Whitney grimaced. She pointed toward the hood of her mother’s car, a silvery Volvo. “Damn. I left them over there.” She picked up the knife on the altar and cut through the invisible boundaries of the circle to open it, reached for the matches, and then stepped back inside. “Here,” she said, pressing the small box into Gilly’s hand.

The flame rose higher every time the girls breathed in, visualizing Stuart Holling as he rose from his hospital bed and walked away from it. Wax slid down the candle until the etched snakes were smooth again. And then, a quick draft coming from beneath the garage door blew the fire out.

“Do you think that means he’s better?” Chelsea whispered.

“Either that or he’s dead.”

“Maybe we should call the hospital to see.”

“They wouldn’t tell us,” Gillian pointed out. “We’re not related to him. We’ll just have to wait and see what happens tomorrow.”

The girls sat, lost in thought. “It was different tonight,” Whitney said finally.

“Like I was humming inside,” Meg agreed.

“Maybe it was because we weren’t just doing it for ourselves.” Whitney spoke slowly, choosing her words with care. “When we cast a spell for money or for love . . . it was to change us, to help us. This time, we were sending all that energy to Mr. Hollings.”

Chelsea frowned. “But if we were sending the energy away, how come it felt so powerful in the circle?”

“Because it takes more strength to change someone else’s life than it takes to change your own,” Gillian replied.

“And if it works-” Whitney said.

“When it works.”

“When it works . . . it will be something he wanted all along, anyway.” Whitney stared at the altar, at the smoking candle. “A true witch can cast spells for someone else.”

“A true witch can cast spells on someone else.” Gillian raised her finger, smudged brown with cinnamon, and blew so that it clouded the air in front of her. “What if we hadn’t healed Mr. Hollings? What if we made him sicker?”

Chelsea’s eyes widened. “You know that goes against the Wiccan rede, Gilly. Whatever you do comes back to you threefold.”

“Well, okay. Mr. Hollings is a stupid example. But if Wicca’s all about keeping the balance of nature, then why couldn’t we use magick for that?”

Whitney looked at Gillian. “I don’t get it.”

Meg leaned forward. “She means if we help people who’ve helped others, it’s natural to hurt people who’ve hurt others. Right?”

Gillian nodded. “And to do it so that they don’t know who’s making it happen.” Her voice skimmed over the others’ reservations, smoothing in its wake. “Think about how powerful you felt tonight, healing someone. And then imagine how powerful you’d feel if you could ruin someone’s life.”

“Hailey McCourt,” Meg whispered.

Gillian turned. “That’s a start.”

“And where have you been?” Addie demanded, as Jack entered the diner.

“Out.”

It was empty of patrons, quiet in the kitchen. Overhead, Jeopardy! played on the television, the sound muted. Jack pulled off his jacket, determined to help close for the night.

“Well, I hate to be the one to break this to you, but you can’t just walk off a job without an explanation. Or maybe that’s what got you red from teaching?”

He fixed his eyes on the screen above her left shoulder. The core of a quarter is made of this metal.

What is zinc? Jack thought. “I’m sorry,” he said aloud.

“You should be. I needed you here tonight. I may not be paying you a lot, but-”

The bells over the diner door jingled. Addie narrowed her eyes at Jack, blaming him for forgetting to lock the door behind himself. Wes Courtemanche walked in in uniform. “Coffee, Addie?”

“Sorry, Wes. I just cleaned out the pots.”

“I have a perfectly nice Mr. Coffee in my kitchen.”

Jack stuck the mop in the bucket and inadvertently knocked it over. A small flood spread beneath Wes’s feet. “Sorry,” Jack murmured, hurrying to swab the spill.

“Even if I wasn’t so tired, Wes, I couldn’t. Chloe’s asleep in the back, and I have to get her home.”

Wes didn’t know what to say to that. “Chloe,” he repeated.

“Yes.”

“You know, I’ve been blown off before, Addie . . . but never because of a ghost.”

None of your business, Jack thought to himself over and over. He pushed the mop over the black and white tiles in a smooth, easy rhythm.

The last surviving Brontë sister.

“C’mon, Addie.”

Not Emily.

“No, Wes. I can’t.”

Not Jane.

From the corner of his eye, Jack saw Courtemanche reach for her, saw Addie back away.

Who is Charlotte?

He dropped the mop and wedged between Addie and Wes, pinning the policeman to the wall. “She doesn’t want to go with you.”

“Jack, don’t!”

Wes shoved, sending Jack sprawling. “I could throw your ass in jail for that.”

Jack did not move from where he’d fallen. Wes jammed his hat on his head and stormed out of the diner, furious. Addie, Jack thought. I did this for Addie.

“Are you crazy?” She leaned down so that her face was level with his, her eyes hard and cold. “He’s a policeman, Jack. He can make a small-business owner’s life miserable. And if that isn’t bad enough, this is only going to make him try twice as hard to come after me next time.”

Jack hauled himself to his feet, yanked on his jacket, and for the second time that day left without telling Addie where he was going, or why.

Addie’s strongest memory of Chloe took place underwater. Chloe had been seven the year Addie managed to scrape together enough money to take the two of them to the Caribbean. They stayed in a tiny rental house that was sixteen giant Mother-May-I steps from the beach. Palm fronds batted against the peeling pink shutters, and every morning on the sand there would be a new coconut.

One afternoon, Addie watched Chloe streaking back and forth beneath the water, as if she were logging mileage. “What are you doing?”

“I’m a mermaid. Come and watch.”

And so Addie had waded in with her daughter’s scuba mask. Underwater, Chloe wriggled: legs tight, hips undulating, as her bright blond hair streamed out behind her. Through the ripples of the water Addie could see the sun quivering like the yolk of an egg. Suddenly Chloe turned to face her, eyes wide, hair snaking soft about her face, arms blued by the shadows of the sea.

Addie could remember being a kid in the pool at the Y, pretending that she was a mermaid, too. There were moments she was certain it had happened-that her legs had turned into a scaled tail, that her lungs could take in water, that the wide thighs of women in the water aerobics class had thickened into pillars of coral. Beneath the water, the world was a different place, and you could be anything you wanted to be. Beneath the water, you moved slowly, so slowly you might never have to grow up.

On the day that Chloe died, the nurses had let Addie sit with her body for an hour, alone in the hospital room. Addie had tucked the sheets tight around Chloe’s still legs. She had witnessed those thin limbs going blue from lack of oxygen; she had seen Chloe’s cheeks and temples glisten wet from the spots where her own tears had fallen-and she’d thought, You are a mermaid, baby.

She’d thought, Wait for me.

The neurologists at the hospital had never seen anything quite like it-a man with significant damage in the aftermath of a stroke suddenly get up and start the day as if nothing had happened. But the nurses had been standing right there: Stuart Hollings, who could not speak or move an entire side of his body, had awakened asking for breakfast . . . and then threatened to leave when it didn’t arrive fast enough.

Three hours after finishing his bacon, eggs, wheat toast, and neurological exams, Stuart’s doctors pronounced him well enough to recuperate at home.

It was standard procedure at the SFPD to alert all duty officers about potential problems . . . including felons who had recently moved to town, although in the past this had never been an issue.