Just then, the ship groans and jolts. The china from the other room shakes like insect wings. And then, with a mighty lurch, we are off, pushing out into the great wide world.

Oliver, my heart hums. I’ll be in his arms soon, in another kind of home.

There is another feeling that nags, but I swallow it down. I’m getting good at it, ignoring the guilt that pools in my stomach, and why shouldn’t I be? I’ve got eighteen months of practice.

As predicted, Maxine dresses Lena and me both for dinner. She explains on these kinds of ships most first-class passengers bring their own staff, but we have to make do with her.

I steal a pale pink gown of heavy satin, tied around the waist with a white lace sash that trails along one side of the skirt. Lena looks radiant in a gown of deep red, set with dangling jet beads along the neckline.

“How many dresses did you bring?” I ask from over the dressing screen.

Maxine magicks a hairpin over the top of it, and sends it flying at my face. “Ha! And you tried to convince me not to overpack. Eat your words, Frances Hallowell.”

I roll my eyes and send the hairpin flying back at her. The magic, blessedly, obeys me. “I’ll do no such thing. I never told you not to overpack, I simply told you to pack faster. There’s a difference.”

Maxine steps from around the silk screen wearing a gown of brilliant cobalt blue. “Ta-da!” She twirls, giving us a full view of the bouffant Lena pinned pearls into.

I spend most of my days in black wool covered in chalk. Maxine has taken to wearing trousers most of the time. This morning was the first time I’d seen her in a skirt in months.

Wearing Maxine’s borrowed gowns used to feel like playacting at being an adult. Tonight, they feel like camouflage. What would the passengers of the SS France truly think of the three young witches in their midst? They’d probably use Louis the XV’s fine wooden tables as tinder to burn us on the starboard deck.

The three of us stand in front of the gilt-edged vanity and take ourselves in. It’s like a trick mirror to another world, another life in which we are ladies instead of whatever it is we turned out to be instead. Maxine cracks a smile. “Good enough to fool them, I think.”