“It sounds pretty terrible and hard and scary being a witch hunter. But sometimes I see things on the news I wish so badly I could fix. I wish I could fix everything for everybody.” She pauses. “I’m not an Oaks. I don’t know why I got the sight—if it’s a fluke, an accident. But I guess, even though I’m scared for you, I wish I were powerful like you. Maybe I’d be brave enough to give it all up—all my hope for a regular life, to have a chance to make the world better. I don’t know—I think in the end I’m too wrapped up in everything else. But not you, Rosie. You may not know it yet, but you’re the bravest person I know. You just seem to forget it all the time. Now that you know about the witches, you won’t be able to sit back and do nothing. Not ever again. You’re too stubborn.”

I think about the times when Germ and I have rescued each other. The time Germ got her mom to show up and cheer when I won the library essay prize, because my mom wouldn’t get out of bed. The time after Germ’s dad’s one visit, when we were eight, when I made her laugh through her tears after he’d gone—with stories of his brain being possessed by gremlins. Without Germ to rescue me, how can I do anything at all, much less be a witch hunter? How can I even be a whole me?

I look at her. “There’s some things I haven’t told you.”

Germ sits upright a little. I tell her about seeing my mom and dad—what the cloud shepherd showed me in the mist, how my dad had the sight because he loved my mom. I still don’t tell her about the whistle or what it brought. But I tell her the rest.

“The cloud shepherd told me I have to make my own weapon. That’s why my mom’s didn’t work. He said I have to make it out of what I’m good at. Take my gift and a weapon that’s close to my heart and combine them. I just don’t know what that means, really.” My thoughts trail to the other secrets, the ones I’m not yet ready to tell.

“I wonder if my mom had time to name my brother before the witches took him,” I say.

Germ is silent.