Earlier that day, at the diner, I’d asked about nighttime law enforcement. It was obviously a very small department and I’d hate to need police backup at night and be unable to contact anyone. They said there hadn’t been a night dispatcher since the last budget cuts. Any calls after midnight went straight to the chief’s house. The officers did patrol sporadically, but on a schedule known only to the department. That, though, should have left the station empty, and it was—empty of cops, at least. After hours, though, was cleaning time.

Cleaning a place the size of a bachelor flat shouldn’t have taken long. But apparently Bruyn didn’t know that and paid by the hour. When I’d cast a blur spell and slipped in, the woman was lounging in Bruyn’s office, doing a crossword, her work not yet begun. I went back outside to wait.

After another twenty minutes, I began running through my repertoire of disarming spells. I had a sleep one that seemed promising. It was a “Mom spell”—one of hers I’d gotten through her contacts.

Mom had been a teacher of the dark arts, but she’d always kept me sheltered from that part of her life. Her contacts knew of me, though, and once I hit teen-hood, they’d started reaching out, hoping there was enough of my mother in me that I was chafing under the guardian-ship of two do-gooders.

That just proved they didn’t know my mother as well as they thought. She was hardly an upright citizen, but she didn’t embrace the dark side because she was evil. It simply made good economic sense. She used those contacts—as I did—with extreme caution. I gave them useless tidbits about the council and the Cabals, and in return, I could call on them with questions I couldn’t ask Lucas and Paige.

Part of the wooing process is gifts. That’s where the spells come in. They give them to me, saying stuff like “your mom would have wanted you to have this.” I collect the spells. I practice them. I store them away in my secret safe deposit box and, when they fit the bill, I use them.

As for why a sleeping spell would be a secret dark magic spell, it was—like most of the spells I kept in my box—not the result that caused concern, but either the materials needed to cast it or the spell’s potential side effects. In this case, the side effect was narcolepsy.