“She read palms and tarot cards—the usual sort of stuff,” Daphne answers with a disinterested shrug. “Apparently, she was good at it. She kind of fell in with a bad crowd, though, and got caught up in one of the biggest and most shocking scandals of the seventeenth century. It was called the Affair of the Poisons, and shitloads of people were implicated, including a former mistress of the king. There were dozens of arrests, and ultimately thirty-six executions—for murder or witchcraft or both.” Her eyes dart to me and then back to the road. “Duclos was named and arrested, but before she could be put to death, she was sprung from jail by a German mystic named—”

“Erasmus Kramer,” I supply.

“Yeah. Kramer.” Daphne downshifts as she navigates a turn. “Nobody knows exactly what went down with the two of them. Kramer was already a balls-to-the-wall believer when it came to the legends, and as best we can tell, Duclos was still fully human when she was sentenced to die by hanging. But the dude got to her in her cell, freed her, Turned her, and she joined his cause forevermore.”

“And now she’s here.” I look out the window, as if I might see her flying by on a broomstick or something.

“So he says.”

It’s almost dark now, and Daphne’s window is fogged again, a ghostly version of my own face gazing back at me. “What does she look like?”

“Nobody knows.” Her reply is prompt, corroborating Jude’s claim. “She’s deliberately stayed out of the public eye—and, you know, she’s an actual bona fide sorceress. She might know countless glamours to disguise her age and appearance.”

“Great. I’ll punch everybody I meet, just in case.”

Daphne nods absently, like I just proposed a wise plan. “You said there were two groups. What’s the second?”

“The Mystic Order of—”

“Rasputin?” Daphne snaps a look at me, and the car swerves. When I gasp, gripping the dashboard, she forces her attention back to the road. “Sorry. Sorry, I didn’t … Northern Wolf, right? That’s what he said?”

“Yeah.” I blink a few times, trying to relax again. “He told me Rasputin is an unstable whack-job.”