She did her best to ignore his jibes—not an easy task, for one so fiery as Maeve. She knew, though, that she needed him on side for this. While she doubted that even spite would cause him to trap them both in such purgatory, she had never considered Skeeter to be a particularly useful man. She would not give him encouragement to behave in any way that was not strictly according to plan.

The seconds seemed to halt as he dug about for his letter, and when she saw the familiar, infamous pink envelope, the auror let out a breath she had not known she’d been holding. There it was, her golden ticket back to the way her life had been before. It was not the damage to her reputation that Maeve cared about—she would not be herself if it was—but the damage to her pride. She would bear these bruises for some time to come, but at least now, they could begin to heal.

“Good,” she offered tersely. “We’ll need to take it to the lawyers for them to dissolve this whole mess. We’re lucky not to have been the only ones affected—we might never have gotten out of it if we were.”