“Doing it like this!” Sonder said. “There wasn’t a warning anywhere or anything like that. The front door wasn’t even locked! We could have just walked in without knowing any better and she would have tried to kill us!”

“From the sound of it that’s exactly what she’s been doing.”

“But why doesn’t she do it the normal way?” Sonder said. “No one even knows that this is her house! She could have . . . I don’t know, registered it with the Council or something.”

“She is letting people know that this is her house.”

“They can’t spread the message if they’re all dead!”

I shrugged. “She probably lets a few go. Or maybe she just assumes that if enough people go missing then sooner or later the others will take the hint.”

Sonder shook his head. “That’s insane.”

I looked at Sonder for a moment. “If you want to be a scholar,” I said at last, “you have to learn not to see things so simply.”

“What do you mean?”

“Deleo and Dark mages seem insane to you because you’re judging them by your standards,” I said. “You’re assuming they have the same goals you do. What makes you so sure Deleo wants to warn people off peacefully?”

Sonder looked at me, puzzled. “What are you saying?”

“I’m saying that if you’re the kind of person who likes to take out your frustrations on other people, then occasionally having to murder some burglars is less of a drawback and more a perk of the job.”

Sonder stared at me in revulsion. “Are you serious?”

I sighed. “I’m not saying that’s why she does it, I’m saying it might be. The point is that Deleo doesn’t live in your world. What you said about registering with the Council? To Dark mages that’d be a joke. They only respect authority if it’s backed up by force. Registering might actually attract them—they’d figure that if she was trying to get the protection of Light mages, then she couldn’t handle it herself. And it would mostly be other Dark mages she’d be worried about.”

“You’re telling me they’d listen to people being murdered, but they wouldn’t read a sign on the door?”

“Yes! Dark mages are different from you, don’t you get that? They don’t follow rules and they don’t do as they’re told! If you set a boundary the first thing they’ll do is push it to see if you’ll do anything. What Deleo is doing is a normal way to send a message in Dark society, and if you don’t understand that then you shouldn’t be here.”