Page 73 of Slouch Witch
Winter sat up even straighter than normal. ‘You took important documents home with you and lost them?’
‘It was only the one time,’ Marsh grumbled. He rubbed at his face. ‘Is this going to take long? I really don’t feel very well at all. I think I might be sick.’
Winter picked up a small bin. ‘Here you go,’ he said without a trace of a smile. ‘Be sick into this.’
Marsh took the bin and hugged it to his chest. I really hoped he held onto the contents of his stomach; I rarely did well with other people’s vomit.
‘So,’ Winter said, all but rubbing his palms together. ‘You have experience of taking documents which don’t belong to you. Why don’t you tell us what you did with Volume 9?’
‘Volume 9?’ Marsh whispered. ‘You mean of the Cypher Manuscripts? You mentioned that before.’
‘Yes.’ Winter folded his arms. ‘I did. Where is it? We know you’ve burnt at least one page. Where is the rest?’
Marsh swallowed. ‘I don’t know anything about it. I’ve never been near the Cypher Manuscripts. I’ve never even looked at them in the library.’
Winter scratched a note to himself; it should be easy to check whether Marsh was telling the truth or not.
The witch continued. ‘I wouldn’t take them. I wouldn’t even know how to take them. Aren’t they warded?’
Winter’s lip curled. ‘Usually, yes.’ His jaw tightened. ‘But you found a way round that, didn’t you? You circumvented the systems, almost killing Ms Wilde and me in the process. What is it you’re really after, Marsh? Is it power? You might as well tell us. The Manuscript will do you no good in prison.’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about! I’ve never touched it! I told you!’
‘Then why did we find clear evidence that you had in your home?’
‘I don’t know!’
Winter exhaled then abruptly changed tack, softening his voice. ‘What happened with Adeptus Diall? Did he threaten you? Is that why you killed him? We know it wasn’t premeditated, Oscar. Was it self-defence? We can help you if it was. We understand that Diall could be difficult.’
‘Diall’s a prick,’ Marsh grunted. Then he paused and looked up. ‘He’s dead?’ He snorted. ‘Good riddance.’
There was a knock at the door and we all jumped, even Winter. He got to his feet and opened it. There was a low murmur before he beckoned me. ‘You should hear this too, Ivy.’
I stood up. ‘Don’t go anywhere,’ I told Marsh.
He glared and rattled the chain linking his ankles together. ‘Unlikely.’
I padded over to Winter. He nudged me into the corridor and closed the door. A fresh-faced woman was standing there. ‘We’ve had the preliminary reports, Adeptus,’ she said. ‘The fragment you found is definitely from the Cyphers. We need to double check but it looks like one of the earlier pages.’
That was something; the further on you went in each Volume, the more power and magic there was. Maybe Marsh had only read the first section or two. He certainly didn’t seem to have much power or authority right now – unless he was waiting for the right moment to use the magic against us.
‘Thanks. And the rest?’
‘Adeptus Leith has been in touch. There’s very little they can decipher from Philosophus Marsh’s home. He has some effective wards in place that prevent us from casting a spell to see what he’s been up to.’
Winter nodded, unsurprised. I, on the other hand, felt differently. ‘But if he’s a Philosophus, then he’s First Level. You’ve said that only Second Level witches know how to put those kinds of wards in place.’
‘He stole an entire volume of the Cypher Manuscript, Ivy, and almost drowned us both in a sewer,’ Winter said. ‘I think we can safely assume that he has magical abilities beyond his supposed level.’
I thought of the man on the other side of the door with his bloodshot eyes and broken veins on his cheeks and nose. He didn’t strike me as someone with fabulous magical abilities but Winter was supposed to be the expert. All the same, it niggled me. This didn’t feel right.
‘The blood?’ Winter asked the woman briskly. ‘Do we have a match yet for Diall?’
She shook her head. ‘Preliminary testing tells us it’s definitely not Marsh’s own blood and it’s the same type as Diall’s, but we can’t say anything for sure yet.’ She looked troubled. ‘We’ve turned over his house and there’s no sign of the missing Cypher Manuscript. People are starting to panic.’
The cat was well and truly out of the bag. ‘So it’s common knowledge what we’re looking for?’
She nodded uneasily. Winter hissed in irritation. ‘In that case,’ he muttered, ‘we’d better find it quickly before all hell breaks loose and there are pointed fingers and harsh whispers in every corner.’
