I’d wondered about the hair color, which hadn’t seemed normal for the Edwardian age—or for the Victorian either, which is when we’d first met. But I’d since learned that the silver nitrate used as hair dye in this period often resulted in purple tones with prolonged use. I didn’t know what color Gertie had been going for originally, but the pale lavender she’d ended up with had become her signature look.

Gertie was a hippy before they were cool.

The hair clashed a bit with the fashionable mustard-colored frock she was wearing, with black silk fringe tacked on at odd places, because she’d lived most of her life in an era where more was more. And because Pythias didn’t have to wear the crap they foisted onto their subordinates. But it complemented the amethysts set in gold and shaped like ancient amphorae in her ears and winking from a pin at her breast. Gertie liked fashion, and she had the money to show it off.

“Are you sure?” I asked, watching the girls go at each other.

“Watch,” was all she said.

I watched. And was quickly reminded that Rhea had been stashed with the covens by her mother when she was really young, to avoid having anyone guess that the resemblance between them might be more than coincidence. The result was that she didn’t just know Pythian magic; she knew coven as well. Which explained why Agnes was determinedly holding her wand hand against the floor.

Or she was until Rhea shifted the small piece of wood into her opposite grip and—

“Nice one!” I called, as a blast set Agnes’ hair on fire.

A snarled word from Agnes put it out, and then the wand disappeared, shifted who-knew-where. Rhea didn’t like that, and jumped her again. The wrestling continued.

“She’s learning to trust herself,” Gertie said. “Confidence was the main thing she lacked. Skill can be taught, but without belief in oneself, all the skill in the world is useless.”

There was nothing pointed in Gertie’s tone, and she didn’t so much as glance at me. But I recognized the growing feeling in my gut. The squirmy, half-ashamed, half-angry feeling that I often got in the middle of one of her lessons.

“Are you trying to make a point?” I asked.

That got me a glance, at least. “You talk in your sleep.”

“I do not.”

“You mumble in your sleep. Enough, in any case.”

“Enough for what?”

Gertie winced, maybe because the fight had just descended into hair pulling. “Let’s breakfast in the garden.”