Mateo walked into the barbershop more or less on autopilot, hardly seeing anything in front of his eyes. He didn’t have to, though; he’d been coming to Ginger Goncalves for his haircuts as long as he could remember. All he did was nod, barely seeing her as he got into the barber chair. She’d know what to do.

He found that if he stared really hard at his shoes, he didn’t see anything of the terrible halo in the mirror, not even out of the corner of his eye.

As Ginger used the electric razor at the back of his neck, once again he thought of Verlaine, alone and probably terrified. All these years he’d known her, and yet he’d never bothered talking with her—never dreamed they had so much in common, that magic had scarred both their lives as soon as they’d begun. And though he’d heard the story of her parents’ deaths, because old stories never died in small towns, he’d never questioned it. Verlaine’s gray hair was like Ginger’s muteness: a part of her, a small strangeness that on its own meant nothing, but in a larger pattern—

Wait.

He focused on the reflection in the mirror—hard for him to do, with the loathsome halo writhing around his head—but now, behind him, he could see Ginger.

Ginger, with a shadow of that same writhing energy coiled around her throat.

Ginger, who hadn’t spoken since the church fire in 1995.

Nadia had talked about other witches. How there had to have been others in Captive’s Sound sometime.

And men couldn’t be told about witchcraft, but women could.

Did Ginger have any idea what had happened to her? Did she understand at all?

Mateo had no clue how to bring this up, but he figured he had to try. He cleared his throat, and she glanced up at him with a pleasant smile. It was okay to ask her yes or no questions, even to communicate with short notes. But it was still tough to get this out. “Ginger?”

She raised an eyebrow.

“Do you—do you believe in magic?”

It was vague enough to mean anything. A song lyric. A joke. If Ginger didn’t understand, Mateo figured, she’d laugh or shrug. Blow it off.

But Ginger went stiff. Her usual ease had vanished; now her face was pale, and she didn’t seem to know what to do.

That meant he was onto something, right? Had to. Mateo decided to venture one more comment, something that would seem totally innocent to anybody who wasn’t knee-deep in witchcraft: “I’ve been thinking a lot about it lately. Hey, you know Elizabeth Pike, right?”

The razor clattered to the linoleum floor, where it buzzed and jittered amid the scraps of his shorn hair. Ginger jerked away, backing up with wide eyes, until she thudded into the far wall.

“Hey—don’t be scared.” Mateo got up, held out his hands. He felt stupid trying to do this with a black plastic apron around his neck, so he quickly took that off. “It’s okay. It is, really.”