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last.
    She finished with the far wall and assessed her work. She had chosen a pale daffodil yellow, a very Bouguereau shade: the color of a nymph’s smile. Satisfied, she moved on to the other side. As she carefully painted around the window trim, she looked through the glass panels across the sea, to Gardiners Island and Fair Haven. The whirlwind around Freya’s engagement had been exhausting, all that bowing and scraping to that Madame Grobadan, Bran’s stepmother, who made it clear she thought her boy was too good for Freya. She was happy for her daughter, but apprehensive as well. Would her wild girl truly settle down this time? Joanna hoped Freya was right about Bran, that he was the one for her, the one she had been waiting for all these long years.
    Not that anyone needed a husband. She should know. Been there, done that. And if some days she felt like a shriveled-up old hag whose insides were are dry as dust, whose skin had not touched that of a man for so long, those were the days when she was just feeling sorry for herself. It wasn’t as if she had to be alone; there were many older gentlemen in town who had made it quite clear they would welcome the chance to make her nights less lonely. Yet she was not quite a widow, and she was not quite divorced, which meant she was not quite single or as free as she would like to be. She was separated. That was a good word. They lived separate lives now, and that was how she wanted it.
    Her husband had been a good man, a good provider, her rock, when it all came down to it. But he had not been able to help them during the crisis and for that she would never forgive him. Of course it was not his fault, all that hysteria and bloodshed, but he had not been able to stop the Council from passing down their judgment either, when the dust finally settled and the evil had passed. Her poor girls: she could still see them, their lifeless bodies silhouetted in the dusk. She would never forget it, and even though they had come back relatively unscathed (if one considered being declawed, powerless, and domesticized unscathed) she could not quite find it in her heart to make room for him in her life once again.
    “Right, Gilly?” she asked, turning to her pet raven, Gillbereth, who was privy to her thoughts and was currently perched on top of the grandfather clock.
    Gilly fluffed her wings and craned her long black neck toward the window, and Joanna followed her gaze. When she saw what the raven wanted her to see she dropped her roller, splashing a few drops of paint on the stone floor. She rubbed it with her boot and made it worse.
    The raven cawed.
    “Okay, okay, I’ll go down and check it out,” she said, leaving the house through the back door and walking straight down to the dunes. Sure enough, there they were: three dead birds. They had drowned—their feathers were mottled and wet, and the skin around their talons looked burned. Their bodies formed an ugly cross on the pristine stretch of sand.
    Joanna looked down at the small, stiff bodies. What a pity. What a waste. They were beautiful birds. Large raptors with pure white breasts and ebony beaks. Ospreys. The birds were native to the area, and a large colony lived on Gardiners Island, where they built their nests right on the beach. The birds were dangerous creatures, natural predators, but vulnerable as all wild creatures were vulnerable to the march of progress and development.
    Like her girls, Joanna struggled to conform to the bounds of the restriction. They had agreed to abide it in exchange for their immortal lives. The Council had taken their wands and most of their books, burned their broomsticks and confiscated their cauldrons. But more than that, the Council had taken away their understanding of themselves. They had decreed there was no place for their kind in this world with magic, and yet the reality was that there was no place for them without it either.
    With her fingers, Joanna began to dig at the wet sand,