“None of us like it when we’re closed in,” said Rosetta. “I mean, I love being tucked up in my bed with a book, but I always have the window open. Even in the winter. And Altamira likes the outside so much she doesn’t even wear shoes unless someone makes her.”

“I like to feel the dirt between my toes,” Altamira explained, halfway down the stairs already.

“Ian says it’s probably a witch thing,” said Rosetta.

It probably was. The natural world was where magic thrived, after all. Casting her mind over the rest of the Very Secret Society of Witches, Mika could see the pattern there, too. She knew Belinda refused to live in big, industrial cities, for instance, while Primrose gave her rose garden more attention and affection than Mika had ever seen her give another person. Like Rosetta, Mika loved curling up in her warm bed, and she also always had a window open. Even in the winter.

But right then, as she followed the girls down the ladder, the thing that Mika found most interesting was not Altamira’s fondness for the feel of dirt between her toes. It was what they’d said:

Ian says it’s probably a witch thing.

It sounded like Ian knew a lot more about witches than he should.

CHAPTER SIX

On their way back out to the car, the girls paused to show Mika the rest of the house. The two closed doors downstairs, between the front door and the kitchen at the back, led to Lillian’s master bedroom and her study. The bedroom was spare and uninteresting, like a hotel room, and it was clear that the study was the place Lillian spent her time.

Someone had obviously made an effort to dust the room, but they’d been up against the insurmountable obstacle of Lillian’s scattered, untidy papers, reference books, and fossils. Indeed, as the girls pointed out to Mika, they were allowed to stand in the doorway and look inside, but they weren’t allowed to touch anything in the room because “there’s a lot of important stuff in there, and Lillian likes it to be just so, and she could be back any day.”

Mika resisted the temptation to point out that if Lillian would only be a little less controlling, her solicitor wouldn’t need to come here and put three children’s secret witchiness at risk.

“Come on,” she said cheerfully. “Let’s go make sure Ian hasn’t fallen into the pond.”

Altamira had already run outside ahead of them. Ian, it turned out, had not fallen into the pond, but he seemed to have befriended the koi.

“You were gone a while,” Lucie said, beaming down at the girls. “Everything okay?”

“I started floating,” Altamira informed them, “so Mika had to rescue me.”

“Well, I wouldn’t go so far as to say I rescued you—”