Rowena answered the door when we knocked, and immediately took Asher into the den to scan him for any charms, spells, or curses. She pointed me upstairs where Cordelia was, and as I climbed the stairs, I searched for the words to say. It had been an accident, stealing the book, but once I had it I’d knowingly cast a spell from its pages.

“Come in, Lola.” Cordelia called out, her back turned to me as she rummaged through the old trunk in her bedroom. There were stacks of magical textbooks, the entire culmination of Cordelia’s collection throughout the years. Most of which she’d gotten from her family, but there were a handful she procured from powerful friends and distant cousins. She’d told me previously that she had charmed the box to vanish should anyone try to break into it.

When I entered her bedroom, which was a cocoon of tapestries and billowing fabrics, she had just snapped the lid shut. The bangles around her wrists were clinking as they hit into one another, playing the same