She looked at her bloody hands, frowning, noticing how empty they seemed. It took another moment to realise she’d lost the Sceptre, but by then Darquesse was already floating in through the broken window.

“You get prettier every time I see you,” Darquesse said, touching down. Her body drank in the shadows around her, her pitch-black silhouette stark against the orange-tinged sky of the city at night.

Stephanie stood, the pain in her hands forgotten. They were in a store, a department store, surrounded by mannequins in frozen poses. No alarm sounded. She wasn’t surprised. Not many department store security systems expected people to crash through their top-floor windows.

“What were you doing in the Vault?” Darquesse asked, walking forward slowly. “Did Finbar have a vision? Did he know I was going after the Hessian Grimoire? Were you trying to foil my insidious plan?”

She chuckled. It was soft, and mocking, and filled with menace.

Stephanie backed away. She was sure she’d been holding the Sceptre when she hit the window. She was sure she’d brought it in with her. She thought. She hoped. So it was here. Somewhere around her, it was here. It was just lying on the floor, waiting for her to find it, to grab it and use it to turn Darquesse to dust.

“You won’t kill me,” Stephanie said. She stopped backing away. She stood her ground.

“Oh no?”

“If you kill me, it’ll destroy Mum and Dad. You don’t want to hurt them, right? That’s what you said? If you do anything to me, they’ll—”

“They’ll get over it,” said Darquesse. “In the grand scheme of things, my little reflection, what does one life matter? What do a million lives matter? A billion? Not much is the answer. We’re all just energy.”

Darquesse stood right in front of her now. Stephanie’s boots gave her a slight height advantage over Darquesse’s bare feet.

There. The Sceptre, on the ground right behind Darquesse’s heel.

“Fine,” said Stephanie. “You want to kill me? Kill me. But not before I break your nose.”

Darquesse laughed. “By all means. Give it your best shot.”

Stephanie grimaced. This was going to hurt.

She swung a punch and her fist connected. Darquesse’s nose smashed, but her head didn’t move back, and Stephanie’s knuckles crumpled under the impact. As Darquesse healed herself, Stephanie cried out, clutched her hand and fell to her knees.

“I hope you think it was worth it,” Darquesse said.

Stephanie grabbed the Sceptre with her left hand and Darquesse cursed and jerked back as black lightning streaked by her face, turning a mannequin to a cloud of dust.