Emily, far too curious to obey Tabby, found a very sleepy and rather baffled Martha being instructed by Tabby in the kitchen.

“Sage,” Tabby said, brandishing a bunch of it at Emily. “Good luck I dried a good portion this summer. And salt—that’s what we need. Fetch it all out. I’ll burn the sage in the dining room, the hallway and the kitchen and anywhere else those demon stones went. Martha, you must make an unbroken line of salt on all the windowsills and doorways—every one—and make sure there is no gap; even the smallest is a weakness.” Tabby thought for a moment. “Don’t go mad, though. That’s all the salt we’ve got until the snow melts.”

“It’s a difficult balance,” Emily muttered to Martha, “between warding off evil and seasoning.”

“I may be as old as the hills, Emily, but I am not as deaf as them,” Tabby said. “As for you, you may go out and fetch me sprigs of rowan and yew to hang over the door. I’d keep them there all year round, but Mr. Brontë isn’t keen on it.”

“Is that truly an essential requirement at this hour, Tabby?” Emily pleaded. “It is almost midnight, and I’m not entirely sure I can tell what tree is what in the dark. I might accidentally bring home a sprig of may, and then who knows what chaos might ensue?”

“Take a lamp and get on with you,” Tabby said, huffing her cheeks, rosy with indignation. “If your father should wake to see what we are about, he would think the world had gone mad and his daughters as wild as pixies. Let us just thank the Lord that his sight is not what it was. If he notices the salt at the windows tomorrow, Martha, it’s for slugs.”

“In December?” Martha yawned.

“Don’t argue—just tell him.”

“The thing is, dear Tabby,” Emily said, as she called Keeper to her side, “that you are right, of course—we were very foolish to bring the—”

“Don’t you speak of it aloud,” Tabby warned her, brandishing a broom.

“—artefact into the house. But, as you say, we are Christian, God-fearing people, and so I can’t help but wonder if the practices that you are currently engaged in to cleanse the house are perhaps a little . . . witchish.”

“I swear, Miss Emily Jane, I shall beat you with this broom, I shall,” Tabby said, flying at Emily, who dodged out of the way, leaping over a border of salt and out into the night.

“I was only asking,” she called back once she was safely outside.