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"My name’s Jasper, not sir, and you’re about as sorry as the cat what got caught with the canary feathers" He retreated back to his chair by the banked fire and swaddled hiain with his blanket "Give h coin in the reticule to pay him a hundred times that, but dutifully counted out twenty and handed him the stack

He checked each piece with his teeth before they disappeared under the blanket along with ht," he said, his voice muffled "Which stone is it you want to charm?"

Since there were no other chairs in the flat, I went to stand by the mantel "Dreamstone"

His head poked up "You clione off?"

"So you have heard of it" As he scowled at me I lifted my hands "Please, sir--Mr Jasper," I corrected myself "I have to knohat happens when it’s charmed"

"Can’t be charmed since there’s no such stone"

"Then how could you know of it? Youfroo some miners told tales about it Said it were found in some pisshole in Cornwall They only wanted to scare folk" Jasper saw e had been digging up half of Cornwall looking for it Only it were the ht down a tunnel on their heads, stole it from them, used it to put them to sleep, and left thee had used the stone on hier’s for o to sleep?"

"Their e what bespelled them wills That’s why they are also called the possession stones" He e, no lanced at the wardlings he’d nailed to the walls "If a stone like it were real, Mr Jasper, would it have to be carried or worn by the person it controls?"

"Why would it, once it was ’spelled? Stones give off power like the sun gives heat All people’d have to do is stand close enough to be caught in the radiance" He glared "Don’t you know nothing about o, I didn’t believe in it" I tried to smile, but if what I suspected was true, in a few hours all of Ruainst a stone that could do that?"

" ’Course there isn’t Why would there be ? It don’t exist"

"The e in the miners’ story," I coaxed, "hoas he defeated?"

"Like all the evildoers, by being killed in a body as outside after dawn" He chuffed out a breath "Nothing ht of day"

Did that randfather was evil? Dredmore, now, he could be crowned Prince of Darkness and no one would even question it, least of allas Harry had been since he’d come into my life, he’d never behaved in any particularly evil er, who hated him And Dredmore, who despised him And my mother, who had made me promise to wear for the rest ofhiry now, I strode over to the wall of wardlings

"What are you--hey, you quit that" He got up and tried to stopone of his talismans "Is that why you really crawled in here? To stealfor a beater"

"You’d best shout loudly, then They’re all up on the Hill" I brushed his hands away and wrenched the wardling fro it as hard as I could to the floor Silver-white light exploded across the rooht faded and the old charm maker squawked, I picked up one of the pieces and exa, which appeared to be silver, had cracked like cheap porcelain Beneath the faux ray stone disk

"Giht over his candle, and as soon as the light frolinted with all the colors of the rainbow

The flashing colors ht?"

"Dispelled its power, you did," heit this way and that "Shattering charmed stone always do"

"So this is drea?

"These wardlings were struck froed me double for ’em"