He turned to face me, his expression serious. ‘Wanda, I’ve only touched on this in a subtle way before, because I know that your not-so-secret Will Watch has seemed like this non-negotiable thing. But everything’s open to negotiation. I think you should ask for someone else to do it in your place. And not just because you’re obviously stressed and exhausted. I saw the way he was looking at you this morning. And you at him. The last thing I want is for your life to implode. I think … I think you should take a step back from Will.’

  ‘Huh.’ Once again, I was assaulted with the image of my guilty little hand yesterday afternoon. ‘I think you’re right,’ I said with a cracked voice. ‘I’ll speak to the Queen and Judge Blasket about it. And Miles, too. Maybe they can get one of the sióga guards to stand in for me on Will Watch.’

  Finn looked shocked. ‘Wow. You’ve been agreeing with me way more than usual, lately. What gives?’

  ‘Nothing. It’s just that once in … oh, a million times … you speak a little bit of sense. And I …’ My hand went to my head. It was throbbing, and I felt suddenly dizzy and exhausted. Shaking it off, I kept my eyes on the crowd. ‘Oh crap on a cracker, Finn. Look! Baldrick Berry’s up to something.’

  Finn followed my eyes, to where Baldrick was standing and lifting his hand. ‘I’m going to have to freeze him,’ I said.

  As soon as I spoke, the wave of exhaustion grew stronger, overwhelming me. My mind grew blank, and a sick, irritable feeling welled up inside.

  The next thing I knew, Finn was shaking me. ‘Wanda. Wanda, put your finger down. Oh, crap, this is bad.’

  I blinked, feeling woozy as I stared at the scene.

  Baldrick Berry was lying on the ground, and my finger … my finger was pointed straight at him. I yanked my hand down, and gazed at Finn. ‘What did I do? Finn, what did I do?’

  He put his hands on my shoulders as he looked concernedly into my eyes. A circle of Wayfarers surrounded us, while more of our team rushed around Baldrick’s body, keeping the crowd at bay. In a low voice, Finn finally answered my question. ‘Wanda, you just killed Baldrick Berry.’

  8. Excessive Force

  As walls went, it probably wasn’t actually the worst. It was grey, and drab, and I was convinced whoever designed it did it just to make me miserable. I remembered when this colour had been chosen. They said it was a calming shade of grey-green. As far as I could tell, it was just grey.

  Arriving here had been stranger than usual. Here being Witchfield Prison. I had only vague memories of it all – being bundled away from the mansion by my own team, while Shane took Baldrick’s body to the Wayfarer morgue.

  I’d been in and out of consciousness, my head aching, my mind feeling a strange mixture of asleep and awake. I knew we’d made another stop along the way, so that I could be given the once-over at Night and Gale. But the hospital had seemed strange and surreal. The place I was now, though, felt depressingly real.

  I was still in the clothing I’d been wearing that morning, but now I had a bright new addition on my wrists: witch irons. Made of Ire, their job was to suppress my power for longer than one of the more modern disempowerment devices could manage. Not too long, I hoped. Wearing Ire on your skin didn’t feel too bad to begin with – and it certainly wasn’t as horrific as having Pernicious Gnats suck away at your magic – but it could still do damage. Left long-term in those Ire shackles, witches would sicken and eventually die, in an even slower and more painful manner than if we’d consumed the Ire in food or drink. Not exactly a picnic, was it?

  My own coven preferred to use golden rope which was laced with Gentle Ire. We summoned our rope from the Wayfair supply closet (AKA my mammy’s larder). It wrapped itself around the prisoner and bound their power inside it, so they could do no damage to the outside world. It wouldn’t hurt the person it was binding. That kind of Ire was rarer and more expensive, though, which was why these witch irons were standard at Witchfield, while a witch was being processed.

  I knew that this was just one of the steps in the processing procedure, because I knew all of the steps by heart. The next step would be a change of clothes, a physical search and a more thorough disempowerment, one that would last for as long as my incarceration.

  This had been a bad day, but if anyone noticed what I was just beginning to notice, it might get worse. Even though my wrists were bound, I could feel my power quite clearly. There was no doubt in my mind: I’d shaken off witch irons before, and I knew I could do it again. I knew I could do even more, if I tried. My lessons with Erik had proven that, time and again.

  Not that I was going to walk through walls the way I did with Erik, and amble out of the prison. That’d be just about the dumbest thing I could do, because if history had taught me anything, it was that when someone’s body defied the laws of magic, people tended to either run away screaming, or run towards the anomaly whilst carrying torches and wielding pitchforks.

  But as long as I didn’t actually use my magic, no one should notice – not unless they were fae, anyway. I hoped this would be the case, and that the guards would just … leave me be. Maybe I was still in shock, or maybe I was totally delirious, but suddenly I didn’t care about the fact that I was about to be incarcerated. Because honestly, I was exhausted, and a short stay in Witchfield could be just the break I was in need of. I could catch up on my reading. Maybe do some yoga.

  Oh, who was I kidding? If I was about to be chucked into a cell, the only thing I’d be able to concentrate on was Sal Manson’s death – and on how the lethal potion had been sneaked into the prison in the first place. Exhaustion or not, when there was a mystery to be solved, I could never let it rest.

  A grey door opened, and half a dozen people rushed in: Melissa, Christine, my mother and father, Miles, and Finn. Dizzy flew in beside them, and settled on my shoulder. He didn’t say a thing, which was concerning. I looked like trash right now, and I wished more than anything that he’d joke about my appearance, or give me a telling-off for my stupid actions at the mansion. Silence meant that Dizzy was deeply upset, and when he was upset, I could feel it all through me.

  After my mother stopped squeezing me and I came up for air, I said, ‘Nice to see you all, too.’

  ‘Max is outside.’ My dad rubbed my hand. ‘But you’re only allowed two visitors, including Dizzy, so he said it should be me.’

  I smiled sadly. ‘Sounds like a Max thing to do.’ I frowned at the others. ‘But there are way more than two people here.’

  Christine winked. ‘Ah, but the rest of us are here in our official capacity. Melissa and Miles as your legal representatives, Finn and me as your bosses, and … well … Bea is the Minister for Magical Law.’

  ‘Darn straight.’ My mother gave me a little smile. ‘Every now and then, I get to pull a string or two.’

  ‘You look a bit better,’ Melissa said softly, taking a seat across from me. ‘Do you know what’s going on, Wanda? Do you know where you are?’

  ‘Of course I know. I feel that same slight nausea I always feel after travelling from coordinate to coordinate.’ Witchfield was in a constantly shifting sub dimension. The purpose was to make it harder to target and difficult to escape from; in practice, it just made my job a heck of a lot more difficult. ‘And even if the journey hadn’t made me feel sick to my stomach, there’s always the walls.’

  She laughed half-heartedly. ‘Yeah, they keep insisting it’s a calming grey-green, but no way is it grey-green. It’s plain old grey.’

  ‘That’s what I said before you all came in. In my head, obviously. I’m not talking to the walls just yet.’

  ‘But do you know why you’re here?’ Miles pressed, adjusting his cufflinks. ‘Excuse me for asking, but you did seem rather out of it for the past two hours.’

  I gave him a sheepish grin. ‘That’s because I was. But I’m okay now. Well, as okay as a girl can be when she’s just killed Baldrick Berry. It’s kind of a big offence.’

  Miles looked down at the pile of notes and papers in his hands, and laid a photograph on the table in front of me. ‘It might be, depending on the factors involved. These are aura photos, taken by the cameras Finn placed in the area. It’s recorded in film form, too.’

  I leaned across to look at the picture. It was of Baldrick, standing to the side of the podium where Will had been answering questions this morning. There was a horrible shade of green emanating from his right finger.

  ‘He was about to put a death spell in motion,’ I said. ‘So he was going to kill Will.’

  ‘It looks that way,’ said Christine. ‘All that was left for him to do was mouth the word, “Marbh”. And if he’d gotten the word out, the trajectory of his spell would have hit Will square in the chest. You saved a life, which bodes very well for you. Judge Blasket has already said she’ll rush your hearing forward, as soon as your medical and psych evaluations are finished. The public might not know everything that happened with Will in the last couple of years, but you went through it all with him, Wanda. Judge Blasket will understand why you reacted the way you did. She’s the one who tasked you with the not-so-secret job of keeping an eye on him, after all. Part of that job means making sure he doesn’t go, well … bad again.’

  She sat down in a spare chair, crossing her long legs as she continued. ‘And no one knows the truth of Will’s power, do they? For all we know, he could be immortal. The death spell could have been like water off a duck’s back to him. And if he survived, his reaction would have been uncertain. You had to act, Wanda, and you had to act quick. And what with the stress and exhaustion of all of the extra work … I think that the judge will rule in your favour.’

  I stared at Finn. ‘You didn’t tell them, then?’

  Finn gritted his teeth. ‘Holy Hecate, Wanda! Are you trying to get yourself in even more trouble?’

  ‘Tell us what?’ my mother asked.

  ‘I did have good reason to believe that whatever Baldrick was attempting wouldn’t work,’ I admitted. ‘We’d warned Will someone might try something. He placed a protection spell on himself, and on Rover and Boxer, too. So … I knew nothing would happen to him.’

  Christine’s face fell, but she did her best to look unruffled. ‘Well, yes, but like I said, none of us know what Will is capable of if he goes bad again. And someone trying to kill him really could have set him off. So just because you knew about the protection spell, it doesn’t matter. There was still every reason for you to panic.’

  I shifted in the chair. My body was cramping up. ‘I don’t have the right to kill someone just because I’m afraid,’ I said. ‘What I was supposed to do was freeze Baldrick, and then disempower him. That’s what I was trained to do. That’s what I intended to do, too, and I have no idea why I didn’t. But either way, it’s on me.’

  ‘Is it, though?’ Melissa arched a brow. ‘Wanda, we all know about the sleepwalking. But Finn said you were out of it even when you killed Baldrick. And considering how you were when you were at the hospital, I believe him. I think you’ve been doing more than just buying some apple tart and cake in your sleep. You’ve been blacking out during the day too, haven’t you?’

  My mother gasped, and rushed to comfort me again. ‘You should have told us. You should have gone to a healer.’

  ‘That was next on my long list of things to do,’ I said, through a mouthful of her hair. ‘But it doesn’t matter, in the end. Even if I get a hearing with Judge Blasket, there’s only so much she can do for me. The law on this is clear – we made it clear when we got rid of the last Minister for Magical Law and her Peacemakers. The best we’ll be able to prove will be Excessive Force with Diminished Capacity. Excessive Force will give me a minimum sentence of two months, then desk duty for two years. If she agrees that my capacity was diminished, I might not get a jail term, but I’ll still have a lot of retraining, and I’ll never leave the front desk of the station again. And if the prosecution can prove malice, then my prison term will be even longer. It is what it is. And I’m okay with it. Well … I’m not okay with it, I guess. But I’m a big girl. I’ll deal.’

  ‘You won’t have to deal with it, because there won’t be a prosecution,’ said my mother. ‘And Judge Blasket knows perfectly well what you’ve had to deal with when it comes to Will, so I think she might even let you stay on house arrest until the hearing. I–’

  ‘Mam, no,’ I interrupted. ‘You can’t be seen to give me preferential treatment. You can’t flout the law just because I’m your daughter. You’ll lose your position if you do that.’

  She shook her head, her mouth open. ‘You think I give two flying flips about my position? Wanda, I’d flout a million laws for you.’

  I sniffed back a tear. ‘I know you would. Because you’re my mammy. But you know that I’d never let you do that. We’ve come too far to mess it up now. I did something bad today, and all the excuses in the world don’t matter. We already know that there’s nothing physically wrong with me – I don’t remember everything that Florence said at the hospital, but I remember that much. She said I’m stressed and exhausted, and in shock, but that she couldn’t find anything else wrong. And I already knew I wasn’t well before I went to work this morning. I should have taken the day off. That’s on me.’

  ‘No,’ said Finn. ‘That’s on me. I’m your boss, Wanda. I could see that things were getting too much for you. I shouldn’t have put you on duty this morning. Especially not when it was Will’s life on the line.’

  There was a knock on the door, and Milly, one of the prison guards, poked her head around. She was a tall, fair-haired woman with a friendly smile. ‘Sorry, guys,’ she said, ‘but Wanda has to go for her disempowerment soon. You’ve got about five more minutes.’ She looked at Dizzy. ‘And I’m sorry, little guy, but it’s not policy to let familiars stay until a witch has been sentenced. We have to know how long the term is before we can decide if the familiar should get to stay. It’s a whole lot of bureaucracy, I’m afraid.’

  Dizzy buried himself in my neck, still silent, and I said, ‘Thanks, Milly. We’ll finish up now.’

  The door closed again. ‘Listen, I love you all so much,’ I told my friends and family. ‘And I know you just want what’s best for me. So just … let me stay here, until my evaluation’s done, okay? And when I get out of here, I will be expecting a party.’

  After some quick hugs, they began to trail out of the room. Melissa gently took Dizzy from me, and cradled him. I was away from him a lot, when I was at work, or when he was out doing his bat stuff at night. But this would be a longer spell apart, and my heart ached for the little bat.

  Finn was last out the door, and I called him back. ‘Just two seconds please, boss,’ I said. ‘Work stuff.’

  9. I Will Be a Wayfarer Again

  With the others outside, he sat on the table in front of me.

  ‘I know what you’re going to say before you even say it, Wanda. You think this is the end of your short career. And if it is, you want to go down fighting. You don’t even mind staying in here, not as long as it helps you figure out how Vernon Samuels sneaked in that Night potion.’

  ‘Pish! That’s crazy talk, Finn.’

  ‘Is it? So what did you want to say then?’

  I sighed. ‘All right. I might have been thinking something along those lines.’

  ‘Well, duh. I know you, Wanda. So I know that apart from being the proud owner of a stupidly massive martyr complex, you also like to distract yourself from your real problems by working way too hard. Like right now, thinking you can spend your prison time sleuthing the days away. Do you know how crazy that sounds, Wanda? For one thing, women and men don’t even sleep in the same blocks. And Vernon’s in solitary right now.’

  ‘They mix men and women in the atrium during the day, and during some classes and things, too,’ I pointed out (somewhat defensively). ‘And Martin’s not looking great, is he? At least I’ll get to keep an eye on him.’

  ‘Oh, good goddess!’ Finn stood up and paced the room, pulling at his hair. ‘Wanda, I saw Rover sniffing you last night. What did he say? Did he tell you your path is diverging again, and that there’s something more destined for you and Will? Because if he did, then I’m going to kill him.’

  I couldn’t help it. I giggled. ‘You couldn’t kill Rover. He’s a pitbull during full moon, and he’s not far off it the rest of the time. Anyway, that’s not what he said. That’s … I mean, why would he even say that? There is no destiny for me and Will. That changed when he opened the Whisperer’s Return. Max is my destiny now. And I love him.’

  ‘Mm hm.’

  ‘I do. And I’d never choose Will over Max, not after everything that’s happened. Although … I … I might have clasped my hand on top of Will’s when I was at his flat yesterday. And he says I said some things. Romantic things. But I think I blacked out, because I don’t actually remember saying them. I mean, I wouldn’t say romantic things to Will. In retrospect, I should have stopped my Will Watch a little bit sooner than I did. I might have some unresolved issues.’

  ‘Mm hm.’

  ‘You’re doing it again. Don’t think I don’t notice. You say “Mm hm” so I’ll keep going off on a tangent. Well, tangent over. You’re not getting anything else out of me.’

  ‘Mm hm.’ He sighed. ‘Well, what did Rover say when he sniffed you?’

  ‘Oh, right.’ I frowned. ‘He said there was something off about my smell. And he didn’t mean my body odour. He … he didn’t really seem sure, but he was all for the idea of me going to a healer.’

  ‘Huh.’ Finn sat back down again. ‘So yesterday at Will’s flat, and this morning, were they the only two daytime blackouts?’