‘Diall’s a prick,’ Marsh grunted. Then he paused and looked up. ‘He’s dead?’ He snorted. ‘Good riddance.’

There was a knock at the door and we all jumped, even Winter. He got to his feet and opened it. There was a low murmur before he beckoned me. ‘You should hear this too, Ivy.’

I stood up. ‘Don’t go anywhere,’ I told Marsh.

He glared and rattled the chain linking his ankles together. ‘Unlikely.’

I padded over to Winter. He nudged me into the corridor and closed the door. A fresh-faced woman was standing there. ‘We’ve had the preliminary reports, Adeptus,’ she said. ‘The fragment you found is definitely from the Cyphers. We need to double check but it looks like one of the earlier pages.’

That was something; the further on you went in each Volume, the more power and magic there was. Maybe Marsh had only read the first section or two. He certainly didn’t seem to have much power or authority right now – unless he was waiting for the right moment to use the magic against us.

‘Thanks. And the rest?’

‘Adeptus Leith has been in touch. There’s very little they can decipher from Philosophus Marsh’s home. He has some effective wards in place that prevent us from casting a spell to see what he’s been up to.’

Winter nodded, unsurprised. I, on the other hand, felt differently. ‘But if he’s a Philosophus, then he’s First Level. You’ve said that only Second Level witches know how to put those kinds of wards in place.’

‘He stole an entire volume of the Cypher Manuscript, Ivy, and almost drowned us both in a sewer,’ Winter said. ‘I think we can safely assume that he has magical abilities beyond his supposed level.’

I thought of the man on the other side of the door with his bloodshot eyes and broken veins on his cheeks and nose. He didn’t strike me as someone with fabulous magical abilities but Winter was supposed to be the expert. All the same, it niggled me. This didn’t feel right.

‘The blood?’ Winter asked the woman briskly. ‘Do we have a match yet for Diall?’

She shook her head. ‘Preliminary testing tells us it’s definitely not Marsh’s own blood and it’s the same type as Diall’s, but we can’t say anything for sure yet.’ She looked troubled. ‘We’ve turned over his house and there’s no sign of the missing Cypher Manuscript. People are starting to panic.’

The cat was well and truly out of the bag. ‘So it’s common knowledge what we’re looking for?’

She nodded uneasily. Winter hissed in irritation. ‘In that case,’ he muttered, ‘we’d better find it quickly before all hell breaks loose and there are pointed fingers and harsh whispers in every corner.’

The witch’s mouth tightened. ‘I’ll do what I can to keep people calm. We’ll send out a statement as soon as possible.’ She turned and sprinted away. People around here certainly liked conducting everything at breakneck speed.

‘You’re expecting a large number of honourable Order witches to take advantage of this situation and start blaming their colleagues,’ I said to Winter.