Three cheers for social conventions was probably two cheers too many. I wanted to run after whatever it was I’d seen, but the hall was crowded, and people turned to watch me as I dodged by. My cheeks went red, and I forced myself to slow down.

A moment later, I burst out from the crowd. All the guests and servers were behind me. The empty house stretched ahead of me, dotted with only one or two figures.

I whirled around and searched the group I had emerged from. Everything and everyone looked perfectly normal except—judging by a few of their concerned glances—me.

I turned back around and wandered down the mostly empty hall, feeling grateful for the space and absence of curious eyes. I frowned at the carpet as I walked, and my brain skimmed over its ignorance, trying to pick out a few insights and getting nothing.

I was so distracted, I almost walked into someone.

“Excuse me,” said a warm, friendly voice.

I looked up.

I didn’t know the woman. She was tall and moderately overweight. Her blond hair was twisted up in a knot at the back of her head, and honesty compels me to describe her form-fitting, beige-colored dress as “unbecoming.”

When Darius had taken me to buy an outfit for the trial, he’d forbidden me from buying taupe shoes. He claimed the color was too close to the light gray of my suit pants.

“You need the contrast,” he explained.

I’d given in because one does not argue with a vampire who’s sacrificed his whole day-off to take you to a dozen different clothing stores, but now I understood his insistence in a deep, almost spiritual way. I had been touched by fashion enlightenment.

The shade of the woman’s dress was a bit too close to her skin tone. The sequins sparkled marvelously, but in the bad light of the hall, you had to look twice to see that she wasn’t naked and covered in dew.

That explained it. Here was my nothing, and it was covered in sequins.

I fought back the urge to hug her.

“Were you just down there?” I asked, pointing.

“I was,” she admitted. She looked flustered. “The crowds bother me after a while. It helps if I can step away.”

“I get you, sister.”

She smiled when she heard we were unexpectedly related.

“Is anyone else down there?” I asked.

“In the hall, no, but if you’re looking for a place to hide, I’d recommend against it. Mistress Oliversen and Master Uhler are talking in the study.”

My ears perked up.

Oliversen and Uhler, you say? Yes, any clear-thinking individual would go out of their way to avoid overhearing those two witches, lest there be some unfortunate misunderstanding about eavesdropping.

I waved away her concern. “I’ll only be a minute. I’m heading to the bathroom. Someone’s waiting at the other one.”

She nodded and went on her way.

After she disappeared into the crowd, I snuck down the hall toward the study. When I was close, I flattened myself against the wall and eased nearer to the gap between the door and the doorframe. First I heard the sound of their voices—speaking in turns, low and fast. There was an edge to the noise that reminded me of an argument, and it sounded like they’d been talking for a while. The moment I could make out the words, I stopped and held my breath.

“Where did you hear that?” Ellis said.

My ears were straining for all their worth, but there was no answer.

The mistress spoke again: “It’s true, anyway. So, as you can see, we’re already prepared if anything should happen.”

“Has anything happened?” Cosmo asked.

“No.”

There was another pause.

“Master Uhler?” Ellis prompted.

“Do you ever get tired of trying to do everything yourself?”

What little edge had been in Cosmo’s voice was gone. All that was left was his exhaustion. I could hear each word sinking into it, as if they were boulders being laid in fine sand.

“I can’t say that I do,” Ellis said.

“Maybe it’s easier for you Mistresses. Each coven is its own clam. All you have to do is close up ranks. I’m the one that has to go around, trying to pry you all open. After a few years, it becomes tiring.”

The clam had nothing to say to that.

Cosmo went on, “I’m not your enemy, Ellis. I want to help if I can, but the largest obstacles I face are the people I’m trying to help—”

If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

Ellis’s voice broke in; it was quick and dismissive. “You have helped, Master Uhler. You’ve given me the warning. What else can you do? I hope you don’t expect me to allow you to interfere with my coven.”

With what must have been iron patience, Cosmo said, in his gentle voice, “This may concern more than just your coven.”

“That’s only if your suspicions are correct, and if they are, that’s their concern. I will protect what’s mine.”

A voice right by my ear said, “Emerra.”

My heart shot into my throat as if it’d been sitting in a lit cannon. I had to slap a hand over my mouth to stifle my gasp. Once the white fuzz cleared from my vision and my heart settled into a rhythm that could only compete with the slower drum lines, I grabbed onto Big Jacky’s hand and dragged him away from the study door, deeper into the abandoned hallway.

“What—” he started to say.

One glare from me was enough to get him to shut his flapping jaw bone.

We were a few rooms away, standing next to the stairs that led to the basement, when I finally let go of his hand and turned to him.

“What are you doing?” I whispered fiercely. “You nearly killed me!”

Despite the complete lack of face to have an expression with, Jacky still managed to look skeptical. “It’s not in my nature to ‘nearly’ kill people, Emerra.”

“Oh, yeah. That’s really comforting.” I craned around him to keep an eye on the door.

“I saw you leave the party and followed you,” Jacky explained.

My eyes jerked back to him. “You were following me?”

He nodded.

“And I didn’t see you?” I asked.

“You seemed intent on other things.”

“How long were you standing beside me?”

“I’m not good with time.” He sounded reproachful, as if I should have known that.

And I did know that.

A day and a decade felt the same to Jack Noctis. Whenever he told you he’d be home “soon,” it was a good idea to press him for a few details. He could’ve been standing next to me in that hall for a second, or he could have been there the whole time.

It bothered me to think that someone so important to me could be standing right there and I could miss him.

“What were you doing?” he asked.

“I was spying on Mrs. Oliversen and Cosmo.”

“Why?”

“He was trying to warn her about something.”

“Warn her? About what?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t catch it.” I glanced at the door again. “Can you ask him? I mean, you’re his boss, aren’t you?”

Jacky turned and gazed toward the study. “I’ll talk to Iset.”

“Not Iset, Jacky! Cosmo! I need you to ask Cosmo!”

“I understood the request, Emerra, but my relationship to the Torr is not as simple as that of a boss and his subordinates, and I’d rather not put Mr. Uhler in a position where he would want to lie to me.”

My mouth clamped shut. Hard. A chill wafted through my stomach.

No. Nobody wanted that—not Jacky, not me, and certainly not Cosmo.

“Jacky tends to treat omission of facts different than he does lies,” Darius had said.

I wasn’t sure how Big Jacky treated lies—I was too scared to ask—but I got the impression it was…bad.

I sighed and leaned against the wall beside me. Jacky joined me.

“Are you tired?” he asked.

I nodded.

“Did you have another nightmare last night?”

“Yes, but it’s nothing new. Is Kirby still alive?”

“Yes.”

“Good,” I whispered. A second later, I said, “Jacky, what’s it like in ARC Hall? Can you tell me, or is that some kind of secret?”

“Under the circumstances, I don’t mind. But out of consideration for the coven, I’d recommend you not repeat what I tell you.”

I remembered poor Cosmo, so tired of prying all the time, and Olivia’s scorn for the tradition of silence.

“Is the secrecy all that important?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” Jacky admitted. “It’s easy to see the problems it’s caused. It’s hard to see the ones it might have prevented.”

“Fair enough.”

Jacky pointed his eye sockets at a random bit of empty space near the hall ceiling. “They have a large room used for gatherings and conferences—that’s where the formal dinner tomorrow will be held. They also have numerous smaller rooms for meetings and solitary study, a few offices, and three main libraries.”

“Why do they have three libraries?”

“The first is for storing prototypes and essential examples of devices, tools, and physical charms that have been created by members of the coven. The second is the general reference section. It’s where students and practicing witches can look up information on magical theory and specific spells. The last library is their archives.”

Archives. The word had a distinctly historical sound to it.

“What are in their archives?” I asked.

“I suppose that it’s like most other coven archives. It would contain all the significant records and writings created throughout their history.”

“You suppose? You haven’t been in there?”

“No. That’s the area of the Hall that’s under the most security.”

“They have a room full of magical toys that go boom!—but they think the most important things to protect are their records?”

Jacky sounded puzzled. “Isn’t that logical? Which would you choose to protect—the devices, or the records that teach you how to make them?”

That shut me up.

“Did your question about ARC Hall have something to do with Nolan Kirby’s kidnapping?” Jacky asked.

“I was trying to figure out what might be worth stealing from there.”

“Unfortunately, that question has too many possible answers.”

“It sounds like it.” I dropped my head back against the wall.

Jacky went on, “And I don’t see how that information would be useful. I know that we’re working under the assumption that the kidnapper is also the thief, but how would knowing their target at ARC Hall help?”

“I thought it might help us figure out who they are.”

When Jacky didn’t answer, I rolled my head to look at him. He was regarding me with the deepest part of his empty eye sockets.

I tried to explain. “I was talking to Misserly and Ashworth. I know that both of them would be happy to get a free-pass into that building, but I figured that they wouldn’t be interested in the same stuff. Ashworth would probably go for the spells, but I’ll bet Misserly would be more interested in the devices. If we could figure out what the thief was targeting, then maybe we could figure out what kind of person would benefit the most from having it, and—boom!”

“One of the devices explodes?” Jacky said.

“No! Boom! We have a list of suspects!”

“Ah. I see.” He paused. “There are several problems with your theory, Emerra.”

As far as I could tell, there were nothing but problems with my theory, and most of them centered around the fact that we had no way of knowing what the thief had been after. Anything Jacky had to add would be nothing but icing on the disaster cake.

“Go on,” I said.

“First, thieves don’t always steal for themselves. They often sell what they take.”

“But that wouldn’t matter in this case,” I pointed out. “Not if they were trying to get some kind of tool that would help them with…I don’t know—with whatever they’re planning on doing.”

“That brings me to my second point,” Jacky said. “It isn’t always the person that would most benefit from possessing the stolen object who’s the most willing to steal it. That depends too much on the circumstances of the thief. A sorcerer may normally prefer to obtain a spell, but if it’s a device they need to meet their objective…” Jacky shrugged.

He was right. Before I could draw any conclusions, I’d need a much better idea—or any kind of an idea at all—about what their final objective was.

“Anything else?” I asked.

“One more minor point.”

Why not? That could be the cherry to go on top. I motioned for him to continue.

“I already know the type of magician that would most benefit from obtaining something stolen from ARC Hall, regardless of what that thing is.”

“What type?”

“A witch.”