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“I met Abby my first year at UCL. We had ancient history class together, and we were both a bit bad at paying attention, so we decided to start studying together. She’s the one who introduced me to magic. She’s self-taught and brilliant and the most passionate person I ever met. I owe knowing the truth about the world we live in to her.” She clamped her mouth shut a moment and took a deep breath.

“She was never taken seriously, not really. I think it made her try harder and look for validation in the wrong places. John Hingley was not a good man, I’m not sayin’ he deserved it, but apart from being married, he was not only Abby’s teacher, but, like, more than a decade older?” She lost some of her nerve and flinched. “It’s just…inappropriate. And then the way he treated her like she was some sort of prostitute? He’d come over to the flat at all hours, sometimes in the middle of the day. And his wife was pregnant too. Did you know that?”

Again, she did not find the camaraderie she was seeking in the faces around her, so she began to rock on her heels. “She cried nonstop when he broke it off. They’d just got back from a trip around the countryside, and she’d thought it was going well, but I guess he thought otherwise. I never saw her so wrecked, Your Honor. So when she said she wanted to get back at him, I understood. And then she said she wanted to try a karmic hex. Something that would take all the bad he’d done and make him see it.”

“Interesting,” commented Avery. “So instead of using the mirror directly, they’d used it in the ritual.” Had it gotten to John through his own mirror then? Did that weaken the relic’s strength? Unlike Patricia, John had used his head to shatter the mirror, which had been enough to kill him. It would explain why he had never gone for his eyes directly.

“So it would seem,” Gideon sneered.

“I know Abigail, Your Honor. She’s my best friend, and I know she has a good heart. She must not have known how strong the anger in her heart was, because she did not intend to kill him.”

43Loups-garous, or lycanthropes, are among many fey who have received a rather unfair reputation in mythology. Firstly, that they are out-of-control monsters, and secondly, that their species is transferable like rabies. They are able to shift entirely of their own will and maintain their minds.

Loups-garous would like it made very clear they are not contagious, and the widespread Mundane interpretation is likely confusing being a lycanthrope with one of the many nasty full-moon activated curses throughout history.

Chapter 35 Saga

“I knew it would kill John.” Eighteen years in Blackthorn Correctional had hollowed out the baby fat in the cheeks of Abigail Rhyder since her last photo had been taken, but Saga thought she was otherwise unchanged. Her face was a placid mask across the table in the interrogation room. While Saga did not feel forty was an age marked with excessive wrinkles, she wondered if Abigail never moving her face might have prevented her from forming any. “That is what you wanted to know, yes?”

“Um…” Saga exchanged an uncomfortable look with Reza. “Part of it, I suppose.” She folded her jacket in her lap for comfort, sensing this interview was going to test the concept of it with every answer Abigail gave.

“I lied to them.” Perhaps it was life in jail or the sundering that made her so blunt. She was not angry, nor did she have any lingering disdain for her victim or her cohorts. “I knew they would refuse to do it if I was honest. He had hurt me, and I wanted him dead for it. As far as motives go, I understand this is rather standard reasoning.”

“Weren’t you at least concerned about the consequences of taking a man’s life?” Reza inquired.

“No.”

“Any particular reason?”

“I was twenty-one and not in the habit of thinking through consequences. After the arrest, I assumed at the time it would result in a slap on the wrist.”

“A slap on the wrist for murder?” Where Abigail was stoic in her answers, Saga was a stark contrast, wearing every emotion on her sleeve.

Abigail looked her up and down in the same fashion Saga had seen her mother do countless times. It was a look that equated any exuberant expression with stepping in something unseemly. “Fey courts have rarely given witches much thought,” she explained in her same even tone. It was a tone Saga had grown up with; not quite robotic or monotone, just barely fluctuating enough that it passed as natural and human. But only just. “They give the Mundane even less. You are human. You should know that.”

It was an odd sensation, talking with this woman. She had Audrey’s voice and yet was someone else entirely. She used the same stilted cadence: the logical, untethered voice of reason without the chaos that fueled life. Saga had so strongly associated this quality with her mother that it was unnerving to see a confirmation that this was what a sundering did to one’s personality, no matter who they were before. Saga’s throat felt tight, but she held her focus. “How did you kill John Hingley?”

“I crafted a ritual to invoke the power of Nemesis. I drew the blood of my sisters for power and used a mirror as a portal for the spell to reach him.”

“That mirror,” Saga began. If she could draw anything from this interview, perhaps she could finally corner Iona. If they had Abigail’s testimony, they would not put Avery’s geas at risk. “Where did you get it?”

“Long prior to my crime, I signed a contract, which forbids me to speak on that matter.”

Saga felt her back molars grind together. “Did you steal that item from your employer at Reprise?”

Abigail’s cool blue eyes focused on Saga. “I signed a contract, which forbids me to speak on that matter.”

Saga covered her face with her hands to muffle a frustrated yell.

“Hey.” Reza put a hand on her shoulder.

“No wonder she was so goddamn smug.” Saga stood, using the heavy wool of her coat to hit the back of the chair in frustration. “She has her employees sign a magical NDA? Are you fucking kidding me?”

“Why are you so upset right now?” asked Abigail.

Chapter 36 Avery

“I am not upset,” Theresa Duffy, unaware of the power the beings around her held, interrupted the magistrate at the suggestion. “I am fucking pissed off, Your Honor. I am pissed off because I am just as much of a victim as Professor Hingley, okay? You got that?” She leaned on the rail like she might spit at the echo of Fiore sitting in the magistrate’s chair.