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intimidating enough to pass for popular, but neither came naturally. It was different for Lucas. The fact that he was younger, and a boy, and therefore shouldn’t be any kind of threat, was a thorn in her side she refused to acknowledge.
    At some level, Lucas was aware of this. It made him slightly more tolerant of Philomena than he would otherwise have been.
    However, his tolerance had its limits.
    Eyeing Philomena’s rice cake, Lucas moved towards the fridge. ‘Now, what I really fancy,’ he said gloatingly, ‘is a nice, fat, juicy bacon sandwich. Mmm . . .’
     
    The real cause of Ashton Stearne’s summons to work became apparent quarter of an hour later, when Marisa called out to Philomena and Lucas to turn on the news. A witchworked storm (or ‘whistle-wind’) had been raised in the office of Helena Howell, MP – smashing windows, toppling furniture, scattering documents. Although the building should have been empty in the early hours of Saturday morning, a cleaner coming off the night shift had been struck on the head by a light fitting and killed. The motive for the attack was clear enough: Howell was introducing a controversial Private Member’s bill to limit the state benefits available to witchkind.
    The three of them watched the latest report on the television in the drawing-room.
    Jack Rawdon, director of WICA, was being interviewed in the studio. Would his agents be assisting the Inquisition in bringing the perpetrator to justice? the journalist asked. Rawdon’s face was solemn as he addressed the camera.
    ‘Crime is crime, whoever commits it. And justice is justice, whoever deals it – whether that’s a witch or an inquisitor. Both WICA and the Inquisition bring unique skills to the fight against witchcrime. The Inquisition’s commitment and expertise are justly celebrated. It is my hope that WICA’s contribution will also come to be recognised. The more work we’re enabled to do, the safer our country will be.’
    Opportunistic git , thought Lucas. He didn’t even answer the question.
    The interview was followed with a recap of the story so far, and reaction from the father-in-law of the dead cleaner, who left behind two small children. ‘That poor family . . .’ Marisa murmured, pressing her hand to her heart. With her other hand, she reached for Lucas’s.
    Philomena’s eyes darted to the pen and ink portrait of Camilla Stearne above the mantelpiece. It had been done the year before Lucas’s mother was killed by the witch-terrorist group Endor.
    As soon as he could, Lucas politely extricated his hand from Marisa’s. He was careful not to look towards the mantelpiece either. Lucas had never especially liked the drawing; he knew his mother had been a pretty woman, but the artist had given her a dreamy wistfulness that was at odds with other accounts of someone both lively and determined. Though Lucas had only been a baby when Camilla died, he resented the portrait’s power to create a memory that was pure romance, and fateful melancholy. It was something he tried to resist, following his father’s example.
     
    By the time Lucas arrived at the party, celebrations were well under way. He had always liked the Charltons – a loud, jolly gang – and he liked their house too. Large and rambling, the grandeur of its scale was mostly obscured by a tide of family clutter. All of the ground floor rooms were already spilling over with guests and music from competing sound systems.
    He found the noise level hard to take. As the day wore on, the tension in his head had returned; a hot, heavy pulse in his skull. Though it didn’t hurt, exactly, he struggled to exchange the usual banter with his usual crowd. He wondered if Bea was here yet and how long it would take to find her in the crush. Tom was trying to tell him something, but the thrumming in his head meant he missed most of it. ‘– downstairs in the den,’ Tom repeated, beckoning. ‘Come and see.’
    It was much quieter in the