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had to get home to Lost Pine. The certainty of it surged through her like something remembered. Something terrible had happened, or would happen. She thought about her adoptive father, blind and aged, a rampaging monstrosity tearing him apart …
    “Miss Edwards?” The words made Emily jump. Her knee hit the tea table, setting the china and silver rattling loudly. Mrs. Stanton was peering closely at her.
    “Miss Edwards? Are you all right?”
    Emily clapped her hand over her mouth, certain that she was going to vomit. She stood, hoping that the movementwould settle the queasy shuddering that was rising beneath her breastbone. It did not. She put out a hand to steady herself, and her hand fell on the newspaper on the side table. She looked down at her hand, at the newspaper, at the terrible headlines.
    “No,” Emily answered, as she snatched
The New York Times
from the table and crumpled it against her chest. “I’m sorry. Not at all.”
    And she ran from the room.
    “That was a creative way to get out of Wordsworth.”
    Miss Jesczenka’s voice came from behind her as Emily stood on the sidewalk, absorbing the information in the newspaper. Her eyes sped over the same words over and over again.
Destruction. Chaos. Terror. Death
.
    San Francisco in a state of panic
.
    According to the reports, San Francisco had been suffering from earthquakes of varying sizes almost every day for the past fortnight. The earthquakes were opening deep cracks in the earth, belching Black Exunge that turned anything it touched into an Aberrancy. It was the Aberrancies that were the true source of panic in the city. Horse-size rats and other vermin terrorized the gaslit streets, brutally mauling unwary passersby. Worse, since Exunge was extremely flammable, if one of the transmogrified creatures encountered an open flame—a streetlamp or lantern, for instance—the otherworldly conflagration could set a whole block alight. The city had turned off the gas wherever possible, but there simply weren’t enough engines to deal with all the fires. With so much horror to be reported on in San Francisco, it was not surprising that there was no news of Lost Pine, the tiny settlement high in the Sierra Nevadas where Emily had grown up.
    “You’re not really ill, are you?” Miss Jesczenka raised a cool hand to Emily’s forehead. Emily pulled away from her touch, repressing an urge to snarl.
    “Nobody told me about this!” Emily snapped the paper in her face. Her blood turned to ice at the thought of her adoptive father, spinning ineffectual spells against monstrositieshe could not see. “What about Pap? What if he can’t protect himself?”
    “Lost Pine is almost two hundred miles from San Francisco,” Miss Jesczenka said. “There’s no reason to think it’s in any danger. And even if it were, the Army’s Warlocks would address the problem, just as they are doing in San Francisco.” She tilted her head at a birdlike angle. “What good would it have done you to know?”
    It was a cold question, but a fair one. Emily had fought Aberrancies before, and the experience had left her with no particular confidence in her ability to fight them again. But the Cassandra had told her that she had to go home, and Cassandras like that didn’t just pop up, making one nauseated and socially inept for no reason whatsoever. There had to be something important behind the message. She might not know as much about magic as these fancy New York Witches and Warlocks, but she knew that one ignored a Cassandra at one’s peril.
    Their carriage, lacquered in shiny black with the Institute’s golden seal on the door, pulled up at the curb. They climbed in, and Emily settled herself into the deep red velvet upholstery.
    “I need to go to California,” she blurted as soon as the door was closed behind them.
    Miss Jesczenka stared at her before answering.
    “But Miss Edwards,” she said finally, “Midsummer’s Eve is only three days away.”
    As if Emily