We gathered into an assembly line, intuitively. I stood at the far edge, pulling tools from bags. Me and the witches three.

The procedure this time was different—a distinct recipe. I laid out on the table several round steel boxes, three long spoons, two more of those dish soap bottles. Lakshmi muttered rapidly, monotonously, trailing through a longer invocation I didn’t recognize. The old woman was efficient, hiking her lavender pallu up her shoulder a few times as it slipped, barely stopping to breathe as she placed each piece of gold in a stone basin. I handed Anita the bottles; she passed them to her ajji. The few times our eyes met I saw that she was as disoriented by the changed procedure as I was. Were we brewing another potion entirely?

Anjali Auntie seemed to need a wall or a chair to hold her up. Once or twice Anita’s ajji looked at her and paused her recitation so the daughter could repeat after the mother in a faint voice. Various liquids were squeezed out, and Lakshmi began to massage the gold. It didn’t liquefy as I remembered. It took on a batter-like quality, thick and jiggly on the surface.

“Light,” Lakshmi Joshi said, breaking her rhythm. Anita extracted a butane canister. I took so many steps backward, I nearly buckled onto the bed.

Anita flicked on the blue flame, which angled steeply over the basin. Then she withdrew the butane. The flame shuddered.

I stepped close enough to feel that halo of heat that still ringed the basin and saw the lavalike bubbling of our now-molten gold. There was so little. But at least the stolen goods were one step more alien, one step removed from the crime.

“Where are the lemons?” I asked, pawing through the bags.

“Mama, we forgot them.” Anita’s voice caught.

Lakshmi Auntie’s hand appeared on mine. She steered Anita and me away from the supplies. Her grip was gentler than I’d expected.

“What’s wrong, Auntie?” I said.

“You listen Anita’s mother, now,” the old woman said.

“We won’t need those lemons and all this time,” Anjali Auntie said.

“You’re not going to drink it?” Anita said.

“Come.” Anjali Dayal ran a hand through her strange hair, that weird striping of black and gray. The already stuffy room was suffused with the dizzying smell of the molten metal.

“Sit,” she said. “Let me tell you some things first.”

ANJALI DAYAL TREASURED the Hammond Creek years when her life was solely hers. Well—hers and her daughter’s. She wanted those precious years to go on forever. She believed they could.