“We were flattered you volunteered us,” murmured Lady Cheetham.
Jack found his eyes on George’s brass-headed walking stick, his mind outlining the series of movements that would be needed to snatch it and use it to smash in his cousin’s teeth. For George the stick was a true affectation, one he’d assumed even before Jack returned from the Boer. Perhaps he thought Jack had decided to copy his style. He could believe what he wished.
In the face of threats.
Jack had said it himself, after Violet’s hearing: crisis justified the seizure of power. The Barrel’s destruction had been a horribly perfect event for the head of the magical police. But George had planned to lock them all up for theft and conspiracy anyway. They would have been scapegoats regardless. Edwin had just rendered things … dramatic.
“And I would hardly be so impolite as to arrest my cousin, Lord Hawthorn, in front of his mother,” said George, as if aware of where Jack’s thoughts had run. He gave Jack a small we’re chaps in this together sort of smile.
Alan would have formed a puddle of seething rage. Even Jack felt a lump of clay in his stomach at how unfair it was. George knew power, cultivated power, and had made a life’s study of how to amass it. The Earl of Cheetham’s heir was not the sort of person who was easily arrested. Even by magicians. Consequences were for lesser creatures.
“I appreciate it,” said Lady Cheetham. Her hands were unmoving in her lap.
“Aunt Polly, I commend your sentiment in wanting to provide a safe haven for your son,” said George. “But what happened to the Barrel—what Hawthorn and his associates did—was extremely serious. A real tragedy. Magicians cannot afford to be at war amongst ourselves. We need order, and laws to abide by, or we’re no better than animals.”
“And Coopers to enforce it, I suppose,” said Jack.
George’s look became the point of a knife. “We do our part. Speaking of which—I don’t suppose you can shed any light on where Edwin Courcey might be found? Or Miss Violet Debenham? Or any of the other criminals you so unfortunately chose to associate with?”
“No,” said Jack.
George’s small smile appeared again, but the knife behind it hadn’t been sheathed. A spasm of real fear shook down Jack’s spine. He thought again of Morris, nowhere to be seen. He thought of Maud’s bruised face on the Lyric, and black runes crawling up Robin’s arm, and Alan’s grimace beneath the memory-charm. And three dead women who’d denied George their power for as long as they could.
“No,” echoed George. He turned back to Lady Cheetham. “The gala, then. I’m impatient to see the finished grounds. I take it the sympathy markers my men laid are still in place?”
Lady Cheetham nodded.
George cradled a spell and then traced four quick, invisible runes on the corners of the low table, which would normally contain a tea service when visitors arrived. Today it contained only a vase in which a cheerful arrangement of dahlias and bellflowers had been sitting, kept fresh by charms, for several weeks.
The vase and flowers vanished beneath an eruption of green and brown and blue and grey, arising from the table like boiling mud. It was the Cheetham estate: an illusion built in sympathy and showing everything from the gatehouse to the Lady’s Oak itself, nearly a foot above the table surface. George looked at it for a while, nodding as if it were a prize-winning cake he’d baked himself, then cradled a quick negation to vanish it.
“Very nice,” he said. “I’d like to see the final view from above the grotto, I think. For security purposes.”
“Jack,” said Lady Cheetham. She stood. “It’s such a busy day, with all the deliveries we’re expecting. Mrs. Sturt has been waiting on me already. Would you do the honours?”
Would Jack take George for a walk to the top of the lake, alone? George had not believed Jack’s denial for a second. He might not arrest Jack and drag him back to London, but he still might turn to some of the Coopers’ less savoury methods to make him talk.
Jack thought of the rug tassel thudding against his ankle. He exhaled.
“Yes,” he said. “I can show George around, and show him back to his car afterwards. I expect he’s far too busy to stay long.”
“Thank you, my dear. George.” And she turned, rigid as if she were carved from something, and left the room. Jack didn’t think she was running away. He suspected she was removing herself from the temptation to take George around the vegetable patch, stab him with a pitchfork, magic him into fertiliser, and use him to cover the lettuces.
So Jack took his cousin up to the lake. He avoided the folly; he had no idea where Dufay currently was, any more than Morris, and had a sudden, alarming vision of the two of them coming face-to-face.
George went right to the balustrade and looked down onto the sparkling water, then turned a slow circle, taking it all in. The circular stone-edged beds of cornflowers and carnations, hydrangeas and lupins; the fragrance of phlox and honeysuckle mingling on the breeze. Olive trees silvered in the light, and small orange trees in white pots glowed with fruit. One of the peacocks strutted around near the top of the slope, picking idly at the lawn and occasionally shaking out the profusion of his tail. It was a triumph of the English country garden, with touches of Mediterranean luxury. And it looked now exactly as it would on the evening of the equinox—minus several magical flourishes of Violet’s yet to come.
“What’ll be done about the weather in the days leading up to it?” George asked. “It’s not been a wet summer so far, but the last thing we want is to be squelching around on muddy grass.”
It seemed a genuine question.
“There’s a magician in the village who’s coordinated weather-spells before. Polly will send for help if it’s needed.”
“Fiddly spells of power are a terrible headache to coordinate,” said George. “It’d be so much easier if it could all be done by one magician, wouldn’t it?”
“If I killed you now,” Jack said, “I wonder how much trouble I’d be saving us?”
The wind ruffled the lake’s surface. A series of ripples showed the invisible rolls of fish, and a single dragonfly darted out like a jewel dangled on a string.
George turned, revealing the motion of his free hand. He was rolling one of those magical glass baubles beneath his palm on the flat marble rail.
“Perhaps you might be fast and lucky,” George said. “But we are on your land, cousin. A violent death here would hurt you and Aunt Polly far more than anyone else.”
That answered a little more of the question as to why George had pushed for Cheetham as a location. Jack felt like Robin must have in Violet’s hearing: suddenly very sick of talking around the important things.
“And whatever you’re planning to do at the gala, with the Last Contract—are you going to pretend that won’t involve violence?”
George picked up the bauble—purple, glittering like a bruise shot with silver—and held it as if considering its weight. “Perhaps not, if you and your interfering friends don’t try to prevent what needs to happen. It can truly be a night of celebration. A coming-together of magicians.”