“That’s what made me drop a stitch before,” Urd hissed.

“And tangled my thread,” Verdandi said, holding up a knot of multicolored embroidery thread.

“Yeah, my screen crashed five minutes ago, but I knew it was going to happen so I backed it up,” said Skald. She held up a flash drive that was hanging on a chain around her neck along with her silver scythe.

“You might have told us,” Verdandi snapped.

“Ladies,” Ike interrupted, “were you able to fix the wards? Did we suffer a breach?”

“Of course we fixed the wards.” Urd held up her knitting. The bundled afghan in her lap was knitted in the same rune and knot pattern as Verdandi’s needlepoint and Skald’s computer game. The same pattern, I saw now, that overlaid the fields and buildings of Olsen farm and the surrounding valley. “Do you think we were born in the last millennium? We know how to circumvent a power surge.”

“You didn’t prevent her from short-circuiting the circle last time,” Moondance grumbled, glaring at me as I sat down on a bench between Ann Chase and Tara Cohen-Miller. Ann smiled and patted me on the hand as if to make up for Moondance’s hostility.

“We were unprepared,” Verdandi said, shooting Skald a reproachful look.

“I can’t keep an eye on everything,” she retorted rolling her eyes like any exasperated teenager. “Would you like tomorrow’s Dow Jones index or next week’s weather in Kuala Lumpur while I’m at it?”

“Really? You know all that?” Hank Lester asked. “Do you know who’s going to win in the fifth race at Belmont today?”

Skald smirked at Lester and clicked the smooth gold ball embedded in her tongue against her teeth. “Would you like to know how long you’ve got to live while I’m at it?” she asked sweetly.

“Stop it, Skald,” Verdandi told her sister. And then to Hank she added, “Don’t pay her any mind. The future she sees is only one possible future – it’s always changing and she’s wrong half the time. But she should be able to plot out Callie’s future for the next hour and tell us if we’re going to have a problem in the circle today.”

“Yeah, I can do that,” Skald said, hunching over her phone. She moved her thumbs over the keypad rapidly, her eyes flicking over the screen.

“Is that my future?” I craned my neck to see Skald’s screen, but all I saw on it were enigmatic runes, squiggles, spirals and, in the center, a huge ugly knot. My future looked like a mess. Skald seemed to think so too. When she looked up her customary smug expression was replaced by one of perplexity. It made her look very young. “I can’t read you at all,” she said. “You’re all tangled up inside.”