That wasn’t a club. I’d bet anything that was a coven.

What? Are you sure?

Ginger’s a witch—and that fire can’t have been targeted only at her. There are more specific spells you could use against one enemy.

What kind of spells were those? Verlaine wondered if she really wanted to know.

Nadia kept typing. If Elizabeth only wanted to hurt or warn Ginger, the curse alone would have done it. But the fire striking a whole group of women who met alone … to me, that says coven.

A whole group of witches—right here in town—and Verlaine had never suspected. Someday soon, she figured she wouldn’t even be capable of being surprised anymore, but not quite yet. Why would a coven be meeting in the Catholic church? Isn’t that, like, a conflict of interest or something?

They probably said it was a knit night or a book club or something. It’s always easiest to hide in plain sight.

Her phone screen was the only light in her room; the shadows it cast made everything look unfamiliar. Verlaine realized she was shivering and clutched Smuckers closer, though the fat old cat meowed once in protest. So Elizabeth just goes around destroying other witches in town, whenever, wherever?

No, because she hasn’t come after me, and she could. I wouldn’t be able to stop her, Nadia replied. That wasn’t exactly reassuring.

Why had she let herself get sucked into this? But Verlaine knew now—witchcraft had played a part in her life long before she’d ever met Nadia Caldani. She wound a strand of her waist-length hair around one finger, over and over, coiling it all; in the phone’s light it shone silver.

Uncle Gary and Uncle Dave kept the one formal portrait of her and her parents framed in the hallway, bigger than any of the many pictures they’d all taken together over the years. So she wouldn’t forget, they always said, like she remembered back that far to begin with. Verlaine was hardly a year old in that picture, chubby and grinning with her dark curls as her mom and dad hugged her tight. She’d lost everything she could see there—the parents, the baby fat, the dark hair, and even the smile.

Was Elizabeth the one who had taken it all away?

Her phone chimed again in her hand. Verlaine looked down to see Nadia’s text: The witches must have been planning on challenging her. That’s why Elizabeth killed them. She must have left Ginger alive but mute as a kind of warning.

Warning who?

Anyone else who was coming after Elizabeth.

Um, isn’t that us? Verlaine was starting to wonder whether “teen runaway” was the worst thing she could put on her college applications.

But as scared as she was, there was no erasing what she’d learned. Her whole life, Verlaine had been wearing the scars Elizabeth had given her; now, at last, she saw them for what they were.

Her uncles said that Mom had a fantastic sense of humor and had crocheted Verlaine’s baby blanket herself. That Dad used to sing Beatles songs to her when she was a baby to put her to sleep.