‘You do?’ I withheld a sigh. The last time Sebastian said he had an important job for us, he’d brought me to lunch at a place called the Starlight Restaurant. He bought expensive champagne and oysters, and made the most cackhanded attempt at flirtation I’d ever been subjected to. The time before that, he’d taken me to Paris for breakfast, and the time before that was a canal ride in Venice. I knew he wasn’t really interested in me. It was all part of his warlock façade. But it was becoming a little trying. ‘So what’s it going to be, then? Coffee and pastries in Paris again? I guess I could go for a croissant.’ I’d lost my appetite for the ones Mrs Danby baked, but now my stomach was growling.

  He shook his head. ‘I’ve given up on the idea of wooing you, Ess.’

  My lashes fluttered wildly, and I spluttered out a laugh. ‘Wooing me? I didn’t think real people used that term.’

  He gave me a nonchalant smile, which made him look even handsomer than usual. ‘You see, I’ve come to the conclusion that being wined and dined just isn’t going to get you. You don’t keep coming here because you want to see my raffish self every day, now do you? And you don’t need the money anymore, now that Pendulay is back in your family, and Dillis’s pal has bought up Teach Dearg.’

  ‘How did you–’

  He tapped his nose. ‘Ear to the ground, Ess. Ear to the ground. No, you don’t come here for money, or for me – although I will, one day, change your mind on the latter. You come here for the same reason I do. The only reason I can stand the place. You like the intrigue. You enjoy ferreting out answers, sneaking around, following people and immortalising their moments of truth. And as you want intrigue, then intrigue is what I’m going to give you.’ He grabbed his jacket and put it on. ‘So let’s get a wriggle on, because I’m about to buy you a dress.’

  I stood in the dressing room of a shop called Luna’s Gúnas, twirling in front of the mirror. This was the fifth dress I had tried on, each one chosen by the shop’s proprietor, a woman with silver hair and scary eyes. However odd-looking she might be, her taste in clothes was impeccable. Everything she’d chosen was flattering.

  I stomped out of the dressing room to find Sebastian sitting on an armchair, a cocktail in his hand, a wolfish grin on his face. ‘I know I said it the last four times, but that dress makes you look good enough to eat. How about we get them all? My treat, remember.’

  I felt my jaw grow tight as tension took hold. ‘Yeah, I remember, because you’ve said it at least a dozen times. You say it every single time I ask you what a dress has to do with intrigue. Why are we here, Seb? What are you up to?’

  He reached down beside him and held up a purse. It was made of the same satin-like material as the dress I was wearing. Opening it up, he said, ‘You can’t tell, but this delicate little handbag is far, far bigger on the inside. You could fit a camera, a gun, a lockpick, a crowbar, and even some flat shoes for when your feet get sore from the heels I’m going to buy you.’

  I sank into the chair opposite his. ‘You – I – what?’

  He sat back, took a few sips of his cocktail, and then said, ‘I need your help with something, Ess. There’s a dinner party on Thursday night, and I’d like to take you as my date. It’s formal attire, hence the dress. And when we get there, you’ll need to do some snooping. It’s … a game, between a few of us warlocks. Sort of a treasure hunt. I have to find something in this person’s house, and since you’ve proven to be incredibly good at tailing insurance fraudsters, I think you’ll be able to help.’

  I kept my expression even. There was no game between warlocks, because Sebastian wasn’t really a warlock. Whatever he wanted to find, he wanted it badly. ‘I don’t usually carry a gun when I snoop. Or a crowbar.’

  ‘If you’re worried about breaking the law, don’t be. The gun will be magically made, designed to stun, not kill.’

  ‘You know that’s not what I meant. What is it you’re getting me into?’ I was going to say yes, either way, because I knew what he really was, who he really was. Even if he couldn’t tell me the truth about where we were going, I felt sure it must be important, so I intended to help him. But I didn’t want to give him a yes too easily, since I still hadn’t told him the memory spell was a dud.

  ‘I’ll make sure you come to no harm, I swear,’ he said, his tone suddenly serious. ‘But what I want to track down, the reason we’re going to this party, it … well, it is something I would love to get my hands on. You can say no. But I really could use some help with this.’

  ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘I’ll take this dress, then. I won’t need the others, because this will be a one-off deal. And you will be giving me more details before I step foot in that party.’

  ‘Deal.’ He gave me a long, lazy look. ‘But if you only want one evening dress, how about I buy you something for the daytime, too? A shorter number. You could wear it to our lunch in Rome right after we leave this shop.’

  ‘Rome?’ I gave him a wide smile. ‘I love Rome. There’s a place near the Pantheon that does the most amazing pizza I’ve ever eaten.’

  His eyes brightened. ‘Really? You’re actually going to come for lunch with me?’

  ‘Well, yeah. Like I said, I just love that pizza, and I – oh, shoot, I’ve just remembered something. I have other plans for lunch today.’

  ‘Ah. You were merely toying with me, I see.’ He let out a long, dramatic sigh. ‘You’ll be the death of me, Miss Jennings-Pendulay-O’Mara. But it shall be a death divine.’

  I rolled my eyes. ‘That’s nauseating, Seb. Do women really fall for that sort of nonsense?’

  He stood up, moved closer, his cologne in my nose, his skin tickling mine. ‘Only the unworthy ones. Which is why I know that when you do finally fall for me, both of us will feel sure it was worth the wait.’

  Chapter 10

  Last Moments

  I almost wished I could go to Rome for lunch, despite the ego boost it would give Sebastian. My real plans of a trip to Witchfield were far less fun.

  Travelling to the supernatural prison was far from pleasant. It felt as if we made many teleportation jumps along the way, though we never once paused, simply rushed from one to the next.

  ‘Sorry about that,’ said Gretel, when we at last landed just outside the entranceway of a formidable building. ‘This place shifts dimensions constantly for security reasons. And we get a whole series of coordinates to jump to, also for security reasons – you never know which in the list is the right one until you arrive.’

  ‘I feel seasick,’ I told her, holding my hand over my mouth.

  ‘Well, it won’t get any better while you’re here, because the prison will carry on shifting. If it’s any consolation, I feel sick, too. Which is why I brought these.’ She took out two small vials filled with a bright green liquid. ‘This should calm your stomach.’

  We downed the potions, and soon I was feeling a little less likely to lose my lunch (it probably helped that I hadn’t actually eaten any yet). ‘Have you got any updates on Mrs D? Is she still …?’

  Gretel sighed. ‘Alive? Yes, she’s still alive, and she matches our records for Mrs Danby – DNA, magical signature, all of it.’

  ‘So it’s really her, then?’

  ‘It seems that way – which means the only mystery is who might be lying in that morgue. But let’s head inside, shall we? We’d better focus on one mystery at a time.’

  She guided me through a series of security checks, and along eerily familiar walkways. I felt so sure I’d walked these corridors before, but that was impossible.

  Finally, we came to a private room. As she pulled open the door I could see guards standing around, but they weren’t the oddest sight. The walls were lined with tiny hourglasses, encased in shining metal and packed tightly together with barely a gap between them. The sand didn’t drop from one section into another, though – it remained suspended in the centre of each hourglass.

  ‘Oh,’ I said, gazing around. ‘You have the room kitted out with those … whatchamacallits? Temporal Stability Devices?’

  ‘We do,’ she confirmed. ‘It means we only have a few rooms we can keep the Trents in – we can’t kit the entire prison out like this. But it works to stop any of them using their particular brand of magic, so it’s worth the effort. Our other methods are just not certain enough, not when it comes to Time Witches. You can’t disempower someone who’s so well adept at hiding their power. How can we know whether it’s worked or not?’

  She was right about that. Although I’d been temporarily disempowered on my way in – a security measure they used for all visitors – there were points along the walk here where I felt certain that, if I really wanted to, I could pull on my abilities with Time. But in here, with these Temporal Stability Devices, those aspects of my magic felt muzzled.

  A redhead walked into the room, waved at Gretel, and took a seat in the corner.

  ‘That’s our mind-reader,’ Gretel told me. ‘I’m just going to go and have a word with her before we start. Take a seat over there.’ She pointed to the centre of the room. Two seats were arranged on either side of some odd-looking, wavering bars. Some kind of magical divider, probably. The thing was, those bars seemed just as familiar as everything else in this prison. ‘Julian will be out in about two minutes.’

  When he arrived, I did my best to hide my surprise. Julian was covered with bruises, and he winced with every step. Even when he lowered himself into his seat, he seemed to be in pain.

  I glanced at Gretel, who looked shocked and rushed over to share some urgent whispers with one of the guards.

  ‘I can’t believe you came,’ Julian said, blinking. His eyes were swollen, especially his left one. The skin around it was dark.

  ‘Well, I did. So … you got in a fight? I thought you and your brothers were being kept away from the other prisoners.’

  ‘We are,’ he said, his expression blank. ‘And the guards don’t get too close to us, either.’

  ‘Oh.’ It seemed that Gretel’s potion had stopped working, because I felt nauseous once more. I realised, as my stomach churned and lurched, why everything in Witchfield felt familiar to me. This was the place I’d been dreaming of. And when I was getting beaten up in last night’s nightmare …

  ‘Your brothers,’ I said, my throat feeling dry. ‘It was your brothers who kicked the crap out of you, wasn’t it? Why?’ And why, I didn’t add, would I have dreamt about it?

  ‘Don’t worry about me,’ he told me. ‘I’m fine. I can handle myself. I’m just so glad you came. You look amazing, Essie.’

  ‘Don’t say that. Just … let’s get the important stuff over, so I can get out of here.’ I was fidgeting endlessly as I spoke, unable to find a way to sit comfortably. I crossed one leg over the other, then switched around. I wanted to ask him more about his brothers, but that wasn’t for me to worry about, was it? The Wayfarers would have to figure that one out.

  ‘Ah. I suppose Captain Wood brought you here to ask me about the things I’ve been saying. She thinks I’m lying, doesn’t she?’

  ‘Oh gee, I wonder why.’

  ‘I guess I deserve that,’ he said. ‘I tried to be honest with you, Essie. When we first met, I didn’t know who you were, and I didn’t know my coven had anything to do with Chronos. I’d had nothing to do with the rest of the Trents for years.’

  ‘Hah!’ I shook my head at him, amazed at his brazen lies. ‘You expect me to believe you? I know you were the CEO of Chronos. I saw a letter addressed to you. You were the one leading your brothers all along.’

  ‘I was not,’ he insisted. ‘Dad made me the coven leader when he died, but I never actually took the role. I’d long since walked away. Do you know how my dad died, Essie?’

  ‘Why would I?’ I retorted. The truth was, I had looked into it, but I wasn’t about to tell him that. He’d get the wrong idea; he’d think that he and his family were ever-present on my mind.

  ‘Well, as deaths go, it was fairly straightforward,’ said Julian. ‘Three years ago, he was enjoying a screaming match with Devlin junior, and in the middle of it he died on the spot. The official cause was a ruptured aneurysm, but … they’re all like that. Big tempers, big plans, big bad.’

  It was pretty much as the records had said, apart from the argument. ‘What did they fight over?’

  ‘Dad had jobs for all of us. My job was to find any magical objects that had Time Witch power stored up. He expected me to hunt down any existing Time Witches, too, but he knew our kind was rare, so he wasn’t surprised when I didn’t find any. Dev junior was also a finder, although … well, he wasn’t as good as me, so he and the rest of our brothers did some less savoury jobs for Dad, too.’

  He dropped his head, tightly balling his fists. ‘Dad thought Dev should work harder, find ways to siphon enough power so he could be a better finder. That’s what they were fighting about, according to some of my other brothers. Dev wasn’t able to find something Dad wanted, and I was, so Dad went nuts, shouted a lot, and then just … died.’

  He looked at me, just for a moment, before dropping his head again. ‘I never really expected him to die, to be honest. He seemed like he’d live forever. And I certainly never thought he’d actually go through with making me leader. I mean, he’d said he would years earlier, right before I married Etain – I had innate Time Witch power, so I was to inherit the position. But I was fairly sure I’d annoyed him so much that he would give the job to Dev in the end. But apparently not, because right after he died my brothers asked me to come home and head up the coven. I told them to get lost, that I wanted nothing to do with any of them. And I stayed true to that. I wasn’t their leader, and I certainly wasn’t heading up Chronos. The Wayfarers told me you found a letter implicating me, saying I was CEO. They showed it to me when they were questioning me, and they told me you found it in my room. But I’d never seen it before, and every word in it is a lie. It has to be a plant.’

  I’d carried on fidgeting through his entire story, unable to sit still and paste a nonchalant expression on my face. Nonchalance was impossible to feign when he sounded so sincere. But like everything he said, I would have to mistrust it, because he’d already been proven a liar. ‘Hah,’ I said, trying to inject a harsh edge into my voice. ‘So someone is setting you up, are they? As if.’

  ‘I swear it to you, Essie,’ he said, leaning forward, focusing far too intently on me. ‘I am not now, nor was I ever in charge of Chronos. I didn’t work for them or with them or anything. There was a point where I began to suspect my brothers might be involved with Chronos, but even that much didn’t occur to me until it was far too late, after Dillis and Rick were kidnapped from Night and Gale. And by then … by then I was so bloody crazy about you that I was terrified to tell you until I knew for sure. I didn’t want to lose you, Essie, and I didn’t want to frighten you away, either. Not until I was certain.’

  ‘You didn’t want to frighten me?’ I shook my head in amazement. ‘Forcing me into a bonding ceremony and stealing my magic doesn’t sound like a scary prospect to you?’

  ‘I knew nothing about that until I got there,’ he insisted. ‘And I would never have forced you to go through with a thing like that. It was … I was shocked, and confused, and I didn’t react the way I should have when I found you in that weird cavern. You … you don’t believe me, do you?’

  ‘Why on earth would I? You knew that cavern and those tunnels a whole lot better than I did, seeing as it’s where you killed your first wife.’

  ‘Except I didn’t kill her, Essie.’ His voice sounded strained, on the verge of cracking. ‘I might not have loved her in the same way that I–’

  ‘Don’t say it,’ I interrupted, talking loudly enough to drown him out, in case he kept on going. ‘Don’t you dare say that. Look, none of this matters, anyway. I came here for a reason, so I just want to get it over with and get out of here.’ I carried on with my attempts to control my facial expression, but I doubted I was doing a good job. Every word of his cut me, especially those words I hadn’t let him finish.

  I was seriously regretting my decision to come here. His reactions, everything he did, and said, it was making me feel deeply uncomfortable. Something was so off about all of this, but I was terrified to ask him: why had his brothers beaten him?

  ‘The Wayfarers found something in one of the rooms at Trent Manor,’ I continued. ‘It looks like a normal winding pin, but Rick says it’s not. He says it’s got magic on it. Our kind of magic. It seems to fit in – in the Pendulay Pocket Watch. Like a second winder, maybe for the Time Turner adaptation the watch also seems to have gone through. But however it works, Rick and the Wayfarers can’t figure it out.’

  His face had turned deathly pale, making his bruises all the clearer. ‘Where did they find this pin?’ he gasped.

  ‘In some ugly room with goblin heads all over the walls.’

  ‘Devlin’s room.’ He sounded almost breathless. ‘I don’t understand. My brother’s not dead, so it can’t be his.’

  ‘You’re not really telling me anything I can follow here, Julian.’

  He rubbed his temples, sighed, and said, ‘Sorry, Essie, sorry. It’s just … maybe it’s nothing, but there’s a spell that the Trents use, and it involves what would look like a winding pin. We call it a Last Moments spell. As we’re dying, we send a message and store it up so that it can be replayed. Sometimes, as well as recording some last words for our heir, we also encode coordinates onto the pin – Time coordinates, so that our heir can visit the moments we want them to, moments we think are important. My dad loved the spell. He and his ancestors used it so that if they were murdered, they could tattle on whoever did it, even record the moment it happened, so their heirs could seek revenge against the killer.’

  ‘That’d be an interesting trinket to inherit,’ I mused. ‘More of an instruction for vengeance than a sweet memento.’

  ‘Yeah, well, the Trents have many traits, and forgiveness is not among them. But I know that this pin can’t be the one Dad left for Devlin junior. Dev destroyed that one in anger, because Dad used it to announce that he was making me coven leader. And my mother left one for me, so … I don’t know whose it could be. The only person I can think of is Etain, though why Devlin would have it, well … I really don’t know.’

 

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