“It’s still inside you,” Martha cried when confronted with this sight. After all she’d done to save the child, the girl was still tainted. She’d given up everything for Faith: her home, her house, her past. A bloodline witch could not be cured or changed or charmed or made to obey, even if she pretended to be perfect. Martha went upstairs to search the girl’s room and soon found the black mirror and the notebook. She ripped the notebook into shreds, and when Martha broke the mirror, the glass shattered into a thousand black pieces, one of which stabbed her directly below her eye, leaving a small deep mark, as if she’d been pecked at by the beak of a bird. From then on the windows in Faith’s chamber were nailed shut. Her door would be locked from the outside at night.

“I’m saving you from evil,” Martha said to Faith calmly, when the girl raced up the stairs to see her room had become even more of a prison than it had been before. “Will you do as I say?” Martha asked.

“Of course, Mother.” The words burned her mouth, for Faith was not a liar by nature and she didn’t intend to follow this woman’s twisted rules.