I pursed my lips. ‘Is the Order being set up?’

‘Either that or we have a dangerous amateur on our hands.’ Winter swept a hand around. ‘Given where we are and who we’re surrounded by, that’s not a great shock.’

‘But the thing that attacked us last night was a damn zombie. A zombie!’

He sighed. ‘I explained that to you already. It wasn’t a zombie. It was an animated anomaly.’

‘Of course it was a zombie! It was a dead body which clawed its way out of its grave and attacked us!’ I still found it difficult to believe but the evidence had been there.

‘Keep your voice down.’

I put my hands on my hips. ‘Seriously? You don’t think that the people here have a right to know about this? There could be an army of the dead on their way!’

‘There’s no army.’

‘You don’t know that!’

‘Ivy, it’s impossible to raise more than one un-dead being at a time. Unless there’s an army of necromancers, which is not going to be the case, there’s no army of the dead.’

I met his gaze head on. ‘I bet,’ I said, ‘that if I had asked you last week if it were possible to raise one dead body, you would have said that was impossible too. Except that’s already happened. How could an amateur manage it?’

‘I don’t know yet. Necromancy is so rare that we don’t know much about it. There’s very little written in the Cypher Manuscripts because any spells designed to get the dead even to twitch are highly unreliable.’

‘I wouldn’t call what happened last night as a corpse merely twitching!’

Winter placed a hand on my arm. ‘I know you’re concerned. I am too. But one of the conditions of being permitted on set is that no one finds out what’s really been going on.’ I opened my mouth to continue arguing but he didn’t let me start. ‘The Ipsissimus agrees. We can’t have the world and its dog knowing that necromancy is real. We have to deal with enough conspiracy theories as it is. Not to mention that people up and down the country will be trying to raise their loved ones. Or worse.’

‘But the people here could be in danger, Rafe.’

Winter’s voice softened. ‘I know. It’s up to you and me to make sure they’re safe until we find out who’s really behind this.’

‘Can’t you do one of your herby spells to find out what happened in Bellows’ trailer? That’ll give us something to work with at least.’

He sighed. ‘I tried that first thing. There have been too many people coming in and out of the trailer for it to work. All it conjured up was a mess.’

Fat lot of good that was, then. I tried a different tack. ‘Morris Armstrong said that they chose this area for filming because there are historical links to magic.’

He nodded. ‘I heard. But it was one family a long time ago. While their descendants are still in the area, they don’t have any discernible magic. They’ve already been interviewed. They don’t have any links to the animated anomaly that attacked us last night either. I’ve already checked. The truth is that none of this started until Enchantment came to town.’