“I’m not Amish.”
“You’re all horse and no buggy,” Iris said.
She’d said it softly, like she wasn’t sure anyone but Keith would want to hear it or would ever think it was funny, but everybody smiled, and Simon gave her a fist-bump.
“Anyway,” she added, “between us and Seraphina and Blake, we can give you a good idea of who Lady Marianne might have agreed to see that late.”
“And who has a key to the Council House,” Cooper said.
“That too.”
Evie stretched, and even though she cupped a hand over her mouth, Keith could hear her yawn.
“Sorry,” she said sheepishly. “Just tired.”
“It’s been that kind of day,” Keith said. “Is Lord Sinclair putting you guys up at the Council House?”
“He offered, but—no offense—that place gives me the creeps. Not even because of the murder. It’s just so squeaky-clean that I feel like the floor’s going to yell at me if I track mud on it.”
“I know what you mean,” Iris said. “I do some administrative work in the office wing, and even when you’re in there every day, it can be intimidating.”
“There’s a Holiday Inn in Polis,” Cooper said. “I booked us a couple of rooms there. And I’d like to bring Vin in tomorrow, if that’s okay. We’re dealing with the murder of a major civic figure, after all. In a unicorn context, at least, this is major national news, so I’d like as many hands on deck as possible.”
Sure, that made sense. They usually did their best not to leave the office completely unattended for days at a time—that kind of precaution only fell by the wayside if someone was really in trouble. But even with Keith stuck on the sidelines, Vin’s presence here would mean five Marshals working Marianne’s case, and he didn’t think the sticklers on the Silver Council would find that insufficient.
He was a little surprised at first that Cooper wasn’t calling in Logan, though, since Iz would certainly have welcomed her mate’s company. But then he realized that whoever they left behind would—at least temporarily—be the public face of the team. That wasn’t a role Vin would ever want or feel comfortable in.
“We’ll have to let you in every day, for however long this goes on,” Keith warned them. He had to say this for their sake, even if he hated bringing up such a bad memory for Iris. “Don’t ever try to drive through the barrier, even if you remember right where it is.”
He glanced sideways at her, trying to subtly check how she was taking this. She noticed his concern—of course she did—and gave his hand a brief squeeze.
“The barrier is dangerous,” she said, driving the point home. “We can’t open it up to strangers for more than a few minutes at a time.”
“Can Lord Sinclair?”
Iris shook her head. “He could ban someone, but he can’t give out an extended permit. Well, technically, he can’t do either of those things all by himself, but he has theauthorityto issue an extended ban.”
“I’ll never understand magic,” Cooper said.
“Neither will I,” Keith said, “and I can even do a tiny bit of it.”
“You can do a littlemagic?” Evie said. “How has this never come up? I’ve known for years, and you’ve never even pulled one single rabbit out of a hat for me!”
Keith laughed. “IwishI could pull a rabbit out of a hat. It’s more like ... if you had somebody who made a magical, rabbit-producing hat, I could maybe get the hat to give me a brown rabbit instead of a white one.”
“You lost me,” Simon said.
Iris tried explaining it:
“Let’s just say that there are three levels of magical power a unicorn can have. None, some, or a lot. Most people, like me, don’t have any, and maybe thirty percent of people are like Keith. Only abouthalf a percentof the population has more than that, and they’re the only ones who have enough power—and enough skill—to actuallycreatesomething like the barrier. This one has been standing for centuries.”
Cooper nodded.
“So it’s like you had a master craftsman build you a door with a really complicated lock, and the craftsman gave keys to everyone in town. I can’t understand how the lock works, but I can put my key in and turn it.”
“Yeah, I don’t know how my computer works, but I can turn it on,” Simon said.
“Exactly. We use things all the time without understanding all the details. So you have the very rare master craftsmen, who can actually make these things and understand them from the inside-out, and then, a tier down, you have people like Keith or my brother-in-law, who are sort of like—fixers.”
