~4.28~

Madame Wow was certainly aware that her apartment was under observation. Wow was the most accomplished oracle in the city, but she did not even have to be any kind of prognosticator to guess that Ivan would place a watch on her following the attacks. She was everything he distrusted: western, bourgeois, mystical, independent, and somebody other than Ivan.

That she was unable to immediately divine the nature or location of her sentry told her everything she needed to know about him, which made it possible for her to ignore the urge to ignore Marley and spot him. She gave Ivan credit for trying. She knew he would not have resorted to deliberate magic in order to spy on her… apart from his distaste for it, he was far too intelligent to think anyone in Jericho could get past her defenses in that arena.

Wow was commonly regarded as being the second most powerful witch in the city. Whether that was true or not, she did not know, but it certainly involved a good deal of oversimplification. Apart from her sister, all witches… at least those of any particular power… were specialists. There were some areas where she knew better than to challenge one of her fellow practitioners, out of a healthy respect for their supremacy.

But above all else, Wow was a seeress… her inner magical eye was her trademark and her claim to fame. No witch in town… not even Ginger, who could keep her whole gang of children under wraps… would have sent somebody against her cloaked in spells of concealment and expected them not to be noticed.

Ivan was lucky that she wasn’t an enemy, she thought. Or rather, Marley was lucky. As things stood, she simply made careful note of the fact that Ivan was meddling west of the border, in case it became prudent to complain about it later. She’d keep the knowledge to herself for now… John and Sam were temperamental about that sort of thing.