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He wiped so You can explain yourself to them’

‘And I will! But, please, you have to tellfor and where I can find him More people will die if you don’t’

He searchedthe truth of my words ‘You could be anyone,’ he said finally ‘You could beall this up’

‘You know I’m a witch I cast a spell to make those ice cubes appear’

He pursed his lips ‘Yeah, why did you do that? It was a bit weird’

Uh… ‘To cool you both off and get you to stop fighting, of course That’s not the point The point is I could easily cast another spell now and get myself out of this situation I could hurt you if I wanted to but I haven’t done Because I’m not a bad person I’m on the tail of a very bad person and so is my boyfriend We’ll wait for the police if it makes you feel safe but please,’ I pleaded, ‘tell me what you know’

For aaboutpersuaded hiainst Winter’s prone body in relief Soood had to come out of this disaster

‘He doesn’t work here His family owns the place but he doesn’t have much to do with it I’ve onlyjoke a the lads that we look alike but Hal never see here for a month or so, but I’ve always had the impression he despises me I assumed it was because we look similar’

‘Hal,’ I pressed ‘That’s his name?’

‘Yeah Hal Prescott He lives in that swanky new building a few ht look alike but we live very different lives’

‘If you’ve only been working here for a month, as in your job before you? Do you know?’

The guard shook his head ‘No one I mean, you wouldn’t think a creave ed ‘They hired me because there’d been soht kids werestuff Or that maybe it was Travellers or so used’ He raised his‘But until you and Blue Eyes here showed up, I’d seen nothing No one coht’

I had a hunch that the reason Blackbeard despised him was because he was in the way, not because they resembled each other Perhaps this was the real reason why he’d drawn out disposing of the coven’s remains He couldn’t kill anyone else because now he couldn’t burn their bodies without being noticed, so he had to get his kicks where he could He would have found it easy to sneak in on his own at night before the guard was hired Nohether his family owned the place or not, it would be next to impossible

Another thought occurred to me ‘You said that this place doesn’t provide cremation services for familiars Why not?’

He bared his teeth in a grin, ‘Apparently they really don’t like witches In fact, I heard they think the lot of you are scuhted to tell me this

Fascinated, I had to ask the question ‘Why?’

‘Dunno No one knows’

Hmm Maybe they’d had a bad encounter in the past Maybe there was a black sheep in the family as a witch Maybe they wanted to be witches and weren’t I chewed the inside ofto do with the fact that little Hal was a null In the end, theBlackbeard did

Behind roaned even louder than I had The security guard shuffled, obviously nervous, so I leaned back my head ‘Just relax, Rafe It’s fine We’re all fine Don’t do anything silly’