Chapter 120

November 14, 2003

Before she could leave the meeting room, a furnace appeared behind the elders. Rolland stood and grabbed the casting iron lying on top of it. Its tip was shaped like a small straight line. With his other hand, he took the can of silver that was next to it and sprayed silver on the casting iron tip.

Watching Rolland make the preparations to bar her EBEE tattoo, she felt relieved. She would no longer be attached to the EBEE. She would be free.

"It has been brought to our attention that you recently took a mate. Do you understand that mates are a distraction in our line of work and a potential weapon to be used against us?" said Rolland as he approached her with the casting iron.

"I understand," she said, looking at him as she wondered if he meant it as a threat.

Rolland pressed the casting iron three times on Coralis' skin, where her EBEE tattoo was. The three burned lines formed what looked like a triangle. Lines all intersected with each other, except that a line would not exactly end where the next one began.

When Rolland was done, she and Andrew left the meeting room. She headed toward her London flat, followed by Andrew and an EBEE guard. Her flat was located in the middle of a human neighbourhood and besides her flatmates, other tenants in her building were all humans. The guard could neither station on the street nor across her door, so he kept an eye on her from the rooftop, which was warded so that no human could see him.

Coralis and Andrew entered her flat, and Erik and Henry were there. Erik opened his mouth to ask about her meeting but she brought her left index to her lips, while pointing at the ceiling with her other hand. She knew very well that their flat was soundproofed with strong magic, but she also knew that the guard could have brought with him custom listening-spelled devices.

Below their liquor cabinet, was a drawer containing custom-made mute-balls, that Gus had made just in case their soundproofing spell was potentially compromised. She grabbed one and activated it before telling her brothers how the meeting went.

"In other words, you won't miss any games, you no longer work for the EBEE and you won't be able to see Frank for the next 5 weeks, but you won't be executed if we can prove you didn't kill the minister during that timeframe," said Henry.

"Being free from the EBEE makes the situation a blessing in disguise… but I need to make sure they aren't going to put their dirty hands on Frank while I'm grounded here."

"And you need to tell him. Three weeks was hard enough for you both, but now we're talking 5 weeks," said Erik.

"I know. He will want to come here to see me, but he needs to understand it's not a risk that I'm going to take. At least I'll still have flyball to keep me sane."

"When I leave here, I'll go back to the hotel the minister stayed at and drag Blum there if I need to. I think the best way to prove you didn't kill Massina is to find who did it," said Andrew.

"We'll help you. You are on their kill list and we aren't. Getting yourself killed by the authorities isn't going to help anyone and it could be why they assigned you to the Blue Thunder's case, while they would have normally handed it to someone who wasn't involved and who isn't close to her," said Erik.

Andrew left and Coralis called Frank.

"I'll check if I can take a few days to come to see you, even if it's just for a day," said Frank after she told him about her meeting with the EBEE elders.

"No, too risky. I don't want any of them to be able to collect any information on you and do something while I'm stuck here. I don't know if Rolland's comment was a warning or a threat, but I won't be rolling the dice on your safety. You mean too much to me."

She could hear Frank's disappointment over the phone and hoped he understood that it wasn't because she didn't want to see him.

"Does this mean that once your house arrest is over… flyball will be the only job you'll have until your season is over and then, I'll get you all for myself? No more 80+ hours a week?"

A giggle escaped her lips.

"Technically, yes. That's the hope, I guess."

"If I can't see you for over a month, I dare to hope we'll at least be able to talk, that I'll hear from you."

"I can't guarantee that I'll be able to call you when I play abroad or even in Mirabel, it depends on where the guard will be stationed, but I will when I'm in London. I'll arrange with Sonylla to keep you informed when I can't call anyone for a while."

"To be honest, right now I'm more worried about you being stuck in a country that wants you dead, like an idle duck."

Over the next few days, she practiced her mental connection to Sonylla. They couldn't physically meet to train, but they could experiment and practice what they could do using their telepathic link. The twinning spell was meant to be a curse, but one that could be used to their advantage and they needed all the advantage they could use if they wanted to stay alive.

Andrew was convinced that Blum was hiding something. Even when he would ask him a direct question, Blum managed to dodge it. Andrew couldn't tell if Blum knew something and was protecting someone, or if he was the one who killed the minister, but it was one more name on the list of people he couldn't trust anymore.

Gus turned the underfloor onto an additional storage space for his custom-made mute-balls and made a batch just for Andrew's usage. Whenever Coralis left her flat to go to a flyball game, she activated her invisibility glamour before jumping off her back window, so that no one would see her. Frank was right: she was an idle duck in the UK.

She had a different guard every time she left. She knew they worked in rotation. Her guards were growing frustrated: they were used to travelling through portals and didn't like flying long distances. Their visible frustration amused her. Rolland didn't specify that she had to use portals to go to her games, so she wouldn't use them and kept travelling the way she always did: on her stick.

One night, after landing on her rooftop when coming back from Peru, her guard grabbed her cloak before she could jump down on her back porch.

"There is something we've been wondering. Everyone knows you took a mate 3 weeks ago. How come we never see M. Blue coming in and out?"