"I'm sorry, Fergus, but unless I'm mistaken, it looks like you're making an institution with the intention of imprisoning people with magic?" Elsa examined the sketches a second time. "In fact, it appears those are the only citizens this prison is being constructed for."
"You sound like you're not thrilled at the idea?" The fried oysters had arrived, and Fergus had already consumed half of his portion.
"It hardly strikes me as practical." She made an extra effort to maintain her poise as she spoke. "Seems like a waste of resources for what could only be a handful of prisoners at most."
"You say that as though you don't already have some of them in Frozen Heart." Fergus was downing another glass of wine, but showed no signs of any intoxication. "From my understanding, you even have a girl with Foresight. Now, a lass who can see the future, well, that's a high security risk if I ever did hear of one."
"Fergus, I never took you for someone who's paranoid." She ate one of her own breaded oysters delicately with a fork. "Giselle has magic at an extremely low level, hardly the level of concern for anyone on my staff. If she were more powerful, she would've been able to stop herself from getting caught."
"And yet she's seeing the prison therapist constantly. Why exactly? Has she been a troublemaker?"
"Not as far as I can tell. What Felix tells the inmates is kept confidential unless they tell him they're plotting to murder me or something."
"See, that's what I thought you were going to say." He reached down with a louder grunt than before and pulled out several more sheets of paper. "It might enlighten you to hear that Fergus Pharmaceuticals has been researching this sort of thing for quite some time. Yer little Felix happens to be on my payroll as well."
Elsa reached into her purse to fetch an aspirin.
"Am I to assume you've somehow been getting his records? I think we both know that would be a violation of standard procedure."
"I'll pretend for a moment it's not hilarious for a warden who once froze a young woman into a block of ice is trying to talk with me about standard procedure." He held his wine goblet out for another refill, which was promptly given to him by the same unenthusiastic server. "You and your prison wouldn't be able to function for even a week without me gracious funding, Elsa, so if I take an interest in the unusual nature of one of yer jailbirds, I'll feel no guilt for doing so."
This was the closest all evening Fergus had come to sounding angry.
"So what if one of my inmates has such abilities? That's hardly enough to justify the expensive and time-consuming process of creating an entirely new detention center. And even less of one to put me in charge of it."
"Why not? Who better to keep magic contained than someone with magic?"
"It wouldn't feel right..."
"I beg yer pardon?"
Elsa softly swore. She had momentarily pulled the curtain down by accident.
"What I meant to say is that I'm perfectly content with my current position. Who would be the head of Frozen Heart if I left? Or do I need to mention how many riots that place had before I arrived?"
"Elsa, please, Frozen Heart would function just fine once I found the proper replacement for you. Someone who would maintain yer firm grip of the place..."
"...while showing your daughter some favoritism? Or do you think you don't make your disdain over how much time she spends in isolation known to me enough?"
"Elsa, in the name of our professional relationship, I'll write that off of a joke." His obscenely large hands had balled themselves into fists. "I can assure you this has nothing to do with Merida. This is being done strictly in the interest of public safety."
"And you're implying those of us with magic are the true threat? Dear Lord Fergus, it's no longer the middle ages. It's been a long time since one of us was burnt at the stake."
"Elsa, I'm hardly pitching a return to the dark ages. But let's say fer a second that one day you decided to send the entire kingdom into an eternal winter? What's to stop you from doing so?"
"Well, first off that is something I would never decide to do." Elsa stuffed another oyster in her mouth just to give herself something else to focus on. "And it's far from realistic to even imply that I have anything close to that level of power."
"That all may be so, lass." Fergus was rubbing his fingers together as though studying her, like an art collector at a museum deciding how much he was willing to spend on an old painting. "Tell me, Elsa, if I might ask you a bit of a personal question..."
"Oh, so you mean this hasn't been personal so far?"
"Elsa, how long were you in jail for?"
Elsa took a long sip of water (which was increasingly getting colder as she did so) to give herself time to contemplate a response.
"I'm not sure what that has to do with any of this..."
"Elsa, please, this will be much less awkward for both of us if you don't treat me like a brainless git." He threw something else her away, this time a set of photos, both of which showing Elsa dressed in orange and looking fearful but resigned. They were her mugshots.
"How did you...?"
"Oh, find these? Not easy. Seems they've been erased from the jail's database, for whatever reason, but lucky for me a horny guard apparently thought you looked cute enough in a jumpsuit to print them out for his own, I'm not sure what delicate wording to us, 'personal' enjoyment? Of course, he was all too eager to sell them to me given how much I was willing to pay him, yet fer some reason he was under the strange impression that I was threatening him with blackmail."
Elsa rubbed her face. The customers around them were chatting at an even higher volume now, but she sensed that at least some of them were starting to stare.
"As I said, I was young and stupid."
"Elsa, yer many things, but stupid has never been one of them." He looked at the mugshots and grimaced. "Funny thing is, if things had gone differently, you and Merida might've ended up being cellmates. Of course you never went to prison. Charges got dropped. Not exactly information that would give anyone a heart attack. It was your first offense, and it was obvious you had only taken the watch to save yer sister's neck."
"If it's such a predictable story, why are you so interested?"
"Because of some little plot twists it has. For instance, there is no documentation of your arrest. Those lovely glamour shots of yours are the only source of evidence. But beyond that, it's like it never happened, and yet you were in jail for several weeks, weren't you?"
"30 days." She could feel waves of frost starting to emerge from her nostrils like a bad nosebleed. "Does that solve your grand mystery?"
"30 days in jail, and no one I can find who took care of you there outside of the pervert who processed you. No trips to court. No visits from a lawyer. No phone calls outside of one you made to your sister, except if I'm not mistaken, she didn't even pick up."
"I'm really not sure what you're trying to imply here." She hastily put a napkin to her nose in case it actually did start bleeding
"I ain't trying to imply anything, love. I'm just a curious old man, wondering how they were even able to imprison someone who could break out of any cell she wanted to by using just a fraction of their magic."
"I was a model prisoner."
"Maybe you were, maybe you weren't. But in any case, whoever was in charge of things wanted no one to know you had ever so much as set a foot in that jail. Even the police officers who arrested you couldn't tell me what had happened with you once they dropped you off."
"You seem to have been making a great effort to track down anyone with knowledge on the matter."
"Alas, it has been with no valuable results to show for me effort. So I can only work with me gut. And me gut is telling me that the only reason someone of your 'status' would be kept locked up for a month without ever seeing a lawyer or a judge would be because someone with the authority to do so wanted you there for purposes unrelated to yer charges. Purposes which involved you being their little lab rat."
Elsa flinched, her head jolting almost violently. It was becoming physically painful to try to contain herself now. Her gloves would only be able to keep her from freezing the table for not even a minute if she didn't find a way to control herself.
She took another aspirin and popped it between her lips.
"What are you trying to accomplish with this?"
"Elsa, again, you misunderstand me." He finished another glass of wine without even a hiccup. "I ain't trying to be yer enemy. I'm simply expressing why you're the best qualified person for this new job. You might have...experience with such matters. Knowledge as to how someone like you can be locked up safely if needed."
Panic was setting in. Pure, undiluted panic. If Elsa didn't leave soon, something might happen. In front of everyone in the restaurant.
She got to her heels and placed her purse over her shoulders, in such a rush to do so that it slid down her arm.
"Fergus, it's been lovely. The food was delicious, but I really should be leaving."
"That's too bad. A real shame. We never even got to the dessert. But don't let me keep you from yer job."
"Do I still even have my job?"
"You do for now. Yer transfer, should it happen, well, that would be up to the board. And I never interfere in such affairs."
"I'm sure you don't."
She turned to leave, more eager than ever to drive home and throw herself into a hot bath until her magic evaporated itself into mist. But then she heard Fergus give a whistle.
"Elsa, before you go, I just want to thank you for coming tonight. I know you've been oh so busy fer the last several weeks. I'm delighted we're friends."
"Friends. That might be a bit of an exaggeration. Is that what we are, Fergus?"
"Oh, of course it is. And you should be damn grateful for that. Because if you were my enemy, well, terrible things can happen to people I don't like. Unfortunate things. Things I have no involvement with, of course, but things that make your little prison look like a five-star resort. And who would look after poor, murderous Anna if that were the case?"
With that, the server gave Elsa a paper bag with her leftovers and dismissed her. She was barely able to leave the restaurant before it shattered into ice within her arms.