But with just four days available to her, she didn’t think she had the time to concoct a potion as unfamiliar and complicated as that. It was more likely to backfire than not. On the other hand, a simpler potion, one that was less effective than a glamour but far less risky, might work. She could adapt a potion she already had in her arsenal, which would allow her to make the most of the little time she had.

She scribbled on scraps of paper, switching between a dozen open tabs of research on her phone. Maybe she could brew a tea to confuddle the senses and make the drinker more likely to believe a lie?

At no point did it even cross Mika’s mind to abandon the inhabitants of Nowhere House to the consequences of their own choices. She was still too raw to interrogate her complicated feelings for the adults of the house, Jamie in particular, but the way she felt about the girls was not complicated at all. Rosetta, Terracotta, and Altamira deserved the best, most joyful lives possible, and that would only be possible if they stayed together, in their home, with the people who loved them so much that they’d literally hidden a corpse in their back garden.

So Mika checked and rechecked her spellbook, studied plant lore, and experimented over her cauldron.

At first, the riddle of the potion kept her wholly in the moment, lost in a dreamworld of tinkling spoons, luminous stardust, and gentle bubbling. She was hyper-focused on the riddle that needed to be solved, so there was no space for anything else.

It didn’t last, of course. In the quiet moments, with Circe looking mournfully out of the window, Mika couldn’t get away from how much she missed the home she’d had for so brief a time. She missed the gables, the crash of the sea, the salt on the air, the people.

How could she possibly miss them this much if none of it was real?

Before she knew it, it was Christmas, a fact she noticed only because the townhouses on either side of her were suddenly reverberating with laughter, clinking cutlery, and carols. Mika, who did her best to be sunshiney every other day of the year, found herself feeling downright grinchy. She couldn’t help it; Christmas had a way of dialling everything up in intensity. Yes, there was the joy, goodwill, and kindness, but there was also loneliness.

She ignored the festivities on the other sides of the walls and stayed curled up on the sofa, a cup of tea in one hand, Circe at her feet, and the cauldron simmering gently on the kitchen table.