Inside, the house was exactly as it had been the day she’d left for university and never returned. The furniture was old, simple, and spare. The walls were blank, the floors dusty, the corners strung with cobwebs, but Mika could see past all that to the crayon scribbles artfully concealed under a cushion; to the long-faded smudges of a child’s face pressed against the window to catch a glimpse of the world outside; to the tiny, walled patch of grass at the back where a little girl had collected daffodils and daisies. She saw echoes of the coats that had once hung from the hook by the front door, tweed coats and puffy coats and waterproofs, and she saw the scratched edge of the kitchen table where that same little girl had once knocked out a wobbly tooth.

It was a house riddled with ghosts.

“Maybe we could live in the Broomstick,” Mika said to Circe. “It has the space.” Circe snuffled sleepily. “You’re right. We need indoor plumbing. I guess we’d better stay, then.”

The heating, water, and electricity were all working because Primrose would never dream of letting a house she owned go to total ruin, so Mika took down the dusty curtains, stripped off the faded cushion covers, retrieved a set of bedding from the airing cupboard on the landing, and set all of it to wash in the washer-dryer in the kitchen.

She spent the rest of the night hoovering the carpets, scrubbing the surfaces, and spelling away the spiders and dead moths that had taken up residence in the house. She moved the furniture around, put the freshly washed curtains, covers and bedding back in place, and scattered the few books she’d brought with her. By the time she was done, the house didn’t look like the one she remembered anymore.

She was so tired by then that she couldn’t think straight, which was exactly the point because the hamster wheel had finally stopped. She stumbled into the shower, had a good, long cry, and fell asleep in the bedroom that had once been hers.

The best way to keep the hamster wheel from turning was to distract herself with a useful, practical task, so Mika allowed the next few days to blend into each other as she focused obsessively on the problem of Edward. She got the food shopping delivered, left the back door open so that Circe could have a run in the walled garden whenever she wanted to, laid out her cauldron and potion-making supplies, checked her spellbook, and brainstormed.

She didn’t know the runes for a spell that could glamour her to look like somebody else, assuming such a spell existed in anything but theory, but was it possible to brew a potion that could do the same thing? What would she need? What plants and ingredients did she know of that might produce the effect of a very specific illusion?