“Gideon gave it to me,” I said, placing it in front of the small china buffet with the claw feet. Faustus gave it a sniff.

“Oh dear,” Izzy said, stepping to the other side of the room, “that doesn’t bode well. Faustus, you might want to get away from there.” The cat gave her a look then moved along.

“This is ridiculous,” Nora said drily. “What exactly are we expecting to happen? If everyone’s ready, I’m just going to turn off the lights.”

“Hang on,” I said. “I want to check on Precious.”

“Precious?” Nora asked, her hand resting on the antique light switch. “You named the toad?”

“Don’t judge me,” I said. “I know it’s a bad name, but you’re the one who made me set it all up in the cage, and it kept looking up at me with those big, black trusting eyes, and I—”

“The only thing more tedious than the name itself is the story behind the name. Let’s just get on with this, shall we?”

“We shall,” Izzy said firmly and in a lower tenor of voice. Another one of Izzy’s quirks was that she often got quite serious whenever we were about to do something witchcraft-related and her voice took on a deep timbre, much to Nora’s annoyance. It was usually kind of funny, but tonight it was particularly amusing, given what we were about to do wasn’t exactly spell-work. Thankfully. No, we were just going to take a look at a toad, and maybe at what the toad left us behind in the cage.

What most humans don’t know, or rather, can’t see, is that some creatures, amphibians in particular, liked to feed on strong energy. Emotional energy was a big favorite. And when they fed on strong energy, that energy had to go somewhere, and oftentimes you could see remnants of said energy in . . .

The poop.

That’s right, we were going to look at the toad’s poop.

In the dark.

You could only see what we were looking for in the dark.

Izzy took a loud deep breath. “Let us take a moment to cleanse our energy before we begin the sacred examination.”

Nora rolled her eyes so hard she practically shuddered. I mimicked Izzy’s deep breath, if for no other reason than to bug Nora.

Izzy spread her hands wide. “Now, let us take another moment to thank Precious for—”

The lights clicked off.

“Oh, so sorry, Sister,” Nora said. “My finger must have slipped. Now let’s see what that toad has been up to.”

Izzy and I crept in the dark toward Precious’s cage. We were already nervous given what we might find, and it didn’t help matters that the sunroom had a peculiar feel to it in the dim light, its shadows stretched across the floor.

“I don’t see anything, do you?” Izzy asked softly.

“No, nothing,” I murmured.

“Why are you two whispering?” Nora asked at full voice. “And why are you creeping? Brynn, just get the creature out of there so we can examine the cage.”