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Juanita said. “I don’t think she ever walked the walk.”
    “She preaches respect for life.” Then, remembering she was supposedly against Alchemism, Heaven added: “I heard.”
    Juanita gave her a nasty smile. “Her followers won’t know if she gets a juicy slab of Angus beef, will they? Just like they don’t know she didn’t create the sea monsters she’s always bragging about, that her prophecies are self-serving bull—”
    “I’ll tell Chef about the steak,” Heaven said hastily.
    Juanita had hoped to drive her off, but Heaven was apparently determined to keep playacting at being friends. She followed her to a table near the jury room. Spilling packets of crackers, she bent to retrieve them.…
    “You hear about Will Forest?” she asked from under the table.
    “Kidnapped, apparently.” Juanita glanced at her tray. She’d ordered lamb stew without even registering it.
    Heaven tucked a lumpy something into Juanita’s shoe before climbing into a chair. “Forest is AWOL.”
    “Says who?”
    “Everyone. He’s run off to Astrid Lethewood.”
    “They’ll search the base for chantments, then.” Juanita said, “To see how he got out.”
    Heaven’s gaze flicked in the direction of Juanita’s foot. “Everything will be fine as long as we all keep doing our jobs.”
    “A search might slow things down.”
    “Delays have consequences.” Heaven tucked in to her meal, a pasta dish with heavily burned chorizo. It was a point of honor that, prisoners aside, there were no vegetarians at Wendover. “You’ve got an ex-girlfriend at Caltech, don’t you?”
    Juanita stirred the stew. “Roche questioned me about Ramón.”
    A twitch. “Did he?”
    “Someone must be tracking our families, watching for patterns. Ramón gets sent to dreamland, my file gets flagged. Mamá falls down a flight of stairs tomorrow, they haul me in for a real interrogation.” She was relieved to see uncertainty in Heaven’s face. That’s right, bitch—you’re not riding some tame saddle nag.…
    “You’re right. If work slows down now and then…”
    A trickle of triumph. Whatever Heaven had stuck in her shoe, she’d delay passing it to Sahara.
    By now, the jury was filing out of its soundproofed dining room. Juanita tensed. If Heaven attacked the jurors, blackmail or not, she’d have to intervene.
    But Heaven turned to her pasta.
    After dinner, Juanita moved on to the gym. She ran the treadmill, then worked her chest and shoulder muscles until she burned the rage down to a manageable level.
    Delay, fight, push Heaven’s buttons. It didn’t help the gnawing in her belly whenever she thought about that postage stamp, that undoubtedly magical postage stamp, in Sahara’s cell. It didn’t stop the recriminations: Show some backbone, break their necks.…
    If the postage stamp were enough to allow Sahara to escape, they would never have asked me to pass on a second chantment, she rationalized. And magic took power, didn’t it? If Sahara tried anything too dramatic, she’d lose weight. A person had to use her own physical resources to work magic—burning calories, they’d been told—or she had to recite something aloud.
    If Sahara vamps someone, I get to shoot her, Juanita thought, indulging the fantasy with grim satisfaction.
    Back in her room, with her curtains shut and her door locked, she fished out the lump Heaven had stuck in her shoe. It was an amber bead, no bigger than a marble. As she turned it over in her hand, her vision shimmered. She dropped it immediately, skin crawling, and shoved it in a drawer.
    When sleep took her, hours later, she saw Ramón playing football with his squad on a flawless, palm-dotted beach.
    Juanita almost wished they could trade places.

 
     
    CHAPTER FOUR
     
    AS WILL FOLLOWED ASTRID around the magical campground she’d called Bigtop, he saw magic in use everywhere. A black woman in a vivid red chador was directing a dozen mutated spiders as they spun thick silk sheets over a