While the sorcerers talked, Miles frantically swiped at his screen, apparently eager to report the failure to the mayor.
“Can we help?” Roger asked when Uncle Catcher approached us.
“No. Not an unexpected problem. Just an irritating one.”
“What exactly was the cause of the failure?” Miles asked primly. “It will need to be included in the record.”
Uncle Catcher squeezed the muscle in his jaw so hard, I thought he might crack a tooth. And then he stepped toward Miles. He was a big man—muscular and tall. Miles was short and lean, with only the political repercussions as a defense. But Uncle Catcher apparently remembered them, and he managed to unlock his jaw.
“We are developing a novel form of citywide demon ward without a spell or a schematic. The need for adjustments was expected. And we will use this run to calibrate and perfect the next one.”
It was a perfectly politic answer, and I wondered if Aunt Mallory had been giving him lessons. Or maybe he had just learned the necessity as a professor. He probably had department chairs and deans to placate.
“Right,” Miles said with an arrogant nod. “I thought as much.”
Apparently unaware of the danger he was in, he dismissed the sorcerer who’d nearly pummeled him by returning his attention to his screen.
Uncle Catcher blinked in surprise, then turned on his heel and joined the sorcerers again.
“And so,” Theo began in the voice of a nature documentarian, “the predator is swayed by the defensive dance undertaken by its prey, and it moves off into the night, hoping for a better hunt tomorrow.”
* * *
Twenty minutes later, the sorcerers still hadn’t started on round two, so we took a collective break.
“Can I talk to you for a sec?” Petra asked me.
“Of course. What’s up?”
“It’s about Black,” she said. “I feel like I should apologize for not believing you.”
I lifted my brows. “Believing me?”
“I mean, you had a vibe about him at the beginning, and I was all ‘But he’s so cute.’ And in the meantime he’s, like, plotting our general demise.”
So many places to start on that one. “There was nothing to believe,” I said. “Having a vibe doesn’t mean there’s anything actually wrong with him. It’s just a matter of taste. And I’ve beenwrong anyway; he saved my life after that, and he seemed to really care about Ariel.”
“Right?” she asked with emphasis, her expression shifting from apology to confusion. “Do you think something happened to him?”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t know. Maybe something like how meeting an alien can totally screw up your worldview.”
I didn’t think aliens were at issue, but she did have a point. Black had gone from saving my life to trying to kill me and accusing me of theft.
“Maybe he was hiding it all along,” I said. “I don’t think he ever really liked me. But maybe there’s more there. You said you looked into his background?”
“Yeah,” she said. “But I didn’t find much.”
“Dig more,” I suggested. “Find out whatever you can, especially about his clients and the people he’s worked with. Maybe that will help us figure out what has pissed him off and how we can stop him.”
And maybe there was one more trick up my very stylish sleeve.
“I need to take a ride,” I said.
“Where to?” Petra asked.
“To collect on a debt.”
