"Susan, is there anything but air between your ears? Do you go out looking for trouble? Do you, in fact, try the hardest you can to be stupid?" asked Thomas. "This boy is obviously a satanic sympathizer. You have known him, personally, for less than forty-eight hours. And, as you know, Wizards. Are. Evil!
Susan didn't know what to say to the first part of this. She settled for addressing the salient point. "But Antonio's nice! And how do you know wizards are evil; have you ever met one?"
Thomas closed his eyes for a moment, simmering with rage. "No one should have that kind of power! Think of what could happen if they wanted, for some reason, to use it against us. Haven't you heard of these Walpurgi? A bloke named Grindelwald has a grudge, and whole villages are wiped out. That kind of power corrupts. It comes from Satan; you know that."
"No, I don't know that," Susan said rationally. "Martin Luther was thought to be from the devil, and where would we be without him today? Benjamin Franklin's lightning rod was supposed to be going against divine wishes, and today, everyone's got one."
She paused, trying to think of something else, drawing on what Antonio had said. "And the only reason wizards don't like us is we forced them into their Seclusion. We wouldn't let them join our communities, so they formed their own. Plenty of them live in peace, Thomas, without trying to wipe us out."
Robert joined their conversation for the first time. "There are radicals in every breed," he said calmly. "Why not?"
"Oh, not you, too. You want these… beings… walking among us without fear? What if, say, you get into an argument with the witch down the street, and she turns you into a mouse? Funny, but deadly. Let's face it: our dear sister has been ensnared by a pretty boy. How do we know one of the things he so cleverly snitched from his, erm, embassy, wasn't a love potion? You tell him tomorrow we're moving, and it's all fixed."
Susan looked at her older brother with narrow, dangerous eyes. "I will not," she snarled.
"You 'will not'? Are you daft? Are you a lovesick puppy, Susan? Do you…"
But no one ever got to find out what Susan did or did not do, because the vase on the table between Thomas and Robert exploded at that very moment. Thomas had been staring at that vase for the past five minutes. Robert and Susan suddenly started staring at him, astonished.
