Ticking of the Clock

"Perhaps you are too distracted today," de Rais sneered. He snapped the heavy book shut and slid it reverently back into its place on the shelf. "Did you truly think confirming the action would rectify the problem?"

Loup didn't bother to meet his gaze. Long ago, she had accepted the fact that he seemed to know everything. "I'd like to learn how to verify the age of spells." Still keeping her eyes down, she asked, "Could you teach me how to do that?"

"That is hardly the sort of work we should concentrate upon." De Rais crossed his arms and leaned against the bookshelf behind him. "That is quite simple. You should be able to find it yourself." He watched his protegee rake her fingers through her hair and look away. "You should not allow yourself to be drawn into other's personal matters. The Dark is not generous to those who deal with it on emotional terms. You should be well aware of that. How many have you seen devoured by the Dark when they called upon it, their concentration not upon the magic, but their petty needs?"

"Too many." Loup, seated at de Rais' desk, laid her head down upon her hands, staring off into the distance. "You're right. I know I shouldn't allow myself to get involved. It's just that," Loup sighed quietly and closed her eyes, "I know you won't understand. Maybe I should leave. This should blow over soon."

"You feel that you have no other friends? Perhaps you are right." He waited until he saw Loup's shoulders sag. "You are abrupt with everyone. You hold little back and your scorn for the others' abilities are not disguised. Friends for one such as you are few." Then, he laughed. "Those are the qualities that I find the most, shall we say, ingenuous? You endlessly amuse me. Even Professor Jones fears you. Did you know that? She has never met one such as you before. I find your obsession with Magda Lowenstein quite odd." He reached out and stroked a volume on a neighboring shelf, letting a dark gloved finger linger over an elaborate silver spine. "The spell that was worked on her, it is more than the usual Non Concipere charm. I have not examined it closely, but I know that the man who cast it placed a great deal of effort into strengthening it. It will fade in time; however, it may take another decade. Does she desire a child that much?"

Loup groaned, sounding much like an animal in pain. "I don't know. I don't really understand it. She seems so sad, so helpless. She rarely smiles any more." Rolling over to face him, she asked, "Why doesn't she leave him?"

De Rais raised an eyebrow. "Perhaps she loves him? It is not my affair nor should it be yours." He stepped forward and carefully realigned a stack of paper on his desk. "The charm only works on the two people it was intended for."

Loup looked up at him through a tangle of her dark hair. "What do you mean by that? That's the standard for that spell." Slowly, she understood. "Oh. True. Messy." She considered that option and discarded it. "Do you think he'd notice if I broke it? I've broken Non Conciperes before. It can be tricky, but I could do it."

"And you do not think he would notice? I doubt that. Although I myself have never had the spell upon me, I have known others who have. All have commented upon the sensation of the spell being placed as well as it ending."

"Do you think he checks? I could hide it in something else."

"You underestimate Professor Lowenstein. Do not be fooled by his lazy demeanor. He is very clever and quite intelligent. His freedom is something he treasures. Should you wish to be amused, you should watch to see when he wears his wedding ring. I find his charade rather droll."

Loup squirmed until she could stare straight ahead as she thought. "If she did conceive, what do you think he would do? Would he think it was his?"

"I do not claim insight into his thoughts or his motivations. I advise you to make no assumptions or to interfere. I fear that no good will come of any meddling." De Rais' voice took on an icy edge. "I would not involve myself in these affairs unless you wish to view it as a lesson in human needs."

"You involved yourself in my problem," Loup whispered.

"You need not remind me of my own folly."

* * *

September's end coincided with the first snowfall. The golden warm days were gone, replaced by an icy knife of wind and a crisply iced snow purifying the grounds. Loup stood at the doorway of the Dark Arts building weighing the pros and cons of grading in the castle versus working where she was. The castle had easy access to food, but it was noisy. All of the libraries were full of students or faculty. The Great Hall would be too dark. She could try to grade in Gregorov's classroom, but that would require that she listen to him lecture and refrain from adding her own comments. There were empty rooms in the castle, she'd been in many of them, but they were cold and dusty. The staff room seemed to be the best choice.

In the solitude of the staff room, she threw down the mass of folders onto the table and continued to the back of the room where the sink dripped away the seconds. Prowling through the cupboards, she discovered a tin of cocoa hidden and forgotten behind a pile of old mugs. Cautious, she ran through her entire range of detection spells. Kessler's sense of humor ran to the scatological and she wouldn't put it past him to have doctored the powder with something unpleasant. Everything looked fine, but smelled old and tired. Still, it would make a welcome change. Even coffee got tiresome when it was all she drank.

Water heated, cocoa stirred into Paul Wronski's precious caffeine molecule patterned mug, she took up her place at the table and began the tedious job of grading the first tests of the year. The exercise bored her quickly. Gregorov's tests had been created to make his life as easy as possible and all were multiple choice. Humming a snatch of a song she'd heard so long ago that it seemed a part of her, she finished the fifth year students' tests and opened the folder for the next class. Now cold, the cocoa tasted gritty and old. A swirl brought a dark streak that hinted of sludgeyness and a sour aftertaste. Hardly worth drinking. It added another layer of vexation to the task. The need for a diversion struck her. The cup was a handy item to blame for the poor quality of her treat. Sneering, she used it as yet another thing to practice with.

The novelty of doing all of her magic without a wand had not paled. De Rais taunted her regularly that her wand was a crutch to be abandoned. No fancy hand movements were allowed in any of the exercises nor any other focusing device. He made it look simple when he did it, but Loup had found it exhausting. Hand outstretched, she rotated it slowly until her palm faced up and then lifted it. The white mug with its dark red formulae rose slowly and hovered above the table. Concentrate. Point and think it there. It moved at a stately pace across the floor until it bumped against the sink. She pointed her finger and thought it higher, but it rose too high. The exercise became frustrating as the mug moved up and down and refused to settle into the sink.

"Today is the day, no?" Magda walked past Loup towards the sink. Her hand stabbed outwards, grabbing the mug and pulling it to her chest. "Paul loves this. You should not play with another's property." Turning her back on an irritated Loup, Magda rinsed out the mug and then dried it. "Truly, Loup, you should practice with things that do not break. You could have destroyed it." She turned, tightlipped and leaned against the sink. "You do not know how to repair things, only break them."

"That isn't true. I can fix things. I fixed the chair." Loup pointed at a chair across the table from her. It was noticeably off kilter.

"The chair has never been the same." Magda walked over to it and placed a hand on the higher corner. A little pressure and the chair rocked easily. "However, it is not the fault of your work. I believe that a piece of it fell into the fire when Yuri threw it. I no longer recall what he was angry about, but I'm sure poor Paul was not to blame."

Loup shrugged. She had missed the cause of the fight, arriving only after Gregorov had exploded and heaved the chair at Wronski.

"Loup," Magda began, taking the chair opposite the other woman, "are you skilled in memory charms?"

Loup narrowed her eyes and waited. Memory charms were tricky work. It was easy enough to Obliviate someone's recent memories, but there were other spells that could reshape large amounts of time and, under someone trained in it, could recreate a personality and mind.

Clearing her throat Magda looked down at the table. "I would ask a favor of you."

"I don't know how to do anything beyond the basics," Loup admitted, tapping a pen against the tabletop. "It isn't the sort of work I usually do." When Magda's face fell, she added, "My Maitre always told me that subtle spells like that weren't my forte. If you wanted something that took sheer strength or power, he said I was one of the best." She stole a glance at the door, wondering if she could stave off the inevitable. "Besides, I never had the training for memory work. Maitre Faucon gave those contracts to Armand. I watched a few times." Loup paused as she remembered long hours trapped in Faucon's office, listening to Armand hunt out all the threads that made up particular memories and either destroy or replace them. Tricky work and time consuming. "I don't know what you're planning, but that sort of work takes a lot of time. You need information about the target's past and how to manipulate or destroy what's there without disturbing their mind. Have you talked to Yuri?"

Magda shook her head. "He would not help me." Sadness draped over her as she twisted her hands in her lap. "Perhaps it is not to be. I should be content with my lot. It is not as if I have a bad life. Excuse me. I do not wish to complain." Her voice was thick with unshed tears as she rose from the table, preparing to leave.

Don't get involved, don't get involved. The litany ran through Loup's brain, warning her. Not wise, not safe. Magda seemed smaller than usual, enormous dark eyes starting to brim with tears. An unfamiliar feeling, sympathy perhaps, ate at the dark mage. She could hear de Rais harrumph in disgust and silently agreed that getting involved was folly. "What do you want done?" she asked, closing her eyes, knowing she was doomed from that moment onwards.

"I have been thinking. I want a child. My sister has had her second baby. So little. So innocent. I would love it and care for it. Ludwig would still be free to have his little indiscretions, and I would have someone to love and who would love me."

"Get a pet," Loup mumbled in English and then realized she'd said it out loud.

Magda, however, was lost in her own rationalization. "If I conceived, I am certain he would think it was his. Perhaps it would be. I visited the doctor in the village. He said I am perfectly healthy and should have no problem. You said these spells fade with time. I am certain that the charm will end soon." Magda walked over to the small window and stared out at the snow, missing Loup's guilty look as she recalled the extra information she knew about the spell. "If I wait for him to agree, I may be too old. I'm young and healthy now."

"Why a memory charm?"

"I thought that if I were to bespell the father, using an illusion spell of some sort, that he would be innocent of adultery. He need not know. I would, but he would not bear the burden. It should only take a few times. He could believe I was anyone." Magda had a far away look as she spun her theory. "He must be fair-haired and have pale eyes. Ludwig has such beautiful hair. The golden eyes are rare, so he would not expect to see them. I would like a man with pale eyes. And," she giggled, sounding very un Magda-like, "I have always been attracted to men such as those."

Gloomily, Loup balanced her pen on the table, stabbing the pointed end into one of the pits that dotted the surface. "You need a chameleon spell for yourself and some kind of attractant just to make sure that the man wants you. Afterwards, you want him to forget all about it or do you want him to think you left or what?" A weariness set in. Loup knew she was already in deeper than she wanted to be.

"I believe I can work the illusion spell. As for attracting him, it takes so little effort to bed a man."

Loup glanced over at the small woman, wondering how someone who had apparently married right out of Durmstrang would know that sort of thing. Loup's limited range of past bed partners had convinced her differently. "You need me to work the memory part?"

"I will need you to build the tale of how the affair starts and ends. He will need to believe that his lover has gone far away. There may be a need to plant other memories to enforce the romance." Magda looked pleadingly at Loup who sat stunned at the plan.

"I'd have to do some research. Do you have someone in mind?" Loup sounded defeated as she asked. She wondered how she would learn how to do the sort of thing Magda was asking. It was the kind of work that Gregorov had been trained to do and hated. She'd teased Gregorov once, saying he'd never done real memory work. Egged on, he had her follow him to the village and there he found a man sleeping in the small park. In minutes, he had done the deed. His victim, placed into a light trance, was coerced into revealing far too much personal information. Gregorov had listened, looking off into the distance as if distracted. When the man talked about his military career, her mate had turned to listen more closely. Loup had watched, both thrilled and horrified, as Gregorov proceeded to warp the memory of a great victory into an act of cowardice, linking it to a particular sound. As a crowning touch, Gregorov had unbuttoned the man's sleeve, searching for a scar. When the Russian found a suitable one, a dark tale of shame was slickly spun and tied to the mark. With that done, they hid behind a stand of trees watched as the victim slowly awoke. Loup started to ask why he had used the sound when he held a finger to his lips, asking for silence and then jerked his chin towards an alleyway that led to the park. In the distance a discordant mechanical sound clanked towards them. Loup watched as the man, still groggy from his enforced nap, caught the sound and began to panic. The noise meant nothing to her, but, with his new memory, the victim flailed into hysterics. They had left when the man's screams drew a crowd. She never did see how the scar figured into it.

Magda turned to Loup and smiled shyly. "I had thought that perhaps Paul Wronski would do. He is very similar in height and coloring."

"Paul? Wronski? You're talking about Professor Paul Wronski? The American? Jones' friend? That Wronski?" Loup stared at her, unwilling to believe what she had heard.

"Why yes. I have given it a great deal of thought and I think he will do."

Not knowing whether to laugh or ask more questions, Loup snorted in disgust. She tried to compose a response and had to discard them all.

"I had thought the ease of proximity would be helpful. I know his schedule quite well and he is often here when there are few others. With your help, I am certain I could persuade him to father the child."

"Why don't you just ask him?" Loup asked, still stunned at the choice.

Magda shook her head no. "I fear that he would think it a joke and mention it to Professor Jones or even Ludwig. I think, for all concerned, it would be best if he thought I was someone else."

"Who would you be for him? The man seems to be celibate as far as I can tell. He doesn't even take the pushy seventh-years into his bed. How are you going to get him to, well, you know. How?"

"I had thought to have you spin a memory that he met me in the village. Perhaps he had several drinks."

"And then what? Where would you meet him? It doesn't always happen the first time. Have you thought this through?" Loup slouched back in her chair and folded her arms tightly across her chest.

Looking offended, Magda crossed back to the table. "I had hoped he would want his lover to meet him in the afternoons now and again. It would be far easier here than anywhere else. Perhaps I could be a visiting relative of a teacher. I could convince Professor Krakow. Or perhaps Professor Bricken. He and I look somewhat the same and Paul would never speak to him."

Loup held up a hand, trying to slow Magda down. "But he lives here and so do you. He'll see you every day. Can you control your spell, time it to appear as the other woman at the right time? It's easy enough to put a shallow glamour on, but you might be with him for an hour."

"Or more," Magda interrupted, looking now very un-Magda-like. Gone was the innocent air that the small woman usually wore and instead a woman aching for sex stood there.

Loup dragged her hand through her hair, catching it in a snarl. "Your spell has to be good enough that your face will always look like the other woman from all angles. And there's more, too. If you've decided to do this, then you better get your details down. Who will you be, where are you from, why are you here and what do you look like." Loup tapped her pen against the table as each point was made. Magda nodded at each one, the heavy-lidded gaze unsettling. "There are several things you could do to influence him towards sleeping with you," Loup half-groaned when nothing seemed to dissuade her.

"There are thousands of love spells, but I believe a few glasses of wine would easily help him to invite me the first time. Ludwig's team plays this Friday and the teams are well-matched. I had thought to begin then. Your presents have been growing warmer each day." Magda pulled her short hair away from her ears, revealing the hoop earrings. "If I have calculated properly, it should be optimum on Friday through Sunday."

Friday. Loup's mental checklist of what would need to be done tumbled before her. That was only a few days! Magda prattled on about her plans, ignoring Loup's morose expression.

* * *

The long mournful peals of the bells sounding the end of the school day bounced against the stone walls. Released from his dungeon classroom, Yuri Gregorov pretended to listen as Siegfried Kessler shared a detailed account of this year's girl. After so many years of working together, he had heard the same or a similar story many times. The tales all began the same and inevitably ended the same. The familiar cycle was in the early stages, all was exciting to Kessler and therefore all the details had to be trotted out and shown as trophies.

At the top of the stairs, Gregorov slowed to look for his mate. She frequently met him there, especially if the dinner's menu wasn't appealing to her. No sign. Across the long stretch of the main hall, jostled by students, other faculty and staff, Kessler's booming voice rose and fell at predictable intervals as the phases of his seduction of the previous night were extolled. The heavy oak doors, studded with nails and decorated with huge, curling hinges stood open to the freezing wind. The men drew their coats tight around them and stepped out into the gale. Kessler's narrative had reached the climax as it were and the sharp intake of breath as the wind penetrated deep in to them was timed perhaps too well. Gregorov mentally groaned, but retained his usual impassive air. It would only encourage his friend's performance to lower depths by saying anything. The men crunched across the grounds to the Dark Arts building, reaching it as Kessler's sordid tale ended.

Gregorov looked forward to the end of his day. The few hours between the end of his teaching duties and before dinner had become his favorite time of day. He would talk of his day and Loup would listen, adding sarcastic asides. If she were in a good mood, he would entice her onto the couch with him. The familiar routine was comfortable and had only become more so over the last two years.

The office was empty. Stacks of completed homework were placed on a corner of his desk. At first glance, the living area was empty, too. He left his coat and case in the office chair and cautiously entered, not quite sure of what to expect. Loup had been known to greet him with a growl and a yip, shifted into wolf form and ready to hunt. The wolf and the woman were of similar size and she was easily the biggest wolf he had ever seen. He found her behind the couch, sitting on the floor amidst a semicircle of books.

"Yuri, do you have any texts about your old work in any language other than Russian?" Loup didn't look up as she asked. A Russian/English and a Russian/French dictionary both lay open to one side as she worked her way through a paragraph.

"I have asked you to learn my language for quite some time. You have been lax in your studies." Gregorov stepped around the first stack of discards and bent down to pick up the top volume. It was clear from the title that Loup's mastery of Russian was even less than he had thought. The philosophy text had been atop a mixed pile of fiction, chess openings and one spellbook devoted to joke spells that deceased Petrov had given him years earlier.

Loup made a hissing noise as she grabbed up the next book. "I think I have the right words translated that I'm looking for, but I haven't found anything yet." She slammed that book down and looked up. "Would you show me where the texts are?"

Warily, Gregorov lowered himself to sit on the floor across from her. "Why are you so interested in my old work now? Tell me and I will think about letting you know where those books might be stored."

She had expected a similar question and, over her afternoon cup of coffee, had fabricated several possible responses. Most sounded trite. The most believable one she offered now. "I think it will increase my marketability. I haven't had a job in weeks. I need some money."

"I doubt the skill is something you could learn from a book. I had years of training before I was considered capable of the task."

"That's you," Loup sniped very, very quietly. Shoving her hair out of her face, she leaned back against the couch. "I've seen how involved the spells are. Not just you. I've watched two others do similar work. I think I could do it."

"You have not the patience," Gregorov said, dismissing the idea with a shrug as he looked away. "It is one thing to take the recent experience. Anyone can do that with a simple Obliviate. The skill lies in replacing what happened years ago, shifting an opinion, but making the change in that opinion rational and logical. I have taken a man, stripped him of his past and crafted an entirely new one."

"How do you do it?"

"It is not for you, little wolf. Your strengths do not lie in subtlety. I have seen your work. You are all strength, forcing your way to your goal. To work this magic, you must understand what drives a man, how to force his thoughts, his instincts in ways that you want and make it look as though nothing has changed."

"Won't you show me the basics? Or, show me which book you used in training?" Loup struggled with her tone of voice, forcing it to be calm and not descend into sarcasm.

Lowering himself onto his side, Gregorov supported his head on his hand and used the other to sketch a diagram that made no sense to Loup. "If you do not understand exactly how their minds worked and will now work, your subject will not appear right. The eyes will be glazed and the jaw sometimes slack. Their spirit will fight you as it tries to right itself. All of this manifests itself physically. I have seen the work done completely correct and the subject's own will defeat it in stages. Then, all is lost and everything erased."

Interested despite her irritation, Loup leaned forward to catch every word. "Erased?"

"Erased. All involved must be erased. The subject, all of his close circle, their circles until there is no trace to the one who worked the spells."

"That seems rather excessive."

"No. It is not. When any of the links to the subject are not severed, the chain can be reconstructed and then you may be discovered and, through you, the one who paid for the work originally."

Loup grimaced, knowing she was most definitely out of her league. "What if the subject only needs to coerced to do something he would do anyway?"

Gregorov raised an eyebrow. "To merely suggest an action, to ease away inhibitions or a moral conviction lightly held, is much easier. You must understand what drives that person still." He rolled to his back and supported his head on his hands, staring at the ceiling. "You must think as others think. Must understand all the things that drive a person. They are not all the same."

"Give me an example, Professor." Loup cleared away enough of the books to reach him and then lay down, her head on his stomach to listen.

A smile was in Gregorov's voice. "Should I, for example, wish you to be less annoying," he grunted when she bounced her head hard onto his belly, "I would need to redirect your stubbornness into an avenue more pleasing to myself."

She couldn't resist. "Such as?"

He made a growling sound and reached around to stroke her hair. "Perhaps merely silence would do." The expected punch didn't strike and he slowly relaxed, waiting for the attack. "To do this would require a few things. The easiest way to accomplish this would be to work the idea into your thick head over many nights of sleep. I would place you into the trance state and whisper into your ear, assuming that my voice could be heard over your snoring." He flicked her nose when she tried to bite. "That, little wolf, is how I would reshape you into a proper mate. However, I prefer the imperfect one."

Too much time. She needed something that took much less time. "What if," she began, her voice trailing as she tried to figure a way to ask her question. Gregorov stopped petting her and she knew he would soon grow suspicious. "What if all I needed to do was create a need for now and didn't care about later? Maybe I could start practicing with that first."

It seemed as though he had stopped breathing and then he began to exhale slowly. "That would seem more in line with your strengths. No. That was not meant as an insult." He began stroking her hair again as he thought. "You are all strength and have not learned to slowly work your way through layers. It is not what you do best," he said thoughtfully as he evaluated her skills. "My old masters would require us to peel a man's thoughts back like an onion. There are many layers: conscious, unconscious, locked secrets, the things that flicker in and out as our instincts fire, things we wish others to see about us and what we try to hide. Many levels. What I did most often took days of work. It was not a pleasant thing. Who truly wishes to see what evils lie in a soul?"

Loup began to squirm. Gregorov sounded as if he might begin a deep philosophical musing, which he was prone to do.

"No. This is not for me to teach you. For one, you would not heed my advice or direction. You are too stubborn."

"Do you have any books that I can read on the topic?" She rolled over to look at him, but he still stared at the ceiling.

"No. We memorized the procedures and then, at the end, we burned them. There were no secrets to be carried in the hand when we were accredited. To gain them, their men must be as good as we. They must also survive long enough to extract what we knew. Most would prefer to die rather than allow another to strip them of their mind, their secrets and their soul." He stopped stroking her hair and clutched her to his side as if seeking an anchor.

* * *

Loup allowed herself to be distracted from her quest until the next morning, a poor choice of timing. As they sat at the battered staff room table, she began again. "Is there a standard text of some sort? Does anyone teach memory work here?" she asked, staring at the coffee press, waiting for the perfect moment to depress the plunger.

Gregorov, bleary-eyed and never a morning person, threw her a look cautioning her to leave the matter alone. His tea was still steeping and his day held too many lectures to give as well as the weekly Dark Arts staff meeting in the afternoon.

The glint in his eye was enough to turn all of her attention to the press for several seconds until she could push the plunger down. Opaque black liquid achieved, she poured her mug to the brim and performed her Confirmare spell. Gregorov made a rude sound as he watched the ritual. With a small shake of his head, he picked up his teapot and swirled the hot water in an attempt to speed the tea's brewing.

By the time the black tea was drinkable, Loup had finished her first cup. She fidgeted while he slowly stirred in a lump of sugar. In what seemed like slow motion, he stirred his tea, the spoon making a periodic clinking sound when it struck the sides of the cup. He took his time before taking a sip, knowing every second would make her wait. At last, he took a long swallow and Loup began again.

"The library must have something. Do you remember any titles I could look up?" She tried her most pleasing voice and smiled when she asked.

Gregorov huffed and looked away, buying a few more seconds.

Deep laughter echoed in the hallway followed by Kessler whose arm was around a giggly, tall brunette who cooed, calling him "Siggy". Both Loup and Gregorov coughed laughs. Winking broadly, Kessler blew a kiss in their general direction before waltzing the girl around the room, stopping at the sink where he asked whether she drank tea or coffee.

"If I had a title, an author or even an idea of where to look, I'd quit bugging you about it." Loup tried a different tactic as she finished the last of her coffee.

Kessler, arm around the brunette, slid into the seat opposite them, laughing loudly at the last title. "I believe there is a German translation in the restricted section of the Defense Against the Dark Arts department's library."

"German?" Loup looked up, interested. "Is there only the one copy?"

"It is written in a rather archaic form of German. An eighteenth century work, I believe." Kessler grinned at Gregorov, sharing an unspoken joke. "It is the standard work, of course."

"What's the title in German?"

"Die Grundregeln des Gedankens und wie es auf dem Verstand, dem Körper und der Seele in Verbindung steht." Kessler said each word slowly, waiting until Loup had finished writing each word, correcting her spelling once.

"I'll have to check it out and read it." She tucked the note into her sleeve and looked up to see both men exchanging knowing looks. "What's up? What aren't you telling me?"

"The book is in the restricted section. You will need a note to gain entrance."

She looked from one to the other expectantly. Neither moved and the grins grew. "Can you write me a note?" The grins remained and the only movement was the sleepy brunette snuggling against Kessler's shoulder. "Please."

"Ah. That precious word," Kessler laughed. "No. We cannot."

Before she could say anything else, Gregorov hunched forward to lean on the table. "That library is for the professors of that department only. We do not belong to that area; therefore, we cannot access what is there."

With his words sounding muffled as he buried his head in the brunette's neck, Kessler suggested, "Perhaps you could find another friend in that department or was one foray there enough?"

Growling, Gregorov shoved his mug away, angry at the jibe at Loup's infidelity of a year past. Chair squealing, he pushed away from the table and stalked from the room.

"Thanks for the help." Loup gloomily picked up her press and empty mug in one hand and then juggled the teapot and Gregorov's mug into the other.

Shifting the girl from the chair to his lap, Kessler added as if an afterthought, "You could always break their wards. The rules never apply to you, do they?"

"You have no idea," she sighed, remembering Paris and the work she had done there. With a great deal of clanking, she rinsed everything out and performed the Siccare charm to dry the accoutrements of morning. Ignoring the passion at the table, she left the staff room and was almost bowled over by Gregorov leaving for the day. Her hand fluttered up to stop him, but he ignored her as he pushed by. The rules, she mused, applied to her more now than they ever had in Paris.