The gulf between us feels wide. I wonder, with a feeling like an astronaut floating in space, if it might even be unfixable. I swallow the lump in my throat.

“I have something to show you,” I say.

We are standing over the bow and arrows, which I’ve laid on Germ’s bed.

She stares at them for a long time.

“Why’re they painted?” she asks.

I shrug. “I don’t know. The Witch Hunter’s Guide… the women who hunted witches in my family, their weapons… they all involved beautiful things, music and embroidery and stuff. I guess it’s connected to that somehow.”

Germ takes it all in, looking hesitant. “Well”—she nods to the bow and arrows—“does it work?”

She looks at me. I look at her.

“You haven’t tried it yet?”

“You know that if you don’t help me, I’ll end up hitting the nearest person within a mile and killing them.”

Germ thinks on this, and nods. “That’s true,” she says. “But, Rosie, dark moon is tomorrow.” She heaves a sigh. “You’ve got almost no time to learn.”

“I don’t have a choice,” I say.

We go out into the yard, which is really just scraggly woods all around the trailer. Germ selects a big old dead oak tree as the target. Dusk is falling quickly. I hold out the bow and arrows to her to try first, but she shakes her head.

“You’re the one who’s good at this stuff,” I say.

“But you’re the one who needs to know how to hunt witches,” she says.

“Witch, not witches One witch.”

Still, I guess she’s right that it has to be me. At the same time, if all that’s standing between me and a witch is my athletic abilities, well… I try to push the thought out of my mind.

Germ helps me get my stance right, back leg facing forward, front leg bent slightly to ground me, arms strong.

I’m pretty sure we both expect this to be the first of about a thousand tries to hit the tree.

But things do not go as we expect.

The arrow veers far wide of the tree—that much isn’t surprising. It sails in the direction of Germ’s brother’s junky old car, which he saved all his money last summer to buy. It’s going for the windshield or the hood or the front right tire, depending on how fast it spirals downward.