“I’m just trying to plan for everything.” Sydney liked plans. She liked to have many of them, so their pieces could be switched apart and replaced when necessary. “What you said about the inheritance lines up with what I thought, but are there any special provisions during a Turning?”
Madison took another piece of the pickled asparagus Will had brought with the second round of drinks. “No—the current rules of inheritance were put in place after the last Turning. Oddly enough, it was Christopher Prospero’s death that led to them. He had no will, and Grey was too young to be formally invested. It was clear he would be, so there weren’t any issues, but it was one of those situations that made people realize that things needed to be formalized.
“Though, interestingly, beyond removing Grey as heir, Miranda never has made a new will.”
“That is interesting,” Sydney said.
“I have the terrible feeling that when you say ‘interesting,’ what you mean is ‘liable to cause three, maybe four large-scale explosions.’?”
“Two. I’m pretty sure I’ll only need two. And I’ll try to keep you clear of them,” Sydney said. “But in all seriousness, you continuing to help me—it might not be a risk-free endeavor. Do you want out?”
“Not even a little bit,” Madison said.
“All right. I’ve set up some basic precautions for you. You’ll find an envelope, bordered in red, in your purse when you leave the bar tonight—and no, I can’t just hand it to you now. I want it to recognize you specifically, and the less contact I have with it the better.”
“Sounds serious,” Madison said.
“It is. The envelope will smell like roses. Open it once you get inside your apartment, after you shut the door.”
“Self-triggering wards?” Madison asked.
“Good ones. You’ll receive a new envelope in your mailbox once a week on Tuesday until this is over. Red-bordered, rose-scented. If any one of those three things isn’t right, don’t open it. And after you don’t open it and you get the fuck out of your apartment building, you call me.”
“Got it,” Madison said, and swallowed hard.
“Look, if this is too much—”
Madison cut her off. “It isn’t. Really. I’m just mentally transitioning from, ‘Hey, I feel like a spy, this is kind of cool,’ to, ‘Those fuckers might blow up my cat,’ and it’s a bit of an adjustment.”
“I swear to you, Madison, I will not let anyone—fucker or otherwise—blow up Noodle. Actually, you know what, I’m going to make Noodle a warded collar. I’ll messenger it to you at the office tomorrow.”
“Thanks. Seriously.” Madison nodded. “Okay. What else?”
“No problem. I love that furball. Anyway, your office is probably safer than your apartment—Prospero isn’t the only House that does business at Wellington & Ketchum, and besides, blowing up a law firm is a good way to call too much mundane attention to the Unseen World. Can’t have that. Still, you’ll receive an email with a 1:13 a.m. time stamp every Wednesday. It’ll have poetry in the body—lines from Seamus Heaney’s Sweeney Astray. The attachment will be an MP3 file. Download the attachment and let the song play all the way through. You don’t need to have the volume on, but let it play.”
“I just hired an associate, specifically to help me deal with the new work for the Turning—lots of Houses trying to get their affairs in order. She seems trustworthy, and I’ve been thinking of giving her some of the peripheral work on your projects, too. Do I need to worry about her?” Madison asked.
“I’ll modify the email so that the spell covers her, too. Just forward it once you’ve played it through.”
“Thanks. Anything else?” Madison signaled for another round.
“Can you find out why Grey was disinherited?”
“Probably. It’ll take a while, though—that sort of thing is kept in physical archive only.”
“Please look. I think it might be important. And if I can do anything to make that search go more quickly, let me know.”
“Believe me, I will.”
Sydney settled the bill and got up. “Watch your back.”
“You too.”
? ? ?
Sydney walked into Laurent’s apartment and covered it in a blanket of wards.
“I thought I had locked the door.” Laurent stood in the kitchen, right hand crooked into the opening of a basic defensive spell.
“You did,” Sydney said. “I unlocked it.”
“Oh.” He watched as she moved through the rooms like a very efficient hurricane. Then: “I live in a warded building.”
“Laurent,” she said, in a voice that suggested that warded buildings were about as much of a challenge to her as a KEEP OUT sign taped to the door would be.
“Right.” Shaking his head and slightly befuddled. “Right. Of course. I’d forgotten you were real-life Hermione Granger. Should I be worried that you can just walk in here like that?”
“If it makes you feel any better, they were very high-quality wards, so I seriously doubt anyone else can,” Sydney said, continuing to cast a variety of spells. Look-aways and don’t-hear-mes. White noise and obscuring shimmers of air. Something complex and Slavic-sounding that left a compass rose drawn in smoke hanging in the air for forty-seven seconds, which Laurent thought was designed to confuse a mapmaker, though he wasn’t exactly sure what it would do in his apartment.
“It makes you temporarily unfindable by GPS, both mundane and magically enhanced, as well as hiding you from locator spells,” Sydney said, answering the question Laurent hadn’t thought he had spoken aloud.
“Oh,” he said again, feeling as if he, too, had been rendered unfindable. Whatever this was, it was not how he had planned to spend his morning.
“I need to tell you something, and I need to make sure no one overhears, or even suspects that you know.”
“Coffee,” Laurent said. He suspected that this was more of a whiskey conversation, but it was 9:23 and there were lines. “I need coffee for this.”
Sydney perched on one of his barstools when she had the apartment secured to her liking. Laurent brought over a tray that had two cappuccinos and a plate piled with almond and anise biscotti.
“This,” Sydney said, “this is exactly why I’m telling you.”
“Because I made coffee?”
“Because there are two cups on the tray. Because it wouldn’t have occurred to you for there to not be.” Sydney dunked her biscotti and ate half of it, then set her cup down. “What do you know about where magic comes from?”
“Comes from?” Laurent shook his head. “I’ve never really thought about it. I guess maybe some kind of genetic mutation or something? You know, the kind of thing that explains why it runs in families, mostly, but then every so often someone like you or me shows up.”
“That may well be part of it,” Sydney said. “Or, to be more precise, may be why some people can access and use the power, once it exists, but others can’t. But that’s not where magic comes from.
“Magic, at its heart, starts with sacrifice. You have to give up something to get something, and because magic is big, with all that it allows you access to, what you give up has to be big. It has to be meaningful.
“The sacrifice is the thing that runs in families.”