Chapter 1

The woman deciding whether I could be trusted to protect people placed a glass bird between us. Beside the application forms, she set a short wooden ramp and held a steel ball at the top. Marble-sized, and heavy enough to shatter those thin, outspread wings.

“Please keep the bird intact,” she said. “Without touching it or the ball.”

I leaned forward, the answers I'd prepared that morning slipping from my mind. At least this was something I could do.

Every mage inherited a gift, one particular way to change the world. Mine was redirection. Once the ball moved, I could turn it; starting it, stopping it or suspending it in the air were beyond me. But I had kept people alive by turning things that would otherwise have killed them.

Surely I could save an ornament. Nine years keeping people alive, and here I was staking my whole future on a glass bird.

“Ready?” she asked

My hand reached for my bare wrist. I cleared my throat. “Can I borrow an anchor?”

Her glance dropped to my hands. I held them still, grateful for the long cuffs of my good jacket. Dark cloth, properly fitted, covering the pale bands where my bracelets had been. The last one had paid the rent. Now I needed to convince a security firm to employ me, and I couldn't even supply my own equipment.

“Of course.” She opened a drawer and passed me a short steel bar. No question about mine.

I examined the metal longer than necessary, taking the chance to look down. Then I closed my fingers around it.

The world resisted being changed. We called that resistance Reckoning; an anchor took the damage in a mage's place. Metal worked best, provided it was of equivalent purity to the strength of the casting. Most of us wore rings or bracelets, even studs in our boots. Without an anchor, the damage could strike whatever happened to be nearby.

With the bar secure in my palm, I studied the desk. A turn to the left would take the ball past the bird's wing, over the edge and into her lap. To the right stood a telephone and a mug full of pens. Redirection wouldn't slow the steel. It would leave the ramp as fast as it entered, and saving her ornament would count for very little if I injured the woman who could give me a job.

Beside the telephone, an empty document tray offered an opening at one end and thick felt along the bottom. This would require finesse, not brute magic.

Dents marked the felt along the back edge. I wondered if other applicants had found the same solution. I resented them for a moment. Apparently I wanted to be the best at saving the bird, too.

Still, I checked my angle. Past the right wing, through the opening, into the felt. My fingers tightened around the anchor.

“Ready.”

She released the ball. Steel rattled down the wooden incline and rolled towards the outspread wings. I cast, holding my breath as it crossed the desk.

The ball cleared the glass and buried itself in the felt with a small, dull knock.

A fine crack opened across the bar in my palm. One small magical effect, one small crack. I loosened my grip and laid it beside the tray.

The interviewer retrieved the ball and checked the bird. While she made a note, I watched the pen resting against her ink-smudged finger, her dark hair pinned behind her ears. Nothing in her face told me how much the demonstration counted; she'd clearly perfected that particular blankness over many afternoons of shattered glass birds.

“Good,” she said.

I eased back a fraction, relief checked by the questions I couldn't ask. How many people had passed that week? How many had she hired?

She put the test pieces away while I kept those questions to myself.

She turned the page. Her finger stopped beside my former employer. "You were head of security for the Duvanes for the last nine years?"

“That's right.”

Duvane was written in the same small print as my address. Their name was on buildings all over the city—one of the arcane dynasties, with a long history of gifts handed down with the companies and property and money those gifts had built. For nine years, I'd made sure people used the right doors, said the right names, and never once bled on the good carpets.

“Before we go any further, Ms. Harlowe, you should know a considerable amount of our work comes from the dynasties.”

“I understand.”

“Then you'll understand why I have to ask. What they've told us about you is very troubling.”

My collar chafed, but I kept my hands on my knees. Varren Security wasn't under the family's direct control, and I'd thought that might get me a chance.

“I made a bad decision while I was drinking,” I said. “And I lost my position. I've since learned from my mistake.”

She looked down at the date. The Duvanes had dismissed me four months ago. I hadn't found work since.

“I'm glad you've stopped. But I have to decide what I can tell a client who asks about you.”

“You can test me before every shift. I don't drink anymore.”

“That would tell me you were sober when you arrived.” She put her pen down. “I need to know what happened in your last position.”

The application lay just beyond reach. I took my hands off my knees and shifted forward—I could thank her, stand up, get out before she said no—then settled back into the chair.

“I know where I went wrong. I won't do it again.”

“We've employed people who've been dismissed by a dynasty before,” she said, turning the application squarely between us. “They don't generally come with a warning to every other firm in the city. Why has that happened in your case?”

There was no sunlight on either of us. Still, the room had become very warm.

“I wasn't the only person who—”

She waited.

I could give her names. Decisions I hadn't made, things the Duvanes had left out of the report they'd sent round with my dismissal. I drew a breath through my nose and held it.

I pressed my thumbnail into the seam of my trousers. “I'm sorry. I can't reveal the details of what happened.”

“I appreciate discretion. But if I can't hear your account, what do I have to set against theirs?”

“I'm not asking you to disregard it.”

“What would you like me to do with it, then?”

A telephone rang beyond the door. I looked at the ink in the crease of her finger and tried to find an answer, the way I'd found answers in rooms full of angry people when we all needed to get on with our jobs.

“I've been the best in my field for nine years,” I said.

Her expression changed. She picked up the two sheets and tapped their corners against the desk.

“I'm sorry, Ms. Harlowe.” Her eyes stayed on the papers until they were straight, as though a tidy desk might excuse an untidy conversation. “We have applicants who could do the work without exposing the firm to the same difficulties. I can't recommend taking you on.”

She laid the application down and kept her hand on it. I bit the inside of my cheek. A firm this size had gaps in its rota, shifts nobody wanted—there were always gaps.

“Put me on nights. I can take orders,” I said, a little too loud. I could take orders, provided they made sense, but this probably wasn't the moment to specify. I lowered my voice. "You can have someone supervising me. They don't have to—experience doesn't matter. I'll do the work.”

“Ms. Harlowe, it isn't the level of the position.”

Of course not.

She glanced at the door. Her hand moved towards the edge of the desk, then stopped.

“We'll keep your application on file,” she said, with a smile. “In case something suitable comes up.”

I stayed another moment, then stood, picked up my bag and thanked her for her time. My voice didn't shake. I could still manage that.

In the waiting area, a woman in a rust-coloured jacket had pressed her application flat between two magazines. The receptionist called her name.

“They're ready for you.”

The woman stood too quickly and smiled at nobody, her eyes going once around the room: street door, reception desk, the door I'd just come through. She checked the exits. I approved, which was presumptuous of a woman leaving without a job. Her cuffs were a little short. An inexpensive jacket, but she'd made it fit.

She went in.

My hand missed the bag strap. I caught it on the second try and kept my eyes on the street door until I was through it.

I turned away from the bus stop, where people stood waiting with nothing to do but look at one another. I couldn't join them yet. Not with my face like this.

Keep my application on file. In case something suitable came up. She could have said that over the phone and saved us both the time. I walked faster, putting the firm behind me; if I could get far enough away before I cried, nobody there would have to pretend not to see me.

Brakes shrieked.

Behind me, a white car mounted the pavement and struck a post outside the building next door to the firm. The post folded into the driver's door. One corner of the entrance canopy dropped, and its steel frame tore free of the other post with a sound that brought me around before I knew I was turning. It hung crookedly from the wall, over the car.

Through the windscreen, I could see the driver pulling at his door handle. He let go and tried again. Somebody shouted a warning, but he hadn't looked up; even with the post crushed against his door, he kept pulling. I stood with one foot off the kerb.

Then I ran.

My bag banged against my hip until I dragged it off and dropped it on the firm's steps. Please don't fall, I thought, watching the canopy as I went around the rear of the car. The nose was beneath the roof, the back wheels on the forecourt, and the engine was still running. On the side away from the folded post, I pulled the passenger door open.

“Turn the engine off.” The driver stared at me, his chest heaving, his breath lost in the noise. “The key. Can you reach it?”

His hand fumbled towards the ignition, caught the key and turned it. In the sudden quiet I heard him draw a breath through his teeth. Blood ran into his eyebrow; a gilt stud shone in one ear, the sort of earring that suggested strong opinions about brunch. He was younger than me, and alone.

“I can't get the door open,” he said.

“That's alright. We'll use this side.”

He tried to come towards me. His mouth opened, but for a moment there was no sound; then he cried out and fell back against the seat, both hands clamped round his thigh. Blood spread between his fingers.

“My leg. I can't—”

“Don't move again. Let me help.”

The canopy creaked. He looked up through the windshield, and I followed his eyes to the gap opening between the frame and the brickwork. A roof big enough to shelter half a dozen people at the entrance now hung above his head, above the hands he was pressing to his leg. My gift could turn falling metal aside. It couldn't hold that up.

Where was the ambulance? There should have been someone with equipment, someone who could tell me whether to move him. The engine ticked as it cooled. He didn't move.

A man in a grey suit was coming from the road. Farther back, people were getting out of their cars.

“The canopy's coming down,” I called back. “Don't let anyone under it.” He looked up, then turned and spread his arms across their path.

As I leaned into the car, the driver caught my sleeve and pulled so hard I nearly went into the footwell.

“You've done this before, haven't you?”

I had dealt with wrecked vehicles. I knew how to get someone out, and I knew what moving that leg might do to him. He was watching my face. This wasn't the time to say any of that.

“Yes. I'm Edda. What's your name?”

“Arlo.” He swallowed, his fingers twisted in my sleeve. “Don't go.”

“I'm not going anywhere.”

With one knee on the passenger seat, I ducked beneath the door frame, keeping my hand clear of a strip of metal trim jutting from the sill. Inside it smelled of hot dust and aftershave. He must have put the aftershave on that morning without thinking about it. I wanted him to have another morning like that.

His seat belt held him tight. There was a red mark on his thumb where he'd been pressing the release.

“I’ll get it,” I said, reaching across him. The button wouldn’t give. I tried again, then eased him back against the seat to take the strain off the belt. His injured leg shifted, and he gasped.

“No. Stop. Please.” His hand closed around my wrist.

I stopped. As his grip loosened, I let my shoulders drop, leaving my hand against the buckle. For a moment we were still together. Then the metal above us creaked again and his fingers tightened. He had heard it too.

A man in a grey shirt stood in the doorway, his broad hands empty at his sides. He had a heavy, clean-shaven face, the kind that looked permanently unimpressed by whatever was happening around it. “Can you get him out?”

“I need you to take his shoulders,” I said instead. “I can't lift him across on my own.”

His gaze went to the canopy. One hand settled on the open door, but he stayed where he was. Please, don't leave. I couldn't take his end as well as mine.

“All right,” he said, and stepped in.

A woman ran down from the firm's steps with a small first-aid kit. I recognized the rust-coloured jacket from the waiting area, the cuffs that didn't quite reach her wrists.

“I've called an ambulance. They're coming.” She knelt on the pavement and opened the kit. “I'm Iona. I can do first aid.”

“Have you got something to cut the belt?” I asked, hopefully.

She brought shears and a dressing, but the sight of his leg stopped her with her fingers on the wrapper and her mouth open. Neither of us moved. Then she caught a corner of the wrapper between her teeth and tore it free.

“Put pressure here.” Leaning past the man, she guided my hand onto the pad. Arlo jerked against me and hissed in pain.

“Keep pressing,” Iona said, covering my hand and forcing it down again. “Like that.”

I kept pressing after she withdrew her hand and stepped out of the doorway, watching her face for reassurance that I was doing it right.

Arlo looked up. His mouth moved, but it took him a moment to speak. “Could you ring my husband?”

He was watching me again. I kept my hand planted on the pad. “I need to get you out first.”

I could have told him there would be time; that was what he wanted, but I couldn't get the words past my throat.

“He won't pick up if he's working. Well, he might.” Arlo swallowed. “If he doesn't, you'll try again?”

“All right.”

“And say I'm here. First, before you say accident or anything. He panics. Badly. He once called the fire brigade because I was late for dinner.”

My mouth had gone dry. “I'll tell him you're here and you want to talk to him.”

Beyond the driver's side, the parking bays were empty of people. A long black car stood in the nearest bay, its front end just beyond the canopy's edge.

By then the blood had stopped spreading beyond the pad. Iona took over the pressure as I eased my hand away, then wrapped a bandage firmly around his thigh to hold the pad in place.

“Arlo, keep pressing here while we move you.” I guided his hand onto the bandage.

He nodded, and I waited until his hand stayed firm before sliding the shears beneath the belt at his shoulder. “I'm cutting this now. Then we'll move you across.”

“Wait. Just a minute.” He pressed back into the seat, struggling to draw breath.

Above us, the canopy wouldn't wait. I shook my head. “We have to move, Arlo.”

He shut his eyes. His jaw was shaking so badly that I almost missed his nod.

As he leaned forward, I cut the belt and caught his weight against my chest. His cry came muffled through my shoulder. The man reached in beside me, and I shifted to make room.

“Under his arms,” I told him. “Let me turn him.”

I left the shears on the dashboard and eased Arlo's hips onto the passenger seat. His heel dragged across the floor. He went rigid in my arms, breath held.

“I've got you,” the man said. “Let her get your legs.”

Arlo's breath came hot through my collar. “Don't lose my phone.”

“It's coming with you.”

He said something else into my shoulder, too muffled to make out.

“You can swear,” I told him.

“I fucking am. This is worse than my wedding day, and my drunk mother-in-law wailed through the entire ceremony.”

The man took his weight under the arms. I leaned through the doorway and worked an arm beneath Arlo's knees, his feet still in the driver's footwell.

“Ready?” I asked. A vein stood out beside the man's clenched jaw.

“Do it.”

“On three. One. Two—”

A crack sounded overhead, and dust sifted over the windscreen. The man in grey flinched, tightening his grip. Arlo cried out.

The canopy was pulling out of the wall. With Arlo across the passenger seat and his legs still inside, we couldn't get him clear in time.

“Christ,” the man said, with the weary disbelief of someone who'd clearly expected better from the day.

I lowered Arlo’s knees onto the seat as the canopy screamed against the wall. The pavement was one step behind me, and my feet shifted towards it before I caught myself, still holding him. I tightened my grip.

The black car beyond the windscreen was empty. My fingers brushed my bare wrist as the last bolt tore free. I slapped my palm against the doorframe and reached for the canopy with my gift.

Its downward rush filled my senses, so much steel moving so fast that my stomach clenched and I nearly recoiled. I forced myself to stay with it, teeth locked, turning its course towards the black car. The Reckoning pressed back until I felt it behind my eyes. My palm ground against the doorframe as I drove that pressure into the car, desperate to feel the metal take it.

The canopy veered past Arlo’s windscreen and crashed down on the black car, sending glass rattling across the front of our car. The man ducked over Arlo, then looked up at me, his mouth open, as the crushed car’s alarm began to shriek.

The doorframe split beneath my palm. The passenger door tore loose at one hinge and twisted across the opening, striking my shoulder hard enough to knock the air out of me. I could see Iona beyond it, but there was no room to bring Arlo through. I’d broken our only way out.

“Don’t leave me.” Arlo caught my jacket with his free hand as I tried to shift, the other still pressed against the bandage.

“I’m here.” I shoved at the crooked door, trying to force it up off my shoulder. It wouldn’t rise. “Help me lift it!” I shouted to the man.

The man let Iona take Arlo under the arms, then wedged his back beneath the door. It rose a few inches, enough for her to pull Arlo’s shoulders through before his hips stuck and the metal began to sink again.

I got my arms under his knees, but his shoe caught on the twisted sill, and when I pulled, he screamed so sharply that I stopped. The door pressed into his side. I pulled again, a broken edge slicing my palm as his foot came free.

Iona and I dragged him onto the pavement as the man ducked out from under the door. It fell against the empty seat behind us; he caught Arlo’s shoulders again, and together we carried him to the firm’s steps.

“My leg, for fuck’s sake! You can’t drag me like that.”

I wanted him to keep swearing.

Iona knelt beside him and put her hand over his, pressing on the bandaged wound. “I’ve got him.”

I had to uncurl my fingers from Arlo’s trouser leg before I could sit beside him. The man in grey bent over with his hands on his thighs, and only then did I feel the pain spreading from my shoulder to my elbow.

“Sorry,” Arlo said. “Didn't mean to shout at you.”

“Don't be.”

“You said you'd ring my husband.”

“I remember.”

His hand went to his trouser pocket and missed. He tried again, and I waited for him to look at me before helping him get the phone out. His thumb shook on the screen; after a moment he let me take it.

“Tell me what to press.”

I held the screen where he could see it. The man in grey crouched on his other side and took over the pressure on his bandaged thigh while Iona checked him. Dust filled the creases of his shirt, and his gaze followed my bloody fingers as I made the call.

Arlo shut his eyes at the ringing.

The phone stayed at my ear. Someone answered. "Hello?"

“I'm with Arlo,” I said. “He's been in an accident. He's here, and he wants to speak to you.”

I put the phone to Arlo's ear, cupping my other hand around it to keep out as much of the car alarm as I could.

“No, love, I'm here. It's me. Listen a minute, will you?”

He listened, one corner of his mouth lifting before it pulled down again. Tears left tracks through the dust beside his nose. When he tried to speak, his breath broke in his throat.

“I'm all right. No, I'm—just come. Will you come?”

The phone was trembling against his ear, and for a moment I watched it before I understood that it was my hand. I braced my wrist against his shoulder and kept it there until he reached up. It took both his hands to hold the phone.

When Arlo had asked me to call from the car, I’d been afraid his husband would answer only to hear him die. Now Arlo was holding the phone himself, and I found myself listening for his husband to say he was coming. I wanted that reassurance too. I turned my face away and let them have what privacy I could give them.

The man in grey was watching me. “Your hand.”

Blood had run as far as my jacket cuff.

He took a pad from Iona's kit and offered it to me. I reached with the cut hand, but my fingers wouldn't open far enough to take it. He waited, holding it between us while I changed hands, then watched me press it to the cut. Neither of us spoke. At least he hadn't asked whether I could manage.

The canopy lay across the black car, its roof folded down to the seats. I looked at the space where the driver's head would have been. Arlo was beside me, his face turned towards the phone. I bent over my hand and stayed there until I could lift my head again.

The ambulance arrived while he was telling his husband where we were. Iona rose to meet them. As a responder crouched beside Arlo, I began to explain about the belt and the canopy, then heard Iona already giving him what he needed. I shut my mouth.

Before they lifted Arlo, his fingers caught my sleeve.

“Thank you.”

He had found the same fold of cloth he'd held inside the car. I covered his fingers with my good hand.

He let go, and they took him to the ambulance. I watched until Iona came back to dress my hand, kneeling in front of me while I looked past her at the open doors. She asked me to turn my palm upwards and had to ask a second time before I did it.

“Sorry.”

“That's it. Keep it like that.” She steadied my wrist. “This is the part that stings. Then we're nearly done.”

My fingers curled at the sting. I made them open again and watched her work. She had been quick with Arlo, but now the end of the tape stuck to her thumb. She peeled it away, caught it there again, and stopped for a moment before laying it down.

“Sorry,” she said.

“It's all right.”

She pressed the tape flat, blood marking her short cuff. I hoped she got the job. If they wanted a reference, I could give her one, though I wasn't sure it was worth much anymore.

The man in grey took a key from his pocket and pressed it. The car alarm stopped, and in the sudden quiet I heard Iona tearing off another length of tape.

I looked from the key to the black car. "That's yours?"

"What's left of it," he said, putting the key away.

I got up and followed him across the forecourt. The canopy had crushed the car’s front end and caved in the roof above the front seats, though enough remained for me to see that the car had been beautiful. I knew less about what it must have cost. Beside its owner, I kept revising my guess upwards.

His grey shirt was streaked with dust, but the fit was beautiful, clean across his shoulders and close at his waist. He pushed his dark hair off his forehead with one broad hand, then let it rest in his trouser pocket. Even now there was an ease to him, an elegance that made me suddenly aware of my own ruined jacket.

I let myself look properly at his face. The dark brows and heavy, clean-shaven jaw gave him a sternness I rather liked; then my attention settled on his mouth and stayed there. A few minutes ago I’d been too frightened to notice how attractive he was. Now I wanted another moment to look.

"I'm sorry." I looked at the crushed roof. "You might have mentioned it was yours."

He glanced towards Arlo's car. "Would that have changed anything?"

I winced. "Not really."

"Then there's nothing to discuss."

There was no reproach in his voice, and I wanted to believe him. Perhaps that disposed of the apology; I was less sure about the bill.

He turned towards me. His collar was dark with damp, and beneath its edge I could see a little of his skin. I remembered his shoulder pressed against mine inside the car. My good hand rose, almost of its own accord, before I caught myself and let it fall.

His gaze dropped to my mouth, then came back to my eyes. My breathing had changed, and at this distance he must have noticed. Neither of us looked away. I could take one step. Just one, and I would know what his aftershave smelled like.

The interviewer came down the steps, carrying my bag in both hands.

"Ms. Harlowe? Your bag." She held it out. "We found it by the steps. I thought you'd want it back."

I took the bag and pulled the strap onto my shoulder, stepping back so the interviewer could stand between us.

"Harlowe?" he said.

"Ms. Harlowe was one of this afternoon's applicants," she said. "We'd only just finished speaking when we heard the accident."

He looked from her to me. "Did you get the job?"

My hand hurt. There was blood in the fold of my sleeve where Arlo had held it, and both crushed cars were still there, in plain sight. Almost any other question would have been easier.

"No," I said.

He looked at my hand, then towards the ambulance. "I see."

"About the insurance," I said. "My number's on the application. You can have them contact me."

I looked at the black car again, hoping his policy covered whatever this counted as. I couldn't afford to replace a single window.

With a last nod, I shifted my bag onto the shoulder that hurt less and headed for the bus stop, trying not to think about what would happen if his insurers wanted me to pay.

The dressing caught on my jacket lining as I took it off. Between the front door and the kitchen chair, I couldn't lift my elbow far enough to free it, so I stood picking at the fabric with my good hand.

Arlo's husband would be arriving at the hospital by now, or waiting for someone to tell him what had happened. I held the freed jacket over my arm and rested my hand on the chair back. Still crooked beside the door, exactly where I'd left it that morning.

My knees began to ache before I moved.

I rinsed the blood out of the jacket and spread it on the kitchen table, then washed my face and unwound the braid I'd checked so carefully before the interview. The dressing needed changing again. Once that was done, I put on a shirt and warmed yesterday's rice with an egg. I started eating standing up, then made myself sit. I wasn't on duty. I could sit through my meals.

My phone lay next to the plate, and I made myself finish before I picked it up.

My daughter's name came up beneath my thumb. I wanted to hear her voice. She used to tell me every detail of an argument with a friend, right down to who had rolled their eyes first, and I would listen while I made dinner. I couldn't remember the last time she'd told me anything like that.

I rubbed a crumb off the screen and opened the conversation with her father.

Will you ask if she'd talk to me tonight? Just for a minute.

The reply arrived before I could put the phone down.

I asked her. She knows you want to talk, but she doesn't want to, Edda.

I read the last sentence twice. My fingers tightened around the phone until the dressing dragged against my palm. I loosened them.

Perhaps she was in the middle of something. Perhaps he could ask again.

She knows you want to talk.

She was thirteen. If she didn't want to talk to me, her father couldn't make her. I'd taught her she was allowed to say no, and I was glad she knew it. I put the phone down before I could ask him to try again.

I started typing.

The interview was awful. There was an accident outside afterwards. I helped get a man out—

My thumb hovered over the next letter. I wanted her to know I'd been useful. Someone had needed me, and I'd done what I was supposed to do.

I read it again, imagining her father handing her the phone when she'd already said she didn't want to talk.

I deleted the message a word at a time. She hadn't made this distance between us. I could leave her alone for one evening without asking her to help me bear it.

I understand. Thank you for asking her.

After reading it twice, I sent it. My thumb stayed above the screen while I tried to find something else to say.

There wasn't anything.

I put the phone down and went to the window, turning the latch until it caught properly. Then I went to bed. With my bandaged hand resting on top of the sheet, I remembered Arlo gripping my jacket.

He'd wanted me there.

I let myself have that much before I turned out the light.

The phone woke me at six eighteen.

I reached for it beside the bed, caught my legs in the sheet, and only then remembered leaving it in the kitchen. By the time I got there, my heart was thudding as though whoever was calling could hear how long I'd made them wait. “Edda Harlowe.”

“Hector Varren. You were at my office yesterday.”

The owner himself. I pulled the phone away to check the time, then put it back to my ear. The interviewer had been quite clear yesterday. I couldn't imagine what she'd left for him to say, especially at six eighteen in the morning. “Yes, Mr. Varren.”

“That cut on your hand,” he said. “Is it going to keep you from working?”

“No. It's dressed.” I flexed my bandaged fingers, then paused. “Wait. How did you—”

“I helped you get the driver out. And lost rather a nice car in the process.”

I looked down at my jacket, still spread across the kitchen table, and rested my hand beside the stained cuff. Now I could place the voice: the man beside me in the car, holding Arlo while I turned his legs.

“That was you?”

“Yes.”

We'd stood close afterwards, before the interviewer brought my bag, and I'd wondered what he might smell like. Hector Varren. I'd looked up at the owner of the firm and told him it wouldn't employ me. “I didn't realize,” I said.

“You were occupied.”

My hand came off the jacket. There had been other things I'd said, surely, though none would come to me now; what came instead was the memory of looking at him, and the horrible possibility that he'd known exactly what I was thinking. Heat crept up my neck. I pulled at my collar.

Of course. The car. I'd given him my number for the insurance, and here I was worrying about whether he'd caught me looking at his mouth.

“Do you need a statement about the accident?” I asked.

“I'm calling about work. I've been through your application, and I've spoken to the interviewer. An urgent job's come in, and I can use you on it. A paid trial, with a small field team. You'd command it.”

I sat down. The relief was so sudden it hurt, and for a moment I couldn't answer him. I'd made myself get through yesterday as though I could bear another rejection, then another after that. Now someone was saying yes, and I was frightened of how much I needed him to mean it.

“Ms. Harlowe?”

“Yes.” My voice caught; I swallowed and tried again. “Yes. When do you need me?”

“At the collection point by seven. I need a yes or no on that.”

Forty-two minutes, and I was still in bare feets and the shirt I'd slept in. “Send the address.”

My injured hand had closed on the jacket again. I eased my fingers out of the fold, reluctant to ask anything that might give him cause to reconsider. But if he hadn't heard the worst, I needed to know before I went. “Wait. You spoke to her yourself? And she told you why she said no?”

“Edda, I knew before she told me.”

Of course he did. For a little while I'd let myself think there might be one person who knew me only from yesterday, from what had happened outside his office. “Then why?”

“I saw you work.” Paper rustled at his end of the call; in my kitchen, the refrigerator stopped humming. “That roof was coming down on you. You stayed with him and got him out.”

The paper went quiet. I remembered wanting to run, knowing I could be clear in one step if I let go of Arlo. For a moment, even with him in my arms, I'd wanted to take it.

“I was frightened,” I said.

“Yes.”

That wasn't what I'd meant to say. My thumb found the edge of the dressing and rubbed along it while I listened to him waiting, until there was something else I had to tell him. “I nearly left him.”

“And yet you didn't."

I kept rubbing the dressing until my eyes filled and I had to cover them with my other hand. I'd got through the interview without crying. I'd got through my daughter's refusal. But now he'd offered me another chance, knowing who I was, and I couldn't speak.

I pressed the heel of my hand against my wet eyes and breathed through my mouth. There were things I needed to ask: what the work was, where he was sending me, who would be coming. He was still on the phone. I had to ask.

“Harlowe. You still there?”

“Yes.” I cleared my throat. “I need to know what you're asking for. If you want information about the family, I can't—”

“If I wanted information, I'd ask for it. I need a field commander this morning.”

“And when they object to you employing me?”

“They can call me.” He paused, leaving me with my hand pressed to my eyes. “This isn't an offer of permanent work.”

I lowered my hand.

“You get this job, with my choice of team and my terms. Do it properly and I'll consider you for another. Fail, and we're finished. I have a whole firm to keep working. I won't endanger it to find a place for you.”

One job. He wasn't promising me a future he might have to withdraw after the first telephone call, and I didn't have to pretend I believed in one. I could believe this. I preferred him telling me exactly how he meant to sack me to somebody smiling over a file.

The pen lay across the table. I reached for it.

“All right,” I said, and this time my voice held. “What's the assignment?”

“A client has people trapped in his building. He's borrowing an arcane item to help get them out. You'll collect it at a hospital with the two people I'm sending, then run the job.”

An arcane item carried magic someone had already put into it. Another mage could use that magic without having the gift that created it. Whatever he was borrowing, it might let us do something none of us could manage on our own. He hadn't told me what.

I rolled the pen between my fingers.

“I'll need anchors too. I haven't got any.”

“The driver will have what you need.”

Something sounded at his end. He spoke away from the phone, his words too quiet to make out, then came back to me.

“I have to go. I'll have someone send you the details. Don't be late.”

I was on my feet again, pen in hand. “I'll be there. Mr. Varren.”

A pause, then, “Call me Hector.”

I looked down at the pen. Mr. Varren had been useful. A little distance, a little formality, and now his name waited in my mouth like something I wasn't supposed to want to say out loud.

“I'll be there at seven.”

“Good.”

The call ended. I lowered the phone, still holding it as though there might be something else to hear.

I still wanted to kiss him. That was embarrassing now, with his offer barely out of his mouth and me so grateful I’d cried. I wished I could stop wanting him long enough to feel properly thankful. He’d given me a chance. I wanted to turn up, do the work, and be someone he could rely on.

At least I had a reason to keep my hands off him now.

I found my field bag under a spare blanket on the wardrobe’s top shelf. His message arrived as I pulled it down.

An address, a service entrance. Two names and their gifts, a driver with a van, instructions to bring my field kit. The pay was there, along with terms short enough to read standing in my underwear.

The torch worked, though its beam yellowed at the edges, the optimistic glow of a device nearing retirement. I left it with the gloves and took out the collapsible baton I'd carried through nine years of family business, settling my thumb over the familiar catch. Smooth as ever. Back into the bag it went.

Shirt, reinforced trousers, boots. One lace had almost worn through; I tied the knot below the weak place and tucked away the loose length.

The kitchen clock read six twenty-seven. Leave now, and I could catch the bus.

I took my keys from beside the drying jacket and left.