I feel like a creeper, walking into a strange woman’s bedroom—but that’s where Lady Salisbury takes us. On the second floor of her house. It’s darker up here. Cooler. Her room is huge, with a little sitting area and kind of a shrine by the lace-curtained window. There’s a table with two lit candles—one burning brightly and one sputtering like it’s about to go out. Each candle is surrounded by photographs: a fair-haired boy on the side that burns bright; a girl on the side that gutters.

“You ‘Lit a candle’ for him,” Baz says, awed. “That’s an enormous spell.”

“I’ve cast it twice,” Lady Salisbury says. “A mother whose child is in danger can lift a car.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“Don’t be. Look…” She leads us to the table. “Both candles still burn. It’s a comfort to me.” She lifts a picture of a thickly built man wearing a Queen T-shirt. “That’s Jamie,” she says. “I took this photo last year, on his thirty-eighth birthday.”

I was expecting him to be younger, I don’t know why.

Baz pulls a notebook from his pocket, and it gives me a pang. Penny should be here. She still hasn’t texted me back. I don’t blame her—I know I owe her a proper apology, but I still don’t know what else I owe her. Everything I said was true. I’m done with the World of Mages.

“How long has your son been missing?” Baz asks.

“A month.” Lady Salisbury seems like a different person in this flickering light. Downstairs, she was warm and cheerful, if a bit sad. Now she’s woebegone and mournful. This room feels too full of people who aren’t here anymore. Her son, her daughter—apparently lost before the girl had a chance to get old—and a curly-haired man in an Air Force uniform looking down from a large photograph over the bed. “My husband,” she says. She’s caught me staring at the portrait. “Gone ten years now.”

I nod, not sure whether I should offer condolences.

“Did Jamie tell you he was leaving?” Baz’s pen is poised over the notepad.

“No … But there were signs.” She lays her hand on his wrist, stopping his pen. “Let’s go back downstairs. The light is better.”

We follow her back down to the sitting room, past more family photos. There’s one hanging over the staircase—the same blond girl as a teenager. I stop. “She looks familiar,” I say. “I think I’ve seen a painting of her.”

“At Watford,” Baz says, over my shoulder. “In the Catacombs.”

Neither of us mention that it weeps.

Lady Salisbury doesn’t smile. “Yes,” she says. “Lucy was a student there.” She walks ahead of us down the stairs. “I think I will make tea after all.”