“It is,” Mika agreed, looking him right in the eye. “But that’s only possible if someone’s willing to give you a chance.”

When disaster struck, as disaster inevitably does, Mika was somewhat distressed to find that, on account of being knocked out cold, she was unable to take any satisfaction in being proven well and truly right.

It was a cold, grey morning, over halfway into her time at Nowhere House, and it started with the resurrection of what had become a frustrating and repetitive argument.

In short, Terracotta, upon hearing the story of Altamira levitating in the attic on Mika’s first day and Mika’s dire warning about its risks, had promptly decided she had no greater desire in life than to levitate.

Her first approach had been to accuse Mika of inventing tales of peril to cover up the fact that she couldn’t levitate. Mika, who discovered in that precise moment that she had an immense capacity for pettiness, had responded by finishing the rest of the lesson from a spot approximately six feet off the ground.

Not to be defeated, Terracotta had then demanded that Mika teach her how to levitate, too. Mika had explained that it had taken her years to get it right. Terracotta had replied with the opinion that perhaps she was a more talented witch and would get it right a whole lot faster. Mika had had to remind herself of every last minute of her thirty-one years in order to resist the childish temptation to suggest a duel so that they could determine who was truly the more powerful witch.

No matter how trying Terracotta might be, and she was very trying indeed, Mika could not help but feel that demanding an eight-year-old meet her with figurative pistols at dawn was not the behaviour of a responsible caretaker.

For weeks, this argument had repeated itself like some sort of ghastly time loop Mika could not break free of. So on that particular cold, dreary morning, when a lesson in the garden devolved into Terracotta dredging up the levitation question again, Mika, who was already somewhat preoccupied with rescuing Altamira from the enthusiastic attentions of a colony of seagulls that the girls had accidentally summoned, lost patience.

“No,” she snapped, batting one of the last seagulls away. “I’ve told you before, you’re too young to learn how to safely levitate, especially outdoors, so stop asking. Maybe your next tutor, God help her, can have that dubious pleasure in a few years.”

There was no response from Terracotta. Mika, now extracting feathers out of Altamira’s hair, assumed Terracotta was scowling at her behind her back, which was both familiar and harmless, and so she finished dealing with the aftermath of the gull invasion without worrying too much about it.

But when Rosetta let out an alarmed squeak, and Altamira looked past Mika with enormous eyes, Mika spun around and found that Terracotta wasn’t there anymore.