Mateo didn’t look convinced, but he nodded toward the Book of Shadows. “So what happened to the first Elizabeth Pike?”

“Her husband survived, but he became afraid of her. He wouldn’t live with her, and she didn’t seem to care.” Nadia’s fingers ran along each line of handwriting, and despite the nearness of the fire, a chill ran through her. “Then—over the years—she began to change. Her hair became less silver—her back unbent—and very slowly she became … younger.”

The photographs they’d seen on Verlaine’s computer suddenly flickered in front of her eyes like film on an old-style projector. They weren’t several women with the same name; they were one person. One person growing younger, instead of older, with the years—with the centuries.

Could a spell make someone live that long? Make someone become younger, ever so slowly, going on backward through the centuries?

It was impossible. But it was also true.

Elizabeth Pike was four hundred years old. Elizabeth was sworn to the One Beneath. She would be the most dangerous witch Nadia had ever heard of—maybe the most dangerous one there could ever be. She was a Sorceress.

And she had her claws sunk deep into this town. She’d walked in Nadia’s house, spoken to her defenseless, unknowing father.

She was using Mateo.

Nadia looked up at Mateo; obviously he understood at least some of what she was thinking. “That can’t be the same Elizabeth.”

“With dark enough magic, anything is possible,” she repeated.

“But I remember growing up with her! Baking cookies. Climbing trees.”

“Do you?” Elizabeth had suggested that people forgot what she wanted them to forget; maybe they also remembered what she wanted them to remember. Nadia asked, “What trees did you climb? Where? Were they in her yard? The park?”

“I—I don’t know. Why would I know that? Nobody remembers everything from when they were five.”

“What about the cookies? What kind of cookies were they?”

Mateo frowned. He was trying to remember, the effort written on his face, but the memories were empty of details. “What does that matter?”

Nadia leaned forward, very close; this would be hard for him to accept—Elizabeth was someone he thought was one of his only friends in a harsh world. But he had to understand. “Of all the memories you have of Elizabeth, are any of them bad? Did you ever, I don’t know, fight over LEGOs? Did she ever puke on an amusement-park ride? Did she fall down and scratch her knees? If you’ve been friends your whole life, then you’d remember something about her that wasn’t perfect. Nobody’s perfect all the time. But if the memories are fake—if they’re just pretty pictures she put in your head—then they’ll all be ideal. And blank. And meaningless.”

It was heartbreaking to see how hard Mateo worked to come up with one memory, just one, that was imperfect enough to be genuine. He found nothing.

Instead he said, very slowly, “She always asks me about my dreams.”

“You mean your visions—the ones that tell you the future.”