I reiterated my point. ‘Apart from the fact that he was a contestant, you mean.’

He gazed at me. ‘You seem to know a lot about what happened.’

I gestured uneasily to where the others had been standing. ‘There’s been a lot of gossip.’

Armstrong’s mouth tightened. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I suppose there has.’ Then he apparently remembered who he was and why I was here. ‘There was an Order witch on the train yesterday.’ His voice grew hard. ‘You were on the train yesterday.’

I swallowed. At least he’d not made any reference to my allegedly smelly contagion. ‘I was.’ I made a quick decision. It was highly possible that he’d clocked me talking to Winter. ‘Adeptus Exemptus Raphael Winter. I’m sorry. He’s following me. We were temporarily forced to be partners last month and now he seems to think I’m up to no good.’ I dropped my eyes. ‘I understand if that makes my position here untenable.’

‘You think he’s here for you?’ Armstrong spoke sharply.

I looked up, mentally crossing my fingers. ‘I do think that, actually. Unless you believe he’s here because of the death.’

He folded his arms. ‘The Hallowed Order of Magical Enlightenment doesn’t like programmes like ours. They’d prefer to keep the magic to themselves.’

I refrained from pointing out that what Enchantment did involved such weak magic spells that the Order wouldn’t give a toss what they did, as long as their name was kept out of it. But it was time to keep my mouth shut and see what Armstrong was going to do.

‘Can I trust you, Ivy Wilde?’ he asked.

It was make or break time. I pulled back my shoulders and met his gaze. ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘You can. Check my background. I’m no Order flunky.’ I had no doubt that he already knew my history but it was worth mentioning to labour my point.

Armstrong rolled his tongue across his teeth and stood up. ‘You will make contact with this Winter. You will watch him and find out what he’s doing and report back to me. I won’t stand for Order interference, regardless of the circumstances.’ He glared. ‘Got that?’

I blinked rapidly. ‘Er, okay. But…’

‘Just do it. If you want to get anywhere in television, you will move every mountain to find out what he’s up to and keep me appraised.’

Winter wanted to me spy on Enchantment and report back to him and Enchantment wanted me to spy on Winter and report back to them. How very messy. I hoped that didn’t mean I’d have to work harder. There were already far too many threads to keep track of.

‘Okay. I’ll do that.’ I hesitated. ‘I might need some extra time away from my runner duties to…’

‘You’ll do it in your time off,’ Armstrong barked. ‘We don’t need the rest of the crew alerted to the fact that there’s a damned Order witch watching our every move. They’re on edge enough as it is.’