new in town or because I’m having supper with you?”
Keir grinned. “I think it’s because you’re the new magistrate, which, you may not yet fully grasp, is a very big deal.”
I sighed. “Maybe I should start having Olivia leave me something and eat at home.”
“That is the last thing you should do. It would just prolong the fascination of newness. The sooner everyone has seen you and looked their fill, the sooner you’ll be ignored like the rest of us.”
“So much for being a very big deal.”
He chuckled. “Come tomorrow. At four.”
I realized I was nodding before I’d decided to say yes. “Okay. Give me the address.”
“I put it into your contacts when I added my phone. Dessert?”
“I think I’ll skip. You stay and have some though. I’m going to call my daughter and let her know I’m alive and well and enjoying jolly old England. She thinks I’m on a self-consoling vacation.”
He cocked his head. “What’s her name?”
“Evie. She’s finishing undergrad studies and wants to go for a PhD.”
“It must be nice to have… somebody.”
I couldn’t miss the undertone of sadness in that. “No family?”
“Siblings. No exes. No offspring.”
“You’ve been alive for over nine centuries and you’ve never been formally attached?”
He shrugged, then winked. “Guess the right girl hasn’t come along.”
I laughed. “You really are a movie buff. Because nobody says that stuff anymore.” At least I didn’t think so.
“Guilty.”
On the walk go my house, he said, “Warmer air is coming in tomorrow.”
“Oh? How do you know?”
He laughed. “Weather radar. See you at four.”
“Okay. Would you like me to have Olivia put something together? For tea?”
“Wouldn’t hear of it. I can’t miss the chance to show you I’m good in the kitchen.”
It was surprising that I was able to sleep well after reading cases that involved magical beings of all kinds; beautiful creatures of fantasy, monstrous creatures from fairy tales and argonaut myths.
And yet I did.
When I woke, the bedside light was still on. The journal I’d been reading was open on the bed beside me. And the smell of coffee was powerful enough to have wafted upstairs and slipped under the door. I smiled and realized that I probably hadn’t awakened to a smile since I was ten and anticipating a visit to the carnival at the state fair.
It was nice.
I looked at the time. Nine o’clock. I was going to have to start setting an alarm.
I showered, had breakfast that somebody else made and would clean up, and put on my running shoes. I could walk with Lochlan in the red shoes, and they’d be comfortable, but it would look ridiculous. I’m no slave to fashion, but I do have standards.
At ten I was waiting outside Lochlan’s office. His light, quick surefooted steps on the stairs would belie his old-man visage even without the shoes.
He smiled when he saw me. “Rita! A good day it is.”
Yes. I agreed with that. “Concur, counselor.”
He laughed.
It took forty-five minutes to sign the papers, only because I thought it would be prudent to at least scan and pretend to understand the legalese. British legalese, which is even more impossible to understand than American legalese, replete with trickery because, in contracts, some words don’t mean what an ordinary person thinks they mean. I never asked Maggie what jiggery-pokery means, but it sounds like a description of what lawyers do.
Eventually I reasoned that I had enough money from my pre-Hallows life to get a ticket back to the U.S. The worst that could happen is that I wouldn’t be any worse off than I was before I’d received the mysterious envelope at the residence motel.
That done, Lochlan and I walked past his house. When he whistled, the two Border Collies cleared the fence effortlessly and ran ahead of us.
“I can’t wait to ask about some of the cases I’ve been reading, but first I want to ask again about established law? It seems like the magistrates are just sort of making it up as they go. Is that right or am I missing something?”
“It’s right. The Powers That Be are careful to choose someone fair.”
“Is it usually a man?”
“Hmmm. Perhaps more than half the time. It’s always someone born in the first three weeks of October. This is the first time we’ve had an American.”
“Why’s that? October, I mean.”
“Astrology. There’s nature. There’s nurture. But those things are the building blocks on traits established by the stars.”
My thoughts wandered to my previous world in which such things would be called superstition and nothing more.