Chapter 15
Chapter Fifteen
I presume we are heading to his house, yet we take a road that ends at a towering building where every street seems to converge. It is clad in black stone that devours the light, silver runes coiling over the surface like snakes.
The car glides into an underground entrance, where Lander parks and steps out. He circles the vehicle, opens my door and helps me out.
The borrowed trousers are too long, so I roll the waistband until the hems clear my socked feet. The concrete leeches cold up through the thin fabric.
“This is the Ministry of Magic’s main building,” he says, with an edge of smugness.
Apparently my earlier speech has not fallen on deaf ears. He has brought me here to prove he truly works for the Ministry.
Nothing like taking someone to a macabre building to prove a point.
From his jacket he produces a silver cuff. Before I can react, he grabs my wrist and snaps the cuff into place.
The band is too wide for my small arm; it chafes the bone. I wobble, suddenly dizzy, and brace myself against the doorframe. The smoky vapour of his magic sputters out; I can no longer see it. Whatever trickle of power I possessed is gone. I am cut off.
Great.
“Anti-magic. Can’t be too careful. Come on.”
He strides away.
Punished for not answering his question, and now I am a suspect, not a victim. I am doing a marvellous job of protecting myself.
“Come on,” he says.
When I hesitate, he doubles back, takes my elbow and guides me forward. His grip is firm, impersonal, yet my skin prickles all the same.
When I was a girl, Father insisted that my siblings and I learn to ride. I remember one day we spent hours in the saddle; when I dismounted my pony, my limbs were so stiff I could not bend them, and I marched like a tin soldier for several days.
That is how my body feels now—as though I am made of tin.
My socks squeak on the polished stone, and it takes a few awkward steps before I realise I need to bend my knees. Next I force my hips to cooperate, tottering beside Lander, who towers over this smaller body.
Each step grows easier; my breathing steadies, muscles warming. I’m quietly pleased to have mastered my gait, though his long legs take one stride for every three of mine.
The interior is cavernous, the ceiling vanishing into shadow. It feels like a labyrinth. The stone swallows light, but silver veins run through the walls, pulsing with power.
I can see the pulses, though I feel nothing, thanks to the cuff. They cast shifting patterns across the chequered floor. Enchanted sconces flare to life as we pass, as though the building wakes beneath our feet.
Snatches of voices echo down the corridors, a low bureaucratic hum beneath the throb of magic.
We halt at a door. He swipes his palm over what looks like plain stone; it chimes and clicks open.
“Go on in.”
Bracing for concrete and a drain, I step inside. Wrong again. It is not an interrogation room. It is an immaculate office.
Books line black shelves, punctuated by the occasional magical artefact. A skull topped with a candle rests on one, and I cannot decide whether it is a joke. The room smells of parchment, old books and Lander’s vanilla–coconut scent, threaded with something sharper, like ozone after lightning.
Even the desk is black. Why anyone would want more black here escapes me, yet the room suits him, especially with that swirl of spiky magic darkness that clings to his skin.
He gestures to a chair. “Take a seat.”
I sit. My legs dangle; my toes barely skim the floor. I suppress a groan. The ley line could at least have granted me a few more inches—I am scarcely five feet tall.
Although any human body would feel small, even if I were seven feet, I would still feel oddly diminished. I do not know whether I will ever grow accustomed to going from such vastness to being compressed into this meat suit. I hate that I feel weak and exposed.
Lander pours water, places a glass before me, pours one for himself and sits.
The room is cold. A shiver rattles through me, part chill, part fear. I thought the drive had drained that emotion, yet it resurfaces, knotting low in my stomach.
The door opens without a knock, and Councillor Meredith Jackson—who was arguing with Lander just this morning, though it feels a lifetime ago—glides inside.
She circles the desk and settles in the spare chair set squarely opposite mine, as though the scene had been arranged in advance.
I find maintaining eye contact almost impossible; it feels so strange.
I have spent several human lifetimes without a body, and now, suddenly, I must consider the expression on my face and how I hold another person’s gaze.
I once read that too much eye contact is creepy, while too little makes you look shifty.
How can I strike the right balance when I am trying not to appear guilty? It seems impossible.
I lift my chin, and my hair itches at the back of my neck. It is still tucked into the jumper; I feel strange with it down. I do not think I have worn it loose since I was a little girl.
My thoughts scatter as the rest of my skin itches, my head hurts and every breath burns. I am not used to it—my heartbeat, blood pressure, all of it. Even the adrenaline surging through my system is disorientating.
There is so much happening in this body that I can scarcely think, let alone protect myself. I am going to slip. I can feel it.
I doubt I can keep this fragile balance much longer.
I usually have far more control, but I cannot stop my hands from trembling. I tuck them beneath my thighs to keep them still.
Already I am mixing things up in my mind. I must remember: Lander said he is merely a council operative, not a councillor, and Meredith has yet to introduce herself. I am not supposed to recognise her or know her name.
Channelling the persona of a wicked witch, Meredith regards me like something unpleasant stuck to her shoe.
Yet the bags beneath her eyes betray that she is exhausted, and I caused it.
She was one of the magic users who dropped to their knees. Thirteen members of a coven—fourteen, counting the Magic Hunter—were needed to bring me down, and still I escaped.
I won.
I won.
The anxiety I have been feeling melts away. I close my eyes and draw my first deep breath in hours and allow myself to feel.
I am safe.
I can keep myself safe.
They have no power over me.
My magic will return, and I may never match my strength as the disembodied force of House, yet I will remain strong. I have always had to be strong. Mentally I am tougher than they imagine, and though this body is weaker, the mind directing it has not changed.
I have dealt with unimaginable horrors. This… This is nothing.
I keep my expression impassive, smiling inwardly. I have nothing to fear. If I stay alive a few more days, I can vanish.
I just need to hold it together.
I set my now steady hands on my lap. I do not twitch or fidget. I simply watch them back.
Meredith blinks, uncertain how to occupy the hush; most people are. Silence unsettles them, so they fill it with noise or movement. She breaks the silence first.
“So you’re the woman our team found in the woods,” she says.
They did not find me. Lander did.
He sits, unreadable, though his troubled eyes are doubtless an act. Lander Kane would kill anyone—man, woman or child—who threatened his beloved magical society.
I say nothing.
She lifts an eyebrow and peers down her nose at me. “Nothing to say?”
“I apologise; I did not realise you had asked a question.”
“Who are you?” she snarls.
“That’s a question,” Lander notes mildly.
So helpful.
“Why were you there?” She leans forward, fingernails digging into the desktop.
“In the woods. Spies have been crossing our borders, trying to steal what we guard. Our ley lines are the strongest in the world, envied everywhere. At two o’clock this afternoon a sentient house crash-landed on a ley line in Branham Woods, causing a major explosion.
The house was destroyed, the line damaged, and the power feeding the Magic Sector is faltering. Tell me what you know.”
“Wait.” I raise a hand. “Did you say a sentient house crash-landed? That a house caused the explosion? I thought sentient objects were small. Magical houses are supposed to be a myth, a fairy tale. Are you telling me a full-sized building, not a doll’s house, fell out of the sky? You mean an actual house?”
“A real house,” she confirms, narrowing her eyes.
I shake my head, feigning bewilderment, and keep talking. People with something to hide seldom ask so many questions.
“Gosh. And you said it was destroyed? I do not understand how a house could crash-land. Did it fly? Did it have wings or float like a car? Was anyone hurt? Was the house itself dangerous?”
“Cut the crap,” Lander says, leaning back with his arms folded.
“Look, Harper, you need to start talking. Tell the truth. This so-called ‘act of innocence’ won’t work for you.
The sooner you give us the information, the sooner we can process you.
You don’t want to see what happens if we catch you in a lie.
It will not be pleasant. I don’t hurt women as a rule, but I will if necessary. ”
There are too many blanks I cannot fill.
Silence will not suffice. If I hesitate or give even the faintest hint of threat, I know what comes next. If the Magic Hunter decides I am dangerous, he will do whatever it takes to make sure I am not.
I need to do something extreme.
“I don’t know what you want me to say,” I murmur. “Is it because I am a paper mage?”
“What?” She whips towards Lander. “She’s a paper mage?”
I duck my head and stare at the floor.
I can feel Lander’s eyes burning into the top of my skull. I am betting they treat paper mages like live grenades, and I have just figuratively pulled the pin and dropped it in the middle of Lander’s office. Boom.
“I did not think the Ministry discriminated by discipline,” I say sadly to my sock-covered feet. “Even necromancers are admitted. I hoped the upper ranks were better…” I allow my voice to fade.
“She’s a paper mage,” Meredith hisses.
“She says she’s not very powerful.”
“That is irrelevant. A word. Outside.”
She storms off. Lander follows. In the corridor, her voice rises. “You brought a paper mage into the Ministry?”
“She’s wearing an anti-magic cuff.”
The door slams; a sound-suppressing spell swallows their argument, leaving only the faint hum of the building.
I swing my legs.
Now the Ministry faces a dilemma: keep my presence quiet, or inform the paper mages. And they will not be pleased to learn that one of their own is wearing a magic-suppressing cuff and being interrogated.
They may never have met me, yet a bond of power binds us, and they fiercely defend their own.
Without thinking too much about it, I grab a notepad from Lander’s desk and pick up a pen. The weight feels wrong in my fingers—too heavy and too small at once, like it is meant for someone else’s hand. For a moment, I just stare at the blank page, suddenly, absurdly nervous.
I have never used a modern pen before.
My gaze drifts around the room, half-hoping for a swan-feather quill and a pot of ink—something that makes sense. Instead, I am left staring at the metal pen gripped awkwardly in my hand, its smooth barrel cold against my skin.
You have written entire accords, I tell myself. You can manage a little note.
I flip to a clean sheet and begin to write.
To any paper mage who is reading this…
The words wobble. The letters lean drunkenly, as if they are wearing someone else’s shoes. My hand cramps halfway through the sentence, muscles protesting this strange, physical version of a task I once did by thought alone—ink coaxed into perfect lines with a flick of will.
I pause, appalled.
Paper mages are fussy about many things, but our handwriting is practically a religion. If any of them saw this scrawl…
I tear the page out, fold it twice, and tuck it to the back of the pad like a shameful secret.
“Absolutely not,” I mutter, flexing my aching fingers. “We are not starting our request for assistance with that.”
I draw a steadying breath, adjust my grip, and try again. Slower this time. My hand still shakes, but the lines smooth out. The letters start to look like mine instead of a stranger’s—still imperfect, still too human, but recognisable.
In neat handwriting—neat enough, at least—I write:
To any paper mage who is reading this,
My name is Harper. I am a paper mage, and I am being held by the Ministry of Magic. I need help.
It is strange that I can ask perfect strangers for help, yet I cannot bring myself to ask my friends. The human condition is odd at times; in this instance, though, I am seeking professional assistance—paid tenfold—instead of putting the people I care about at risk.
They do not need to know my entire story, but I know that we paper mages are inherently nosy, and they will get the message.
I close the notepad and set it back on his desk.
It does not matter if Lander finds the note; it will already be too late.
Paper mages are extraordinarily powerful. Because in this century they act as impartial keepers of records, and are exempt from prosecution and sector rules: no law binds us, and no one is foolish enough to try. We may live wherever we choose.
When I studied the treaty, I discovered why. Paper mages were granted full diplomatic immunity precisely because they work with every derivative. Every official document in the country is passed through their hands.
Though we are magic users—and should, in theory, fall under the Magic Sector—we remain neutral, drafting contracts for vampires and shifters alike. Those contracts are so airtight that breaking them can be fatal. Everyone knows better than to cross a paper mage.
Perhaps I have started a tug-of-war between a powerful faction and the Ministry; if either discovers who I truly am—and how much power I hold—things will become interesting.
I will fight for my freedom if I must, using their own laws against them.
Ten minutes pass before Lander returns.
“Come on,” he says, beckoning. “The interview can wait.”
I hop from the chair and follow him through more corridors. After five minutes, he stops, opens another door.
“You’ll stay here.”
I do not ask where ‘here’ is. I step inside.
An apartment, with the kitchen to the left, a generous L-shaped sofa, a bedroom and a bathroom to the right. Double doors open onto a courtyard paved with white tiles; colour splashes everywhere in pots and hanging baskets. Not all black, thank the stars.
“No food in the cupboards,” he says. “I’ll bring something shortly. Anything in particular?”
“I am not fussy. Whatever is easiest. Thank you.”
He nods. “All right. Get some rest.”
The door closes behind him, and I hear the quiet click of the lock.