CAPTAIN HELENA BLACKTHORN sat on the rim of a fountain in the early morning sunlight, feeling a strange mixture of emotions. She looked to the sealed area in the shrubbery and what it represented. It irritated her beyond belief. She assumed the uprooting of the tree and the death of its residents, the bees, were Cairns’ doing somehow. But now, knew otherwise. She mourned their loss. She mourned something else too. Something that had been awakened deep inside her, feeling that had lain dormant for so long, unfulfilled, which were probably about to die too.

Running a hand through her hair, Blackthorn recalled how it had only been three weeks since she, along with Bryce and Hamilton, had arrived at Central for Cairns’ witch-hunt. She was still trying to assimilate all that had transpired despite having spent the last three days being debriefed, in Jamison and Warshawski’s company. There were still gaps that needed filling in, but neither Jamison nor Warshawski would be able to help her there.

She needed Cassandra. She needed…something.
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CAPTAIN BLACKTHORN HAD BEEN with Admiral Jamison, Head of Security, and was late. Or so she felt, as she walked briskly up the avenue towards the last fountain and the gap in the shrubbery that led to a cool oasis of calm. Alice-land she now called it.

It was difficult not to be irritated and not for the obvious reasons. Something was amiss, and she couldn’t put her finger on it, yet. Jamison had paged her last night to arrange an early morning meeting, one, which, in the end, had taken, up most of the morning and had gone, quite frankly, nowhere.
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BLACKTHORN NEVER DID find out the woman’s name that afternoon—where she shared a couple of hours eating bread and honey—nor over the next few days. Somehow the woman always managed to skilfully change the subject, divert her attention elsewhere or just plain ignore her entreaties altogether, all with that same soft smile.

Infuriating, disarming, persuasive. She had come up with a number of adjectives with which to describe her enigmatic bee charmer, and some she wouldn’t even repeat in polite company.

My bee charmer?
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