“Probably why I’m so often irritable,” Hollis said, absently taking a bite of the strawberry shortcake her partner had unobtrusively pushed closer to her. “My filter’s clogged.” She was only half-aware of even speaking.

The others regarded her with varying degrees of interest as she continued to eat the dessert, her faint frown remaining.

“Give it time,” Quentin advised finally.

Hollis finished the bite in her mouth, then said cordially, “I’d love to. Only the Universe hates me, like I said, or I did something horrible in my last life, or something like that. Because you can’t push too much through a filter and expect it to not get clogged. I think I’d have a clearer idea about the old man and the crow otherwise.” She frowned at him, then at Bishop. “But you were asking Nellie about the crows.”

“And I was asking you,” Nellie said promptly, looking somewhat relieved to move on from spirits. “Have you picked up anything from them?”

Hollis ate the last bite of her dessert, then pushed the plate away and reached for coffee. “You know, I really couldn’t say whether I got anything from the crows. For sure, I mean. There were some odds and ends while we were up on the mountain, and we did see a few crows about. But I’m not sure what I was getting. I mean, I wasn’t focused on birds. Or maybe it’s that clogged filter.”

Either way, it gave Bishop sufficient reason to say to Nellie, “We know you can communicate with them. And we could definitely use their help.”

“I’m not telling them to do anything.”

“Not tell. Ask.” He paused, then added, “As I said, I’m fairly certain they’ve offered.”

“Bishop—”

“Nellie, you know crows are highly intelligent. That they remember faces, people. They know who’s been good to them and who hasn’t. They share that information with each other. And correct me if I’m wrong, but it’s not widely known that it’s a Cavendish Talent to communicate with the crows, right?”

It was Finn who replied to that. “A rare Talent even among Cavendishes, the ability to communicate with the crows.” He stopped himself just in time from using the word command rather than communicate, and nodded. “There are a handful of rare, extremely unusual Talents that pop up now and then across the five families, and that’s one of them. It wasn’t spoken of or even known to anyone outside the Cavendish family for a long time, probably because it isn’t something anyone believed especially useful. Until Duncan found a way—a very bad way—to use it. I doubt many of us know now. I mean, plenty of his followers and those who feared him knew that Duncan claimed he could control them, but he made it seem like a Talent he alone had, not a family Talent. Once he was gone nobody seemed bothered by the crows. I only knew about it, that it ran in the family, not just in Duncan, because Nellie’s father told mine before he left Salem.”