On the last mark, she held the nib to the paper and exhaled, and I felt sure tears were imminent. Finally, she set the quill on its side, and a gentle roll of thunder rumbled somewhere outside. She turned to me, her eyes dark.

“Dear child, it is that—” She hesitated, considering her words. “It is that I have never had this feeling before.”

I began to tremble, as if a chill had just entered the room. “What feeling?”

“A feeling that something is about to go terribly, terribly wrong.”

In the quiet moments that followed—for I knew not how to reply to her frightening statement—I grew convinced that some nameless, unseen evil haunted us both. Could the spirit of Mr. Amwell have begun to haunt her, too? My eyes fell on the worn burgundy book still resting at the side of the table. The book of magick. Nella had said the book was meant for midwives and healers, but the inscription inside the back cover noted the address of the bookshop where it originated—a place where I might find more volumes of the same subject matter.

If my fear of Mr. Amwell’s spirit was reason enough to visit the shop, Nella’s sense of impending doom was reason to make haste.

The muffled sound of rain continued; the storm had not yet let up. If Nella did indeed throw me out, I would be passing a long, wet night in the slick streets of London. I would not return to the Amwell house, not yet, and I doubted I had the bravery to sneak into a stranger’s shed as Nella liked to do.

“I intend to visit the bookshop in the morning, once the rain has ended,” I told her, pointing at the magick book.

She raised her brows at me, a skeptical look I was getting to know well. “And you still intend to seek a remedy to remove spirits from the house?”

I nodded yes, and Nella made a small grunting noise, then stifled a yawn with her hand.

“Little Eliza, it is time for you to go.” She stepped closer to me, pity in her eyes. “You ought to return to the Amwell house. I know you fear it greatly, but I assure you, your fright is needless. Perhaps when you step through the door and declare that you have returned, any remnant of Mr. Amwell’s spirit, real or imagined, will be released, and your heavy heart with it.”

I stared at her, speechless. I had known all along that a dismissal was possible, but as she had now declared it so, I could hardly believe she had the gall to send me away so easily—and into the rain, at that. I’d ground more beetles than she did, after all; she could not have done any of it without me.