Restoration

by Angela Slatter

Genres: Paranormal; Urban Fantasy

Synopsis

Walking between the worlds has always been dangerous - but this time V's facing the loss of all she holds dear. Verity Fassbinder thought no boss could be worse than her perfectionist ex-boyfriend - until she grudgingly agreed to work for a psychotic fallen angel. And dealing with a career change not entirely of her own choosing is doing nothing to improve V's already fractious temper. The angel is a jealous - and violent - employer, so she's quit working for the Weyrd Council and sent her family away, for their own safety. Instead of indulging in domestic bliss, she's got to play BFFs with the angel's little spy, Joyce the kitsune assassin . . . and Joyce comes with her own murderous problems. The angel has tasked V with finding two lost treasures, which would be hard enough even without a vengeful Dusana Nadasy on her heels. And Inspector McIntyre won't stop calling: the bodies of Normal women who disappeared decades before are turning up, apparently subjected to Weyrd magics. Angelic demands or not, this isn't something she can walk away from. And the angel is getting impatient for results . . . 'Slatter [has] gone from strength to strength, armed with first-class imagination and first-class storytelling skills' Jeff Vandermeer, bestselling author of the Southern Reach trilogy

Release date: August 9, 2018

Publisher: Jo Fletcher Books

Print pages: 400

Sample

In the beginning . . .

. . . God created the heavens and the earth, thought the archangel, and had to stop itself from giggling. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.

Although not today, it wasn’t. Today it was firmly seated on a mountain top, watching the world go by, big bare feet planted in the snow of Musala Peak in the Rila Mountains, rough sack robe thin against the cold − not that the freezing temperatures would have any effect on either angel or The Deity.

A deity.

If the angel had learned anything at all in its very long life, it was that there was more than one god on this planet, this plane, this place, and their powers and influence waxed and waned according to the belief of the mortals worshipping or ignoring them − and the angelic choir’s own strength, much to its chagrin, also depended on this ratio.

Ramiel the Archangel, the Thunder of God, felt the tremors each time a heresy, be it Albigensian, Nestorian, something new from the Fraticelli or whatever, arose amongst the Faithful. Questioning brought doubt, a weakening of the creed and a concomitant dwindling of its own puissance. One of the high and holy, one of The Deity’s chosen, its purview was to watch over those who rose from the dead. It had been made a lord of resurrection in its own right by the hand of the one who sat before him. Ramiel knew what it − he − had to do to rescue them all, be they heretic, mortal, angel. He must marshal what was being allowed to stagnate: take it by whatever means and become something new himself, rise higher to ensure that the faith, the belief, the credence did not fade or fail.

He had been loyal for such an age! He had believed so utterly: been resolute and steadfast for aeons. He had stood by The Deity even as the Shining One made his own play for power. This was not a treason he’d come to lightly.

It had taken the archangel a long time to find what he needed. The thing had had many lives and passed through many hands. It had been found and lost and found, over and again. It had borne myriad names, but two had stuck: the Dagger of Wilusa, for the Bronze Age settlement sometimes mistaken for Troy, although it was far older than that. Some said it had been wielded by Zeus to kill Kronos; with it, Abraham had intended to sacrifice his son; Incan priests had used it to cut hearts from chests. It belonged to the Amazon queens of old, passed from mother to daughter. Latterly, it been in the possession of the Brotherhood of Boatmen.

Its true history was of no concern to the archangel, and in any case, Ramiel preferred the other name, although he certainly did not whisper it as he strode the vaults of Heaven or the planes of the Earth. He’d kept its possession secret, avoiding the temptation to boast of its finding to his brothers – he had never even mentioned his search for the thing, fearing that no one else would understand his duty, his obligation, his need to set matters right.

The archangel pulled the God-Slayer from its sheath; the metal whispered the merest song, but Ramiel felt the weapon heating up. He watched the cold sunlight glint on the sharp edge, almost distracted by the watery sheen before remembering his purpose.

The All-Seeing, All-Knowing didn’t even turn around: too trusting, too weary, too long past its time – nothing like it was meant to be.

Ramiel raised the dagger and plunged it into the surprisingly slender back.

Jagged shards of fire poured forth, silver and savage, from the rent in Godly flesh. If The Deity made any sound, Ramiel couldn’t hear it over his own screaming, for the light was burning him as surely as molten mercury. It seared and scorched, an inferno of strange heat and eldritch flame that appeared to fracture The Deity, although that might have been Ramiel’s fevered mind playing tricks on him in those few seconds that lasted an eternity. At last, though, it felt like his agony had ended. He broke away from the conflagration of God and archangel, of melting mountaintop that would be recorded as an unexpected volcanic eruption in the histories of the monks who lived in the Rila Monastery not so far away. The intensity of the pain was such that he ceased to feel it; he could no longer see the splitting of the Godhead – indeed, he ceased to have much grip at all on his sanity (although, if asked, his brethren would have ventured that to attempt what he had, his reason had clearly already departed).

Ramiel turned and spun as if released from an oppressive grip.

Then he fell.

And continued to fall.

Chapter One

I woke on the couch, stiff and sore and shivering and roundly cursing the bastard beeping a car horn outside my house. Alas, that person’s identity was no mystery to me. She could just have phoned, but apparently she was hardwired for shitty behaviour. I was already regretting – well, everything, frankly. I fired off a fairly curt text, which might have contained a threat, and the honk-honk-honking ceased. So far, this day was sucking harder than any Monday had a right to.

If I could get warm, I could squeeze another five or maybe even ten minutes before the summons started again. I closed my eyes, curled into a ball and reached down to find the doona that had deserted me in the night, but my fingers came up empty. I grudgingly re-opened an eye and peered blearily around until I spied the thing just beyond my grasp. Damn. I’d had nightmares again last night, although I couldn’t recall the specifics, but clearly they were enough to have had me tossing and turning and shot-putting my blanky across the room.

No real surprise there.

It was, after all, my first night without the comfort and joy of David and our daughter Maisie in the house; the first night without my mother Olivia making herself useful and indulging in all the domestic tasks she’d avoided for almost three decades. Not that I was complaining, since it meant I didn’t have to do them. She might have been a new presence in our lives, but we’d very quickly got used to her.

And it was the last night I’d been officially employed by the Weyrd Council and answered to Zvezdomir ‘Bela’ Tepes, and the last night that Ziggi Hassman, newly revealed as my uncle, had chauffeured me around the city of Brisbane and joined me for our final work-related cake’n’beverages at Little Venice. That had been right after I’d confronted Sandor Verhoeven, head of the Council of Five, to give him one last opportunity to yell at me and tell me what I was doing was a very terrible idea – and not just a terrible idea but, in the whole history of terrible ideas, easily the most terrible . . .

And today was the first day of my new job.

Said job, I noted, didn’t come with a key to any executive washroom, nor was there a plush corner office and there was definitely no employer-paid superannuation, holiday pay or sick leave, but I did get a replacement assistant-cum-driver – which would have been fine, had Ziggi’s replacement not wanted to kill me. Oh, and did I mention? My new boss was a psychotic, broken-arsed archangel who insisted he was the Guardian of the Southern Gate of the Underworld.

So why would I take such a job when my previous position had sweet benefits like Ziggi as my back-up, reporting to my ex (in as much as I ever reported to anyone) and the chance to get punctured in increasingly creative fashions?

Well, mostly because that was the price of the lives of those I loved: the price of rescuing my mother from the dreadful bargain she’d made many years ago with the aforementioned broken-arsed archangel, and the price of some breathing space while I figured out how the Hell I was going to get myself out of the equally dreadful bargain I’d made myself about a month ago with that self-same heavenly representative.

Unsurprisingly, last night I’d had myself quite the little pity party. I’d obviously fallen asleep on the couch unintentionally, and the presence of the doona certainly didn’t suggest any premeditation . . . but I really didn’t want to sleep in a bed that smelled of David, not when I didn’t know when he’d be back in it. And while it hurt to think of David, that pain was almost bearable. Turned out, the lack of our daughter was not. As her nursery had been surrendered to Olivia, Maisie had been sharing our bedroom pretty much since her birth and the space was now redolent of talcum powder and lavender creams for soft baby skin. Maybe it was harder to let go of your own flesh? In any event, I couldn’t endure the haunting sweet scent of my baby girl or the sight of the empty cradle.

I wouldn’t be spending any great length of time in our bedroom until I’d restored my life to what passed for normalcy in Verityworld.

Maybe I’d move some clothes into Olivia’s room . . . surely that wouldn’t be quite so bad? I missed her too, but my feelings about my mother were complex, with a lot of ambivalence and resentment in the mix. She wasn’t really a standard kind of mum – well, maybe that wasn’t quite fair: her cooking skills were great, exceeded only by her assassination skills, which was kind of cool − and even though she was in large part the reason I was in my current predicament, the shape of her absence hurt. As a child, I’d been too young to really remember her, or feel the loss; now I knew her, or at least something of her.

She’d fallen in love with my father and paid a heavy price. She’d had to cut off contact with her own parents – and then she’d discovered what her exotic new husband Grigor truly was: a Kinderfresser, a child-eater, butcher to the Weyrd population of Brisbane, back when such things were still allowed. In her despair, she’d tried to drown herself, but her grief and anger had acted as a beacon for things tuned to such pain and she’d been pulled back to life. The Guardian of the Southern Gate of the Underworld had offered a bargain: her service in return for revenge on Grigor, the man who’d promised so much and brought her so low, and she’d accepted.

Olivia had had a long time to regret that choice.

Covenants based on hatred seldom work out for the best, however, and all those years of doing the Guardian’s bidding had taken their toll. Grigor had been dust for ages, but Olivia, still in servitude, finally couldn’t take it any more and fled. She’d deserted me as a child, then come back to me, bringing a fucking great mess for me to clean up as an adult – but she’d protected my family for me when I couldn’t, and it turned out, that counted for quite a lot, actually.

We would still have to have words when things had returned to normal, but for now, that could wait. I was horribly aware that I’d just sent my own child away and couldn’t help wondering if one day I’d be having the same kind of uncomfortable conversations with Maisie. What if it took me years to sort out this shambles? How long before my daughter began to forget me?

I gave up on sleep, rolled off the couch and stretched, listening with displeasure to the cracking of my joints; surely I wasn’t old enough for undignified old-person noises? Soon I’d be farting when I bent over: oh joy. Something new to look forward to.

My shower took considerably longer than it probably should have, given someone was waiting outside for me, but there was the washing of the hair, the conditioning of the hair, the exfoliating of the skin, the trimming of the nails, the brushing of the teeth, the blow-drying—

Okay, maybe that was taking the piss. I changed into jeans, Docs, a long-sleeved T-shirt and a leather jacket.

I was just considering making tea – my tastes had changed, apparently irrevocably, since Maisie’s birth, which no one had warned me about – when the honk-honk-honking started up again. Even I was smart enough not to push matters too far.

*

‘You took your own sweet time.’

Joyce dressed like a librarian – or at least my idea of a librarian – with a taste for Mary Janes of the Fluevog variety (quirky, architectural, more expensive than my pocket preferred) and frocks in tan, murky grey or muddy green, so as not to draw attention. As I climbed into the relatively new bronze Honda CRV she’d sourced from who-knew-where I saw that today was no sartorial exception. I guess camouflage is kind of important for an assassin, especially a kitsune. This morning, with her black hair swirled into a tight bun and her thick-rimmed glasses, the fox-girl assassin looked mostly harmless, which she most definitely was not.

The gods know Ziggi could be idiosyncratic in his observance of the Road Rules, but for someone who looked so law-abiding, her driving was incredibly careless, and not helped in the least by her apparent belief that hands were better used for gesticulating than holding the steering wheel. Joyce had taken me for a quick orientation the previous day and in that first twenty-minute trip I’d experienced more narrow squeaks and heard more horns blaring in anger than in all the years of Ziggi’s chauffeuring. Still and all, I’d either become more Zen about stressful situations or better at hiding my conviction that I was going to die horribly in a hard-to-explain car accident. Or maybe it was just that since I’d lost my taste for coffee my nerves were no longer anywhere as jittery as they had been.

‘You took your own sweet time,’ Joyce repeated as she turned the key in the ignition.

I was doing up my seatbelt as quickly as humanly possibly, but she beat me, tearing onto the road without bothering to check for oncoming traffic seconds before I heard that faintly reassuring click. ‘I had to iron my clothes.’

She didn’t bother acknowledging my standard state of rumpledness, just floored the accelerator.

Approaching warp speed, Captain. It took an enormous amount of willpower not to grab whatever I could find and hang onto for dear life.

‘You should give me a house key.’

I laughed out loud. ‘Nope.’

‘In case of emergency.’

‘Joyce, you with a key to my house? That would be the emergency.’

‘At least remove the fetish.’

‘No fucking way.’ The last time Joyce had visited, she’d left me a welcome home gift: the body of my delivery guy, Len. She’d also inadvertently left behind a hank of her fur, which I’d used to make a ward specifically tuned to keep her the Hell off my lawn. ‘Perhaps you’d just like me to sit here while you slit my throat?’ I offered as a compromise.

‘Well, the boss wouldn’t like that, so you’re safe for a while,’ she sneered, then jerked a thumb over her shoulder. ‘He’s sent something for you.’

‘What?’ I looked around at the back seat and spotted Joyce’s brown satchel. A small white box, tidily decorated with a green ribbon, peaked out from under the flap. With more than a touch of envy, I asked, ‘Did you do that? Because you have missed your true calling, Joyce. Gift-wrapping is a real art.’ I briefly considered a universe where I could hand over all birthday and Christmas-gift-preparation to my new co-worker. Briefly.

‘Just open it.’

Much though I loved presents, that was not going to happen, and it was not going to happen because I had a theory, albeit possibly a thoroughly wobbly and baseless one.

When Olivia was in his service, the Guardian had given her a sword and a strange kind of compact, a mirror through which to watch me. Mike Jones, one of the Weyrd security team who’d tried to protect me and mine, whose partner Jerry had died doing so, had found a pocket watch he had no recollection of buying. Joyce herself had carried a fine tantō, which had also come from the burned hand of her employer. The first time I’d travelled to the Underworld − zero out of ten, would not willingly go again − to find my mother, the Guardian had offered me a gift, of sorts: a reliquary, a piece of blindingly white bone inside an ancient locket of crystal and gold, something it − he − said I would need when I was hunting the things I needed to find.

I’d sent my mother back up topside but I’d hung on to her sword, planning to use it on the Guardian if I could. But the archangel just laughed and, at a gesture, the weapon had crumbled to rust and dust, which was inconvenient, I’ll grant you, but revealing. The Guardian, drunk on his own cleverness, had declared, ‘Do you think I have no control over the gifts I lend to my menials? Do you think I cannot destroy what was forged by my own will?’

See, the Guardian had a magic mirror in his lair to watch the minions, but my theory was this: the mirror only worked if his hapless slaves were carrying some kind of transmitter – that’s why he was so keen on the present-giving. It was actually nothing to do with generosity, or providing the best tools for the job, and everything to do with staying in control.

I’d accepted the reliquary because it was essential to my task, but it was secured in a shoebox in a cupboard in the library at home. I’d made my mother throw away the compact, and Mike’s watch was currently being stored in a lockbox in the Weyrd Archives for safekeeping, which I considered a comforting show of faith in my abilities: someone believed they’d eventually be able to examine it without risk. I wondered if the antique-looking copper bracelet on Joyce’s right wrist was another tether.

‘Go on. Open it,’ she repeated.

‘Maybe later.’ Like Hell.

Joyce was smart enough not to insist, because nothing said Drink from the poisoned chalice! like starting an argument about it. Still, I thought it might be a good idea to provide a distraction. ‘Those are nice, although they’d be nicer concealed.’

On the seat next to her bag were some new weapons: a set of sai, shiny and sharp as all get-out. Not nearly as pretty as the tantō had been, but she needed to replace it after something happened to it. Well, I happened to it.

‘Not enchanted yet,’ she said shortly. That meant they couldn’t be shrunk down to nothing to fit neatly inside the satchel. Then she said, ‘The boss wants to see you.’

‘Nope! ’ I said quickly, and in case she might have misunderstood me, ‘Nope, nope, nope. I saw him yesterday − you know that, you were there. You drove me. In fact, yesterday’s little tête-à-tête is the only reason you’re here, remember?’ I was not going down that hole again; there were ways into the Underworld other than death (the majority of folk, Weyrd and Normal) or stupidity (me), cracks and fissures, and I was no more keen on them than I was on taking another trip with the Boatman.

The archangel and I had done some fine-tuning of our bargain: he’d agreed that I needed to be able to speak with the Weyrd community (although my former colleagues, i.e. Bela and Ziggi, were off-limits, especially as, technically speaking, Ziggi was also family). In return, I’d agreed to be accompanied by Joyce, even though I’d specifically demanded she be kept away from me.

‘But—’

‘It can wait until I’ve got something to report,’ I said now. ‘I am not being summoned every fucking day to play power games. Besides, I haven’t had breakfast yet.’

In truth, I wasn’t that hungry, but I was keen to procrastinate. I was no further along in my researches than I had been yesterday – and besides, I really hated the trip down to its lair. I had nothing to report and couldn’t imagine the Guardian would have anything new to tell me – he was just trying to remind me who was in charge.

To her credit, Joyce didn’t grit her teeth and/or swear out loud.

‘Head towards Little Venice.’

‘You know the Guardian doesn’t like you going there.’

‘I went over this yesterday! I will do this job, but I will do it my way. You both know that Little Venice is a hive of information’ – besides, how else was I going to be sneaky and start circumventing the limitations placed on me if I didn’t go to Little Venice? − ‘so frankly, you can sod off.’

That kind of put paid to any chitchat for a while, until I noticed Joyce looking in the rear-view mirror with a frequency that my admittedly brief experience suggested was utterly foreign to her.

‘What are you doing?’

She hesitated, then said, ‘We’re being followed.’

‘You don’t say?’ I might have sounded flippant, but somehow I was not surprised.

‘A black Mercedes GLE 350d, four-wheel drive, with super-tinted windows.’

‘Terrible taste – very gangsta.’

‘You don’t sound very worried.’

‘Oh, I’m worried, but I know I can’t do much about it at the moment.’

‘Don’t you care? Doesn’t it make you nervous? Just a little bit?’

‘Hey, I’m working for a bastard who’s considerably crazier than my usual boss. My family are in exile. I had to quit a job I didn’t entirely hate. I’ve lost my delight in cake and coffee, and I’m in a car driven by someone who’s plotting to kill me as soon as I finish this mission.’ I ran a hand through my still-damp hair. I sighed. ‘Besides, I know who it is.’

‘Friend of yours?’

‘Yeah – no. Let’s just say she is well ahead of you in the “Let’s kill Verity Fassbinder” queue.’

She paused, considering, then asked, ‘What did you do?’

‘Killed her family.’

‘Wow. Like mother, like daughter.’

Chapter Two

One thing Joyce did have over Ziggi was the ability to find a parking space in West End. I was so used to being dropped halfway up Boundary Street and having to walk the rest of the way that the whole experience of getting out of a vehicle right outside Little Venice felt so uncanny that I wondered if she had some spell that simply removed anything in her path. Was there a pile of cars somewhere that had been in the wrong place, at the wrong time? Cars with befuddled folk sitting inside thinking, How the Hell did I get here? After a moment trying to work out exactly where her car-dump might be, I recognised I was being overly paranoid. Probably.

‘Get a move on,’ I urged, waiting impatiently for Joyce to catch up, but when she finally stood beside me on the footpath, I noticed she’d wrapped both hands around the strap of her bag and her knuckles were white. She was looking distinctly nervous.

I peered around, trying to spot the danger myself. ‘What’s wrong?’

‘I don’t feel . . . comfortable.’

‘You’re a bad-ass fox-girl assassin with a sea of blood on your paws and you don’t feel comfortable?’

‘What if they . . . ?’ Don’t like me? was the unspoken implication.

She fidgeted, scuffing the ground with the toe of one cognac-coloured Hope Promise, which kind of made my heart skip: those shoes were too expensive for such treatment. Then I felt I was being disloyal to my Docs.

‘They’ll love you! Who doesn’t love a kitsune as long as she doesn’t drink so much she loses her shape, kills someone who looks at her sideways or steals a soul?’ I rolled my eyes. ‘Look, you’ll be in good company: the Misses Norn have thought about injuring or giving me an atomic wedgie at least once.’ I leaned close. ‘You might not have noticed, but I’m very annoying. You’ll barely register on the scale.’

To prove my point – and to hurry her along – I snapped my fingers and headed through the dark entranceway into what had once been my happy place before I lost my taste for rocket-fuel coffee and diabetes-inducing cakes.

Little Venice was variously a café-bar, a residence, a place to get your fortune told, and the spot where I’d taken out an angel who was trying to kill one of the Sisters Norn who ran the place. There were four big rooms downstairs, serviced by surly emo-Weyrd waitresses and one or two of the Sisters. The walled courtyard at the back was empty; it was too cold to sit out there and too early for the braziers to be lit. I couldn’t see the small, colourful snakes − Aspasia’s newest babies − that usually lurked in the foliage, so I guessed they were still curled up somewhere warm. The smell of last night’s incense and this morning’s coffee beans permeated the air.

Theodosia was behind the main bar, wearing jeans and one of the most unaccountably ugly sweaters I’d ever seen: a mangled mix of puce, asparagus green and yellow. Titian corkscrew curls piled haphazardly on top of her head looked set to tumble every time she rubbed the cloth over the marble bench, yet somehow the ’do stayed aloft. The quadrate cross scar left by the angel’s ring at the base of her throat was still livid against her pale skin, even though it had been healed months ago. None of the Norns tried to conceal the marks, as if wanting the reminder of what had almost happened.

‘Hey, Theo. That jumper − did you lose a bet?’

She looked up, lifted her middle finger and smiled, but her gaze very quickly slid past me and I watched as her grin became wider; her shoulders squared and her chest pushed out a little.

See, Joyce? Told you they’d love you. I almost felt miffed, but not quite.

‘Fassbinder. Shouldn’t you be politer to someone who catered your wedding? For free?’

‘Very probably,’ I agreed as she came out from behind the bar and enfolded me in a hug.

‘Who’s this cutie?’ she whispered.

‘Theo, this is Joyce, my’ − sidekick? friendly neighbourhood assassin? Then I remembered I didn’t actually have to be subtle about it – ‘murderer-in-waiting.’

‘Wow. Long line.’

‘Truth.’

Theo was one of the Council of Five, who more or less ran the Weyrd community in Brisbane, so she knew why I’d quit working for them; that meant her sisters did too. But most of the Weyrd community didn’t, and I was discovering that some of them saw my act as a betrayal; no matter how much my half-bloodedness, my interference, my very presence were resented, they had grown used to me. It certainly explained the looks I was getting from customers currently taking up real estate in Little Venice: glares, surprise, a dash of disdain and even downright hostility, none of which I troubled myself about.

‘Joyce, this is Theodosia.’

Theo dropped me like yesterday’s prawn shells and offered one slender hand to Joyce, who hesitated a moment, then blushed an astonishing shade of pink as she touched those long manicured fingers.

I bit down on a grin and settled onto one of the barstools, waiting patiently.

Of course, my patience always was a short-lived thing. ‘Any chance of toast and tea?’ I asked.

Reluctantly, Theo released Joyce and went back around the counter. She stuck two slices of bread in the toaster and started to prep a peppermint tea, then smiled at Joyce. ‘Anything for you, lovely?’

Joyce shook her head and clambered onto a seat next to me; it was a rare treat to see her speechless.

‘Oh, no. Joyce, you’ve got to try the Angel’s Blessing.’ One of the Norns’ specialties: a three-layer thing of lemon mascarpone, mead jelly and marshmallow, sandwiched between the thinnest slices of sponge top and bottom.

‘For breakfast?’ Joyce clearly objected, but I would not be denied my vicarious eating.

‘She’ll need a coffee to wash that down.’

Theo began the making of Joyce’s involuntary repast. ‘So, Verity Fassbinder. How’s the new job?’

I shrugged. ‘Too soon to tell. Is Aspasia around?’

‘What am I? Chopped liver? It hurts when you don’t want to talk to me,’ she said, but it was the merest of resentful glances.

‘I am talking to you, Theo, but I also need to talk to Aspasia.’

She let out a high-pitched whistle, and I checked my ears to make sure blood hadn’t started flowing.

‘Wow. That’s how you’re communicating nowadays? Bet she loves that.’ And as if to underline my point, a stream of profanities came from the direction of the kitchen, some of which were unrepeatable. Even I was impressed.

‘How many fucking times do I fucking have to fucking tell you not to fucking whistle at me? I’m not a fucking dog!’ Aspasia rocketed through the doorway, her black locks twisting into snakes that hissed and bit at the air. She pulled up short when she saw me – then she spotted Joyce and her eyes widened a bit more. The last time the kitsune had been here, she’d been having a drink with one of her now-deceased sisters as they tried to track my runaway mother. Aspasia knew exactly what those fox-girls had done in the meantime – and what Olivia had done to two of the three – so her surprise was quite reasonable. ‘Hey.’

‘Hey.’ I rose and crossed over to her and as Theo engaged Joyce in a So-tell-me-all-about-yourself conversation, I was able to hug Aspasia and whisper, ‘Friday night ten p.m., St Stephen’s Cathedral.’

She slid a hand into and out of my back pocket; it wasn’t like Aspasia to get touchy-feely − that was Theo’s purview − so I didn’t take it personally. When I felt the thick square of paper she’d left behind, my heart beat a little faster.

‘Any news about our friendly neighbourhood sorceress-on-the-warpath?’ I asked loudly.

She shook her head. ‘Only a few sightings, but she hasn’t contacted anyone that we know of − or anyone who’s admitting to it, at least.’

‘We don’t know who her flunkies are nowadays,’ I pointed out, ‘so I’m not sure where she’d have found new ones, not when the Nadasy name is pretty much a dirty word.’

Dusana Nadasy might have money and power, but she’d made herself an outlaw amongst the Weyrd – not that anyone really blamed her for her actions. After all, Eleanor Aviva, disgraced member of the Council of Five, purchaser of illicit wine made from the tears of children, collect