The People Who Look Away hung back—as always, content to let their beasts do the hard work. Eleanor kept her attention focused on Katie. She had to get the book, quill, and ink back from her.

Eleanor started forward, jaw clenched. A muck reared up in front of her. It was huge, with wide, tattered ears like a bat. Bare ribs protruded through the mud that coated its body, mushrooms growing between them. It raised a huge paw, claws extended—and then a glass bottle shattered against its torso, brilliant white light spilling out. It let out a strangled sound and crumpled to the ground, turning to dust and mud.

The hedgewitch appeared at her side, another bottle already in hand. “You okay?” she asked, a bit breathless.

“Fine,” Eleanor said curtly.

The hedgewitch nodded sharply. “Go. I’ll make sure nothing touches you,” she said.

Eleanor ran forward again, trying to ignore the shapes lunging out of the dark, the yelps and growls and shrieks, the clash and clang of metal. The Katies were right ahead of her, watching her approach with a kind of detached curiosity.

“What are you doing?” the one on the left asked.

“There’s no point to all of this,” the one on the right said.

“You won’t get away,” the one in the center said.

“No one ever does,” they chorused together, and their voices were suddenly full of anguish and sorrow and anger.

“You did,” Eleanor said. “You escaped.”

“No. I didn’t. I tried a hundred times, and I never did,” they said. Their outlines shook, flexing. They snapped back into a single woman, then split into three again.

“You escaped with us,” Eleanor insisted, tears in her voice. “You were Thea and you got away.”

“That wasn’t real,” the center Katie said. “Enough of this.” She wrenched open the cover of the book. The three of them moved in unison—one holding the ink, the other the quill, the third the book. Eleanor lunged forward, trying to cross the last distance before Katie could—

A hand closed around her wrist. “Got you,” Ms. Foster spat, as all around them familiar figures appeared out of thin air—thirteen men and women. Pip’s dentist. Otto’s great-aunt. They were the thirteen men and women of the January Society, who had tried to hand them over to Mr. January last Halloween.

Katie, satisfied, merged once more into a single version of herself. She tucked the ink and quill into the bag that hung over her shoulder, and the book she held under one arm, surveying her work.

“Ah! Excellent!” Mr. January cried, as the Society members looked around in confusion. “A chance to redeem yourself. Get those children through the door, and all will be forgiven! I’ll even let you exist again!”

“Come on, Eleanor dear,” Ms. Foster said, dragging her toward the door.