by ‘In case you didn’t know,’ I said to Jay later, ‘we have dinner plans.’
He didn’t say anything. He looked too pole-axed to form words.
‘Is… that bad?’ I said, and my heart did a little sinking thing. It hadn’t occurred to me that Jay might dislike the idea. Or — what if he already had dinner plans with someone else?
‘No,’ he said, but too cautiously to make me feel much better. ‘I thought you’d — you aren’t doing something with Alban?’
‘He did ask me,’ I said. ‘But seeing as I’d already made plans with you, I didn’t feel that I could accept.’
Jay digested that. ‘I am honoured to serve as your excuse,’ he said, not looking at all honoured.
My heart sank a little bit more. ‘We— we could reframe that,’ I tried. ‘How about my preference?’
‘Am I?’
I thought, guiltily, of how much I’d wanted to accept Alban’s invitation.
Then I thought about what dinner with him would actually be like. Me, blushy and smiley on the outside, sick at heart on the inside, trying not to be pathetically weak to all the Baron’s charms and failing miserably.
Dinner with Jay, though? That would be fun. Just, fun. We’d talk, go over the events of the day. Make plans for tomorrow. Make each other laugh. And Jay would smile at me sometimes and all it would do to me was brighten my day.
No drama.
‘Actually,’ I said, ‘you are.’
I was rewarded with a smile. It was only a tiny one, but it went all the way up to his eyes, so I’m counting it. ‘Then it’s a deal,’ he said.
I beamed. ‘Great. Till later, then.’
We sealed the deal with a fist-bump, and went back to herding people for another couple of hours.
As I might have slightly hinted at earlier (spoilers, sorry), nothing much happened until the end of the day. Which turned out to be about two hours later than we’d planned, because when we tried to close up the doors at five o’clock, the waiting queues of people threatened to revolt.
It was nearly seven, then, when something like serenity finally descended. Relatively speaking. We had only about thirty people left in the hall, and most of them had already viewed the Wand. Many of them were clustered together in knots, talking excitedly — about the Wand, about its rumoured history, but most of all about Merlin.
Everyone is fascinated with Merlin.
Feeling myself justified in deserting my post, I sidled up to Jay. ‘On a scale of one to ten, how knackered are you?’
‘About eleven, but this is a meaningless measure.’
‘Oh? Why?’
He looked at me. ‘If you aren’t exhausted, you aren’t trying hard enough.’
‘All work and no play makes Jay a dull boy.’
He snorted.
‘And in due course a burned-out boy.’
‘Hasn’t happened yet.’
‘Therefore it’s impossible.’
He gave an affirmative nod.
‘Nonetheless, would you maybe consider that dinner thing sometime soon? I at least would prefer not to starve to death in pursuit of a thief.’
‘Nancy Drew would be ashamed of you.’
‘But I think Bess would totally get me.’
He grinned. ‘I am hungry,’ he admitted.
‘The man admits a weakness!’
‘I shan’t make a habit of it. You’d never respect me again.’
‘I’ll ask Rob to turf these fine people out,’ I said. ‘Time to close—’
And I stopped, because at last, guys, something happened. I won’t admit to having felt a sense of disappointment at the uneventful day we’d had; all we’d done all day was herd people about, and answer the same questions over and over again with the same pack of lies. It made me happy I hadn’t ended up as an events planner for real.
Well, our patience paid off. And then some.
Sort of.
I hadn’t stopped speaking because anything especially dramatic happened. It was only that I’d noticed another visitor, someone I’m certain hadn’t been in the room five minutes before. We’d shut the double doors by then in an attempt to stem the tide, and I hadn’t noticed them opening. Apparently the duo of Rob’s people stationed either side of the doorway hadn’t noticed them opening, either.
Nonetheless, here was someone new. She was standing right in front of the glass case containing the Wand, inspecting it with narrow-eyed attention, and the reason I was so entirely fascinated by this circumstance was that the case was open.
The case was open.
Like she’d just lifted the lid, casual as you please, never mind the fact that it was securely locked and bristling with sealed-for-all-of-time-don’t-even-try charms.
Following the line of my gaze, Jay froze. Both of us stared, dumbfounded, at the newcomer for several seconds.
She, unperturbed or oblivious, dipped a hand into the case and drew out the Wand.
‘Um,’ I said, mobilising myself. ‘Excuse me?’
She didn’t look up.
‘Excuse me,’ I said again, walking over. I caught Rob’s eyes and attempted a frantic get-over-here signal with my own. ‘Please don’t touch the Wand,’ I said, stupidly, for here was our thief; she already had her mitts all over our contraband; and all I could think of to say was please don’t touch?
Please don’t somehow circumvent the best magickal security known to man or beast and vanish without trace?
Please don’t shame the entire Society and all my friends with a flick of your impossibly powerful fingers, tearing our brilliant plan into tatters in the process?
Please get the hell out of my exhibition hall — but slowly, leaving Rob and team plenty of time to pursue?
Finally, she looked up, and stared directly at me. She wasn’t much to look at, truth be told, by which I mean that there was nothing about her to suggest that she might be the most powerful magician in the known world. She looked a ways younger than my not-at-all-doddery spriggan persona, though by no means young. She had rather swarthy skin, white hair, and keen, amber-hazel eyes, with the kind of proud, straight-backed posture most of us lose by the age of thirty. She wore a simple black coat with a dark blue dress underneath, and shabby, well-loved black boots. She could have been anyone at all, in short — except for one thing.
When I got closer to her, I felt something unusual about her. A restless, roiling aura of pure magick, I realised with a shock — just the kind of thing you feel if you’re crazy or stupid enough to get close to a griffin. Or a unicorn. It wasn’t in-your-face obvious; quite subtle, really. But I’m used to Addie by now; I have been stupid enough to hobnob with a bunch of griffins; and since our trip to Vale, I’ve developed a little bit of the same thing myself.
In my case, it’s kind of stuck on, like wrapping paper, which is why I periodically have to go take a horn holiday. And why I sometimes magick-zap things that I touch, if I get excited about something.
In this woman’s case, it felt… normal. Like having brown hair, or green eyes; nothing anyone would think remarkable.
So this wonder of nature and magick looked right at me, and said: ‘This is pretty work.’
Rob had reached us by this time, and stood looming at the woman’s elbow. Most of his team were coming towards us, forming a ring around the case and the woman holding the Wand, ready to cut off her escape. ‘Put the Wand down, ma’am,’ he said firmly.
‘But,’ she said, ignoring him, ‘it isn’t mine.’
And she put it back, quietly closed the case, and turned away.
Jay’s eyebrows shot up, and I realised it wasn’t because of what the woman had said. It was because the charms on the case were back, as strong as ever, like they’d never disappeared. He tried the lid; it was locked again, too.
Somehow, in that moment, I lost track of the woman.
So did Rob. ‘Where is she?’ he barked, looking wildly around. He issued a few orders, and his subordinates — John, Dylan, and Rebecca, some of them; I didn’t know everybody’s names — fanned out across the hall, Wands raised.
They didn’t find her.
I did.
‘There,’ I gasped, spotting her quite on the other side of the hall. Three steps would carry her out of the doors, at which point she would no doubt vanish forever.
‘Wait!’ I shouted, and took off at a dead run, heedlessly shoving people out of my way as I went. ‘I need to talk to you!’
She kept walking. In no hurry at all, mind; measured steps, like she had nothing to worry about from us. Which, clearly, she didn’t.
‘I just want to talk!’ I yelled, mustering a final burst of speed.
Somehow, I never reached her. I should have. I was really moving, short legs notwithstanding, and she was strolling along like she had all the time in the world.
But my last few strides got me nowhere. I remained two or three steps away, unable to close the distance between us.
She did pause, though, and gave me another of those hard stares. What she was seeing in me, I could have no idea; she hadn’t looked at anybody else quite like that.
In fact, come to think of it, she hadn’t looked at anybody else at all.
‘Please,’ I panted. ‘Nobody wants to harm you. But I desperately need to ask you a question.’
Make that about fifty questions, starting with “did you pinch Merlin’s grimoire”, going on to “what did you mean, that Wand isn’t yours?” and ending with “who in the ever-living hell are you anyway?”.
She released me from her scrutiny, and turned away.
Then she was gone. I glimpsed, or I thought I glimpsed, a section of the doors dissolving into nothing for a split second — sort of like that trick Jay did that one time, when he opened what he called a “void” through a certain impassable object — but the impression was so fleeting, I couldn’t be sure.
Either way, she was gone.
I stopped trying to run, and stood, panting for breath and grappling with my dismay.
We’d lost her.
Jay came up, and stood in silence for a while, staring at the firmly closed doors as helplessly as I was. Rob’s team went past us at a run and poured out of the doors in pursuit, but somehow I knew it was hopeless. She wasn’t there to find.
Finally Jay said, ‘I guess we found our purloiner of grimoires.’
I nodded. There could be no doubt. All the vaunted security at the Elvyng manor would be as nothing to someone with skills like that. We no longer needed to waste our time working out how someone had managed to pass through it.
There had been something about this woman, too, that suggested she was… above such mundane considerations as locked doors, security charms (and alarms), and indeed the law. Like she existed outside all of that, on some other plane of reality altogether. She wouldn’t hesitate to stroll into William Elvyng’s house and wander out with Merlin’s Grimoire tucked under her arm.
‘Question though,’ I said. ‘She declined the Wand because it’s not hers.’
‘Right.’
‘But if we’re right, and she’s our thief… she took the grimoire.’
‘Which wasn’t hers either. So why was that different?’
I swallowed. ‘Jay. This is going to sound crazy—’
‘What else is new?’
Hah. ‘What if she took the grimoire because it was hers?’
And there was that are-you-freaking-crazy stare again. ‘Hers? Surely you aren’t saying…’
‘I think,’ I said slowly, appalled by the enormity of what I was about to say. ‘I think we just met Merlin.’
