He intended to find some permanent solution to the problem of Mr Clark’s garden gate, and had unearthed both a manual on the care of all manner of doors and a more general treatise with a section on untangling enchantments muddled by too many previous hands. Both were out of date, but he felt it was time to consider something other than current best practices, since those were apparently failing. He opened the door about to say as much to Miss Frost, and checked on the threshold. Victor Nevett was sitting in the visitor’s chair, leaning back in the chair with his arms crossed in exactly the same attitude of impatience that he’d habitually displayed in classes and chapel. He looked up as Ned came in, and Ned was struck by how little he’d changed; he was a bit heavier than he had been in school, and he sported a neatly trimmed beard, but otherwise he could have stepped out of one of Ned’s more uneasy dreams about school. “I told Mr Nevett you’d be back directly, and he said he’d wait,”
