“Your mother somehow saved you, Rosie. We don’t know how. In my heart, un-beating as it is, I believe that means something—a powerful secret. There’s no other way to explain it. But no one can imagine what it might be.”

“The Memory Thief,” I offer, “she said something about being tricked.”

Homer contemplates this, then shakes his head. “I don’t know. I’ve spoken to every ghost who haunts that hospital, and none of them can tell me anything useful. They all fled when they sensed a witch in the vicinity that night, and never looked back. It’s a dead end, no pun intended.”

He gazes at me, then leans back, swipes a worm gently out of his ear and drops it onto the ground. He looks at us. He thinks for a long time.

“All I know is that the Memory Thief is coming for you now. And to stay safe, you’ll have to go far from here. Give up everything you know. Go into hiding.”

“For how long?” Germ asks for me.

He blinks at me a moment, taken aback. “Why, forever.”

He does not seem to notice that he has shocked us. He looks down at his hands as if counting on his fingers, working out logistics under his breath. “There are people who could hide you, take you in, all over the world—in Japan, in Zimbabwe… a few brave people with the sight, scattered remnants of witch hunting families who’d take the risk for one of their own. All that matters is that you’re safe and away from here come the dark moon.”

“What about Germ? Is she in danger too?”

He looks at Germ, then shakes his head. “She’s got the sight for some reason I can’t guess. I suppose it could be a coincidence. But she’s not a witch hunter. As long as she stays uninvolved, they’ll ignore her. It’s you the witch wants. And she’ll be angry. A witch can’t kill, directly. But her familiars are something to be reckoned with, and there are many ways a witch’s curse can cause you to end up dead—to wander off a cliff, say, or jump from the deck of a ship.”

I’m afraid—so afraid that my heart feels like it has fallen into my feet—but an entirely different idea now catches hold of me. And I know, now that it’s caught, it won’t un-catch. I don’t say it at first.

“My mom would never come with me,” I say instead. “She won’t leave sight of the sea.” I think of how agitated she gets when we’re away from the shore for just a couple of hours.