Laurence had that “hitting an air pocket on an airplane” feeling, hearing Patricia talk this way. Like Patricia was about to open up to him, and that was exciting, for reasons he couldn’t divulge to himself. But then he was terrified that she was right, and maybe there really were things that would give him no choice but to recoil from her—what if she was about to say that she recharged her witch powers by drinking the blood of babies? Plus every single time he learned more about Patricia and magic, he lost something.

None of this, though, overrode the adrenaline buzz of holy fuck, I feel close to this person right now. In his skin, in his scalp even. In his chest.

“Whatever,” Laurence said aloud. “You already helped clean up after my biggest fuckup. I don’t see how your shit can be worse than that.”

On the sidewalk downhill from where they sat, a woman with a stroller was yelling at her toddler, a lank-haired kid in overalls who kept running up to the cherry tree and trying to harass the parrots. Who just laughed at him. The mother threatened to count to five.

“When I was a teenager, some of us went off half-cocked and attacked this drilling project in Siberia, and people died. Including my friend. And these days…” Patricia took a heavy breath, almost shaking. “I curse people. Like, one guy who had raped and killed a bunch of girls I turned into a cloud. There was a lobbyist who helped to block environmental regulations—they called him the Picasso of the Paperwork Reduction Act—and I conned him into becoming a sea turtle. Sea turtles live a long time, longer than most humans, so it wasn’t murder. These bureaucrats were trying to kick my friend Reginald out of Section Eight housing, and I gave one of them a rash. And so on.” She couldn’t look straight at Laurence.

“Wow.” Laurence shouldn’t have been surprised, after what happened to Mr. Rose—but Patricia had said that was one of the senior witches’ handiwork. For a moment, he felt like this steep hillside was tipping over, and then he got his center of gravity together again. “Wow,” Laurence said again. “I gotta admit, that’s not what I pictured you doing. I kind of imagined you more, I don’t know … going around and blessing babies or something.”

“You’re thinking of fairies. If I blessed a baby, it would have exactly the same effect as if you blessed a baby.”

“I doubt that,” Laurence snorted. “Babies tend to projectile vomit at the sight of me. Anyway, it sounds like you put the smackdown on people who deserve it. I don’t know. If I could turn people into turtles, there would be turtles everywhere.”