Selene was back in the laundry room washing clothes. Trisha worked beside her.

"You sure are quiet," Trisha said. "My last assistant liked to talk."

"Sorry. I just don’t know what to say."

"I’m not saying it’s bad. I just got used to talking to someone. It’s been a bit quiet. I’m sure you’re still confused. It’s not your fault."

"Ya..."

She wasn’t sure if that was it.

"Where did your assistant go?" Selene asked.

"She saved enough to move to the city. It can be hard to live there. I wish I knew how she was doing."

"Is it that much harder?"

"I guess you don’t know, but cities are quite new to our land. It used to be that the fey lords employed those living in their area to work in their castles, but now there are few fey lords and the ruler of the seelie is too vain to share his halls so everyone went to the city. The city is made up of wizards so to get permission to stay you have to follow a strict set of rules."

"Then why does Edith want to move?"

"She misses being with others of her kind."

"But why live in the city at all? Isn’t there forest land?"

"Ah, child. We used to be so proud," Trisha said pulling a shirt from the wash bucket. "We made the best wine and held the best dances. We may have been a little spindle legged, but we could keep people laughing and they loved us for it."

"Then what happened?"

She needed to know. She couldn’t live here if she knew nothing about it.

Trisha sighed. "The seelie king banished them," she said putting the shirt aside and taking a new one.

Selene didn’t really understand, but she hated seeing that expression on the old woman’s face.

"Maybe we could have a dance here," Selene suggested.

Trisha paused in the middle of her washing.

"You know I never thought of that."

A sound in the hall caught their attention. A large grey dog was watching them with russet tinted eyes.

"What is that?" Trisha asked.

"I think it belongs to a wizard," Selene said. "What are those people even doing here?"

"I don’t know," Trisha replied.

The dog lowered its head and sniffed at the flagstones.

"I don’t like that it’s sneaking around. If you’ll wait here I’ll just go and tell Lady Ris," Trisha said starting to stand.

There was no need for her to make the effort. Hūge had already heard her and left back the way he had come.

Manson was convinced. There was defiantly something odd about the warlock girl. Her room had been empty, meaning a new servant and she was a warlock. An apprentice deserved a better position. On top of that she didn’t seem to know anything about anything. A resident of the world could not be that ignorant and if such a person existed they would not be considered for an apprentice. This was...Manson raised his head. Hūge had come back to the room, but that wasn’t the reason. Manson sensed someone else.

Vox appeared at his door.

"Are you reminiscing about not being invited?" the man asked.

"No. I was working on what to say if I am," Manson replied. "I’m guessing your meeting ended. Would you tell me the result?"

"Everything will go as we want it to. I suggest you stop worrying and go home."

"Are you warning me?"

"Do you always have to state your feelings?"

"No. I just can’t figure out why you are here," Manson said.

"Then we have the same problem. Tell me when you’ve figured your side out," Vox said taking his leave.

Hūge, who had come to sit beside his master, turned his head so that his beady eyes could gauge Manson’s reaction. Manson reached out to close the door and lifted his hand to rub the bridge of his nose. Hūge barked and Manson once more regarded the soft eyes of his beast. It seemed that no matter what he tried he always came across as a mediocre man. For the first time in a while he put out his hand and stroked the dog's head.  Once more things were not going his way and if there was one thing he did know it was that informants didn’t get paid if they died. He needed to end this game.

Against his better judgement, he decided to speak with Yurith. Out of his travel bag he took a shallow dish and a container of clear water that he poured into the dish. He left the dish on the floor while he went to lock the door and close the shutters. He knew that he had already made himself look suspicious for securing the room so he also took out a piece of chalk and wrote symbols against sound and scrying on the walls. He ordered Hūge to be alert for intruders. With that he sat down in front of the dish and chanted the appropriate words.

Having opened the way to scrying he had to wait for a reply. It was possible that the Yurith would refuse to speak to him.

"Manson," he heard a woman’s voice through the water and the pretty face of Yurith appeared on the surface. "Did you find the human?"

"I think I did. I wanted your opinion first."

"How can you not be sure? She’ll be the only human in the whole fey land."

"That’s just it. I don’t think she’s human."

Yurith gave him an irritated look. Then she signed and pulled out of view.

"Explain," she told him as she relaxed somewhere.

"I was attending the meeting of an unseelie Lord," Manson began. "Naruze is what he calls himself and —"

"Since when was there an unseelie Lord in the country?" Yurith interrupted.

Manson thought this ignorance was strange until he remembered that Yurith spent all her time locked in a room.

"He made himself known around five years ago. We don’t know where he was hiding, but that’s not the point."

"I’m curious. What does the unseelie look like?"

What was he to say? He had been too busy with the case of the missing human to care about appearances.

"He doesn’t look like much," Manson said to shake her interest. "He’s short, has typical black hair, and wears fancy clothes. He wouldn’t be the only unseelie to come out of the forest in the last few years and claim himself as the area ruler. The seelie would have got rid of him by now if they thought he was a threat."

"Alright. What about the human?"

"There is this warlock girl living at the castle. She arrived very recently as a servant and she doesn’t seem to know any of the basic knowledge of our world. Her master doesn’t even talk to her."

"You think he turned a human into a warlock."

"I know it sounds crazy."

"What did the girl of yours look like? You remember that don’t you?"

"Of course I do. She was skinny with long blond hair, but so are half the girls in the city."

"You should try reading her memories," Yurith said.

"But if she doesn’t remember having a human life how does that prove anything?"

Beside he didn’t want to be the one to intrude that deeply.

"Alright, she might not be the human, but she sounds too good to pass over."

He was afraid that she might say that, but he had been asking for it.

"You said she was inexperienced," Yurith prompted.

"I don’t think she knows what magic is."

"I’ll teach you something."