Robin nodded his admiration of Charlie’s work, but didn’t move to join the group. Instead he wandered over to where Edwin was seated in a kind of nook formed by sofas. Edwin had removed his necktie and his dinner jacket. Robin knew enough now to guess that the small green jars dotting the room’s low tables contained the group’s decanted guidelights, but Edwin’s was loose, hovering above his shoulder. The reason was obvious: Edwin had a book in his lap. He was also taking notes, the unmagical way. Robin failed to dredge up the tiniest scrap of surprise.
The cigarette in Edwin’s other hand was another story. Robin enjoyed the drooping angle of it, the casual pinch of Edwin’s fingers.
“You smoke?” was Robin’s greeting.
“Only in company,” said Edwin. He correctly read Robin’s surprise and went on, almost amused. “Yes. Indeed. Not often.”
“Give us one, then,” said Robin, settling himself on the nearest ottoman.
Edwin blinked and held out a carton. Robin pulled his gold lighter from his pocket and lit up. It had been long enough that the first taste of smoke made him cough.
“I thought you said you’d given it up,” said Edwin.
“I did. I don’t smoke.” Robin smiled at him. “Apart from sometimes. In company.”
Edwin’s eyes strayed back to the lighter, which Robin tossed in his hand. “It was a gift from Maud, when I sat my second Tripos. For luck.”
Edwin’s tiny smile flickered at the side of his mouth. He took a drag from his cigarette as though to banish it, and looked back at his book.
Robin opened his mouth to suggest that Edwin could give himself a night off research, but closed it again, silenced by the twin realisations that Edwin still felt guilty about his failure to lift the curse today, and that Edwin wanted the excuse not to join in the parlour games.
Edwin said, without looking up, “Actually, this one’s a history of the magical families of Cambridgeshire. It’s recent and atrociously pompous and full of spiteful digs at the author’s distant cousins. But it’s the only thing in the library that might tell us something about the Suttons.”
Robin felt a warmth that had nothing to do with the fire, which was crackling away within a deep tiled recess. Edwin’s wry, professorial humour was something that Robin didn’t think many people were allowed to see.
It was Miggsy’s turn in the illusion game when Robin next looked up. He extended a hand to help Belinda out of the chair where she sat, and cradled a spell. The chair filled at once with a gauzy version of Belinda herself, leaning sideways to laugh at something.
“I say, that’s neat.”
Edwin followed his gaze. “That’s an echo, not a constructed illusion. It’s a fiendishly fiddly spell, but if you cast it over a chair and define the time as five minutes ago, it’ll show you who was sitting there.”
Robin’s mind filled instantly with penny dreadfuls and police stories. “You could catch a few criminals that way, wouldn’t you think?”
“I suppose so. You’d have to be precise about the parameters, or else stand there doing it over and over to find the right time. And it takes an immense amount of power to see further back than a day or so.” He glanced at Robin. “It’s like the law of distance, only more so. Time and magic interact . . . oddly. We don’t understand it well.”
Belinda showily pretended to kiss her past self farewell as the image faded. Miggsy began another spell at once, in the clear hope of holding her attention, but Belinda had already flitted off in response to Charlie’s wave.
“I think Miggsy’s sweet on Belinda,” said Robin.
“Oh, yes,” said Edwin. “He’s been in love with her for years.”
At times like this Robin could feel the pull of gossip, the heady temptation of it. It would be so easy to glide from statement of fact to judgement, sly and sweet on the tongue. He did know the appeal. He’d just seen it used as a weapon too many times to have any appetite for it.
Charlie hovered over his wife’s shoulder as she built her own illusion, keeping up a stream of talk and sometimes adjusting her hands. Robin would have been tempted to drive his elbow into the man’s face, but Belinda seemed to brighten under his attention. The butterfly illusion she created was pretty enough, but its movements were wrong. It rose from her cupped hands like a sack being hauled up on a rope.
The butterfly had hardly shaken itself into nothing when Charlie declared it his turn again, and cradled for almost half a minute before a steam-powered carousel sprang up, to general laughs and more clapping. The carousel was miniaturised, man-height yet still filling half the room, an intricate and eerily silent whirl. Belinda stood trailing her fingers at its margins, a fresh cigarette in her other hand. Trudie grasped Charlie’s elbow and gushed her admiration.