Feeling an unfamiliar thrill (had she ever been able to show her magic off like this before? She couldn’t think of a single time, not even with Primrose. Especially not with Primrose), Mika reached for a roll of sunflower-patterned fabric on the desk.

“Isn’t that for paintbrushes?” Rosetta asked curiously.

“Usually,” said Mika, unrolling the fabric to reveal eight small glass vials tucked into the elastic slots inside. “But I use it for what I call my Can’t-Do-Withouts.”

Each vial was labelled, of course, and Mika watched the girls read the labels with avid interest: the relatively mundane lavender, peppermint, and cedar; the more curious mushroom dust, poppy pollen, and crushed pearl; and finally, the downright exciting moonlight and star shavings.

“I’ll tell you all about each of these another time,” Mika promised them, taking the vial of pure peppermint essence out of its slot. “For now, I want to show you a different way to cast a spell. You’ve probably figured out by now that using magic is like running or climbing trees or painting. It uses energy.”

They nodded. “I always need a nap after I accidentally set something on fire,” Altamira admitted.

“I used to, too,” said Mika. “If we were to try to do a spell that needs to be left in place for hours, maybe even days, it would be impossible for us to have the energy to keep that up. But something I wish someone had told me years before I finally worked it out for myself is that you can use tools to keep a spell in place for you. Like the wards around Nowhere House. Lillian’s thousands of miles away, but the spells she cast are still in place. That’s because she tied the wards to something that has its own magical energy. If I had to guess, I’d say she probably used the biggest, oldest trees as anchors.”

“Is that why she goes out into the woods every spring?” Rosetta asked. “Is she recasting the warding spell?”

“She probably is, yes. All spells wear off sooner or later, no matter how powerful the witch or anchor is. Getting a whole year out of a spell is really good.”

“It’s more like a year and a month,” Rosetta clarified conscientiously. “We know that because one year, Lillian didn’t come back from a trip in time and the wards were down for a whole week.”

“I thought you were going to cast a spell,” said Altamira, uninterested in this tangent.

“I am.” Mika held up the vial in her hand. “This is peppermint essence. Like the trees outside, it has its own magical energy. Watch.”

Kneeling in the balcony doorway, on the threshold, Mika let three drops of the essence fall to the floor, right into the corners. They looked completely ordinary, like drops of water, but then she squiggled the familiar lines of a rune in the air and cast her spell.