Page 38

Luke’s friend Howard met them in the grand, lamplit driveway of the Bertram-Mogg house (or, as Sera would now forever think of it, the Bibbly-Bogg house), resplendent in a glittery cloak and deep blue tuxedo that strained over his belly.

His mask, which matched his cloak, was little more than a sliver of fabric over his eyes and did nothing to hide his identity.

Luke’s was bigger, in velvety black, with an embellishment on either end that distracted from his distinctive blond hair and looked a bit like horns.

Sera, who had put her own mask on before getting out of the car, was very glad hers covered her eyes, most of her nose, and both her cheekbones.

Yes, it was highly unlikely that anyone would recognise her as the skinny teenager with the permanent high ponytail that she’d been fifteen years before, but she wasn’t taking any chances.

“It is enchanting to meet you, my dear,” Howard said affably.

Sera’s old training kicked back in like a reflex. “And you, Minister Hawtrey.”

“Call me Howard, please. If you’re Luke’s date, I insist we become fast friends.

” Howard beamed at her with an open sincerity that made it rather difficult not to smile back.

She was beginning to see why Luke liked him.

He gave Luke a hearty wallop on the shoulder.

“Good to see you, old chap! And after all those times you insisted you’d never show your face at a Guild event! ”

“Still not showing my face,” Luke said dryly.

Howard roared with laughter. “I’ve missed you, Luke. Where have you been? How’s Posy? And who is this?”

“I,” said Matilda momentously, extending her hand like she’d read one too many historical romances, “am Fortuna.”

Incredibly, Howard took her hand and gallantly kissed it. “A name as beautiful as you are.”

Matilda giggled. “Oh, I like you. I shall be your date for the evening.”

Howard looked delighted. “Nothing would make me happier, but, er, who are you?”

“Why, I’m Luke’s beloved grandmother, of course,” Matilda said without missing a beat. “I know I’m not strictly on the guest list, per se, but you wouldn’t turn old Nana away, would you?”

“I wouldn’t dream of it,” said Howard, offering her his arm and sweeping her up the steps of the entryway.

“Oh, aye, makes total sense,” Luke said wryly, watching them go. “I’m so white I’m practically translucent, but sure, she’s my grandmother.”

Sera choked on a giggle. “ Fortuna. ”

“God help us.”

Howard and Matilda had paused at the top of the steps, waiting for them, but as the reality of the moment hit her again, Sera discovered she couldn’t move.

It had been nearly sixteen years since she had last been here, but it was like the Bertram-Mogg country house had been frozen in time.

The shining white steps, the velvet drapes in all the windows, the floating orbs of light, and the towering hedges were exactly as she remembered them.

Acres of immaculate grounds stretched out around them, soaked in the purples and blues of the night, landscaped and manicured to within an inch of their lives, and Sera was tempted to laugh slightly hysterically at the contrast between this pristine, opulent place and her wild, tumbledown inn.

Ahead of them, guests were entering the manor in twos and threes.

Most were unrecognisable behind their masks, but some were only too familiar, like that pair of Grey cousins over there or that Bennet boy in the lilac suit.

In the shimmering, hazy lights, she could almost see their younger selves, sneering at her, admiring her, envying her, feigning friendship just to get closer to her power.

Her heart raced, and she was drowning, and past and present were so tangled up in her mind that for a moment she was afraid she’d forget which was which.

Then Luke took her hand, and she held tight, and the jigsaw of their fingers fitting together felt like a lifeline pulling her out of the water.

“I’m okay,” she said, shaking away the cobwebs of the memories. Piercing, worried eyes searched hers from behind his mask. She didn’t look away. She wanted him to know she meant it. “It’s a lot, but I’m okay now. Really.”

He nodded. “Okay.”

“Come on, ducks,” Matilda called from the top of the steps.

Luke didn’t let go of Sera’s hand.

At the door, an honest-to-God footman stood waiting to take their coats and cloaks. Sera, still a little unsteady with nerves and not quite brave enough yet to show off her gown, pretended she was cold and kept her cloak on.

Inside the house, the vast lavish rooms heaved with glittering guests. They were dancing, playing cards, whispering to one another in the alcoves, even competing to see who could cast the most impressive spell. And drinking, of course. Lots of drinking.

“Remember,” Luke said to Matilda, when Howard was distracted talking to someone in a blackbird mask, “nothing gold, purple, or blue.”

“What about silver?” Matilda asked, eyeing a passing tray of flutes filled with sparkling silver liquid.

“Silver’s fine.”

Sera had been searching the crowd, every sense on high alert for a glimpse of Albert, but she whipped her head around at once and said, “Nooooo. No silver. Sorry,” she added to Luke, “I forgot about the silver. You’ve never been here before, so you couldn’t have known about it.

” As another tray passed by, wielded by an unobtrusive server, she pointed.

“ Pink is fine, though. That’s just strawberry and lemonade with optional vodka. ”

“Optional,” Matilda scoffed, plucking a pair of flutes off the tray and keeping both. “So what’s in the silver one?”

“Witch wine.”

Luke raised an eyebrow. “So that’s the fabled witch wine? Famously enchanted in a secret brewery at the foot of Ben Nevis and aged for exactly twenty-two years and twenty-one days? Renowned lowerer of inhibitions and provoker of orgies?”

“What?” Matilda demanded. “And I’m not allowed to have any? Rude!”

“The stories are greatly exaggerated,” Sera said in a pained voice, trying to rid herself of an unwelcome vision of Bradford Bertram-Mogg engaged in an orgy. “As for you, drinks with magic in them have unpredictable side effects on people who aren’t witches, so no, you can’t have any.”

“According to Verity, her sister turned green after a single sip,” Luke added. “And I don’t mean green like she looked a bit seasick. I mean Wicked Witch of the West green. It took a year to fade.”

“Pink it is, then,” said Matilda, round-eyed.

As soon as Howard had extracted himself from his friend in the blackbird mask, Matilda whisked him off to dance.

Sera and Luke lingered at the edge of the room, among a handful of card tables.

Sera glanced at the time on the antique clock on the wall.

Nine thirty-eight. If Clemmie stuck to the plan and wreaked havoc at ten like she was supposed to, they had about twenty minutes or so before they’d need to get to Bradford Bertram-Mogg’s large and impressive private library.

It was hot in the room, and Sera tugged at the ties of her cloak, regretting keeping it on. Maybe it was time to get rid of it.

Her eyes snagged on a table of youngish women playing enchanted pontoon.

Was that Francesca? No, not with that posture.

She relaxed a little. Francesca was the one other person who might recognise Sera.

Yes, she’d helped her after Theo and Clemmie had taken The Ninth Compendium of Uncommon Spells , but she was also Chancellor of the Guild, and she’d been pretty clear that Sera could not allow Albert to find out what she was up to, so there was no telling how she’d react if she found Sera here.

Where was Albert anyway? Sera knew he would be here, so as much as she dreaded seeing him, it was almost worse not knowing exactly where he was.

And then she felt it, a sudden sharp, painful prickling along every inch of her skin, like her magic, like the universe, like every ghost of every past Sera, was warning her.

A second later, there was a ripple across the room, as if other people had reacted to the thing Sera had already sensed, and Luke’s icy, narrowed eyes landed on something over the top of Sera’s head, somewhere behind her.

They were standing so close together that she felt the sudden tension in his body.

“He’s here, isn’t he?”

He nodded. “All the way across the room. He’s not looking this way.”

Slowly, carefully, Sera turned.

He was older, of course, with more lines around his eyes and his hair the steely colour of the lightning his magic manifested as, but she’d have known him anywhere.

The immaculately tailored clothes, the hawkish features that might have been handsome if he’d ever smiled with real warmth, the proud tilt of his head, and of course the power.

An invisible magical force you couldn’t ignore, crackling around him.

Sera, who had once had power like that, knew that it didn’t have to be so obvious.

It didn’t have to snarl at your side like a chained, muzzled beast. He chose to do that.

She had once been awed by his power, had admired it, but all these years later all she could see was how lazily he wore his magic, how little respect he gave it, and how easily and unapologetically he used it to make everybody around him submit.

He was holding court, surrounded by a handful of eager, fluttering guests.

Then Bradford Bertram-Mogg pushed his way to the front to fawn, and as Sera watched Albert nod at whatever he was saying, with an expression that perfectly combined indulgence and impatience, she remembered all the times he’d looked at her with that expression and remembered how it had made her feel like she was lucky to have his attention, and she ought to be grateful, and she certainly oughtn’t to waste his time.

Past and present collided again and Sera was ten, uncertain and eager to please and hoping she’d found a father figure at last; and she was thirteen, aware by then that she’d never please her unpleasable mentor and basking in the admiration of everybody else instead; and she was fifteen, realising at last that this man she’d admired and trusted had been trying to make her small the whole time she’d known him.

“All hail the Great and Powerful Wizard of Oz,” Luke said quietly in her ear, and Sera laughed, and the past fell away.

She looked up at him. “Thank you for this. For everything.”

“You don’t have to thank me. What you and the inn have done for Posy, for me, it’s…” He shook his head. “I could do a lot more and we’d never be even.”

“Is that why you’re here?”

He laughed. It sounded like sandpaper. “You know that’s not why I’m here.”

She opened her mouth (to say what, she didn’t know), but then the musicians stuttered to a stop and the dancers stumbled and the room went suddenly, terribly quiet.

Albert was in the middle of the room with another, younger man, in an empty space a dozen dancers had scuttled out of. Now that the music and conversation had stopped, every word out of Albert’s mouth rang clear and cold as a bell.

“It does seem a bit rude, Martin,” Albert was saying, examining his fingernails idly, but Sera knew that quiet, coaxing voice too well, and every muscle in her body went rigid with dread. “I was here for ten minutes and you still hadn’t bothered to come up to say hello.”

“I didn’t—I hadn’t seen you—” Martin faltered. “I was—I was dancing—I just thought—another dance—”

Albert nodded understandingly. “You were dancing. Of course . Well, by all means, Martin, dance.”

And Martin’s feet began to move. Sera watched him look down at them in horror, because he certainly wasn’t making them move, and then the musicians began to play again, their eyes wide, their limbs stiff and stilted, as if they weren’t making them move either.

It was horrible. Martin was literally dancing at the end of Albert’s strings.

“Albert—” Martin gasped, as his feet flailed faster and faster and faster, “Albert, please—”

Beside her, Sera could feel Luke’s fury, burning as fiercely as hers, but they couldn’t move, either of them, because they couldn’t draw attention to themselves, and even if they did, what could they do? What could she do? She wasn’t the girl she’d been fifteen years ago. She was all but powerless.

“Albert,” Sera heard Howard say, laughing nervously, and she knew he meant well but she wanted to yell at him to shut up, shut up , because he was standing right next to Matilda, and Matilda wouldn’t stand a chance if Albert’s ire got anywhere near her.

“Albert, old chap, don’t you think that’s enough now? ”

Albert ignored him. Poor Martin was almost in tears.

Then, just like that, Albert snapped his fingers and it stopped. Martin dropped, a puppet whose strings had been cut.

Albert patted him on the shoulder. “Not to worry. I forgive you.”

He strolled back to his gaggle of courtiers without a backward glance. Martin dashed out of the room. Slowly, uneasily, awkwardly, the music and the dancers and the card games started up again.

Under his breath, Luke murmured, “Every action has an equal and opposite reaction.”

Sera looked at him, confused.

“Verity said it. It’s why she helped Theo and Clemmie take the spellbook. Without an equal to keep him in check, Albert Grey isn’t just a smug bastard lording it over everybody else.”

“No,” Sera agreed. “He’s more than that. He’s a monster.”

On the wall, the clock struck ten.