Our lawyer, Ms. Trevellyan, who had told us to call her Jenny, watched the disc Adam had handed to her. It was from Camera Two in the garage and showed pretty much everything I’d seen when Guayota had come to visit. It also showed, to my relief, the dog changing into a man in the background while Guayota and I fought.

She watched it from beginning to end, and her poker face was flawless. If I didn’t know better, I’d have thought that she saw fights between volcano gods and mechanics on a daily basis. Her assistant, a bright young thing, had yet to acquire a mask that could cover her fascination.

“Good one,” the assistant breathed at the point where I stuck the mop handle into his head. It looked more disturbing on-screen than it had been at the time. I suppose I’d been worried enough about survival to get too squicked then.

When the disc finished, she added, “You’ve done a lot of karate, right? That looked like an outtake from some of the old martial arts shows—before they learned to get the actors to slow down so the audience could see what they were doing.”

Jenny Trevellyan cleared her throat. Gently.

A light flush rose in her assistant’s face. I hadn’t caught her name, and now I regretted it because I liked her. “Sorry. But you’re lucky you survived. Seriously, that guy was scary.”

Jenny folded her hands and stared at Adam. “Okay. What happened later that made you erase the end of the video?”

“An unfortunate glitch in the equipment,” Adam murmured. “We have three discs from different cameras, but something, maybe the excess heat, made them all quit recording around the same time.”

The lawyer’s assistant, who was scribbling down notes, lit right up. “Magic is supposed to affect electricity like that. I’ve read that wizards can’t be in the same room with things like computers and stuff.”

I knew where she’d read that. I bit my lip. It was to our advantage to spread a little misinformation whenever we could.

“Convenient as that explanation is,” said Jenny dryly, “I would like to know what would happen if Cantrip magically figures out what the cameras would have shown if they hadn’t … glitched. I am your lawyer; I can’t help you if I don’t know the truth.”

“Someone came in with Adam and saved my skin,” I told her. “The means that someone used would make that someone very valuable to the military or any number of other disreputable types who might resort to kidnapping to get that kind of power under their control. I’m just glad that the glitch happened when it did. That way, we can just give the credit to my husband and ensure that a Good Samaritan doesn’t suffer for saving my bacon. We’d like to leave that person out completely.”