobgoblin, trailing after him with an umbrella to protect his precious Sidhe skin from the unrelenting sleet. He paused in front of a rusty boat, jerking his head imperiously at the pale-faced sailors visible on the deck. Whatever cargo he was here to inspect, it had to be valuable for him to bother making this trip.

It might have been January but in the Highlands of Scotland spring was still a long way off. Still, even wealthy Sidhe like him couldn’t order deliveries from across the Veil. For the last three hundred years, the Fomori demons had ruled the Scottish Lowlands from the other side of the magical barrier called the Veil. Unless you wanted to risk being torn apart limb by limb by a horde of murderous evil-doers, you couldn’t go through the Veil and you couldn’t fly over it. If you wanted something delivered from the rest of the world, you had to bring it by sea or get a plane to go the long way round.