Ledi: I saw the selfie you posted from the train station, with the guy peeing like five feet away. WTF? Where are you now.

Portia: Yes, that was a sweet moment that reminded me of home. My boss never showed at the station and I’m in a taxi with a weird, conspiracy theory-touting Scottish driver.

Ledi: Do you have the pepper spray I bought you?

Portia: Yes, mom. What are you doing up?!

Ledi: Same thing I do every night, Pinky: studying. Let me know when you get to the armory. If you don’t, Thabiso will call the embassy there and have them send out SWAT. Is there SWAT in Scotland? SCWAT? You know what I mean. ?

Portia laughed. Her best friend Ledi was a princess, after eloping with the prince she’d been betrothed to at birth, but she still studied like a pauper and would use her pull to protect Portia if necessary. That knowledge eased the tension in her neck a bit. Someone had her back, even if only through an invisible link between their mutual phones.

“Did you get a hold of anyone?” Kevin asked. “At the armory?”

Portia’s “mind your business” hackels rose, and she dug in her purse so that her pepper spray sat atop all the other crap. He looked harmless enough, but after months of her mother warning her how rough Edinburgh could be—Have you seen Trainspotting?!—better safe than sorry.

“Yes. I’m messaging with him now.”

“Tav knows how to send a text?” Kevin caught her eye in the rearview mirror and Portia stiffened, though he was smiling. “I guess maybe he’s finally getting it together now that he’ll have you for an apprentice.”

“Am I going to have to mace you?” she asked, too tired and frustrated to execute the niceties that had been ingrained in her through years of deportment lessons and dealing with her parents’ rich family friends.

He barked out a laugh and smacked the wheel. “Aye! Definitely American!” Portia wasn’t sure if the statement was meant to be an insult. “Don’t fash yourself. I take lessons at the armory, and everyone’s been on about this American apprentice arriving this week. Cheryl checked her InstaPhoto and said she was beautiful and glamorous, and seeing as how you’re going to the armory and you’re. . . .”

Portia didn’t think psychopaths had the ability to blush as bright red as Kevin was up in the front seat, so she relaxed her hold on the pepper spray. Anyone who would call her glamorous after hours in transit deserved the benefit of the doubt.

“Well, I’m glad someone is looking forward to my arrival. Mr. McKenzie seems to have forgotten I’d be arriving this morning, and that he was supposed to be meeting me.”

“Oh, yeah. Tav is . . .” Kevin paused, and in the rearview she could see his brow crease. “Tav is a right bawbag at times. But a bawbag who grows on you, I suppose.”

Portia pulled up her browser and searched “bawbag scottish slang.”

The term bawbag is a Scots word for “scrotum,” which is also slang for an annoying or irritating person.

Considering how little contact she’d had with the man who would soon be teaching her the ins and outs of Scottish swordmaking, she couldn’t quite disagree. They’d spoken briefly on the phone, once, and he’d kept the conversation to a minimum—at the end of the call she’d realized that he’d barely spoken at all. Her other correspondence had been with someone named Jamie, who seemed pretty cool.

“Yes, leaving me stranded at the station is a bawbag move,” she said, and Kevin laughed.

“Aye, this is going to be grand,” he said, then the car slowed and stopped just in front of what looked like a blue wooden telephone box. Portia was fairly certain she’d seen Regina wearing a T-shirt with one of those things on it, with the words police box around the top.

“Here we are, Bodotria Armory,” Kevin said, hopping out.

Portia stepped out as Kevin busied himself pulling her bags from the trunk—boot—of the car. In the two pictures on the website, the building had looked charming, but in the early morning dark with mist rolling in from the sea and creeping over the cobblestone streets, it had a distinctly menacing air. It was Georgian neoclassical, if she was guessing correctly, three stories of perfect symmetry and imposing bulk. The gray sandstone was dark and grimy with age and moss grew in fissures between the stones. The windows were all dark, except for a circular Palladian window at the very top floor.

“There better not be any wives locked in the attic,” Portia muttered.

“No, Tav is single, though not for lack of ladies trying, so no worries there,” Kevin said as he handed off her rolling suitcase. “I’ll wait for ye to get in, lass.”

“Thanks,” she said, then took a deep breath.

I could use a shot or two, for fortitude.

She’d forgotten how scary trying new things was when you were sober. She shook her head and began moving for the door when a loud cry broke through the fog.

“Oh, stop it, you fucking tosser!” It was a woman, and she was mad or scared or both. “I said cut it out!”

Portia ran to the police box, but the door was locked.

“Oh, those were decommissioned ages ago,” Kevin said calmly, as if there weren’t a crime in progress.

All of the crime alerts from Bodotria her mother had flooded her inbox with popped into Portia’s head and she didn’t think. Her hand shot into her purse, her suitcase clattered to the cobblestone, and she ran off toward the sound.