I held up a hand. ‘If you’re talking about the Spire on O’Connell Street, then that’s kind of out in the open, don’t you think? If she freezes me, a whole lot of humans will see it happen.’

  He shrugged. ‘Then I guess you’ll just have to deal with it. Or, y’know, use some initiative and make yourself invisible. I hear you’re good at sneaky spells like that.’

  I gritted my teeth and took myself to the central strip on O’Connell Street, standing beneath the Spire. It was cold and raining, and pigeons were everywhere. I looked up at the eyesore, as Erik had called it. Considering it was incredibly pointy, it had always seemed pointless to me. I missed the old Anna Livia monument (or the Floozie in the Jacuzzi as people so fondly called it). But no matter what statue I was next to, I was still very much out in the open, so I put myself under a quick invisibility spell, and waited. And waited … and waited …

  People automatically avoided me, sensing that the spot was very much taken. But the pigeons … well, they just kept right on bumping into me, and then staring angrily at the spot where invisible-me was standing. One of them stood there for a good few minutes, glaring at the ground where he should have been able to walk.

  I moved aside politely, and he moved at the same time, banging into my ankles. We went on that way for ten minutes or so before I picked the pigeon up and laid him down behind me. In another world, I thought, I was known as Dances With Pigeons.

  He cooed some words that could have been ‘Thank you.’ That’s what I was going to tell myself, anyway. Because today, I needed a win. I needed to know that I was of value to someone’s life – even if that someone was a pigeon that was currently pecking at a piece of a discarded burger on the street.

  My dance with the pigeon had confirmed it: I definitely was not frozen. Maybe this was all just a big ruse. Right now, the rest of them were back at the college, having a great laugh at poor old Wanda. Old being the operative word. I might be just twenty-two, but I felt so much older than the seventeen- and eighteen-year-olds in my classes. I was beginning to think that it was time for me to head back, when Alan finally turned up.

  He rushed frantically around, wringing his wrists and hissing, ‘Wanda! Where are you, Wanda?’

  I made myself visible and walked over to him. ‘Hey, Alan.’

  He jumped when he saw me, a hand fluttering to his heart. ‘You’re way too good at that. Anyway, I brought a message from Professor Shannon. He said that if I got here and you weren’t frozen, you had to take a turn trying to freeze Jess again. She’s standing on a table in the college canteen.’

  I frowned. ‘Why didn’t Erik come and see if Jess had managed to freeze me?’

  Alan shrugged. ‘He seemed pretty confident that she wouldn’t. Oh, and Wanda … Jessica gave me a message to pass on to you, too. She said if you fail to freeze her, then you can come to her party tonight. It’s gonna be mega, Wanda. Everyone else is going. It’d be nice to hang out with you outside of class for a change. Anyway …’ He raised his hand, preparing to click his fingers. ‘… I’d better get back now.’

  As I looked at the spot where Alan had been, Terrence poked his head out of my bag. ‘I know you’re going to freeze her anyway,’ he said. ‘If it’s any consolation, Bess didn’t have a lot of friends at college, either. And she turned out okay. I mean, a bit moody. And disagreeable. And kind of mean sometimes if I’m honest. Hmm. Y’know what? Maybe you should pretend to be less than you are if that’s what it takes to make friends.’

  I stroked his cute little head. ‘She was your witch though, right? So she must have had some good points.’

  Terrence looked as though he was thinking it over very carefully. ‘Y’know, she did have one really good point. She ignored me most of the time, so I was able to get plenty of reading done.’

  I smiled at him and gave him a little kiss. ‘Swings and roundabouts, Terrence. Swings and roundabouts. But y’know what? You were right to begin with. I’m not going to pretend to be less than I am.’

  I stood still, concentrating. I pictured Jessica, felt her in my mind, and whispered, ‘Conáil.’ And then I clicked my fingers and took myself to the canteen to see if it worked.

  Erik and the class were standing there, staring up at the table upon which Jessica stood. Erik turned to me, a strange look on his face, and then drew me aside. ‘You do know that doing a spell from that distance would take even a Mage Monk years to learn.’ His hands were on my shoulders, and he was looking seriously my way. ‘I’m going to have to go back to trying to teach the others how to freeze from a distance. But as for you … we’re going to need some one to one time, Wanda. Can you turn up at six a.m. tomorrow?’

  ‘I dunno,’ I replied. ‘Six is usually a busy time for me, Professor. I have all that drooling on my pillow to do.’

  He laughed, and an almost fond look came over his face. It was completely unexpected, and a little bit disturbing. ‘You’ve got your mother’s sense of humour,’ he said. ‘But you’ve also got her work ethic and determination, which is why I know you will turn up at six. And when you do, you and I are going to try a full-on Sliogán spell.’

  I sighed, glancing over at Jessica, who was sending a dagger-laden glare my way. ‘Sure. I’ll be there at six. It’s not like I’m going to be hung over after all those parties I’m not invited to, now is it?’

  11. Chasing the Dream

  When I reached the library for my lunch date with Adeline, she was nowhere to be found. But there was one unexpected person, standing at the gated entrance to the Bad, Bad Books, gripping the bars.

  ‘Will?’

  He jumped and looked over at me. ‘I … I just had to see where she died.’

  I joined him at the gate. ‘Well, you’re a board member, so you can go pretty much anywhere you want in the college, I guess,’ I said. ‘So did you know Bess well?’

  He turned to look at me, his eyes haunted. ‘I hired her. Well, me and the other board members. We knew Adeline didn’t like her but … Adeline’s not exactly popular with a lot of the board.’

  ‘Em, speaking of the rest of the board, Finn was telling me that it’s proving a tad hard to get in touch with any of them.’

  Will shook his head, an angry look in his eyes. ‘Of course it is. Useless shower of … well, you know what they are. I do know they were trying to get me to go along to some secret powwow they hold every autumn. I don’t know the location, because I declined the invitation. Apparently they drink a lot of brandy, play a lot of golf, and spend a great deal of money that could be better spent on scholarships. But if it’s any consolation, I doubt they’d be of any help to the investigation.’

  I wasn’t so sure about that, and the fact that they were so hard to find was making me even more suspicious. It was just a little bit too convenient that everyone on the College Board, except for Will, was absent at the precise time that a woman they hired had been murdered.

  ‘So is it true that they still have no idea who killed her?’ Will asked.

  ‘It’ll get figured out,’ I said. ‘Everything does. Did you … did you like Bess, Will? It’s just that I heard you had an argument with her recently.’

  He squeezed his eyes shut and started to shiver. ‘It’s true. I did argue with her. She wasn’t doing her job. Adeline hated her, and I couldn’t blame her. I … I was beginning to think I’d made a really big mistake in hiring her.’

  ‘But it wasn’t down to you, was it? It’s not like you forced the other members to hire her.’

  ‘Maybe. I don’t know. I don’t know anything anymore. Except Bess is dead, and my dad is dead and … I can’t help thinking they’re connected.’ He opened his eyes again, looking intently at me. ‘You’ll be helping out with this, won’t you? I mean, I know you’ve left the Wayfarers but … you’ll be helping out?’

  ‘Yes,’ I admitted. ‘I’ve agreed to help out as much as I can.’

  He shot me a lopsided grin. ‘I knew you would. You’re so good, Wanda. Have I ever told you how much I wish I could be like you?’

  ‘Hmm. Once or twice, maybe.’ And no matter how many times I heard him say it, I was never sure I actually lived up to his opinion of me. Sure, I’d put a few bad guys in prison, but I also did some not so wonderful stuff. Just last week I’d put an empty carton of orange juice back in the fridge because I knew how much it annoyed Emily.

  ‘I’ve told you I didn’t kill my dad, and I meant it. But Wanda … I’m not a good person. Not like you. Because honestly? Now that I’ve gotten over the initial shock, I’m glad he’s dead. He can never hurt you again. He can never hurt anyone again. Maybe the person who killed him did us all a favour.’

  As he spoke, a tear streaked down his cheek, and I reached out to wipe it away. ‘You’re right,’ I said. ‘He wasn’t a good person. But you can be. You already are, according to Candace Plimpton – and you know I hold that little girl’s opinion in very high regard.’

  ‘Tell me if it’s too soon,’ he said with a husky laugh. ‘But … tonight will you have dinner with me at my house? Kind of like our first date, except this time you won’t be spying on me.’ He grinned, rubbing away another tear and looking even more intently at me

  I stared back at him. This should be the time when my heart was skipping about three dozen beats, I thought. Or feeling … something.

  But while I was waiting for those feelings to rush on in, Will leant in, with a question in his eyes. I knew that question. It was the ‘Can I kiss you now?’ question. The question I’d been waiting for, and hoping for, for so very very long.

  I nodded, stood up on my tip toes, and brought my lips to his. At the back of my mind, I couldn’t help but recall that what we were doing now had already been prophesied. Kissing him now, here, was something I had already seen myself doing. Knowing that gave the whole thing a fateful feel. Everything was unfolding, exactly as it had been predicted.

  Yip, that was what was going on at the back of my mind – but at the front? At the front I was thinking that this felt nothing like I’d expected it to feel. Will’s kiss was deep, and searching, and the fact that he no longer had a moustache was definitely improving things. But from my side of the kiss, I felt like I was still looking for him. I felt like I was chasing the memory of the kiss we had at the Masked Ball. I felt like I was chasing the tingles, and the weak knees.

  So I kissed him deeper, and longer, trying my hardest to find those feelings again. Because I knew they were there. When I thought about Will, I wanted him. Every time I saw him since the first time we met, I had wanted him. Now … now I still didn’t feel like I had him, even though his lips were locked with mine.

  But I was a hard worker. Such a hard worker that I would have kept right on kissing this incredibly handsome guy until the kiss became what I wanted it to be. Kissing him at the Masked Ball had been the stuff that dreams are made of, and I would chase that dream until it was mine. I probably would have gone on kissing him until the library was shut (or at least until I got hungry, anyway) had some very loud throat-clearing not interrupted us.

  We jumped apart to find Adeline standing a few feet away, a mischievous smile on her face. ‘Sorry for interrupting, Wanda. And sorry I’m late for our lunch date. But … I’m ready if you are.’

  I glanced at Will, who had turned beetroot red, dimples and all. ‘See you tonight?’

  He nodded, and, in a hoarse voice he said, ‘Tonight, Wanda. I can’t wait.’

  12. Elemental, My Dear Wanda

  ‘So,’ said Adeline, unlocking a drawer in her desk. ‘Will Berry. I did not see that one coming. What about you and Max?’

  ‘Are you about to show me the page Bess had in her hands?’ I asked, ignoring her question. She knew just as well as everyone else did that Max was firmly under Emily’s thumb, and that he was unlikely to extricate himself anytime soon. ‘Finn said it wasn’t from the book.’

  Adeline let out a troubled breath. ‘It’s not,’ she said, opening up a folder. There was a white sheet of paper inside. I could see that it had been straightened out. I could also see that it was one hundred percent blemish free – except for the ripping marks down one side, where it had been torn from a book.

  ‘So … I’m guessing you’re not going to tell me this is some sort of magical paper, and that it’s actually much older and deadlier than it looks?’

  ‘I almost wish I was about to say that. I’ve already performed an origin spell to discern its age and where it comes from. It’s from a fairly new forest, and it was produced, oh … six weeks ago.’ She pointed at the page. ‘But you can see the tear marks. It was ripped out of a book. Just not the book. The nameless book that might well be in some very bad hands.’

  I bit my lip. Finn and I were the only ones who knew what the book was called, and I had no intention of going against the Queen’s wishes in that regard. ‘How often do you check on the vault?’ I asked.

  ‘Every single day,’ she told me. ‘But obviously I’ve never opened the book while I check – it can’t be opened. I suppose I can’t really know what the pages say but I can say for sure that this is not one of them.’

  ‘Yeah, it seems that way,’ I agreed. ‘But I know one thing. Unless I get an enormous veggie burger down my gullet in the next five minutes, I’m never going to be able to figure this out.’

  ≈

  I did get that veggie burger down my gullet. Also some chips, onion rings and salad, washed down with an enormous glass of orange juice. Adeline talked a lot while we ate, about trees, and paper, and origin spells, and all the reasons why that page was definitely not from the stolen book.

  But while she talked, I couldn’t help but wonder: what if it was from the stolen book? Or, at least, the book that was stolen on the day of Bess’s murder.

  Bess had those keys for two weeks, after all. Was it possible that the thief stole away with a copy instead of the original? Could that be the reason why they killed Bess – because the book she gave them was not the book they expected to find?

  Bess had snatched that page for a reason. Maybe to prove to whoever found her that the book in the vault was a copy. And if it was a copy … I shuddered. If it was a copy, then who had the original?

  ≈

  After I said goodbye to Adeline, I headed towards the Wayfarer station. Or at least I started to head that way, right up until I decided to go elsewhere.

  The Queen told me that the Elemental Seat could give me power, but maybe it could give me some extra smarts, too. Right now, I needed all the help I could get.

  ‘What do you think, Terrence?’ I asked, looking into my bag. He was still reading my e-reader. ‘I told you what the Queen said about the Elemental Seat, right? Fancy flying on my broom to take a look?’

  He poked his head out, blinking in the sunlight. He’d abandoned his broken glasses and it turned out that, like many Bookworms, they’d just been there for show. ‘Flying would be fine, as long as you take it slow. I don’t do well with reading while I’m in motion, and I’m in the middle of a book called Detective Draper Does it Again. I’m not sure what he does again, seeing as this is the first of the books I’ve read, but I’m sure it’ll give me some idea of how to solve Bess’s murder.’

  ‘Well, it sure can’t hurt,’ I said, rubbing his head. So, he was reading detective novels now. Did that mean he was moving on, or he was in denial? ‘Listen, I heard that Adeline threw some coffee over you,’ I said. ‘Is em … is that true?’

  I didn’t have her pegged for a suspect anymore, but I needed to know this nonetheless. She was my friend, and I liked her a lot. But I couldn’t stay friends with the kind of person who’d hurt a sweetheart like Terrence. He’d remained quiet all through lunch, not poking his head out even once. Was it because he was afraid of her?

  ‘Oh no, she didn’t throw coffee at me. Gosh, no. I’d left a pile of books on the floor, and she tripped over them and broke her favourite coffee mug in the process. A little bit of her coffee dripped on me, but it was my fault, not hers. I feel terrible about it, to be honest. That’s why I didn’t pop out to say hello while you were eating. Well, that and I was reading.’

  With a rush of relief, I made sure he was well tucked in, and that my bag was safely arranged, and then I swung my leg across the shaft of my broom, and kicked off the ground.

  ≈

  I set my broom down on the same wide stone windowsill I’d flown to all those months ago, when I first had the vision of this place. As I hopped through onto the rickety, dirty floorboards, Terrence said, ‘Minister Plimpton and everyone before her swore that this place was inadmissible. That the room was unstable.’

  ‘Fun fact, Terrence – sometimes politicians lie. My mother keeps meaning to get around to doing something about it, now that she’s Minister,’ I said. ‘But there’s so much more on her agenda. The place is in a bad state, but it’s sound. And even if it wasn’t, I’m a witch. Doesn’t really matter if the floor falls through when I can fly us to safety, does it?’

  ‘Suppose not,’ he replied with a wry smile. ‘Now, where’s this throne?’

  I looked around. And then I looked around again, and again …

  Finally, I walked to the spot on the floor where I’d seen the throne before. The wood was unsullied there, the way wood is when it’s underneath furniture or a carpet instead of getting stained by footfall and bleached by the sun.

  ‘It’s … it’s not here,’ I said in a weak voice. ‘I don’t understand it.’

  Terrence jumped out of my bag, then looked around and around the room, much as I had done. ‘You’re sure it wasn’t in a different spot?’

  ‘Where?’ I asked, flapping my arms around the place in confusion. ‘Look at the floor. This is definitely where it was.’