“I received word of a nightmare this morning,” he said.

“Whose?”

“Spruce Fielding’s youngest daughter.”

“Elle?”

“The very one. She had a nightmare last night. According to Spruce . . . it frightened her so badly that she hasn’t spoken a word today.”

I quirked my mouth to the side, my heart aching with this news. Children’s nightmares were always the worst. They were the recordings that kept me up at night when I read them. They were the dreams I dreaded to see stalking the streets on new moon nights.

“And you need me to go and record it,” I surmised, and a quiet thrill went through me. I had never been the one to divine a nightmare, or to record it in my father’s book. I accompanied him most of the time, and I observed, and I read his recordings afterward so I could prepare for the new moon. But never on my own.

“Yes, Clem,” Papa said, and I could not discern if he was proud or nervous. “Don’t use the divining spell unless you absolutely must. And if you must, please use my spell, word for word.”

I nodded and felt his gaze as I moved about his cluttered bedchamber, gathering supplies for the visitation.

“I will, Papa.” I opened his cupboard, where a hoard of tiny blue vials waited within, gleaming in the light. Remedies. I selected two, the corked glass the size of my pinkie. The dark brew sloshed within them as I hesitated, thought better of it, and grabbed three more vials, slipping them into the deep pocket of my charcoal-streaked skirt.

“Divining,” my father continued, as if he was about to impart a lecture. I inwardly braced myself. “Particularly done with . . . oh, how do I say this, with precarious intent, can open a door that you might not know how to close.”

As if to prove a point, I shut the cupboard door, more forceful than necessary. I could hear the vials rattling in protest, and I met Papa’s gaze, swallowing an impatient response. Sometimes he acted like I had no inkling how to cast a charm or divine a nightmare. This was a lesson I had heard countless times from him, before magic had even sparked at my fingertips.

“I haven’t done anything precarious in months, Papa.”

And by precarious, I meant spontaneous, when magic came to me in the moment. The sort of magic he was afraid of. That was why he was diligent in studying the nightmares, so he could prepare potential spells. His memory was immense and deep, and while I admired him for it . . . my strongest magic was forged from intuition.