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mother had remarried. The house was empty, apart from Lady Barb, but Emily still couldn’t relax. She pulled the gown over her head, used a simple spell to clean her teeth and then reached back into the bag for a phial of sleeping potion. Placing it by the bedside, she climbed into bed and took a sip. As always, it tasted unpleasant. But it did its job.
    And then the nightmares started.
     

Chapter Four
    ...THE MIMIC ADVANCES TOWARDS HER, A glowing mist of eerie blue-white light. Emily raises her hands to cast the counter-spell, but the Mimic doesn’t even flinch. It just keeps coming. She feels her mind start to shiver under the pressure of its magic, her thoughts scattering in preparation for being absorbed. The Grandmaster should be here, but he is gone...Emily stumbles, then falls to her knees. Her body starts to break up into dust...
     
    Emily snapped awake, screaming.
    For a long moment, she fought for control. Her entire body was drenched with sweat, soaking her gown. It took minutes to remember where she was and what she was doing, lying in an unfamiliar bedroom. Somehow, she managed to sit upright and push the blankets aside, then swing her legs over the side of the bed and stand. Her legs felt wobbly and unstable.
    A dream , she told herself, firmly. It had all been a dream.
    But her mind refused to believe it, not really. She’d had nightmares for the first month or two after the Mimic had been destroyed, but then they’d faded away. Now, however, with the change to a new bedroom...she gritted her teeth and walked towards the bathroom, hoping that the water wasn’t too cold. She needed to wash the sweat from her body and hope it helped her recover from the nightmare.
    The bathroom was larger than she’d expected, with a large bathtub in one corner. Emily turned on the tap and splashed water on her face. The shock woke her up, allowing her to concentrate on casting a heating spell for the water. It bubbled rapidly and started to steam, but she kept pouring cold water into the tub until it was warm rather than boiling hot. As soon as she could, she removed her gown and climbed into the bathtub, washing the sweat from her body. The water, thankfully, helped her relax.
    She winced at the half-remembered dream as she allowed the water to work on her tense muscles. There was much to admire in Whitehall and the surrounding world, but one thing she couldn’t admire was the complete absence of psychologists. She couldn’t talk to anyone about PTSD, not when any hint of mental instability was sure to cause a panic. Mental instability was associated with one particular kind of magician -- necromancers. If she’d gone to someone – anyone – and confessed to any form of mental disorder, she suspected she wouldn’t like the consequences.
    In some ways, it made sense. No one wanted the necromancers to discover a way to come to terms with their own madness. Shadye had been dangerously irrational, lashing out with a staggering amount of power...and completely fixated on the so-called Child of Destiny he’d kidnapped from Earth. If he’d been less focused on Emily, he might well have destroyed Whitehall completely and killed Emily herself. But it was no reassurance when she wanted someone to talk to.
    Naked, she stepped out of the tub and dried herself with a spell, then glanced in the mirror. Her eyes looked tired, her face pale; she scowled in annoyance before she walked into the bedroom. Lady Barb hadn’t issued any instructions for what she should wear, so she reached for the standard student robes. Alassa might bemoan their shapelessness, but Emily had always found them reassuring. Besides, there was no need to wear anything underneath them apart from a set of equally shapeless panties and one of her makeshift bras.
    Carefully, she opened the door and smiled as she smelled something cooking down below. It smelled faintly of bacon and eggs, although there was something else in the mix she didn’t recognize. She