“Too bad none of your books has a spell for plucking knowledge from someone’s head,” she said, giving Anushka’s grimoire a poke.

An idea burst in my mind like a firecracker. “Sabine,” I said. “You’re a genius.”

The cook had given me a strange look when I’d appeared downstairs in my dressing gown, but she hadn’t interfered when I’d gone into the pantry to retrieve a sprig of rosemary. Back in my bedroom with the drapes drawn and my door jammed, I’d carefully torn the page containing the spell for the skin cream out of the grimoire. After I’d copied the contents of the page out on a piece of stationery under Sabine’s watchful eye, I carefully rolled up the original, wrapped a strand of the hair Chris had stolen and the sprig of rosemary around it, and held the package over my washbasin full of water.

I understood better now than I had before why the spell worked as it did: the piece of paper with the spell on it focused on the memory I wished to extract, and the hair acted as a link to Catherine, while the rosemary improved and strengthened the clarity. Water was the element of choice because memory and thought were fluid and transitory, ever changing.

“You’ve done this before?” Sabine asked.

“A variation of it,” I replied, examining my work. “Magic doesn’t work on trolls, but it does work on half-bloods.” The spell had been intended to find lost items, but I’d adapted it before when I’d used it on Élise in order to extract the memory of when she’d last seen the clove oil I’d needed for the injury I’d sustained during the earthshake. Catherine had told me that the incantation used was merely a way to focus on the desired outcome, so I was sure it was possible to change the spell again to suit my purposes.

“But if magic doesn’t work on them, why does a curse?”

I bit my lip. Her question was one I’d pondered at length before. “I don’t know. But hush now, I need quiet for this.”

Staring at the rolled-up paper, I focused my thoughts. I wanted the strongest memory associated with the spell, but more than that, I wanted to know whom it had been for.

“When did you cast this spell?” I whispered, then dropped the package into the water. “And for whom did you cast it?”

Touching the surface of the water, I felt power surge through me while the roaring sound of a river flowed out of the basin. The paper spun round and round, then as though it had suddenly tripled in weight, it plunged to the bottom.

Sabine gasped, and I almost did, too. That hadn’t happened before.

My pulse fluttered in my neck, and it was a struggle to maintain my concentration as the water turned dark and murky. There was movement, but I felt as though I were spying on a scene taking place in the darkest of nights. Whispers of sound teased my ears, but I couldn’t decipher what they were. Leaning closer to the water, I peered into the basin, trying to pick out something familiar.