As for her parents . . . Julia cut herself off. She knew what she was doing, and she knew how hard it would be for them, watching her fall back into the obsession and get skinny again and stop bathing and all the rest of it, and she did it anyway. She felt like she had no choice. It was an addiction. Thinking about the consequences for her family, really thinking about them, would have annihilated her with remorse. So she didn’t. The first morning she caught herself absentmindedly, almost sensuously, running a thumbnail along her arm at the breakfast table, leaving a red line behind, or rather when she caught her mother catching her doing it, no words were spoken. But she saw part of her mother die that morning. And Julia did not take heroic measures to resuscitate her.

Julia could have died that morning too, she knew. She almost did. But you let a drowning woman cling to you, she’ll drag you down with her, and what’s the point of that? That’s what she told herself, anyway. You have to look her in the eye and pry her fingers off your arm and watch her sink down into the airless green depths and perish there. It’s either that or you’ll both die. What’s the point?

Her sister knew that. You could see the disappointment in her quick brown foxy eyes, then you could see it change and harden into something clear and smooth and protective. She was young enough, she could still swerve around the wreck and keep moving. She let Julia go, her sister with her black secrets. Smart kid. She had made a sensible deal. Julia made one too.

And what did Julia get, for her deal? When you put your family and your heart and your life and your future up on the block, how much does that net you? What do you walk away with in return? Show her what she’s won, Bob!

A lot, it turns out. A motherfuckingload of arcane lore is what it gets you, for starters.

That first day they tested her. From the second you got in the door—Jared actually started up the stopwatch widget on his iPhone as she crossed the threshold—you had fifteen minutes to learn and execute the flash spell that Quentin punted at the Winston safe house, or you had to leave, and you couldn’t come back for a month. They called it, boringly, the First Flash. You could try again at another safe house, of course—they didn’t share information—but there were only two in New York City, so if you wanted to get your magic on in the five boroughs you had to go big or go home.

Tired as she was Julia did it in eight minutes flat. If she’d had any muscle tone left over from her rainbow-witch phase she wouldn’t even have needed that long.