do not know. I understand she may have been—embarazada, although such things are not openly spoken of."
"So we have a motive for the killing. A potential motive, at least. Sorcerous blood runs strong in those old Irish families."
Don Sebastien nodded. "There may be other motives as well. The father is a member of Colonial Parliament. House of Commons."
Garrett stirred wax with a glass rod, the hot scent filling her head. "They must be better off even than the house shows."
"Not necessarily. The father—Robert Carlson—has familial links to Mayor Eliot. And the Mayor's patronage."
"Ah." The wax was clearing. Garrett fished the wicks out of the bottom of the crucible and trapped them against the rim, scorching her fingers slightly as she pinched them out. She blew on the scalds. "Would he not have been the target, then?"
"Perhaps. We cannot be certain he was not—he is, after all, gone. And we also cannot rule out other, unknown, enemies."
Garrett lifted the first of the watch glasses and held it over the seething pot. "What troubles me is the consents," she said. "The boy was killed outside the door of his house. Outside its protection. But the family—although that upstairs window was open, there is no trace of forced entry."
"Continue, Crown Investigator." She thought she saw respect in his eyes. Perhaps his open-mindedness about the worth of things extends to Irish and women both. Will wonders never cease?
"Human agencies can come and go as they please. Magical ones—the forms must be observed. One of the forms is consent, expressed or implied."
"Ah, yes," he said. "I am familiar with the theory. And of the difference between implied and informed consent, and that one will serve as well as the other." He smiled as if something amused him. "So, in adherence to the principal tenets of magic, if no human agency entered the house—excepting the officers of the Colonial Police—"
She stirred the contents of the watch glass into the wax. "—then a consent must have been issued to whatever did. Did you note the damage to the door?"
"Si." He watched her intently now, eyebrows rising as she frowned at the contents of her crucible.
"That's odd."
"Crown Investigator?" He stood from the wing chair and would have come to her, but she raised one hand to forestall him before he crossed into the circle.
"A moment," Garrett said, selecting another glass. "As I was saying, whatever killed the boy—and I too become more convinced it was a whatever and not a whomever—made an attempt at the door and was barred from entrance. However, it—or something else—apparently managed to enter the house almost immediately and remove the residents tracelessly."
"Except. . .." His long fingers indicated the shallow dish in her right hand.
"Candlewax. Yes." She nodded and upended it.
Don Sebastien leaned forward, curiously, his boots firmly on the outside of the tiled circle. "What are you looking for?"
"Antipathy," she answered, and looked up long enough to shoot him a brief, real smile.
"What every woman wants."
Garret laughed and set the dish aside, rather more casually also capsizing the third one into the vessel. She did not lift the one containing the splintered bits of door. "I've learned something interesting, Don Sebastien. You may enter the circle now, I'm finished. Come and see."
* * *
Mary served them dinner on a card table in the book-paneled library, where Garrett normally took her solitary meals. Silver candelabra decorated the table, and when Garrett commented on the extravagance, Mary remarked that she'd gotten a bargain on candles. Don Sebastien lifted his Windsor-backed chair and placed it adjoining Garrett's, rather than across. Amused or contemplative, she permitted the familiarity. He tasted his wine and picked up the heavy, long-tined silver fork gingerly, investigating the salmon on his plate.
As he teased the flaking fish apart, he glanced up and met her eyes, smiling. "You did not find what you expected," he said.
Garrett ate carefully but with good appetite. "One tries not have expectations, precisely," she answered. "But yes, I would have to say that I did not expect the splashed wax to exhibit similarity with the candles remaining in the house. You saw how the wax in the crucible accepted what I introduced to it?"
Don Sebastien nodded. "I could see no difference."
"The principle of antipathy states that two substances which do not share an identity will not normally commingle. This tells me that the splashes of wax which we retrieved from the Carlsons' house are magically identified with the candles they were using."