I had wondered if I’d know a wobble when I saw one, but there was no mistaking it. Nick was metaphorically teetering on the edge of his future, as Eleanor had feared, and I didn’t know if I should yank him back to her idea of solid ground or let him fall into whatever fantasy was playing in his mind and see if it caught him. I wanted to be the patient advisor I knew he needed, but if Nick was wobbling, how much of it was because my actions had pushed him to it?

Before I mustered a reply, I spotted a small barnyard animal floating toward us.

“Barnes, incoming, my three o’clock,” I said, under my breath. “His toupee is extra tonight.”

Richard’s longtime secretary appeared at our elbows. “Follow me. Now.”

His tone was deadly. A switch flipped in me and Nick, and we joined hands and followed Barnes to the staff elevator. His finger trembled as he punched the button for floor sixty-five, and the ten seconds felt like they swelled into ten minutes. When the doors sprang open, we saw a glass conference room with Richard and Freddie pacing white-faced near the windows.

“Go in,” Barnes said, and he glided back into the elevator.

My mind raced as I tried to read their expressions. When the door clicked shut behind us, Richard punched a button on his cell phone and placed it in the middle of the table.

“I don’t know what could be so important that you’d put me on hold, Dickie,” came Agatha’s bitter complaint.

“I was playing Maids and Milkmen,” Edwin protested, and I assumed this was some weird British children’s game that never made it to Iowa until I heard Elizabeth purr, “I’m here to collect your delivery, sir.”

Richard appeared to fight the urge to spit bile into the phone, and instead said, “London Bridge may be falling.”

Agatha’s gasp was guttural. Freddie groped for a chair, while Nick swayed in place. They’d obviously been briefed on the code, though it didn’t take a wizard to guess.

“She suffered a severe stroke,” Richard said. “She is still with us, but her future is uncertain.”

Nick and I had lived this moment once before, wringing ourselves out during four torturous hours in a car, only for it not to be true. Now that it was not a drill, I had no idea how to feel, other than empty. Nick, too, looked hollow, as if the first scare had drained him dry.

Richard drew his mouth into a thin line. “I’ve called the ministers here. Edwin, you’ll need to come at once. No time to change.” He paused. “Depending on what you’re wearing. I cannot act as a Counsellor of State in this instance, so you and Frederick must be the two who make it official.”

I took several shallow breaths. “Make what official?”