Page 121 of The Hearth Witch’s Guide to Spite & Spellwork

“I didn’t,” Avery confessed as they walked from the lobby to the outside street. “What I knew was Iona either had a connection to the mirror or a connection to its origin. Thanks to your keen observation, we discovered Hingley and Abigail’s affair. Which is a scenario ripe for revenge, but not Abigail’s. Knowing how Iona likes to hunt her marks, in the case of an affair where the husband is cheating on his pregnant wife, his mistress is not the most-wronged party—I believe her in that regard. So, Abigail was therefore unlikely to be a client. How else would she have access to or even knowledge of a relic at Reprise?”

“If she or one of her friends were an employee,” Saga concluded.

“Precisely.”

“So, roughly, our interrogation hinged on a guess?”

The accusation felt like a burn. “It was an educated guess.”

“We just went into the lion’s den with nothing but a gamble!”

“Let us not focus on that,” Avery dismissed, “but rather that I won.”

Chapter 31 Saga

Saga’s phone vibrated, and immediately she felt anxious. Taking a deep breath, she glanced at it. Leigh. She could tell Avery was looking at her, so she tried to pass this moment off as merely checking the time. “Three forty,” she announced as casually as she could manage. “Where to now?”

“Do you want tea?”

The question was in such contrast to Avery’s severe expression that it took Saga aback. “What?”

“I believe it has been an absolute age since I have had a proper afternoon tea. What say you?”

“Shouldn’t we be focusing on the case?”

“We have several leads now, do we not?” Avery nodded for Saga to follow her. “First, it would be wise to track down Elizabeth Hingley and see if we might be able to suss out where she was the night of each murder. Second, we will need to request a meeting with Abigail Rhyder in Blackthorn, and third, we will need to procure the location of Patricia’s safe house, if she has indeed been moved yet.”

Saga nodded.

“But do you know what occurs to me with all of those requests?”

“No?”

Avery produced her phone from her pocket. “I believe they may all be achieved through a single phone call. Which, if policies and procedures remain relatively unchanged from the past two hundred years, means if I put in the requests now, our requests at earliest will not be approved until tomorrow. Knowing we have a wait ahead of ourselves, I think it would behoove us to pass it pleasantly while we have the opportunity. We are both well-dressed, it would be a shame to waste the moment. Thus. Tea.”

“Ah.” Saga nodded in understanding. “Where are you thinking?”

“When was the last time you went to Hygge?”

“A few nights ago, when you were drunk on oath breaking.”

Avery’s cheekbones pinkened as she adjusted the scarf around her neck. “Ah. Yes. I vaguely recall that.”

“It was cute,” Saga said but carefully watched the pale woman out of the corner of her eye to see if this would fluster her more. “Nothing to be embarrassed about.”

“I am not embarrassed,” Avery grumbled into her scarf, hunching her shoulders as they made their way back down into the tube station to take the train to Covent Garden. She proceeded to be quiet and “not embarrassed” for at least three stops before she relaxed into the lull of travel.

Saga spent the time trying to observe anything to keep her mind otherwise occupied from where her thoughts kept drifting and had been since the night before. The thoughts that, no matter how much she’d talked through them into the wee hours of the morning, still felt like a lead rock in her stomach. Eventually, she would have to talk to Leigh. Her anger had dissipated, but the unease remained. Would she even be able to talk with Leigh about it? Or would the geas prevent it? Was the geas lifted now that she knew?

Then there was the matter of her mother. A woman so changed from the one she witnessed on trial, her mind struggled to see them as the same person. Even by her own mother’s words, it seemed they weren’t. Was her altered memory to blame, or the sundering?

The weight in her stomach churned. Leigh had described being sundered as existing but not living. Half a life: a consequence Audrey had knowingly chosen and faced fearlessly for the chance to reunite Saga with her father. It was precisely the sort of emotion-driven, irrational course of action that Audrey would have criticized now. How would Saga ever look at her mother knowing all this, especially knowing that her mother didn’t?

How did you tell someone you appreciated something they didn’t remember doing? How did she reconcile the cold, unfeeling figure with the mother who’d given up everything to try to give her the world?

“We’re here.” Avery had to nudge her as they arrived at their stop and Saga followed her out like a ghost.

“Are you thinking about your mother or the case?” Avery asked.