“Charles, actually. It was a nest of Shax demons. Quite a few more than they’ve been used to dealing with lately, but nothing they couldn’t manage. Charles was very insistent that there was nothing to worry about.” Will rolled his eyes. “I have a feeling he was fretting in case I suggested the picnic at Regent’s Park lake tomorrow be canceled. All the young ones are going.”

There was a very faint lilt at the end of Will’s speech, which sometimes came when he was tired. The faintest remnants of an accent, sanded away by time and distance. Still, when he was exhausted or grieved, it came back, and his voice would roll softly like the green hills of Wales.

“Do you worry?” he said, meeting her eyes in the mirror. “I do, sometimes. About Lucie and James.”

She set down her hairbrush and turned around, concerned. “Worry about the children? Why?”

“All this—” He waved his hand vaguely. “The boating parties, the regattas and cricket matches and fairs and dances, it’s so… mundane.”

“You’re worried they’re turning into mundanes? Really, Will, that’s a bit prejudiced of you.”

“No, I’m not worried about that. It’s just that—it’s been years since there’s been anything but minimal demonic activity in London. The children have grown up training, but barely needing to patrol.”

Tessa rose from her chair, her hair tumbling down her back. It was one of the oddities of being a warlock: her hair had stopped growing when she stopped aging, rather unexpectedly, at nineteen. It remained the same length, halfway to her waist.

“Isn’t that good?” she said. “We don’t want our children in danger from demons, do we?”

Will sat down on the bed, kicking off his shoes. “We don’t want them unprepared, either,” he said. “I remember what we had to do when we were their age. I don’t know if they could face the same thing. Picnics don’t ready you for war.”

“Will.” Tessa sank down beside him on the bed. “There is no war.”

She knew why he worried. For them, there had been war, and loss. Tessa’s brother, Nate. Thomas Tanner. Agatha Grant. Jessamine Lovelace, their friend, who now guarded the London Institute in ghostly form. And Jem, who they had both lost and kept.

“I know.” Will reached out to stroke her hair. “Tess, Tess. Do you think when you stopped growing older, you stopped aging in your heart? You never became cynical and fearful? Is it old age catching up with me, that I am so fretful and disquieted over nothing?”

She seized him by the chin, turning his face to hers. “You are not old,” she said fiercely. “Even when you are eighty, you will be my beautiful Will.”

She kissed him. He made a pleased, startled noise, and his arms came up about her. “My Tess,” he said. “My lovely wife.”