She glances to Sel, and I know her answer is for his ears and mine both. ‘No. Even if I could speak to her now, she would not tell me.’

My mother gives me a final squeeze, and a frown. ‘I love you, Bree. Tell your father I love him.’

I laugh through tears. “I will. I promise.” She turns and walks away before I can beg her to stay. “I love you, too.” I see her smile lift, and then she is flame and light, and I can barely make out her features.

“Keep going,” Hazel whispers.

I drag my palm across my eyes, sniffling, nodding. I take a deep breath, focus on the voice I will never forget. The spirit I first channeled in my life as a Medium. “Grandmother Charles, Leanne.”

Leanne pulls forward out of the fire, a wide, short woman wearing an apron over a full skirt. She smiles. ‘We meet again.’

“Yes, ma’am,” I whisper.

She frowns. ‘You gettin’ enough to eat? Your face looks thin.’

Someone snickers behind me. I ignore them, and her grandmotherly disappointment. “I need to ask you a question. Did you wield our power to attack, not just to defend?”

She shakes her head, face sad. ‘My mother had so trained me to stay away from danger, that I lived most my life without the power ever manifesting. Didn’t matter that I never used it. It was going to take her no matter what.’

The grief in her voice digs my own down deeper, burrowing like a drill. “I understand…,” I whisper.

‘Sorry, baby.’ She waves, and steps back.

Jessie I’ve already spoken to, but she comes forth anyway, glancing to her left where her own daughter had just appeared, sorrow in her features. ‘I showed you what I know. That the Hunter will come if you wield our power, grow it large enough to do harm.’

I feel my friends’ eyes on me, and Hazel’s and Lu’s too. “Who is he?”

She shakes her head. ‘I never found out. I could only run.’ She steps forward, eyes hard. ‘I am a healer, but know one thing: My mother wished to be a hero. And fighting took her life. But the power woulda taken her life anyway.’

Next is Emmeline, the hero. More hope there. ‘I fought the creatures I saw in the night.’

She puts her hand to her chest like I’d seen in Jessie’s memory. Pulls it forward to extract a whip of flame. I echo her, excited to learn how to do more—then abruptly, she drops her hand. ‘Until one night, foxes cornered me. Later, the Hunter found me as I lay dying in the street. He watched life leave me, and said not a word.’