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‘Thankfully the animals have left me alone… so far. But everything else is driving me crazy. And to be honest, it’s pissing me off.’

‘Do you want me to ask or should I leave that alone?’

‘It’s not like I don’t know what I lost. What it stole from me,’ he complained bitterly. ‘I’d wanted to tell her, but every time I tried, the magic blocked me. You know how it works.’

‘I do now.’

‘Maybe if I had been able to tell her – to warn her – maybe she wouldn’t hate me now.’

‘You know Ophelia would probably tell you to trust in the magic, or something like that?’

‘Why do you think we’re nowhere near Glimmers?’ Jamie snapped, then immediately felt guilty for it. ‘Sorry, Mimi. I’m not mad at you. I’m mad at it. I don’t know why the pixies helped nudge us together if this was always going to be the result. It’s so unfair, and I miss her so bloody much!’

Mia leaned against his shoulder. There wasn’t anything she could really say to make things better, and they both knew it.

* * *

Amrita trudged up the stairs to her flat, glad to be home. She couldn’t wait to kick off her shoes and veg out in front of the TV. It had been a long day, and she’d spent far too much of it arguing with the local council about funding for a patient to get the right support he needed to stay at home, and she was so tired her head was starting to ache.

‘Hello.’

Amrita yelped and took three steps back, hand already scrabbling for her keys before she realised it was Rayenne who had spoken. The woman was leaning calmly against the window that Amrita had just walked past – in her supposedly secure building. How had she missed her? Lunar sat quietly on her shoulder.

‘How… how did you get in here?’ A horrible thought occurred to her. ‘Can you teleport?’

‘Why bother when I can talk to people?’ Rayenne laughed. ‘A very nice gentleman called Claude opened the door for me.’

‘Some caretaker he is.’ Amrita grumbled.

‘If you want someone to be annoyed with, it should probably be me. I can be very persuasive.’ Something in the woman’s eerie silvery eyes made Amrita believe her. ‘And if I need to apologise for encroaching on your space, then I will. But I do think you really need to talk to someone, otherwise any decision you make won’t be truly informed. May we come in?’

‘You’re not…’ Amrita took a deep breath. ‘You’re not going to magic me, are you?’

‘Not without your permission. Not unless it was urgently needful.’

I promise to be good too, Lunar cawed.

‘Was it the last time?’

‘Yes.’ The grey eyes were utterly calm. Enticing. Sympathetic. ‘And I’m truly sorry that it hurt you. But there wasn’t another choice that would have protected you from worse.’

‘Worse?’ But even as she asked the question, Amrita already knew the answer. She’d felt the girl’s injuries as if they were her own – as if it had been her body slammed into the floor and dragged. She didn’t need Rayenne’s answer, and the other woman knew that.

‘If it helps, I have been scrying on your gift, and I think I understand enough to answer your questions.’

‘Scrying?’

‘A form of divination to discern answers to questions not found in other places. Although’ – she smiled, suddenly looking much less mysterious – ‘there was some book research too.’

‘There’s books on me?’

‘There are books written on all kinds of magic. If you know where to look. Did you want to talk about it further? Maybe over tea?’

Amrita hesitated, jingling her keys in her hand. Before Hudsbury – before Jamie – her life had been simple. Often filled with annoyances and frustrations – but simple. She had thought she could go back to that, to living in a world where magic didn’t exist outside of fiction and she didn’t still wake up with the feeling of hollow loss pressing into her chest. If Rayenne could help with that, then maybe it was worth the risk…

‘And you promise you’re not going to magic me?’ She had to check.

We already said we would not.