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“It’s not a great choice,” I grumbled. “I either go with crazy bigots or with the long, slow decline of a girl who grew up being mentally abused by an incubus.”

“Yes,” Messenger said dryly. “Our duty seldom allows us to choose between chocolate and more chocolate.”

I blinked. I blinked again. Messenger, the boy in black, the boy who pronounced terrible doom on evildoers, the servant of Isthil, my master, had just made a joke.

Not a great joke, but . . .

Of course he did not smile, that would have been too much to hope for.

“I want to see what they pay her,” I said. “May I . . . Can I . . .” I wanted to ask whether I had the power on my own initiative to play with time as Messenger did.

No answer, which I suppose was the answer.

Could I? Well, that was up to me, wasn’t it?

I didn’t know how to begin. There is no magic wand in our world. No Latinate Harry Potter spells to cast. There is only will and, I suppose, imagination.

It dawned on me then, that imagination was vital to a messenger. Imagination is a tool of adaptation, a tool that allows a person to accept as real what seems impossible—what is impossible in the usual world.

I wanted to be a writer. It was that desire that had led me to the sin I was still paying for with this terrible duty. I had a good imagination, that much at least, if few other talents.

“Fast-forward,” I said with far, far more confidence than I actually felt. And to my utter amazement, it worked. In time I would get past being surprised, but I was not there yet.

The world of the little rural coffee shop sped up to three or four times normal speed. The three of them, Graciella, Nicolet, and the manager, all began to move swiftly, hands and feet jerking, heads shifting as rapidly as a nervous bird. The guitar was lifted and set down, lifted and set down, and we heard helium chipmunk versions of songs sung at hyperspeed.

“Stop,” I said.

Graciella was initialing six sheets of paper, and signing the final sheet.

I stood over her shoulder to see, but having power over time and space does not make me capable of understanding a contract.

“We need a lawyer,” I said to Messenger.

“Yes.” He left it like that. Just a yes.

But it was not a fatalistic, dead-end yes. It was a yes followed by an unspoken but implied, “So . . .”

I frowned, very unsure whether what I was thinking would work. If it didn’t, I’d have made a fool of myself. Maybe humiliation was part of my duty.

“I want a lawyer,” I said, trying not to grin at the way I was mimicking every police show I’d ever seen.

“Is the coffee here any good?”

This came from a woman who was standing beside me. Just standing there as if she’d been there all along. She was tall, middle-aged, attractive in a middle-aged sort of way, with large, liquid eyes, dark skin, hair up in dreads, and wearing a beige designer suit.

“I don’t know,” I said, staring.

“I suppose I can’t drink it anyway,” she said. There was a distinct islands lilt in her English. “It’s a drag being disembodied.”

“It’s good to see you again, Ms. Johnson,” Messenger said formally.

Ms. Johnson did not answer him except with a disapproving look. She took in the room and said, “I see we are in freeze frame. And who are you?”

“Me? I’m Mara. I’m . . . um . . . the apprentice.”

“Really? Messenger must be nearing the end of his sentence. So, why am I summoned?”

I didn’t want to answer that question at that particular moment because I wanted to ask her just who she was, what she was, how she had come here, and from where. But she did not strike me as chatty. “We have a contract we need interpreted.”