“Further investigation required, let us say,” Ty said. “I will continue to do research in the library.”

They had picked Dimmet Tarn as a destination for Livvy not only because the distance was a useful measure but because there were lots of interesting stories about Dimmet Tarn among the other students at the Scholomance. It had once been a place of great uncanniness, supposedly, but none of the stories were in agreement as to the nature of its uncanniness. Some stories said that it was once a place beloved of the faeries. Others said that there was a great clutch of demonic eggs far down at the bottom of the tarn, so deep down that no sounding rope could give a true measure. Another story said that an unhappy warlock had enchanted the water so that to swim in it would curse the swimmer with a toe fungus that eventually hatched miniature blue and green toadstools, which sounded improbable, but then warlocks were often improbably petty. It was one of the potential side effects of immortality. You got very bad at letting go of things.

“Did you try to submerge yourself?” Ty asked.

“Yes,” Livvy said. Much like pushing through a headboard, she had been able to push herself down into the water. It had been nothing like swimming had been back in Los Angeles, where the water was green or blue or gray, depending on the time of day and whether the sun was shining, and all the waves wore a cap of white froth and came rushing up noisily on the wet sand. Dimmet Tarn was black, utterly black, as black as night but without stars or moon or the promise that dawn would ever come. Black as tar, black as—nothingness.

Livvy had not felt the water of Dimmet Tarn, but she had sunk into it all the same, slowly, until her head was beneath the surface, darkness below her, the suggestion of the winter sky above shrinking until it was gone altogether and she saw and felt nothing. She had sunk down and down into that void, that blackness, that nothingness, until it was not clear to her whether she was still sinking at all. Nothingness was all around her. Only that strand that connected her to Ty remained, as thin as it could be and yet stronger than the strongest metal.

She and Ty had theorized that perhaps since she was now, as a ghost, uncanny herself, she might be able to discover the secret of Dimmet Tarn. Livvy had liked the idea she might have a superpower of some kind, be useful in some way, and Ty liked the idea that there might be a local mystery that they could solve. But if Dimmet Tarn was keeping an occult secret, Livvy had not discovered it.

“They’re going to ring the bell for dinner soon,” Livvy said.

“I hope it’s not olive loaf,” Ty said.

“It is,” Livvy said. “Can’t you smell it?”