“Other than Daniel Green,” said Anna.

“We wouldn’t give him anything,” Charles said. “But I don’t think that will be an issue.”

“I wonder,” said Anna thoughtfully, “do you think that Carrie knew what she was doing when she entrusted him into the loving arms of the witches who run Angel Hills?”

“Yes,” said Charles. Someone as organized and thorough as the woman whose life he’d been invading was not the kind of person who would make a mistake on that scale. He wondered what Daniel Green had done to his granddaughter.

“He said she was Wiccan,” Anna said. “How does leaving him there jibe with ‘An it harm none’?”

“Even the most peaceable people have their limits,” Charles suggested. “And putting him there certainly reduced the harm that he could cause.”

“You like her,” Anna said.

He considered that. “I like what I know about her.”

“You gonna sit around, or are you gonna work?” asked Tag, hauling a wingback chair out to the bigger pile.

Anna snorted a laugh at Tag, so Brother Wolf didn’t remind Tag who gave the orders.

“Sissy translated the letter her father wrote. She said there were a few differences between the letters, but most of it was word for word.” She pulled a couple of pieces of paper out of her back pocket and handed them to Charles. Tag took up a position where he could read them, too.

Dear Dr. Connors the Younger,

My daughter. So much has gone wrong I don’t know how to tell you. I don’t even know if you’ll get this letter, but I live in hope.

First, I love you. I take joy in every day because I had you, your brother, and your mother in my life. I do not think that I will survive this coming night.

It discovered that we had broken our bargain, before I knew there was a bargain to be broken. Remember, if something is too good to be true—it is a lie. Do not come here.

I have not spoken to you about the Singer, have I? I suppose that must mean that I understood there was something wrong before I admitted it to myself.

We tried to kill ourselves, we tried to kill each other, and it would not let us. Nor will it let us leave.

I woke up this morning and I looked for your mother because I thought that it was the morning after we got married. I looked for her for an hour before the Sign Maker found me. He is deaf and it seems to make him immune to most of what the Singer has been doing to us. The Opera Singer has been crying for two days because she thinks that her daughter died today instead of twenty years ago.