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clearly that’s what this was—a dream. Otherwise, how had I gotten here, to the center of the Easton woods? At the foot of an ancient oak tree, she crouched, her skirts billowing before they floated to rest on the ground. Behind her, at a slight distance, the spire of the Billings Chapel hovered above the topmost limbs of the bare trees, its face stark white against the night sky.
    “Here,”
she said, touching her suede-gloved fingertips to the dirt. It was untouched by the snow, canopied as it was by a web of thick branches.
“Here is where we buried the books and promised never to speak of them again.”
She looked up with a wry but sad smile.
“Of course, promises are made to be broken.”
    “Books?” I asked. “There was more than one?”
    She nodded slowly, looking at the ground. She trailed her fingers reverently—almost lovingly—back and forth, as if she were remembering something or someone she cared for deeply.
    “Yes. The others have long since gone missing. Scattered on the four winds to places unknown.”
Then she looked me in the eye.
“But the book of spells, the most vital of the books, that’s in safe hands now.”
    I knelt down across from her. Although I could still see my breath and there were goose bumps visible on my skin, I didn’t feel the cold at all anymore. Nor did I feel hot. It was as if I were somewhere outside my body, and nothing that touched it mattered.
    “Why are we here?” I asked.
    “Because you are a skeptical girl, Reed Brennan. You need proof.”
She lifted her hands and clasped them atop her knees.
“I’ve come to tell you how to find it.”
    She said this last bit in an excited tone, as if she were a little girl proposing a new scheme. I was about to answer when my eyes flicked past her shoulder. Something had just moved, there in the trees. A figure. A girl. I was sure of it. But when I stared into the darkness broken by tree trunks and underbrush, I saw nothing.
    “Tomorrow night, you will return to this place,”
Elizabeth instructed.
“Bring a shovel, and a candle to light your way. If you dig in this very spot, you will find what you are looking for.”
    A shock of blond hair ducked behind one of the trees. My heart skipped and I stood up. A branch cracked. I caught a whiff of a scent—something earthy and sour—and my senses recoiled. It smelled like death. Leaves rustled. The sounds grew closer. There was someone out there. Someone moving toward us through the trees. I opened my mouth to warn Elizabeth, but suddenly my throat constricted. It was as if someone had curled their fingers around my throat and started to squeeze, but no one was there. When I tried to call out, all that I could manage was a croak.
    I waved both my hands, trying to get Elizabeth’s attention, but her head was bent toward the earth. She was stroking the ground with her fingertips again. Behind her, the branches swayed. The crunch of footsteps approaching grew louder still, but she didn’t flinch. Didn’t look up. There was no air, and I couldn’t move. Not to defend her, not to defend myself.
    Suddenly someone sprang from the underbrush and pounced on top of Elizabeth, wrestling her to the ground. A blur of blond hair and pale skin. The girl closed her fingers around Elizabeth’s neck, slammed her head into the dirt floor of the forest, and whipped her head around to glare over her shoulder at me.
    “Ariana!”
    My door banged open and I sat up straight in bed, my hand covering my heart. Ivy stood in the doorway, her hair knotted with sleep, her nightshirt falling off one shoulder. She held an aluminum softball bat over her shoulder.
    “Reed! Are you all right?”
    She pulled the bat back and looked quickly around the room, as if ready to destroy the first thing that moved.
    “Why?” I asked, trying to catch my breath.
    Her stance relaxed slightly. “Because you were just screaming about Ariana.”
    My cheeks warmed with embarrassment. But the memory of what had just