“Wellbelove?” Fiona sneers. “AndBunce? Why on earth or below would they vouch for me?”
“They’re vouching forme.I promised that you wouldn’t do a runner.”
She huffs. “That was foolish of you.”
“Fiona. Can wepleasego?”
She sighs and takes her time standing up, then kicks over the chair. “Fine.”
Fiona’s wand and car were impounded. I had to sign for those, too. If she fucks up before her trial, they’ll put me in a tower with her. I hold out her wand and keys.
“Back seat,” she says, taking them.
“I’m not sitting in the back seat.”
She opens her door. “I think you are. Because the front seat is for people who haven’t been kidnapped by—”
“Ha ha,” I say.
“Ha ha,” she says, tossing her handbag onto the passenger seat.
I climb into the practically nonexistent back seat of her MG (1967, Grampian Grey—classic), which Fiona treats as carelessly as everything else in her life. (You should see our flat; there are mice living in the sofa, it’sshambolic.) I have to sit sideways to fit. I wrench my knees past the seat in front of me. “Are you going to tell me what you were doing at Watford?”
Fiona starts the car. “I needed to pick something up.”
“In Headmistress Bunce’s rooms?”
She glares at me in the rearview mirror. “Those are your mother’s rooms, Basil.”
“No. Not anymore.”
“Always.”
“Fiona.The Mage is dead. The war is over.”
“That’s what they’d have you think.”
“That’s what Idothink.”
“The war isn’t over until we get back what’s ours!”
“What’sours, Fiona?”
“Our power, Baz! Watford! The Coven!”
“The Coven has already rolled back most of the Mage’s reforms. What more do you want?”
“They were never reforms!” She points at me in the mirror. “They were a campaign against the Old Families!”
“Well, they’re mostly gone now, is my point.”
“It’s too little, too late.”
“Fine then,” I say, “maybe you should run for the Coven and change things.” (This is a terrible idea, I’d never vote for Fiona. And Icanvote now—the injunction against my family was dropped. All the Mage’s laws targeting specific families were overturned. We’ve got Bunce’s mother to thank for that.)
“In the old days,” Fiona pouts, “Pitches didn’thaveto run. We were guaranteed three spots on the Coven.”
How am I supposed to reply to that? The woman is ridiculous. I roll my eyes and try to change the subject. “What were you trying to find at Watford?” I ask again, more gently this time.
