“What message?” asked Kelpie blankly. Mina’s eyes blazed with fury and humiliation. Bogle laughed aloud, and Kelpie knew that Mina had tried to send her a message by magic—and it hadn’t worked. Och, but she must say something quickly, or no telling what Mina might do!
“It would be yon red-haired serpent down there,” she said improvising hastily. “He was no doubt setting up a spell to prevent your message from reaching me. Teach me to say spells, Mina,” she wheedled, “so that I may set one on him.”
It worked. Mina’s pride was saved, and her wrath turned from Kelpie to Alex. “I will be cursing him myself,” she growled. “He is the same one who would not pay me enough when you were hurt, and who would not let you steal? Very well so! He will pay, and the others as well. We will go now and demand your wages before you leave.”
Leave? Kelpie’s heart sank. Back to the old life of fear, hatred, beatings? Away from Wee Mairi and Ian and the companionship and teasing? She backed up a step and braced herself.
“What for should I want to leave?” She stuck out her jaw rebelliously, and Mina slapped it.
“Because I am saying so!” she snarled. “And because I will put an evil curse on you if you do not obey.”
Kelpie prudently pulled in her smarting jaw and considered this. On one hand, Mina was not as powerful as Kelpie had thought, for she almost certainly could not read the crystal alone, and her magic message had failed to get through. But that was not to say she could not curse. Kelpie still had great faith in the power of Mina’s evil spells. And Mina’s curse would be even more disagreeable than her company. Kelpie brooded darkly over the unpleasant alternatives before her, almost inclined to risk the curse.
“Why would you not want to come?” demanded Mina, and her cursing changed to wheedling. “And here I have been to the trouble of arranging for you to learn witchcraft at last, ungrateful wretch that you are, then! What, would you stay to be a slave to arrogant fools such as these? Stupid sheep, spending their lives shut in a wee glen?”
“They do not, then,” muttered Kelpie mutinously. “Ian and Alex have been to school in England in a place called Oxford, and have seen the King and Montrose and know more than we about affairs. And they do not beat me, nor make me steal for them and then set the crowd on me. And I do not believe you plan to teach me witchcraft, whatever, for you are always promising it and never do it.”