“What notebook?” Bea asks.

I double-check the door, carefully placing the key in my pocket. “His stargazing notebook. He dropped it when he climbed down the house. I don’t know how he did that. The house is three stories high.” Of all of it, that may be the part that shocked me most, that he’d somehow managed to climb down the side of the house like a real-life Spider-Man. I can’t get his face out of my mind. Freckles, full lower lip, thick eyebrows. It was the kind of face that sticks with you.

Bea exhales noisily into the receiver. “Mon Dieu! Willow, that was so idiotic. What if he’d been dangerous?”

The thought had crossed my mind, but the moment the boy’s eyes locked with mine, I’d known immediately he wasn’t dangerous, for no other reason than my instincts. His eyes had seemed… I don’t know. Safe. Which is obviously a stupid thing to think of a stranger you run into in the dark. But if at all possible, he’d been more afraid of me than I’d been of him.

She exhales. “Are you going to tell your mom there was someone on the roof?”

“Well…” I now find myself with a moral dilemma. Do I tell my mom someone who was possibly not supposed to be there was there when I was also not supposed to be there? But it didn’t seem like he was doing any harm. Also, if I’m honest, he intrigued me. He felt almost familiar somehow. The same way the Book of Shadows had felt familiar, he’d seemed like someone I’d met before.

Speaking of the Book of Shadows…

“Oh, that book I mentioned,” I say. “It’s full of spells. I have to send you a picture of—”

“Are you really changing the subject right now? You heard an intruder and ran toward them while I sat here sweating to death from stress.”

“Breathe, Bea,” I say. “Back to my family situation. Can you believe my mom had this many secrets?” I continue describing the Book of Shadows to her, my voice rising with excitement. My mom practiced magic. My mom. The woman with the twelve blazers and impeccably organized drawers had once written a spell called Spell to Survive Gym Class that involved hexing a pair of gym shorts. I still can’t believe it.

I’m waiting for her to be shocked, but instead, there’s a beat of silence. “Bea, you there?”

She exhales into the receiver. “Well… honestly, yes. Your mom seems like the kind of person who would have witches in her family.”

“You suspected that my mom comes from a family of witches?”

“No, obviously not. She’s just so secretive, you know? Like she’s always been friendly enough, but she’s so private, it’s like you don’t actually know her.”