That I am wanted for questioning.
He protects Meredith.
Something in me clicks shut.
An anti-magic cuff snaps onto my wrist, cold and heavy. Someone confiscates the wand—never truly mine. Snack Thief brought it, so Lander gave it to me. I do not want to see it again.
They may keep it.
A spell softens the papier-mâché. It sloughs away, and one by one the encased coven members stumble free—pale, shaking—into the care of waiting healers.
“Is she all right?” a familiar female voice asks, stepping closer.
“She’s fine, Jennifer,” Lander replies, dismissively.
“May I check your vitals?” she persists. When I do not respond, she does so anyway, efficient hands at my wrist, my neck. “She’s exhausted. Magically drained.”
Lander tilts his head, studying me. I know he is wondering why I am depleted; no doubt he has already deduced it was the paperweights. I would not be surprised if he slips a few into my pockets later, just to see what happens.
I ignore him. I cannot look at him.
“She has sustained fire damage to her upper right arm.” Jennifer gently prods the wound, cuts away the torn fabric, and heals my arm. Cool magic knits fleshwith a soft pull I feel all the way down to my bones. “All fixed.”
“Thank you,” I mumble.
“Thanks, Jennifer,” Lander adds, as if I were a child he is speaking for.
“You’re welcome,” she says, then her gaze sharpens at him. “She doesn’t need any more stress, Lander.”
She hurries off to help a witch—only just freed from her papier-mâché shell—who looks as though she is about to be sick.
It takes a while to clear the graveyard. Voices fade. The healers move on. Cars depart. Eventually, it is only Lander and me standing in the quiet, surrounded by stones and trampled grass and the lingering stink of scorched earth.
I expect him to shove me into his car and haul me off to the Ministry’s grim black-stone building for interrogation. Instead, he removes the anti-magic cuff, slips it into his pocket, and guides me to the chapel doors.
“Let me through the ward,” he says.
I hesitate, then grant him temporary access. His hand stays on my wrist—as though I might bolt—while he opens the door and guides me to the living room sofa. Of course he knows the layout; he has viewed it through Snack Thief’s eyes countless times.
A moment later, a blanket settles over my shoulders. I am trembling with fatigue, the aftermath shuddering through me now that the threat is gone. I have not slept, and I am running on willpower alone.
He returns with a cup of tea. I cradle it in both hands, staring into its dark depths as though the answers might rise with the steam.
I have no idea what is happening—no idea why we are still here.
Should he not be marching me to the Ministry for interrogation, handing me over to Meredith?
He sinks into the chair opposite and leans forward.
“Are you going to start from the beginning?”
The beginning.
No. I am not starting from the beginning.
“What?” I ask, deliberately obtuse. “From this morning?”
He gives me a look that says,Do you think I was born yesterday?
