“And you would be . . . ?”

“Chalice.” She held out a hand. “Pleased to meet you.”

I checked with my magesight: no active spells that I could see. I shook her hand. “That’s right. Good to meet you.”

“You aren’t too busy? I know it’s late.”

I looked back at Chalice. A Dark mage . . . and Luna’s prospective teacher. “No, it’s fine.” I smiled. “Why don’t you come in?”

chapter 6

I handed Chalice a cup of tea. “Here.”

“Thanks.”

We were up in my living room. Chalice was sitting on the sofa, knees together. I sat in the chair opposite her and put my own cup of tea on the table with a click. The sounds of the Camden night came filtering faintly through the window—shouts and laughter, running footsteps, the thumping of music from over the rooftops—but inside, the room was quiet.

I studied Chalice. Her coat was slung over the sofa along with her scarf, and she was leaning back, apparently relaxed. She wasn’t obviously pretty but she dressed well and held herself with a sort of pleasant confidence. She didn’t look like a Dark mage, or any sort of mage for that matter. She looked like a professional London woman in her late twenties or early thirties.

But she was a Dark mage, and the fact that she didn’t look dangerous just meant that I hadn’t yet figured out how she was dangerous. Being Luna’s master has given me a good basic understanding of chance magic. Chalice would be able to lay curses, protect herself with good luck, arrange for coincidences to happen when they most benefited her . . . and unlike Luna, she’d be in full control of it. “Thanks for coming on such short notice.”

“Oh, don’t worry.” Chalice spoke with a faint Indian accent, but her English was perfect. According to what I’d been able to learn, she’d grown up and trained in India before coming here in her midtwenties. “I had a free weekend, so I thought I’d drop by.”

“Hope you didn’t have to wait long.”

“I didn’t wait at all.”

“Actually, I was out of the shop all day. You rang just as I was getting home.”

Chalice smiled at me. “Just good luck, then.”

“Very.”

Silence fell. From outside, men’s voices echoed down the street, laughing and drunken. Inside, Chalice and I watched each other across the coffee table. If we’d been cats, our tails would have been twitching.

“I like your house,” Chalice said.

“It’s pretty small by mage standards.”

“I know, but the places most mages live are so cut off.” Chalice glanced back at the window; the sound of the boys had faded away to be replaced by the rumbling of a car engine as someone tried to park. “This feels more like the middle of the city. More alive.”

“That’s why I do it. I grew up here in London; I don’t like to be too apart from it.”

Chalice nodded, and I felt the tone shift. Pleasantries were complete. “So I understand you’re looking for a teacher.”