Page 25

The new guests left the following morning, full of honeyed waffles and bacon just the right side of crispy.

They’d arrived exhausted and dejected, having only just been evicted from their home and struggling with making the long drive from Cornwall to Aberdeen to stay with family, but a full night’s sleep had done them a world of good and they’d left in better spirits.

As Sera stripped the double bed in the room the family had spent the night in, and wrestled the new fitted sheet over the mattress, she became aware of Posy chattering indistinctly to herself in the next room.

Luke was probably with her, then, and Sera had been meaning to ask him about his living arrangements.

She poked her head around the open door. Posy was sprawled on the rug, armed with crayons and a piece of paper, a partly built castle of wooden blocks beside her. Across the room, Luke was at the desk, working, with three big books lying open in front of him and a stack of several more beside them.

“So what is the new project Professor Walter’s got you working on?” Sera asked curiously.

“Right now, stealing magic.” Luke propped his forearms on the desk and looked at her over the stack of books. “As in, she wants me to find out if it’s possible.”

“Dare I ask why she wants to know that?”

“She says it’s because all knowledge is worth having and no magical scholar worth their salt would leave any path unexplored,” Luke said drolly.

“What she means is she thinks it’s only a matter of time before someone like Albert Grey decides the already incredible amount of magic he has isn’t enough for him, and she wants to get ahead of it. ”

“Is it possible to steal magic?” Sera asked, more than a little unnerved at the thought of Albert with even more power.

“Steal it? No. I haven’t yet been able to find a way.” Luke tapped the page of the book in front of him. “Come look.”

Sera crossed the room to look over his shoulder.

The book was very, very old, with fragile parchment and beautiful illustrations and handwritten text in deep, burnished gold ink.

Sera would happily read a good book on the screen of her phone if that was all she had to hand, but there was something about the ink, paper, and dust of an old book that simply couldn’t be beaten.

The words on the page were written in the most common of magical dialects, one she could read, so it took her only a glance to understand what she was looking at.

“This says you can take another witch’s magic,” she said, appalled.

Luke tapped the page again. “Keep reading.”

She did. “Oooooh.” Like the resurrection spell, this particular spell was so fraught with peril that it needed an incantation to keep it in shape, but that wasn’t the part that had caught her attention. It was the word of caution tacked on.

Take what isn’t yours and you shall pay with what is.

“Take another witch’s magic and you’ll lose yours too.” Sera had spent enough time with magical books and their ridiculous, unnecessarily wordy riddles to translate this easily. “I literally cannot think of a single spell Albert is less likely to cast.”

“Neither can I.”

Considering the books on the table, Sera mused, “Don’t you think the timing’s a little too convenient?

Professor Walter catches Theo and Clemmie trying to steal The Ninth Compendium , realises I’m looking for the restoration spell, helps them, sends you here, finds out you’ve translated the spell for me, and then decides straightaway that this is the project she simply must have you working on? ”

“Oh, it’s absolutely too convenient,” Luke agreed. “She won’t admit to it, but I suspect she’s battening down the hatches.”

“You think she’s worried about what Albert might resort to if I get my magic back?”

“I think Albert Grey is the sort of man who feels threatened by anyone whose power comes close to matching his,” said Luke. “And I think Verity likes to be prepared. Happily, I’ve yet to discover any way for him to acquire more magic.”

Sera bit her thumbnail, trying to put a finger on why there was a pit in her stomach.

After the years she’d spent as his apprentice, trusting him to do what was best for her, longing for his approval and never getting it, putting herself through the humiliating duels, all of it, it shouldn’t bother her that Luke and Professor Walter and who knew how many other people at the Guild detested him. She detested him. So why…?

You know why, she thought. You just don’t want to think about it.

The words came out before she could stop herself. “Can I ask you a question?”

Luke looked up, the tiniest furrow between his brows. Sera leaned against the desk, fingers gripping the smooth, worn wood on either side of her. His eyes dropped to her fingers, to the white of her knuckles. “What’s the question?”

“I…” Her face grew hot. “The moment I arrived at the Guild, there were all these people telling me how special and extraordinary I was. The same sort of people who tell Albert the same thing. And I…I mean, considering what you said the day you came here…”

No. She couldn’t do it. She couldn’t bring herself to ask the question.

Carefully, Luke broke the death grip her fingers had on the edge of the desk.

Heat blazed through her skin at every single place his hands touched hers, and, startled, she yanked her hands back to her chest. Dropping his own arms back to the desk, fingers flexing, Luke said, “You want to know what the rest of us really thought of you.”

“No, not exactly,” said Sera. “I’ve already gathered from the things you said that you didn’t think much of me.

” That he’d thought so little of her bothered her more than it ought to, but that was something to put aside for later.

“It’s more that I want to know if everybody thought I was the same as him. ”

Because that would be unbearable. After all these years, it shouldn’t matter to her, it really shouldn’t, but it did. The thought that all those people, people like Luke and Professor Walter, people she’d liked and respected, might have thought she was like Albert …

“You know what?” Sera said quickly, chickening out. “Don’t answer that. I don’t think I want to know. Really.”

“I was—”

“Really,” she said again. “Let’s just not. Actually, I came in here to ask if you wanted the other room. It seems a bit silly for you and Posy to not have your own space when there’s an empty room right next door.”

He looked at her for a long moment before going along with her change of subject. “Is there any point? We’re not staying long.”

“So?”

“What if someone else needs a room?”

“I’ll clear out the box room.”

He considered it. “How much would a second room cost me?”

“Er, I reckon you could have both rooms for a hundred quid a week.”

“That would be daylight robbery.”

“I would never,” Sera said indignantly.

“ I’d be robbing you ,” Luke said dryly.

“Oh.”

“You should double it and ask me to make one breakfast a week, cook one dinner a week, and fix the leaky roof.”

Sera was riveted. “Would you muck out the chicken coop too?”

“I draw the line at anything involving the chicken coop,” said Luke.

“I did too, once upon a time,” Sera said nostalgically. “They were happy days.”

Good. They’d got back on normal footing.

(Naturally, she steadfastly ignored the fact that she would undoubtedly spend the rest of her day on reassuringly mundane domestic tasks accompanied by frustrated cogitations about glass teapots, impossible spells, and the significantly increased attractiveness of men who fixed leaky roofs.)

Then, because normal was not a thing that ever lasted long in Batty Hole, apple blossom tea began to rain down on them.

“I thought this only happened on Sundays,” Luke said in a slightly accusing tone of voice.

“It would seem the magic’s evolved,” said Sera grumpily. “It does that.”

Tea dripped down her nose and had already drenched his hair, but around them, the rain vanished before it touched any of the books or bedding or surfaces, leaving everything else untouched.

Luke stuck his tongue out. “Tastes nice.”

It was such an unexpectedly silly, endearing thing for him to do that her annoyance evaporated. “On the bright side, we’ll dry off the moment we leave the room.”

He stood suddenly, looking around. “Er, where’s Posy?”

And then, from somewhere downstairs, there was an earsplitting scream.