The Time Witch: Most powerful of the witches, besides Chaos. She is catlike, loves to play games and gamble with people.

Curse: Manipulation of time.

Skills: Compresses, stretches, grows, and shrinks time. Makes weapons out of time. Makes people age too fast or takes away their ability to grow older. Makes happy moments last less time and sad moments last more.

Familiars: Hummingbirds, distinguishable by their empty blue eyes. They steal, distort, and warp the time surrounding their victims.

Victims: A person cursed by the Time Witch might age rapidly, or age in reverse. They might lose entire years without knowing it. Ghosts, fairly or unfairly, blame the Time Witch for their own angst-filled relationship with time.

The shrill sound of the phone startles me, and chills race up my spine. I sit still, not answering, and wait for our ancient answering machine to pick up.

Germ’s voice rings out after the beep. She must have finagled access to someone’s phone at school.

“Rosie, it’s me. If you’re there, pick up?” I stay where I am, frozen. For some reason, I can’t bring myself to pick up. I suppose it’s a mixture of hurt and protectiveness. The more danger I find in the world of witches, the more I want Germ to stay away. And the more I think of Bibi, the more I want to hide from Germ.

“Why aren’t you here today? I hope you’re okay. I have stuff to tell you. I’ll call you when I get home.”

After she’s hung up, I turn back to the book, and read the last few lines of the “Secrets of the Earth and Moon” section.

If the grass and the animals and the trees have gifts, people have their own part to play too… their own gift.

Imagination is a piece of the hidden fabric that only humans can wield. Imagining is to humans like flight is to birds. It is faint and invisible and hard to see at times, this gift—just a shimmer in the human heart. And it’s the reason why witches have always hated and feared us. It is our deepest power.

The hearts of witches are fearsome, and have been unstoppable for as long as time. But do not count out the human imagination. It’s a whispering, quiet thing, easy to drown, easy to kill.

But it has a power that can destroy the most terrible darkness.

I trace the words with my finger. I don’t understand it, or what it could mean about how to fight.

But when I close the book, I’m convinced. The world needs witch hunters. It needs people like my mom—or who she used to be—who are brave enough to do what she did. I’m just not one of them.