But then I think again about my mom. I wonder if maybe the love Homer says she felt for me could be hidden inside her like a muscle memory, like the way a person plays the piano without thinking about it. Like if once she got a little of it, it would all come back to her.

And then it lands on me—the sudden, breathless, horribly hurtful hope. To have someone look at me like I’m a light their eyes are drawn to. To have a real mom, which would mean a real family, which would mean I, myself, am a real, lovable daughter.

If that’s not worth risking your life for, I don’t know what is.

Part 2

CHAPTER 12

I wake in the late morning with Homer Honeycutt’s words in my head: Find a witch weapon or how to make one, and find out how your mom saved you the night you were born.

I know the first place I need to start, but it doesn’t fill me with much hope. I need to start with her.

Bleary-eyed from so little sleep, I tuck the Guide under my arm and head downstairs to make myself my first-ever cup of coffee. It’s bitter and I don’t like the taste, but it wakes me up. You’re gonna stunt your growth, sweetie, I think. I make my mom a cup and bring it to her in the attic, where she already sits, rocking and staring out the window.

She looks up at me and narrows her eyes. I glance around at all the things I’ve put up to help her remember me. I kneel beside her with the book. I slide The Witch Hunter’s Guide to the Universe onto her lap.

Her eyes go from her coffee cup to the book, then to me. There is something there. A glimmer of a spark of memory.

“Mom, do you remember this book? It’s a book you helped to write,” I say, “full of secrets you helped to learn.”

She blinks at me, then stares back down at the cover. I slowly open it for her, and flip through one page and then the next, my heart beating in my throat with hope. When I arrive at the page of the Memory Thief, her eyelids flutter. She turns her gaze to the window.

I look hard at her. “Mom,” I say, low, because my voice falters. “What happened the night I was born? How did you protect me? What secrets did you know?”

She turns her eyes back to me. And that’s when I see it, or I think I do. Somewhere deep inside her eyes, something trying to get out, to reach me. Maybe I’m imagining it, but I don’t think so; it’s like the smallest pinprick of light still inside her. And then it fades.