6 PM.  London.

Snow so early in December might have been a little too much to hope for, but Jonas would have taken anything in place of the freezing, biting rain.  Pertinacious and piercing, it ruthlessly defied any protection that man tried to set against it, so that by the time he made it back to the office, he was not only soaked in spite of his coat but relatively certain that he now knew what the preliminary stages of frostbite felt like.

He fumbled for the key outside his door, nearly dropping it as it slid against his now-slick gloves.  Normally, he could have ducked inside the used bookshop which occupied the ground floor of the building that his office shared.  Though Jonas didn't know the Muggle owner of the bookstore particularly well, they were on friendly enough terms, and even a few moments out of the rain would have given him time to regroup before attempting to entice the tiny metal key into the lock.  But for the past few days, the normally reliable shop had remained stubbornly shut, its 'Closed' sign an impenetrable fortress against the holiday shoppers who had taken to the streets.  The private investigator frowned as he cast a look over at it; not even a light was on inside.  He'd have to make certain to track the owner's number down and give him a call.  It was out of character for the store to be closed for so long in the heart of the Christmas season.

Jonas was beyond freezing by the time he managed to let himself in through the door, nearly kicking the makeshift amphibian alarm system as it began cheerfully croaking as he entered.  What had been funny a few weeks ago was decidedly not now that he was cold, tired, and irritated at still having to limp up all of the stairs.  Swearing fluently under his breath, he shed his jacket, scarf, gloves, and hat as he ascended, dumping them on the floor just alongside the stairwell as he finally made it into the office.

Luckily, the lights were still on and the room was warm enough to make up for the chill outside; either Lexus hadn't left yet, or she'd been thoughtful enough to leave the heater on after she'd gone home.  Jonas limped behind his desk and sank into his chair with a sigh, though getting off his feet didn't do much to relieve the ache in his knee.  A chill in the air always made it hurt worse, and that, combined with having to brace so that he didn't slip on the wet streets, never helped.

Jonas closed his eyes for a moment, and then, not for the first time, slid open the top drawer in his desk.  He'd tucked the small bottle of mysterious liquid out of sight there when he'd come back after the meeting almost a month before.  As he set it on the desk, it glinted attractively, gleaming against the light from the electric lamp on his desk.

It was enticing.  As he examined it, biting back at the aching pain in his leg, Jonas thought he knew all too well what it was to be faced with a pandemonium shadow show.  Temptation was an all too vivid thing, even when one was aware of the possible consequences. 

But whatever the tempting possibilities, he wasn't about to imbibe some unknown concoction that had been given to him by a crazy bloke who might as well have been auditioning  for the new role of Doctor Evil.  Jonas gripped his fingers tightly to warm them, and then closed a hand around the bottle, removing it from sight.  He wasn't stupid.  For all he knew, drinking the bloody thing would start his eventual transformation into a hideous hairless cat, doomed to slave away as a house pet for all eternity.  Pinocchio and Something Wicked all at once.  It was somehow fitting. 

Although...

Deliberately, Jonas set the bottle back down on the desk, crossing his arms against his chest as he thoughtfully considered it.  He wasn't very sure of himself around potions anymore, but he conveniently knew someone who was.

"Still here, Lex?" he called over his shoulder, not bothering to try and defy physics by attempting to peer around the corner into the room where the office computer was set up.

Although Lexus was still in the office she definitely was not intending to be. The workload that Jonas had deligated to her was keeping her busy but that was not the reason she was currently sitting in the second room of the office curled up in an armchair enjoying a book. After exhausting every resource she could think of for the day to further move along the muggle case she had been given Lexus decided it was best to start fresh the following morning, let her mind rest and perhaps she could figure something out when she came back to her work. Not wanting to head back to her own flat by herself Lexus was keen on heading out for the night, perhaps send an owl to Daz and have a few drinks but one look in the mirror had given her pause. The curls she had put in her hair in the morning had fallen flat and her make up was faded. There was no way she was going to go out looking like that so she had attempted to perk up her look, unfortunately that's when disaster had struck.

For the past little while Lexus' magic had been going haywire, the tiniest of spell were spelling disaster. She originally thought that it had been some weird side effect of the new wolfsbane she was taking but the potion was easily out of her system by now and her magic was still wonky. Hoping that today would yield different results she had used a few beauty charms to make herself look presentable before heading out. Yet once again her magic seemed stubbornly uncooperative. The curls she had attempted to put back in her hair were now constantly curling up into tight wraps and then falling flat and the touch of colour she had tried to add to her cheek had turned her entire body a lively pink colour. With her hair constantly doing and undoing itself and her skin a horribly unnatural colour there was no way she'd be going out much less leaving the office. She didn't think her muggle landlord would be able to ignore such a strange occurrence.

As Jonas entered the office again Lexus briefly looked up but just as quickly returned to her book. She had picked up the whole set of The Slither Girls books by Dolly St Claire and was really getting into them. If she couldn't have her own lurid adventures tonight she might as well live vicariously through Odette and Lilith. However when Jonas actually called for her she figured she couldn't avoid him, "Yeah I'm still here." For a moment she contemplated letting him come to her. If he really wanted to talk to her that badly he could make the effort but one look out the window caused her to change her mind. The rain was pouring down in heavy sheets and it didn't take a genius to realize that Jonas always moved slower when the weather got like this.

Slipping a book mark into the page she had been reading Lexus slowly rose from her spot with a sigh. She tentatively turned the corner and came into the light of Jonas' office with a strained smile. The constant bouncing of her indecisive curls were distracting enough but the pink colour of her skin was definitely something to stare at. She tried to play it all off with a non chalant smile, "What's up boss?"

"Had a question --"  Jonas broke off as the young woman came into view, an extraordinary triumph of self-curling ringlets and a glowingly pink complexion.

His working relationship with the young Canadian had developed more or less by accident.  Jonas had never even entertained the thought of employing an assistant before, mostly because maintaining a constant enough income to both support his family and pay wages for another person was a mind-boggling obstacle.  He had gotten by for years on his own, and if he hadn't run into Lexus by accident on the Underground and felt sorry for her, Jonas had no doubt that he would still be solely self-employed.

Having the Canadian witch around had been an adjustment at first, but he had come to appreciate her company.  Having someone else to talk to was a break from the usual monotony of the office, and Lexus was both easy-going and bright enough to pick things up quickly.  If it hadn't been for her help, he would have been overwhelmed by the current juggling between wizarding cases and his usual work, but Lexus's diligence and willingness to pitch in had meant that for the first time in years, he wasn't having to scrape by financially.  Of course, that was slightly aided by the fact that one of his current clients liked to pay in enormous bags of gold, but even so, Jonas was more than willing to give her the credit.

Getting used to having a twenty-something witch around, though, had been more of a challenge.  Except for his interdiction on anything resembling Muggle-baiting, Jonas had done his best to allow Lexus to make her own decisions.  His own memories of being on the run were vivid enough that he'd wanted to give his assistant a chance to get her feet under her, and he suspected that the more he criticized, the less likely she'd be to listen to him when it really did matter.  And so he hadn't said a word when she'd spent her money instead of saving it, or went to Knockturn Alley against his better judgement.  He'd even kept his mouth shut when she'd dyed her hair a bright, vivid yellow - a reaction, he'd figured, to spending so long alone and finally wanting to be noticed in regular society.

But somehow, this was different.

"-- for you," he concluded feebly, a good five seconds after he'd started the thought.  He had been staring and he knew it.  The perpetually twisting, hypnotizing curls gave the impression of watching a lava lamp; Jonas had to force himself to look away.  Suddenly, the fact that he was still wet and miserable seemed of very little importance, especially in comparison to the effort that he was having to exert in order to swallow the enormous smile that now threatened to split his face. 

Jonas coughed into his hand, letting out a noise that sounded suspiciously like a muffled laugh, and then ran both hands through his still-damp hair. 

"Planning on going out tonight, were you?" he asked nonchalantly, as if Lexus waltzed around with oddly colored skin and an animated hairdo every night of the week.

Lexus had been feeling absolutely horrible about the magical mix up and had come close to tears several times but somehow seeing Jonas' double take and his stumble over trying to hide a chuckle had made it seem comical rather than tragic. She had no idea how it had happened but over the past month of knowing him Jonas had become a huge part of her life and even though he was her boss she could still count on him to somehow make her feel better even when he wasn't trying. Her lips curled into a smirk and she let out the chuckle that Jonas had been covering up.

"Yeah I was planning on it but had a little . . . accident." She did her best to shrug it off despite the fact that her mixed up magic was seriously bothering her, "I guess not using magic for over a year has really left me a little rusty." She smiled again before taking a perch up on the side of his desk looking curiously at the potion bottle. Although she had left pretty much all of her former life behind Lexus couldn't relinquish her love for potions. It was almost enough to get her mind off of her beauty mishaps.

"So um what did you want to ask me?" She wondered if they could get through a proper conversation without her hair getting in their way.

Lexus's laughter nearly sent him over the edge.  Jonas took a deep breath, and then did his best to push his amusement aside, affecting a perfectly straight expression.  It was much easier not to laugh when he didn't quite make eye contact with either his assistant or her bounding curls.

"Just a favor," he started to say, when his brain finally processed the rest of the exchange. 

The private investigator blinked, a frown crossing his face as he regarded the woman.  "You're having trouble with your magic?" he asked cautiously, giving her a careful look.  That was too much of a coincidence.  If Lexus was having trouble casting spells after a holiday from life as a witch...but she hadn't been avoiding using magic when he'd met her, he realized.  That would have made the entire Muggle-baiting debate a moot issue.

"What sort of trouble are you having, exactly?" he asked, his forehead creasing as he looked her over thoughtfully.  "Just with appearance alteration spells?  How long has it been a problem?"

A rush of colour rose to her cheeks which looked considerably awkward on her already pink skin. She never thought of herself as a bad liar. Usually she was fairly good at passing things off as the truth and most people never questioned her. However she had forgotten that part of her first encounter with Jonas had included admitting she had put a rather powerful Confundus Spell on a desk clerk at the Hotel so she could stay for free. Jonas had claimed it was muggle baiting but she claimed she was doing it for survival. If she had been rusty from not using her magic for a whole year surely that sort of complex magic wouldn't have worked and Jonas knew full well of that.

She hesitating in speaking again wondering how much she should actually tell him. She had figured her sudden flux in magic control had been due to the new Wolfsbane she had taken the month previous and had no idea that the Egyptian dagger Jonas had brought in was the true culprit. She wondered if she'd be able to tell Jonas about it without revealing her own deepest darkest secret.

She finally nodded in response to his questions, "It's been all my magic. Even the simplest of spells turn sour. I've been living completely like a muggle for weeks now. I don't think my landlord would like it very much if I set my place on fire. I had been hoping that something as simple as a beauty charm would be fine but it turned out horrible too. I should have known after the whole hospital thing," She fought off another wave of blushes, "At St Mungo's when I showed up with canary yellow hair, all I was trying to do was add golden highlights and ended up with that and now," She ran her hands down indicting her current predicament, "A little bit of blush and some curl back into my hair, that's all I wanted and instead I end up like some bad cartoon character."

She sighed again and leaned her hand on his desk while still perched on top, "It's been about a month now, not that long after I started working here."

Jonas's forehead creased as he regarded the Canadian, examining her carefully as if she were a particularly perplexing puzzle.  There was something about her situation that sounded remarkably similar to his own.  But he couldn't remember any of his spells backfiring; they'd simply stopped, no misadventure about it.  The private investigator hadn't used his magic regularly for years, and he had to admit that he could have very well just not noticed if castings had slowly begun to go awry.  Even so, he couldn't imagine that he would have just missed something like that.  Accio and the basic cleaning spells had worked perfectly well after he'd come back to them again, and he'd been getting into Diagon perfectly well for months until his wand suddenly decided to stop working.

Which, he realized, had happened almost exactly a month ago.  That coincided suspiciously well with Lexus's timeframe.  A similar time frame didn't always mean identical causes, but this sort of situation seemed designed for Occam's razor.  If his magic had stopped working, and Lexus's had stopped behaving, and both appeared to have occurred at near enough to the same point in time with little preamble, it seemed logical to suppose that the two problems had one cause.

Jonas started to dig in his pocket for his wand until he realized he'd left it in the pocket of his jacket, which was still piled in a heap with the other wet clothing near the top of the stairs.  He let out a sigh.

"Tell you what," he said slowly.  This was trial and error.  If the problem could be defined, it would be easier to deduce a solution.  "I left me wand in the coat pocket.  Why don't you fish it out and try to cast something with that?"

Lexus was kind of hoping the topic would just slide and they could get on with whatever it was that Jonas wanted her for in the first place. Not only was it embarrassing that she couldn't perform even the simplest of spells but if Jonas determined it was a side effect from some kind of new potion she had taken, a whole new bag of worms would be open, one that Lexus just wasn't comfortable getting dirty in.

She glanced at his jacket before looking back at her boss with utter disbelief. Did he seriously just ask her to use his wand? Using someone else's wand was like wearing someone else's underwear, you just didn't do it. It was uncomfortable and dirty on so many levels. Not really in the mood or position to be arguing Lexus reluctantly got to her feet and fetched the wand from his jacket. It felt strange and foreign in her hands. She had been rather fortunate in the fact that she had never had to use someone else's wand before. The cedar phoenix cored wand felt as if it were vibrating in her hand and she suddenly really missed her own maple one.

Taking a deep breath she swished the wand trying a simple charm that would cause a canary to fly out of the end of it. Instead the unfamiliar wand jolted and a large bright yellow spark burst from the tip making a sound as if the canary she had tried to conjure had been strangled to death. Lexus jumped back dropping the wand and covering her ears from the noise.

Giving Jonas a worried look she gnawed on her lip for a few moments before concluding, "Well I think it's safe to say that it's not my wand."

Any thought of being wet or cold had completely flooded from the private investigator's mind as he considered this new puzzle.  He regarded Lexus thoughtfully, putting a hand to his chin as she managed to conjure something out of his wand, even though her reaction hinted that the yellow sparks weren't quite what she had attempted.

So it wasn't his wand that was broken.  Jonas had never quite worked up the muster to ask someone else if he could borrow theirs, but he had still partially clung to that theory.  Apparently Lexus's magic wasn't behaving no matter what magical implement she chose to use, which meant that his probably wouldn't work no matter what he did.  Luckily, there was a simple way to find out.

"Huh," he said intelligently, holding out a hand.  "You mind if I try yours?"

This was the best kind of problem.  Logic, Jonas was certain, would eventually prevail; if he thought about the circumstances hard enough, put the pieces together, he had to stumble across some sort of pattern.  Certainly, he had been worrying at the problem for over a month, but he hadn't had all the pieces then.  Now, they had at least one more of them.

"So, it starts about a month ago," he said out loud, mulling over the situation.  "No problems before, magic just stops working right.  Can't think of anything that could have caused it, can you?" he asked Lexus thoughtfully.  "You're sure it was after you started working here?"

Lexus was even more hesitant about letting him use her wand than she was about having used his. Hadn't she already covered this? You just didn't use someone else's wand, it just wasn't right but seeing as she had already used his she could hardly deny him a try with her own. Almost reluctantly she drew her wand from her skirt pocket and handed it to him. The nine inch smooth maple wand was hand made by the most skilled wandmaker in Canada, Geoffries. Though there were plenty others that made wands, much like Ollivander, Geoffries was considered the best and so most children - before being shipped off to Pinebrook or one of the other magical academies in Canada - went into The Under and saw Geoffries to purchase their wands.

She stood with her arms crossed around her chest nervous about what he might do. Something else was tickling the back of her mind though. She had already proved that her wand wasn't malfunctioning so why did he need to check it for himself? Unless he was having the same problem, and if he was having the same problem as her then there was no way that it had been Daz' Wolfsbane potion that had caused her magic to go on the fritz.

Lexus shook her head causing her animated curls to bounce out wider than usual. They seemed almost annoyed with the movement and began their hypnotic curling and uncurling even faster than before, "Can't think of a thing," which obviously wasn't the truth but she wasn't about to say, 'Well I did go track down an illegal potions maker so that I could get my hands on Wolfsbane that wasn't regulated by the ministry so I didn't end up reinacting an American Werewolf In London, but you know, that couldn't have been it right?'

"And it definitely started after I started working here. Remember the whole 'muggle baiting' thing?" She was sure she didn't have to remind him. It had been a rather tense subject when they first met and she hoped it wouldn't make this encounter any more awkward than it already was, "I was using my magic just fine, the rare times I actually did use it. I spent most of the last year in isolation."

Jonas weighed the maple wand in his hand, fingers resting lightly against it.  Nothing.  He didn't feel anything.  He shifted his grip around it, and then tried flicking his wrist at one of the pens that was sitting on the desk.  Even after he'd taken his wand out from hiding, after he'd decided that it might well be safe to try his hand at magic once more, he'd always been able to manage the simple spells even if he hadn't dared to try anything more complicated.  Now, even those weren't working.

"Yeah, I remember," he agreed.  He certainly hoped this wasn't Lexus's karmic retribution for agreeing not to bait Muggles anymore, or she'd never listen to him again.  He'd have to have a talk with Karma in either case.  It obviously needed to get its priorities straight.

The private investigator sighed and set his assistant's wand back down on his desk, aligning it so that it was parallel to the edge.  "My magic hasn't been working for about the same time," he admitted, not coming anywhere close to meeting her gaze.  "No spells, nothing.  I haven't even been able to get into Diagon on me own." 

The last bit was what had frustrated him the most.  Magic, he could live without - and had, for several years.  But talking to people was how he did his job.  If he couldn't even do that reliably...

"So here's the million quid question," he said, squeezing his eyes shut as he pinched the bridge of his nose.  "Your magic's not working right.  Mine's not working at all.  What happened a month ago that set us both off kilter?"

Almost as soon as Jonas placed her wand down Lexus' petite hand had picked it up feeling the comfortable weight in her hands before slipping it back into place in her pocket. It had been such a weird sensation watching someone else try and use her wand and though she would never admit it to him Lexus was secretly glad that Jonas had not been able to do anything with it. Despite how much she meant to him, having saved her from an uncertain life as a travelling seductress, she felt as if her wand would somehow be tainted if he had managed to successfully perform a spell with it.

She sat back on the edge of his desk once more crossing one leg over the other and balancing with one hand on his desk. Her golden blue eyes widened when he admitted that he had lost his magic. If his loss of magic was related to her sudden lack of magic reliability then that meant one very important thing: this had nothing to do with Daz's wolfsbane. Which also meant that she could now openly talk to him about it. She let a sigh of relief deflate her chest as she looked consolingly at her friend. She was having one hell of a time with how unpredictable her magic was being but at least she still had it. She couldn't imagine how hard it must be for him to not be able to do anything magical.

She bit her lower lip in contemplation as she tried to think of anything else that would have happened to them in the past month. She had been so focused on trying not to let him know that she was a werewolf that she found it hard to think about anything else that they had done in the past month, "We went to that nice little restaurant when we first met, there was that little fat man that wanted us to look into his accountant, something about being convinced he had been filing his taxes wrong, you finally found that dagger you had been searching for, I've been driving myself crazy working long nights for all the wonderful cases you've been giving me," She gave him a wink to let him know she was just being playful, "Oh and we met Mediwitch Randall. I would say we picked up something while at St Mungo's but that was only a few days ago and this has been happening for quite a bit now."

He listened for a moment, eyes still shut, as Lexus began to recite what she remembered.  This was the part where everything should come together, where the ingenious private eye suddenly revealed the solution to the mystery that had been plaguing the reader for the past two hundred and fifteen pages in a way that made the deduction seem elementary.  Or maybe, he thought, this was the part where they sat around in the office acting bloody confused because the goddamned writer had decided to stretch the case out to another volume.

Starting at the beginning was essential.  Premise: This was solvable, and between them, they had the pieces necessary to puzzle it out.  Given:  He had lost his ability to use magic, and Lexus was struggling with hers.  Assumed:  There was a singular identifiable cause to both problems, whether it was magical or mundane.  They spent enough time working together that it was reasonable to think that their situations were connected.

Opening his eyes, Jonas pulled open the drawer where he usually kept his notebooks.  He flipped to a blank page, and then, picking up a pen, began to scribble down what Lexus had said.

"Right," he murmured as he wrote, and then studied it thoughtfully.  Just off the top of his head, Jonas could add a few more to the list. 

"We went to the Black Chimaera for your birthday," he noted, jotting it down.  Maybe it was some sort of magical disease contracted from Forrester.  At least he could laugh about it then. 

Jonas paused, and then added a careful K.M. to his running tally.  Even though he hadn't drank from it, the vial still sitting on his desk might have another purpose that he hadn't even guessed at.  A tidy T.R. was added to the list as well.  Though he didn't think the Head Auror would cause anything like this to happen to him intentionally, there was still a chance that it was a result of her visit.  Some enemy of the Ministry could have followed her to his office and assumed he was a friend.  He hesitated for a moment, and then added a quick crescent shape under the rest of the list, keeping the notebook tilted so that Lexus couldn't see it.

"All right," he said, scanning up and down the list.  Time to start eliminating. 

"Reckon it's safe to say that if something caused this, it's not mundane," he observed, crossing out RESTAURANT, ACCOUNTANT, and WORK LOAD with a bold strike of the pen.  "So we're left with potentially magical causes.  And like you said, the visit to St. Mungo's was too recent," he agreed, striking out the name of the hospital as well.  "Unless we're dealing with something temporal, but that's getting complicated.  Occam's Razor and all."

He studied the remaining items on the list.  After a moment, he lightly drew a line through T.R. and scribbled out the shape.  The former struck him as too unlikely; the latter shouldn't have any effect on him.

"So we've got the dagger and the visit to the Black Chimaera," Jonas remarked, his forehead creasing as he squinted at the remaining items.  And the vial, but he didn't want to have to explain its origin out loud.  He tapped his pen impatiently against the page, and then glanced at Lexus.  "The professor did say that the dagger was supposed to be cursed," he admitted reluctantly.  Even saying it out loud made him feel ridiculous.  What bullocks.  "You reckon it could've been something in Knockturn?  Aimed at Muggleborns, perhaps?"

Lexus swung her one leg to an inaudible beat as Jonas started to approach their problem in a very logical manner. At the beginning she had leaned forward to see if she could catch a glimpse of what he was writing down but he was keeping the pad at such an angle that she'd likely fall into his lap before she was able to see what he was writing. It was slightly irritating knowing that he had written down a few things that he had not said out loud. If this was affecting both of them he should have been a little more open with his suspicions. She might even be able to provide some sort of insight into his unspoken suspicions even though she had no idea what those insights might be.

Resigned to letting Jonas scribble whatever it was he wanted Lexus swung her foot a little quicker biting her lip. She nodded her head at the mundane comment. It wasn't likely that a muggle restaurant, or a muggle accountant had managed to have something that would effect their magic given the general ignorance of magic's existence in the muggle world. Then again it could be some sort of new virus, like the flu, that had no effect on muggles but messed around with magical people.

Jonas seemed to have brought it down to either their visit to Knockturn Alley and that pretty dagger he had procured for the school teacher. She squinched up her nose with a smirk at the mention of a curse. Although she was a witch, who knew full well that there were real magical forces that drove through the world and had been cursed herself with a disease that made her turn into a blood thirsty ravenous beast once a month Lexus was finding it hard to believe that some shiny little dagger was the cause of their problems. It seemed more likely that someone in Knockturn had concocted some kind of sickness that affected muggleborns.

She let out a shudder, "That's a frightening thought." She once again found it unnerving to think about the increased prejudice against muggleborns in the country. Europe was so old in terms of civilization that pureblood weren't all that uncommon even if they were dwindling out but back home it was a rare thing to be a pureblood, especially one that descended from the original settlers. Most of the purebloods that existed had descended from the native shamans.

Despite the fact that Lexus wanted to think of her new 'hangout' as the ideal place to relax after a long night at work she couldn't deny the kind of people that lived there, not to mention the not so human creatures that also found holes to live in amoungst the darkened alley, "So who do we know in Knockturn that would want to wipe out muggleborns?" 

Jonas let out a quick breath, leaning his head against one hand again.  "There's the question, innit?" he asked absently, letting his gaze drift across the room. 

He had - maybe surprisingly - liked all of the individuals that he'd met at the Black Chimaera so far.  Tawse was a decent bloke, Ashford made him smile despite his gruffness, and even Forrester and Dazmond Wiedman had been alright (though he was not thinking about the latter - that interaction had to remain strictly business).  Despite Knockturn Alley's reputation and Raynor's cautions, he had no reason to think that any of them would act so maliciously towards Muggleborns.  Certainly, he had no illusion that they'd be happy about it - he could read Rule Six on the wall just fine - but he couldn't imagine any of them going out of their way to instigate problems.  Their ire seemed to be fully and justifiably directed at the Ministry.

Even if it wasn't, snooping in Knockturn was inherently dangerous.  Lex might be able to get away with more because she was young, pretty, and female, but he still didn't want to put her in that position.

"To be honest, I couldn't say," he concluded at last, glancing over at her.  "And I don't think we can go asking there directly.  That's the sort of thing that you don't want to draw anyone's attention to - sharks in the water, and all that.  Just keep your ears open.  If you overhear something that sounds like it might be connected, let me know and we'll figure out the best way to approach it then."

That left the dagger and the vial.  Jonas regarded the latter object for a moment as it sat on his desk, and then closed his hand thoughtfully around it.  At least this brought the conversation full circle to his original question, even if it came under a different context.

"I picked this up about the same time too," he said, tossing it easily to Lexus.  "I can't imagine a potion could have an effect like that on us both without either of us drinking it, but we might as well cover our corners, yeah?  You're good at Potions, aren't you?"  She was, and he knew it - Jonas had heard all about Lexus's excursions with the native tribes in Canada and the tricks she'd picked up there.  "Reckon you could reverse engineer that to figure out what's in it and what it does?"