I listened to crickets that had turned to dust thousands of years ago on a continent I’d never set foot on. “You’re able to hold a soul so you can gestate a baby,” I guessed, and she nodded, solemn.

“Ku’Sox is a fool, but he’s right. You need to prove yourself, and now is as good a time as any. I will not have your standing in doubt. Don’t you agree, Al?” she added lightly.

Al looked sick. “She’s rather stupid yet.”

“I am not!” I exclaimed, and he pointed at me.

“There, see? She is.”

Newt waved a hand at Dali, still standing by the jukebox. “Even a dunce can have a baby. All it needs is stamina and a little imagination. Rachel?”

“I am not stupid!” I said again.

“Shut up,” Al hissed as Ku’Sox gleefully ate someone else’s cheese. “You don’t know what you’re doing.”

“So teach me,” I hissed right back. “Thanks to you, I can’t be a witch anymore. I may as well be a demon.”

My heart was pounding. God, what was I doing? I only knew that I had to be somewhere, and right now, this was it.

Al stared at me, hope dying in his eyes. “I can’t teach you this.”

“I can,” Newt said, and my breath came fast.

Crap on toast.

“I will,” she added, and I swallowed hard. “I will teach you, you will make one, and Al will fix it to reality. I don’t have the balls to do that part. Literally.”

No one was even whispering. All eyes were on me, the tables full of demons in robes and a small crowd bunched outside, trying to listen in. I hadn’t counted on this. I mean, Al I sort of trusted. At least I trusted that he needed me alive and reasonably well. But Newt? She looked sane, and that was worrisome.

“Come here,” she prompted. “You want to do this, yes?”

Not really. Taking a slow breath, I stood, feeling weird in these clothes with the green rocks sewn into them. They clinked as I came around the table, Ku’Sox moving in agitation as he stood, looking young next to Dali’s tired jadedness. Al’s hands were in fists on the table. A bead of sweat trickled down his neck.

“Sit before me, Rachel,” Newt prompted, her voice oily, and I wondered if this was how she’d killed her sisters, lulling them. She shifted on her cushion to sit cross-legged, pointing for me to take the tiny bit of padding right in front of her. “Back to me.”

Better and better.

My gut was so tight I thought I was going to vomit, and my arms felt like sticks. Everyone was watching as I gingerly sat, pebbles clinking as I tugged a bit of cloth to cover my bare legs. “That’s a love,” she murmured, and I jumped when she touched my hair.

Someone laughed, and I whipped my head around to see who it had been, but Newt was there, rubbing my forehead from behind, trying to be soothing but only making it worse.