Reassured, Rosetta’s excitement had been boundless. She’d dug out the clothes she only ever wore on birthdays, had insisted on washing her hair this morning, and had sat patiently for an hour while Ken had dried, untangled, combed, and styled it until it was a perfect halo of thick, beautiful curls around her face. It was heartbreaking to Mika that Rosetta thought a trip to a bookshop justified all this effort, but it was also wonderful to see how happy she was.

As if he’d been thinking the same thing, Jamie turned his head now to look Rosetta in the eye and smiled the warm, twinkly smile that he only ever gave the children. “You okay, kid?”

“I’m whatever okay is when you multiply it by a million,” Rosetta said, still gazing raptly out the window.

“And Mika obviously has everything well in hand,” Ian said, “so we’re off to a splendid start.” There was a pause, and then, his tone shifting, he went on: “If something should go wrong, Mika, how do you propose to handle it?”

“By leaving straight away and trusting that whatever’s happened is dismissed as a trick.”

“Perhaps you and Rosetta could preserve your anonymity by disguising yourselves,” Ian suggested.

“What, like with hats and moustaches?”

“Or with magic,” Ian said meaningfully. “On account of you being a witch and all.”

Mika noticed Jamie’s whole body had tensed. She had no idea why he’d agreed to this outing after how adamant he’d been that it was madness, but the last thing she needed was for Ian’s apocalyptic hypotheticals to put him off before they even got there.

“Ian, nothing’s going to go wrong,” she insisted.

“Hmm,” Ian said noncommittally. “But could you disguise yourself if you needed to?”

“Ian.” Jamie’s voice was clipped.

“I’ve heard of glamour spells,” Mika said, considering the question with academic interest. “They project an illusion, so you could make yourself look however you wanted, but they’re very difficult and I don’t know the right runes. If I had to cover my tracks and I knew as much in advance, I’d probably stick with something less complicated, like a tea to confuddle the senses of anyone who drinks it.”

“Is there such a thing?”

“I’ve never tried to brew one, but I don’t think it would be difficult to figure out. But again,” she emphasised, “extreme measures are not going to be necessary today.”

Ian dropped it after that, and looked out of the window with a slightly troubled expression on his face. Mika wondered if she’d misjudged him and he was, in fact, a lot more worried about this trip than he’d let on.

But then, as they drove past a pretty country church, Ian piped up again. “So, my dear. Do you have anyone special in your life?”