He didn’t answer. Not that I had really expected him to.

“Okay, you can stay, but—”

I yelped and clutched my chest again as a furry set of claws impaled the bottom ledge of the window frame.

“Faustus?”

The cat pulled himself up on the sill beside Dog. They gave each other filthy looks, but then settled in, and turned their attention to me.

Wasn’t this just terrific. It looked like I was going to have an audience for my first magical performance in, well, forever.

“Right. Fine. You both can stay, but you have to be quiet.”

Silence.

“Glad we’re agreed.”

I opened the grimoire and flipped the pages.

I knew the spell was in here somewhere. I could almost see it in my mind’s eye. It was on the right-hand side of the page, and the edges were bordered with a string of hand-drawn fires. Because grimoires were often personal collections of spells, they didn’t usually have a table of contents, but, really, that was something the witching community needed to work on.

Then again, I could just use magic to find it.

There was a time when my skills were so honed, I could have just snapped my fingers, and the book would have opened to the right page. Or I could have called on the night wind to flip through the pages for me until the right one was found. I almost thought about giving it a try, but my neglected skills were not sharp, and I didn’t want anything to go wrong before the main event.

I turned page after page by hand until I finally found it.

“There you are.”

Wildfyre Magick.

I traced the words written in calligraphy with my fingertips. When it came to spells, everything needed to be done with care, even the way an incantation was written. For those of us not artistically inclined, it was one of the hardest skills to master. It required so much patience. But most witches believed the powers that be were pleased when great pains were taken to make the words on the page a thing of beauty, and it never hurt to have the powers in a good mood.

I read over the words in front of me. The spell had both a potion component and an incantation, but neither was overly complicated. It certainly shouldn’t test the limits of my abilities. At least my past abilities.

I could do this.

I had to. My family needed me.

I bent down to retrieve Adam’s old Bunsen burner from underneath the table. The last thing I needed for the spell. I blew the dust from it and connected it to the line coming from the wall, being careful to avoid the candles. I then clicked on the gas and cracked the flint lighter above the shooting stream. Faustus hissed when the flame came to life.

“Sorry,” I murmured, fiddling with the gear at the base of the jet.

The cat merely licked his paw in response.