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“I’ll take the case, but I have a few conditions.”
My mum crosses her arms. “Conditions? We’re talking about your brother’s life.”
“And I’m the only one who has a chance in hell of getting him released, so we do it my way.”
“Go on,” Dad says.
“The first point’s pretty simple. No magic and no intimidation of witnesses. Inside or outside of court. By you or by me. I’ll neutralise Gabriel-fucking-Thornber’s magic, but I won’t use any of my own. For my own protection and for my conscience.”
Mum frowns like she’s about to protest, but Dad simply nods. “Fine. We can stick to that for now. If your legal skills don’t seem to be working, we’ll review as a family.”
“Sure. Next, it’s against all my professional ethics, but I’ll lie for Bren if I have to. In return, I need the whole truth from all of you.”
“You’re our daughter, his sister,” Mum replies. “No one’s going to lie to you.”
It’s striking that, so far, no one’s explicitly said Bren didn’t do it. I’m assuming he didn’t, but I wouldn’t one hundred per cent put it past him. He certainly hates the Thornbers, even more than the rest of the family. With the possible exception of me.
I don’t ask my parents the question again. I’ll discuss it with my brother. With my client.
“Glad to hear it. But for the moment, I’m your lawyer and that’s it. Which means we definitely can’t socialise as a family, and I’m going to keep my distance from the rest of the town, too. I need to focus and keep my cover intact. We’ll have the party to end all parties once Bren’s out.”
“We have a deal,” Dad says, with a smile.
For a moment, I almost think he’s going to formalise it with a lien mark, but I’m being ridiculous. Besides, he knows as well as I do that when it comes down to it, those sorts of theatrics aren’t necessary. A deal’s a deal and a debt’s a debt, whether it’s branded on your skin or simply spoken out loud.
FOUR
Walking into a prison is hardly an unfamiliar experience for me, even if HMP Wakefield—originally built in the Tudor era, rebuilt in Victorian times, and looking halfway between a haunted asylum from a horror film and a Soviet hellhole—is particularly grim. It’s been home to murderers and rapists for four hundred years and you can feel it in the air.
Brendan’s not my first client, and he won’t be my last, but I usually keep my composure in these situations by drawing a cloak of professionalism tightly around me. I’ve always got a little thrill out of the way that hulking great men who treat women like crap shrink into themselves at the sight of tiny little me. My tailored suit, stern expression, and big words are a magic all of their own. It’s amazing how much respect you can force out of someone who’d never normally show politeness to anyone, let alone a young woman, when you’re the one thing standing between them and a long sentence.
Some of my clients are unfairly accused or acted out of desperation. Some, I have to admit, can be pretty unpleasant. But perhaps partially as a reaction to the way my family has always run Mannith like a medieval fiefdom where their will is law, I believe in the rule of law. Never in lying for my clients, but always in putting their story forward, ensuring a fair trial and, one way or the other, seeing justice prevail.
But all of that’s when I’m dealing with faceless criminals and anonymous victims of the system. Knowing it’s my brother I’m here to see makes it a thousand times harder to summon the detachment I need. I’ve seen family visitors far too many times. Those who cry, those who scream abuse at the staff, and everything in between. I look like my usual polished, educated self. But inside, I feel like one of them.
I also feel vaguely hungover. I’d forgotten how much my family can put away when we all get together. The drinks were on the house at The Windmill, and Liam kept those gin and tonics flowing.
Even through my self-inflicted headache, it’s evident from the moment I step into the visiting area that Brendan’s not the only practitioner inside. I can feel their presence. Gabriel’s men, no doubt, there to keep an eye on Bren, if not try something worse. It’s rare anyone from Mannith ends up in jail, despite their crimes. They must have been planted. They wouldn’t be able to do overt magic given the protections build into the prison walls, but practitioners who can’t defend themselves are as susceptible to a physical attack as anyone else.
I’ve been reading through the case files this morning, and things don’t look great. Niall Thornber was shot in the chest at point-blank range, in his own home. There’s no hope of spinning this as an accident.
The murder weapon was a Victorian silver revolver, left at the scene, which I recognise as an old Sadler family heirloom. There are several similar guns in town—an ancestor of ours had them made and distributed to his closest acolytes—but this one was covered in Bren’s prints. Which is odd, because if Bren wanted to kill someone, I’d expect him to use magic. It’s cleaner, and much easier to present as a natural cause and keep out of a human court.
Then there are the witnesses. The star attraction is Gabriel himself, who supposedly saw the murder. But the prosecution—or more likely, Gabriel—have mustered any number of further witnesses who claim to have seen Bren on the night of Niall’s death. Some of them supposedly saw him out and about in town at the start of the evening, in contradiction of his alibi. Others claim to have caught sight of him later on, close to Thornber Manor around the time of the murder.
“Your client’s in here, Ms Elner,” the prison guard says, pointing towards a private meeting room. “I’ll wait outside.”
I nod. He lets me in, then locks the door behind me. I immediately throw a bubble of silence around the room. The prison is meant to respect client-counsel privilege, but you can never be too careful, and I can get away with tiny bits of protective magic like that without triggering the lien.
There’s a hint of resistance in the air. Presumably, it’s from the wards that would stop me from simply breaking Bren out of there, but they let that token spell go.
The room is chilly and smells faintly of drains. I swallow hard at the sight of Brendan, sitting on a plastic chair across a worn table under a sickly florescent light. He’s always had delicate features, a slender build and wide, faraway eyes.Too much time practising magic, too little time down the gym, as Liam is fond of telling him. In stark contrast to Liam and Shane, of whom the exact opposite is true, he looks a lot sweeter than he is.
On one level, he’s his usual beautiful self today, but his almost feminine charms are stretched to breaking point. He’s just a little too pale, a little too thin. Some of the hyper-masculine swagger that balances out his looks and makes the overall effect work has dimmed. And more worryingly, so has most of the all-encompassing clouds of magic that always used to surround him. I’ve not seen him in years, so it could be the passage of time, but I’d put money on the fact that he looked as glowing as I remember him being, right up until the point he was incarcerated.
I toss prison rules and professional appropriateness to one side, dash around to his side of the table and throw my arms around him. There’s probably CCTV, but my bubble should block it. “It’s so good to see you.”
“And you, at long last. Are you here as my sister or my lawyer?”
