When Julia cupped hers, he held the mirror so that it reflected the moonbeam into them. She gasped. Immediately she felt her hands fill with something cold and hard. Coins. They made a sound like rain.

“They’re silver,” Pouncy said. “I think they’re real.”

One of the coins jingled on the floor and rolled away. This was powerful magic. It felt like nothing else she’d ever seen.

“Let me try,” she whispered.

She copied the sign he’d made on the mirror. This time instead of silver the moonbeam became something white and liquid. It pooled on the table, soaking into the cloth. She touched a finger to it and tasted it. Milk.

“How did you do this?” she said.

“I’m not sure,” Pouncy said, “but I think I prayed.”

“Oh God.” She forced down a hysterical giggle. “Who did you pray to?”

“I found it in one of these old Provençal books. Langue d’oc stuff. The language looked like an incantation, but I was wondering why there were no gestures to go with it. So I just got on my knees and clasped my hands and said the words.” Pouncy flushed. “I thought about—well, I thought about O.L.U.”

“Let’s have a look under the hood.”

There were simple spells to make magic visible: they showed you the ways the energy was running in and around an object with an enchantment on it. But what Julia saw when she cast one on the mirror defied explanation. It was the densest weave of magic she’d ever seen: a tracery of fine lines in an ornate pattern like a tapestry, so dense that it almost obscured the mirror underneath it. It should have taken a team of magicians a year at least to put all those channels in place. Instead Pouncy had done it alone, in one night, with a simple chant. It was unlike any working she’d ever heard of.

“You did this? Just now?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t think so. I said the words, but I think somebody else must have done the work.”

Her hands and her body felt strangely light. There was a sweet smell in the air. Acting on an impulse, she dabbed a little of the milk on each of her eyelids. Instantly her vision sharpened and clarified, like when they change the settings at the ophthalmologist’s.

“We’re getting close, Julia,” Pouncy said. “We’re getting close to the divine praxis. I can feel it.”

“I don’t like feeling things,” she said. “I like knowing them.”