“I’m an old man, Mika!” Ian tutted. “I can’t go traipsing up and down the city!”

Mika scoffed but relented. She glanced once more at Rosetta, just to make doubly sure that the shimmer of power gathered around her was completely in check, and then darted out the bookshop door.

Of course, as soon as she’d made her way down the narrow, twisty cobblestone street and turned the corner, she stopped short because she didn’t actually have any idea where Jamie was.

She was just about to turn right around and go back to the bookshop when the door of an old, narrow, two-storey brick office opened and Jamie came out, his brows furrowed. He shut the door with unwonted force.

The angry look on his face didn’t budge when he spotted her. “What are you doing out here?”

Mika glanced at the sign above the door behind him. The words solicitors ltd stood out. “Have you been to see Edward?”

“What?” He gave her an odd look, as if her question had come out of left field. Then he glanced behind him and sighed. “Oh. No. Edward works in London.”

So he’d been to see a different solicitor, then. Mika was unaccountably curious, but a voice at the back of her mind piped up, reminding her that it was not considered good manners to ask someone why they’d been to see a solicitor.

She opened her mouth to tell him what Rosetta was up to, but what came out instead was:

“You’ve committed a crime, haven’t you?”

Jamie stopped in his tracks.

“Oh, good God,” Mika went on, quite unable to stop the words. “Is it murder? It is, isn’t it?”

“You’ve been spending too much time with Terracotta,” Jamie said severely. “Murder is not the answer to every question.”

Mika found herself collapsing into laughter even as red-hot colour stained her cheeks. “God, I’m fucking ridiculous.”

All her life, she had been prone to what Primrose had called very irregular ideas. It had not been a compliment. And, really, Mika was starting to think Primrose may have been on to something. Upon encountering a man leaving the office of a solicitor, a regular person would surely have jumped to it must have something to do with money and not, instead, to the more outlandish a murder has clearly been committed and the police will be knocking at the door any minute now.

Jamie’s face was expressionless, but there was something perilously like a smile in his eyes as he said, “You are fucking ridiculous, yes.”

“So,” she said sheepishly, “At this point, I feel like I have to ask why you’ve been to see a solicitor.”

He cut her an exasperated look, but said, “I had a question about my dad’s will.”

“Oh.” Mika felt terrible. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t know your dad had died.”