Evening


Layton entered to drawing room, carrying a tall glass of clear liquid.

          "Time to take your medicine," his dry voice broke Ira's concentration as she looked away from the view of night time Knightsbridge, glimmering urban lights of the city against a dark skyline. Ira was laying down on a damask chaise lounge she had brought over to the window, which had been repaired since the fated dinner earlier that month. Nothing had been the same since then.

A ghostly white hand reached out to take the drink.

He sat at the edge of the chaise, looking rather ordinary in his dark jeans and ridiculous rust coloured sweater. Especially ordinary next to Ira's white lace dressing robe: it spilled over her skeleton frame like spiderwebs of moonlight. She took his hand as she drank the vodka in long sips.

       "How are you feeling?"
"I'm not," the witch replied and handed him the empty glass. "Have you heard from our friends in red robes?"

A pause, Layton placed the glass on a side table and then reached into his pocket for a small beige manila card. On it there was a note written in a cypher that only he and Ira understood. "No. But a source on level four tells me there is a werewolf being held in the Ministry."

Ira nodded gently to herself and rested against the cushioned back of her seat, eyes closed. The mutt had broken the blood contract - she felt Hannah Bombay die but knew it had been in some way voluntary. There had been no news of her death otherwise. Layton suspected Musgrave's help.

       "What do you want me to do to her?" she heard her assistant ask, his grip on her hand tightening.
"Nothing." Ira murmured as she sought refuge behind the cool blackness of her eyelids. "Draw out her documents, whatever we have on her. They might use it to line her cell in Azkaban."

Layton's silence reeked of displeasure. Of course, they both knew it was too late to bother with Bombay. It had been some time coming and with her niece's disobedience in February... Ira was counting the days before she was revealed to society. Even with Eleor having lost parts of his memory. A soft smile enlivened her lips.

She opened her eyes to look fondly at Layton. "Soon," Ira assured him and allowed him to lean in to kiss her. Their lips barely grazed but it held all the emotion of true fervour. "Will you dress me?" she pressed her forehead to his mouth.

He sent a thought into her head: yes, of course, anything. Her brother's funeral had been a quiet affair but now they would have to attend the reading of his last will and testament. Ira had fed Mihai Zamperia his kin, and he had taken Kazimir's life in retaliation. She was tired of this battle.

There was still a long way to go.