The Serpent's Shadow by Mercedes Lackey

patients have a number of very large, very inhospitable friends of their own, who would not care to see me or my practice inconvenienced?” He ducked his head, squared his shoulders, and followed her direction—into the mysteries of her office.
    He was not entirely certain that he was going to come out. At least, not in the same state—mental or physical, he was not sure—in which he had gone in.

5
    P ETER sat—carefully—on the single chair facing the doctor’s desk, in a room that appeared to serve as study, initial consultation room, and office. The doctor studied him, her expression as serene as a bronze Buddha, and just as unreadable. He decided to show a bit more spine than he had for the past few moments, and studied her as well. Neither of them broke the silence; only the usual street sounds filtered in through the glass of the window facing the street—footsteps, hoofbeats, voices, and the occasional cough and chatter of a motorcar.
    One day all our hansoms are going to be replaced by those wretched autos, Peter reflected, as a particularly noisy vehicle chugged by, drowning every other noise as it did. And on that day—perhaps I’ll move to the Isle of Man, or of Wight, or the Scillys—or some place equally remote. God, how I hate those things!
    As he continued to gaze unabashedly at the doctor’s face, taking in the nuances of her features, he became more and more certain that his first guess about her parentage was correct.
    Eurasian, no doubt. With the surname “Witherspoon” there wasn’t much doubt which parent was the English one; the only question was—how on earth had this woman, of mixed blood, managed to become a doctor? The task was difficult enough for an English girl! Who had sponsored her and given her the necessary education? The London School of Medicine for Women?
    No, that surely wasn’t possible; she looked too young. She must have begun her studies in her teens, and the London School wouldn’t take a girl that young.
    I don’t think that I would care to stand between her and something she dearly wants. I would probably find her walking over the top of me to get it.
    The office revealed very little of the doctor’s personality, other than the fact that she—or her servants—were fanatically neat. Bookcases lined the wall behind her except for a space where a door broke the expanse, bookcases polished until they gleamed and filled with leather-bound volumes. Her desk, spartan and plain, held only pen, pencil, paper in a neat stack, an inkpot, and a blotter. There was one small framed print on the wall behind him, but he didn’t dare turn around to look at it, not with those black eyes fixed on him. Printed wallpaper might be Morris; he wasn’t sure; it was warm brown, yellow, and cream, exactly the colors he’d expect from an Earth Mage.
    Nothing on the desk to help—no pictures, no trinkets. And nothing with writing on it. So she was the kind who put her patients’ records out of sight before they even left the office. A careful woman; a wise woman, given what she’d implied about her last client.
    Ah, but what he sensed, now that he was within the enclosure of her protective magics, made him long for fifteen minutes left alone in this—or, indeed, any—room in the house. It wasn’t just the force of her personality that left him a little stunned, it was the strength of her magic. Strangest of all was that she wasn’t using it. She was certainly old enough to have learned as much as he about the arcane; certainly powerful enough—but the magic she had invested in the walls was held together mostly by the main strength of that power. If those spells had been put in place by an Elemental Apprentice, they’d have fallen apart before the mage turned around. She had taken a bit of this, a bit of that, and a heavy dose of willpower to create protections that were