I eyed the hapless duo. Burglars taking advantage of a temporarily empty property were one thing – but these witches were something else entirely. I hunkered down until I was eye to eye with the man. ‘Who are you?’ I asked softly.

He struggled against his bonds. ‘Mmmph.’

I dismissed his attempt at an answer. ‘Don’t worry,’ I told him airily. ‘I’ll find out.’ I reached inside his jacket and pulled out his wallet. There, for all the world to see, was his Order ID card. ‘Matthew Bell End.’

‘Mmmph!’

‘Oh, I’m sorry. Matthew Bellham.’ I grinned. ‘Easy mistake to make.’ I placed my fingers under his chin and forced him to look at me. ‘Now why is the Order breaking into the flat of one of their own?’

He pressed his lips together and looked away.

‘Ve haf vays of making you talk,’ I said, with what I hoped was a menacing air.

Unfortunately, he called my bluff. ‘Go on, then.’

I leant back and examined him. The frown line in his forehead was growing more pronounced by the second. He wasn’t scared but he was concerned. I rubbed my chin, stood up and went over to his partner. I patted her down, looking for identification. Clearly, she was a bit smarter than frowny Matt as she didn’t carry anything with her name on it. She did, however, have five carefully separated ziplock bags of dried herbs: rosemary, bakuli pods, tansy, sweetpea and something unidentifiable. I opened the bag and took a careful sniff before recoiling. Yeuch. That was pungent.

Yanking down her gag, I asked, ‘What are these for?’

‘I’m a keen cook.’

‘Really.’

‘Yeah,’ she sneered. ‘Really.’

I tossed the bags to the side. Whatever spell she’d been planning, it was obviously dubious. I’d look it up later. I could only surmise that it was designed to harm Eve in some way – and that made me very pissed off. ‘Who are you?’ I demanded. ‘Are you with the Order too?’

‘What’s it to you?’ she snarled, meeting aggression with aggression. ‘Who the hell are you anyway?’

This woman was all fire and brimstone. No doubt she was smarting at being taken down by someone half her size. Deciding to try a different approach, I pasted on a wide-mouthed smile. ‘I’m Ivy,’ I beamed. ‘Pleased to meet you.’

She rolled her eyes. ‘Let us go. You’ll be sorry if you don’t.’

I was already sorry. Goodness only knew what I was going to do with this pair. There were spells I could use to encourage verbosity and elicit the truth about why they were here but they took time to prepare and I didn’t have the right herbs. I doubted Eve had them hanging around her flat either. Those kind of things were generally only used by Third Level Order geeks because their inherent danger precluded all but the most skilled from not leaving their subjects as drooling vegetables. Civilised society tended to frown upon such actions.