PROBLEM - Anthony Lockwood

CHAPTER SEVENTY THREE

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lxxiii

i know i say all the bad ideas are the worst bad idea but this might just top all of the others ones

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HE COULDN'T LOOK at her anymore. He couldn't watch her clench her jaw and glare at him. He couldn't look into those dark, empty eyes that were glistening like freshly cut glass with tears that refused to fall.

He grabbed the robes.

"There are two men out there due back any minute with a barrell, and I don't plan on either of us ending up in it," Lockwood stated. He handed her a robe and mask, "Whatever else you want to say about me, Alice, it's going to have to wait. Put this on."

Alice didn't move.

"Please, Alice."

Ten minutes later, Alice and Lockwood, masked and robed, both stood in an elevator, being led through the halls by one of Winkman's men.

They made their way through the corridors but stopped as someone walked before them.

Stephanie Winkman.

Alice prayed to every goddess she remembered that she did not recognise their eyes as she surveyed them. They were a strange pair. Lockwood was tall and broad, and Alice was short and petite. She was terrifyingly aware of their height difference in that moment.

It appeared the goddesses were feeling generous because Stephanie smiled. "Welcome, stragglers..." she handed Lockwood a number plaque - 197 - "Have fun."

And then she stepped aside and let them in.

They pushed their way through the crowds of robed buyers, watching as Julius Winkman showcased the items he'd brought today.

"...The source of one of the nations most prolific murderes: Anne-Marie Nelson."

The people began to should and cheer for the mirror, demanding to be shown the bone glass.

Stephanie put up her hands to quiet the masses. "Of course you do. And here she is. That rarity. The piece that has so exercised the hard-working people of DEPRAC these past few days. Recovered at great cost from the grave of the most powerful death witch in history, Sir Edmund Bickerstaff, we present to you his bone glass."

"Second most powerful," Alice whispered under her breath, voice laced with venom and so quietly no one could hear it but herself.

Delilah Deane has been the most powerful death witch history has ever seen.

No matter how sick and twisted that was, there was a part of Alice that felt proud of that. A part of her that marvelled the power of her mother.

A part of her, deep down, that perhaps wanted it for herself.

She watched as Julius Winkman pulled over the iron net that had encased the bone glass and let its power stream into the air. Magic buzzing like flies.

Alice winced, feeling the shockwaves of power.

The glass had been covered with an iron casing.

"A truly lethal item," Winkman announced, "The mirrored surface itself, which has been covered for your protection, excudes a mesermirising attraction more powerful..."

Alice turned to Lockwood, "There's too many people, let's stay quiet and see who buys it."

Lockwood shook his head, "You have your flares, right? I'm gonna need a distraction to get to the mirror. Look out, I'll give you a signal."