Holding her hand out flat, Elizabeth pushed it forward until her fingers were in the candle’s flame. The first flare of heat hurt, but she had long since learned to ignore pain.

She held it there, and held it there. Her skin turned red, and the thin wisp of smoke rising from the candle began to darken. The tallow scent deepened into the smell of smoldering flesh.

Hotter, Elizabeth thought. Pain-sparked tears welled in her eyes, but they were meaningless. Her fingers had begun to turn black. Make it hotter.

Make it boil.

Nadia leaned her head back on the heavy curved rim of the claw-foot tub, breathed in steam and put the ingredients together:

Bone through flesh

Something shattered to the sound of a scream

The destruction of a thing beloved

The air was almost uncomfortably thick with steam now, and Nadia could feel her whole body prickling with heat from the tub—she hadn’t turned the cold tap enough—but she knew she had to concentrate.

An X-ray in shadows of blue and gray, revealing the jagged white fault line where her ulna should have showed through strong, and pain lancing its way up her arm while Mom stroked her hair.

The car windows the night of the wreck, splintering into spiderweb patterns as they flipped over and over, as all of them shrieked in sudden terror.

But Nadia couldn’t think; the water was so freaking hot—it almost burned.

Her eyes opened wide as she realized the water was getting hotter. Though the taps were off, the water in the tub was heating up second by second, faster all the time, and she gasped aloud to see steam billowing up—oh, God, it stung, it hurt, it was going to start cooking her—

Nadia shoved herself out of the tub, flopping over the side onto the tile floor so hard it knocked the breath out of her. As she lay there in a puddle, skin red and burning, trying to inhale again, the room heated even further and she heard the unmistakable sound of water boiling. She grabbed a towel to hold over her face, coughing into it as the steam thickened until she couldn’t see her own toes. The heat was almost overpowering, and for a moment she thought she might pass out.

But she pushed herself to her feet. The doorknob glowed with heat, but she got to the bathroom window—an old-timey little rectangle that swung out from a side hinge, at least in theory. Nadia had never tried to open it before. Desperately she pushed at its wooden frame, but it wouldn’t budge; the window had been painted shut, probably almost a century before—

—then it gave. A blast of cold air rushed into the room. Although steam still filled the air, already Nadia could see through it again, and the temperature went from unbearable to merely uncomfortable.

A crow landed immediately outside, the wings flapping so close it startled her, so she yanked the window back until it was only open a crack. It didn’t matter; the worst had passed.