Walkers began using herbs and small blessings, instead of conjuring dark spells to hex those who had done us wrong. We merely will the moon to bend in our favor, Grandma would say. We no longer command it.

Oliver steps out of the moonlight and moves closer to the bed. “So you can’t undo something that’s already been done?”

“Like what?”

“Like someone who’s dead.”

I swallow and my fingers grip the edge of the bed, nails digging into fabric. I know what he’s asking. “Like Max?” I ask. And I wait for him to answer, but the words are lodged like little thorns in his throat. “I can’t bring anyone back from the dead,” I tell him. “No one can.”

That kind of magic was used by a different kind of witch, an old form of witchery that’s been lost almost entirely. And for good reason.

The dead should never return from where they’ve been.

What they’ve seen.

Oliver walks across the room, his footsteps stirring up lavender-scented dust, and he sits at the end of the bed, pressing his hands against the bones around his eyes, and my heart sinks in a way I didn’t expect it to. He thought maybe I could fix this, bring back the boy who died. And I suddenly feel worthless that I can’t—that I can’t undo what’s been done. That I’m not that kind of witch. The kind he wants me to be.

A familiar feeling of dread rises up inside me, the feeling that I’m hardly a Walker at all. Only in name. But lacking any true magic—lacking a nightshade.

“How did he die?” I ask, I try. Maybe he knows, maybe he remembers. Maybe he will finally say. And maybe I don’t want to hear the answer.

“I don’t know,” he says. And when his chin lifts and his eyes sink into mine, I see the forest reflected back in them. I see the dark, clouded sky and the slow slippage of time. “I want to remember,” he says, a hint of unease running through him. “But it’s like the memories have been replaced by something cold, like I’m back in the forest and I can’t see a thing.” Emotion catches in his voice, and I know he’s telling the truth. He might be lying about other things, but not about this.

“Sometimes our minds want us to forget,” I say, my own voice sounding raw, like gravel along the banks of the lake. And there is a hurt growing inside me, expanding. My own things I’d like to forget. Like the day my grandma died and left me alone. Left me with a mom who doesn’t want me to be what I am. “It’s less painful that way.”