Magpie shook her head. “I don’t know,” she said, looking at the strange recipe card. She suddenly squinted and looked closer. “Jacksmoke!”

Again, Poppy looked startled by Magpie’s cursing. Magpie caught her look this time and blushed. “I mean, skiffle. . . .”

“What is it?” Poppy asked.

Magpie opened her book and leafed through it until she found a page marked with an iridescent snakeskin. Her eyes shifted rapidly back and forth between the book and the recipe. “Poppy, look.” Pasted to the page was a scrap of parchment gone sepia with great age, once ripped in half and carefully seamed back together. It read

Hurry home, love, through the
dream-dark glade,
Where moontime beasts lurk
in darkling shade.
Never linger, love,
where the shadows grow.
The Blackbringer hunts where
the light fears to go.

“The Blackbringer?” said Poppy. “That old bogey? My mum used to scare me with tales about him so I wouldn’t stay out past dark.”

“Aye, that’s just an old nursery story. But look, see on the recipe here, the initial B? Now look at the big B on Blackbringer.”

Poppy looked back and forth between them. “It’s the same,” she said. “Sure! And look at the h on half and home. These were written by the same hand!” She glanced up at Magpie.

But Magpie was chewing her lip and shaking her head, bewildered. “Sure looks like, but skive, it’s impossible!” Her voice had an edge of suspicion to it as she said, “Poppy, this parchment? I found it in the ruins of Shaith Ev, the temple of the Ithuriel. It’s part of a letter from the age of the devil wars.”

Poppy’s mouth dropped open. “For true? That’s old. . . .”

“Twenty-five thousand years. And that’s not all.” Magpie traced the B on Blackbringer with her fingertip. “It was written by Bellatrix!”

The two lasses fell silent and stood looking at each other in disbelief.

“Ach, there y’are, ye treacherous twitch!”

Magpie and Poppy both swung toward the door to see Maniac in his lady wig, glowering in at them. “Feather . . . ,” Magpie said sheepishly, “I’m sorry—”

He jerked his head so the wig sailed off and landed in a hairy heap at her feet. “Where ye been? Sure ye come back once it’s all over, neh? Sneaky as an imp!”

“Glad to hear she’s not all crow,” said a growly little voice out of sight.

Maniac turned his head. “Good-imp,” he croaked, “ye mistake me. She’s crow straight through. ’Tis only when she’s wicked that she’s imp.”

“Then may she always be wicked!”

“Snoshti?” Magpie leapt the prop trunks to get to the door and peered around for the imp marm. She saw her there, so small and quizzical, surrounded by beetles, and her heart swelled. She dropped to her knees before her and flung her arms round the little creature. “Snoshti!” she cried. Her whiskers tickled just the same after all these years.

“How wild ye look!” Snoshti declared, holding Magpie at arm’s length to examine her. “Brown as a gypsy and skinny—”