Hazel lay awake in bed as Holly slept next to her. The inn was fully booked and hadn’t had any extra rooms for Hazel or Hemlock, so they had to share with their siblings. Hazel stared at the shadowed silhouette of the bone as it rested on the end table near her head. The room was dark, but the bone looked darker still, soaking up shadows as if any light refused to touch it.

Hazel couldn’t rest with that thing so close to her. She had told Holly they’d think of something and had suffered a pang of guilt for the lie, but she didn’t know what else to do. It was the only way. Holly would never understand. She didn’t want Holly to understand. Hazel wanted her sister to retain her naive optimism. Something the darkness couldn’t touch.

Holding her breath, she slipped out of bed and dressed carefully and quietly so as not to wake Holly. She probably didn’t need to be so careful—Holly would sleep through crashing pots and pans and howling dogs. But Hazel didn’t want to risk it. Not tonight.

Once dressed, Hazel took the cold, hard bone from the table and slipped out the door.

A single oil lamp burned on a narrow table in the hallway, illuminating the way to Hemlock’s door. She gently knocked upon it, and after a minute or so, the door opened.

Hemlock blinked at her. “Hazel,” he said, sounding surprised. He glanced behind him before stepping out into the hallway with her and closed the door. “You know Hawthorn’s in there, right?”

“I don’t want to come in. I need you to come with me.”

Hemlock grinned and stepped closer to her. “Oh? Where?”

She fished the bone from her pocket and held it out.

His face fell, and he sucked in a breath. “What are you doing, Hazel?”

“Finding my father.”

“Now? Tonight? Do you even know what you’re doing?”

Hazel shook her head. “I have no idea. But I’m never going to know. Now’s a good a time as any.”

“And what does Holly think of this?”

“I don’t want her involved.”

“She’s already involved. It’s her father too. She has a right to know.”

“I know, but not with this. Not until it’s done and over. I don’t know what’s going to happen. I don’t even know what’s out there after dark. It’s why I need you to come with me. You’ll be able to deal with what’s out there a lot better than her—better than both of us.” She took a breath. “I’m asking for your help, Hemlock.”

Hemlock rubbed his forehead and nodded. “All right. Just… let me get dressed.”

Hazel paced around the dim hallway until Hemlock returned, smoothing the jacket of his rumpled black suit.

She managed a feeble smile. “I’m afraid we both have the look of getting dressed in the dark.”

Hemlock grinned, straightening his shoulders. “People might get the wrong idea.”

“Let’s hope that’s the worst thing that happens tonight.”

They walked down the hallway towards the stairs.

“I wouldn’t mind, you know,” he said, “if they got the wrong idea. Or… even the right idea…”

“Focus, Hemlock.”

“Right.”

She glanced at him out of the corner of her eye and bit her lip to keep herself from grinning like the fool she was. She also needed to focus.

The common room was empty, save for a man sleeping at a table, his face buried in his arms. Hazel lingered by the door. Then, taking a deep breath, she opened it, picked a direction, and started walking.

“Do you know where to go?” Hemlock asked as he followed her.

She shook her head. “No, I… I figure we’ll just walk and see what happens.”

Hemlock said nothing.

They came across a tiny orb of blue light weaving in and out between the black bars of an iron fence. From the shadows came a rough, scraping sound of something heavy being dragged along the road. Hemlock took her arm and pulled her away. Yet a tension tugged at Hazel’s mind, drawing her attention to a darkened alley on the other side of the road, opposite of where Hemlock was headed.

The dragging sound became louder. Not wanting to waste time, Hazel took Hemlock’s hand and, before he could speak, ran with him across the street and into the shadows of the alley. Whatever was out on the street didn’t follow them.

They walked past low shuttered windows. When Hazel passed an uncovered window, she glanced inside before hurrying on. Then her breath caught, and she stepped back to it. Beyond the window the room stood dark, yet she still managed to make out the shadowed silhouettes of bookshelves lining the walls. A private library, nothing special. She should move on, but instead Hazel lingered there, her breath fogging the cold glass.

“What is it?” Hemlock said.

Hazel didn’t answer. She didn’t know what to say—how to explain the tension tugging at her mind. Maybe she was just afraid to say the words, because then it would be real.

A low arched door stood next to the window. Hazel walked to it and pulled on the handle, and the door creaked open.

“What are you doing?”

“I need to go in there.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know.” She ducked inside and walked down a pair of stone steps that took her into a darkened hallway. Hemlock closed the door behind them.

“Who lives here?” he whispered. “Do you know?”

“No idea.” She listened for any sound—footsteps, hushed voices, or the even, feathered breath that came from sleeping bodies. But there was nothing. No clock ticking, no crackling of embers as they cooled in the night. Not even a scratching from rats in the walls—a sound which Hazel never thought she’d miss, but she missed it now. It was too quiet.

She ran her hand along the wall as she walked down the hallway. Dust clung to her hand and floated into the air. Hazel sneezed.

Both she and Hemlock froze, but everything remained eerily silent.

Hemlock pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and handed it to her. “I think the house might be empty.”

Hazel nodded, took the handkerchief, and wiped her nose. “I hope so. How anyone could live in all this dust is beyond me.” But she remained tense. The amount of dust suggested that no one had lived there in some time, yet the house was furnished. Shadowed portraits hung on the walls; dusty carpets padded her steps. When Hemlock pulled out his pocket watch and conjured from it a fairy that, along with the watch, emitted a brilliant white-gold light, Hazel could finally see the true state of the house.

Dust-laden cobwebs hung in the corners, fluttering in a draft that Hazel couldn’t feel. Faded paper had peeled from the wall in places. Further down the hall stood a narrow table with a porcelain vase containing an arrangement of dried red roses that almost looked black. Webs stretched between the drooping heads of the flowers, and when Hazel touched one, the petals fell apart and fluttered to the floor in a papery cascade.

The fairy continued to flit down the hallway, and the shadows shrank away as it approached. They followed it and opened a door to a bedroom—the covers on the bed lay flat and undisturbed, their color indistinguishable underneath the dust. A photograph portrait of a woman rested on the night table in a silver frame. Her face was blurred, as if she had refused to sit still. Hazel made her way back down the hall to the door she believed led to the library. When Hemlock and his fairy came close enough to illuminate the cracked and peeling paint on the door, she nudged it open and stepped inside.

The smell of dust was thicker here, moldering in its stench. Hazel put the kerchief over her nose to keep from sneezing again. She stared at the stacks of books and wondered what to do.

Hemlock followed her in, and the fairy carrying his glowing pocket watch flitted to the shelves. The light seared across Hazel’s vision, and she closed her eyes, leaving a ghostly winged afterimage imprinted on her mind.

“Extinguish the light,” she whispered.

“What?”

“The light, put it out.” She took a breath. “Please.”

Hemlock remained silent a moment. Then he released the fairy and returned his watch to his pocket.

Hazel opened her eyes. Moonlight filtered through the window, and she could make out some of the muted colors of the leather-bound tomes. Dark green and maroon. Midnight blue, black, and chocolate brown. Some of the titles were visible on the spines, even underneath the dust that coated everything like powdered breath. Whispering Wights and Intelligent Sprites: How to Imbue Cognizance into Your Summoned Spirits. The Misunderstood Virtues of Blindweed and Direction for its Proper Application. Silenced after Sunset: 50 Counterspells for the Mischievous Familiar. Necromancer books. Hazel wished she could feel surprised. She pulled a book from the shelf and cracked it open, wrinkling her nose as a waft of musty air hit her, smelling like stagnant water and decomposing leaves. She held her breath and brought her face closer to the pages, trying to make out what was written. But the text was faded, and the paper was blotted with a rash of mold like liver spots on old, withered skin. She pulled out another book and opened it, but the pages were the same. Then another but it, too, was illegible.

Hazel stood there, her arms limp at her sides.

“Hazel,” Hemlock said, his near-whispering voice carrying through the silence with surprising clarity. “Perhaps we should leave.”

“There’s something here. I know there is.”

“Yes,” Hemlock said. “That’s what worries me.”

She made herself look at him. “I can’t turn back. Not until this is done. I think you know that.”

An expression passed over his face that Hazel couldn’t quite read. He looked sad but also strangely defiant, his shoulders squared and back straight as he met her gaze.

Hazel reached into her pocket and pulled out the bloodied bone. She held Hemlock’s gaze a moment longer. Then, looking away, she tossed it into the air.

The bone clattered onto the wooden floor, clearing a path through the dust before it rolled to a stop at the clawed foot of a dense cherrywood bookshelf. Hazel bent down to pick up the bone and as she did, felt a draft of cool air coming from behind the shelf.

“There’s something here,” she murmured. She tried to push the shelf aside, but it was too heavy. “Help me move it.”

Hemlock walked to the other side of the bookshelf, and on a count of three, they edged the monstrous thing away from the wall as it groaned and screeched across the floor. In the wall where the shelf had stood was the outline of a door. There was no handle or knob, only a hole in the wood where a knob should have been. Hazel hooked her finger into it and pulled, and in a cloud of dust and a squeaking of rusty hinges, it opened, revealing a dark passage beyond.

Silence lingered as she and Hemlock peered into the blackness.

“Well, that doesn’t look foreboding at all,” he said.

Hazel smiled, but it was fleeting and faded as a cold fear settled over her.

Hemlock looked at her. “Do you want to go first or should I?”

She closed her eyes, thankful beyond words that he was there. “I’ll go first, but we need some light. Maybe something less brilliant than the fairy though?”

Hemlock shook his head. “This is a warlock’s house. I’ll need an object of mine for the magic, and the fairy is the only thing I can conjure from the watch. You’re under no such restrictions though, unless a witch lived here as well.” He looked around. “Which I doubt.” Then he smiled. “Have you been practicing your Wyr pronunciation?”

“In the Grove, yes, but not since we came here.”

“Try the moth spell I showed you.”

She spoke the words Hemlock had taught her, feeling both elated and relieved when a little white moth glowing like moonlight unfolded into being. It flitted into the passage and illuminated a narrow set of stairs that headed downwards.

Hazel took a deep breath to steady her nerves, then started her descent. The stairs creaked under her weight. She kept a hand to the wall, trying not to dwell on what made the rough stones slick underneath her fingers.

She looked back at Hemlock. He was frowning, but when he saw her looking at him, he gave her a crooked smile. Hazel tried to smile back, but the effort felt beyond her, and she probably looked more pained than pleased. She continued on.

At the bottom, Hazel’s boots scuffed against irregularly shaped flagstones that paved the floor. The moth’s light was feeble down here, and Hazel resisted the urge to ask Hemlock to summon his fairy. She didn’t know why, exactly. The extra light would be welcome. But at the same time, it also felt… wrong.

The wound on her hand throbbed in time with the beating of her heart. The cold air fed into her nerves a strange kind of energy. She felt excited. And beyond that, a faint and terrible understanding.

Thoughts and images came to her mind, unbidden and unknown, but there was truth beyond them. Like when she had known that on each new moon at the tumbledown cottage near her home, if she made a fire and crumbled cake in a water-filled basin, she’d see her mother again. Hazel had that same kind of feeling now. She knew what to do to push back the darkness beyond the little moth Hemlock had taught her to summon, only she wished that she didn’t. Especially now with Hemlock there. She didn’t want him to know that about her.

Hazel reached into her pocket and wrapped her fingers around the bone that now felt warm against her cool, clammy skin. She worked a spell—similar to a Weaving spell of Transformation but with altered pronunciation and harder consonants. Into that spell she wove another one similar to a Wyr conjuration but also with the altered pronunciation and a longer drawing of the vowels. When she finished, blue points of light flared in the darkness. They wove around each other until each light found a sconce on the wall, then erupted into flickering flames as they attached themselves to tapered candles, and the darkness receded.

A long rectangular table stood before Hazel. On the table was a plain silver goblet, a mortar and pestle, and a wooden box about the size of a thick book onto which intricate designs had been carved. There was also a bottle of wine, a thin, narrow knife, an unadorned ceramic bowl, and a clean white cloth that had been folded into a neat little square. It occurred to Hazel that there was no dust down here—the cloth looked freshly laundered and pressed, and the dark glass of the bottle gleamed in the flickering blue light as if it had been polished.

Everything looked deliberately placed, each item carefully arranged. And the absence of dust could only be the work of magic. Someone wanted to keep this place just so. But why? Did they plan on returning? Or had they known she would be there—that someone would be there—and if they had, then what did that mean?

She stepped closer to the table, studying the items. There was a pattern among them—a symmetry in their arrangement, an evenness of the spaces between them. It was as if they fit into her mind like pieces of a puzzle, and Hazel knew what to do.

She took the bone from her pocket and put it into the bowl-shaped mortar. Hemlock came to stand next to her, but Hazel kept her gaze on her work. Her nerves had calmed, and the excitement she had felt now became an enthusiastic curiosity as her mind buzzed with a potential solution she was eager to prove right.

Picking up the heavy stone pestle, she ground the bone into dust. She then tipped the powder into the goblet, using her fingers to scrape the mortar clean. Moving on to the wine bottle, Hazel picked up the knife and hesitated. The knife had to be there to open the bottle—there was no other use for it, if she was right. Puzzled as to why a corkscrew hadn’t been left behind, she handed the bottle and knife to Hemlock, murmuring instructions for him to open it.

He gaped at her, knife and bottle in hand, but Hazel returned her attention to the table. She opened the wooden box, finding stalks of dried herbs and plants bundled together with pieces of twine. There was lavender and mugwort, marigold, jasmine, anise, and vervain. There was ash bark, yarrow, and a few withered, deadly nightshade berries dangling from a stalk along with dried leaves. Hazel sifted through them, running each plant’s properties through her mind, searching for the way each one fit into her puzzle. Not all of them did. There were more here than what she needed.

She took some mugwort and jasmine and broke off some of the fragile, flowering fronds of the anise and crumbled them between her fingers into the goblet along with the bone dust. Her hands hesitated over the ash bark. She wanted to reach for it, grind it up in the mortar like she had the bone. But it didn’t quite fit. Not as well as the yarrow. So Hazel took some of the dried flowers from that instead, ground them with her fingers, and added it to the goblet.

She turned to Hemlock. He had gotten the cork out of the bottle, his expression a mixture of puzzlement, fear, and concern.

“What are you doing, Hazel?” he said as she took the bottle from him.

“Finding my father.”

“How, exactly?”

Hazel didn’t answer. There was no time to explain, not if she wanted to hold on to this idea long enough to see if it worked. She poured some wine into the goblet and stirred it with the handle of the knife. Then she sucked in a breath—she had almost forgotten an ingredient. Hazel returned to the box and plucked a nightshade berry from its stalk and ground it into a jammy paste with the mortar and pestle. She mixed it with some wine, then poured the slurry into the goblet. She gave it another stir, then brought the goblet to her nose and sniffed. It smelled like wine, mostly, but more earthy, with hints of jasmine and anise coming through. Not all that unpleasant, really.

“Nightshade is poisonous,” Hemlock said. “Please don’t tell me you’re thinking about drinking that.”

She turned to look at him again, the haze clearing from her mind now that she had done what she wanted to do, and a twinge of shame gnawed at her. Yet she couldn’t turn back. Hazel still hadn’t gotten her answer, and she wouldn’t be able to rest until she had.

Hazel brought the goblet to her lips and tipped it back.

The liquid was thick and sludgy, tasting like chalk, ash, and iron. She downed it quickly, not wanting to dwell on the taste or let the sediment settle to the bottom. She almost laughed. Sediment. As if the sandy consistency was a natural occurrence in the wine and not ground-up bone that had been slathered with her blood. The thought almost made her retch, but instead she coughed and managed to keep it down. The chalky taste faded, replaced by sweet, floral notes from the wine and jasmine before giving way to the aromatic sharpness of the anise, and then to bitterness that she could only assume came from the nightshade.

Hazel’s heart quickened, and sweat beaded across her brow. She put a shaking hand to her head, not wanting to think about how foolish she had been or what a terrible mistake she had undoubtedly just made. This was the only way. It had to be.

Hemlock stood in front of her and grabbed hold of her shoulders as he studied her face. His knees were bent, bringing his eyes level with hers, and she realized his eyes were hazel. Green flecked with brown—colors of the earth. The color of her name. Why hadn’t she noticed that before? He must not have noticed the similarity either, or he wouldn’t have been frowning like that. She giggled, wanting to tell him, but her laugh came out sounding gurgled and foreign. She sobered, acutely aware of her racing heart and of the shadows that had gathered around her vision.

Her legs buckled, and Hazel collapsed onto the floor. The shadows grew, turning white and wispy as they took over her sight. They gathered around Hemlock, pulling at his skin and eclipsing his face, but the stillness in his body indicated he didn’t notice. Hazel closed her eyes as they throbbed with a dull and distant pain that made the world shiver. When she opened them, Hemlock had gone, and all that remained were the pale, wispy shadows, as if all life had been leeched from the world, leaving behind only a smoking, pallid husk.

Her breath echoed through her chest and ears as if she had been hollowed out like a harvest-time gourd. Alone, alone, dead and alone. The thought echoed in her mind along with her breath, and she grabbed hold of her head and bent over in an effort to quiet them.

Silence. No, a heartbeat, fluttering and florid. Like a butterfly trapped in a jar, wings singed by searing sun. When had she become like sand, dissolved by wind and whisked away by the rapids of a rushing river? She looked for an anchor, letting the pale wispiness of the world wash over her like shimmering sunlit water.

She calmed, and the room came back into focus. Hemlock was there, kneeling in front of her on the ground. But it wasn’t really him—it was only a pale shadow, an outline of a mirage that shimmered and pulsed like a heart with a beat of its own. Hazel reached out to him, but her hand passed through where his face should be. Her movement displaced the shadows, only to congeal back into place once she withdrew.

The rest of the room looked much like Hemlock—bleached and bland, a shimmering, tenuous echo of what had once been there. Hazel got to her feet, and the room shifted, moving along with her, though for some reason Hemlock’s shadow remained fixed in place.

She walked to the table, but the stone floor became like sifting sand, pushing her back even as she struggled to move forward. Yet still she managed, coming to a pale and wan table that seemed to disassemble itself and then reform every time Hazel blinked.

The table looked much the same as far as Hazel could recall through the haze of her mind. There were the clean white bowl and neatly folded cloth, the herb box, wine bottle, and mortar and pestle. There was the goblet with its dregs of wine and silt of bone dust drying along the silver edges of the cup. The bone dust gleamed like crystalline snow.

Hazel looked up and out beyond the room, beyond the shifting hollow mist, and looked for the same sparkling gleam out in the world. And there, beyond the shivering, shadowed stones that served as a wall, a glimmering that matched the cup winked in the distance.

She held her breath, wondering if it were true or if she had only imagined it. How could she be sure of anything here, a world that refused to solidify into color and bone, stone and blood?

Hazel passed through the table, sending it to ripple in her wake as if she walked through water. She made her way to what served as a wall, and then she walked through that as well. The city of Sarnum rippled into shape before her, as if a mist had dissipated in the morning sun. It was neither night nor day; everything was equally wan and devoid of color. She fixed her gaze on the glimmering point of light winking through the haze like a candle in a distant window. But where was it? She had no bearings. There was no sun to tell her east from west, no stars to tell her where the north lay. It was all just haze and fog, shimmering heat and rippling water for air. She tried to focus through it all, the same way she had when the room had coalesced from the mist. Again she let it wash over her until in the distance… Was that a hill? There was something on it—a house or maybe a mill. Hazel narrowed her eyes, trying to see, but then her stomach cramped, and she grabbed her abdomen as she doubled over.

“Hazel?”

The voice boomed in her mind, making her wince even as bile rose in her throat. She swallowed and inhaled a deep breath, relaxing with momentary relief before she doubled over with another sickening cramp. This time she retched, the mist cleared, and she was back on the floor in the cellar of the abandoned house.

The solidity and vivid color of her surroundings were jarring. Hazel could only blink before she doubled over again, vomiting onto the floor.

Hemlock grabbed the ceramic bowl off the table and set it on the floor in front her. Hazel emptied her stomach into it—purple-brown sludge peppered with bits of desiccated leaves. She closed her eyes, not wanting to look, fearful of getting sick all over again.

A minute or so passed, then Hazel spit acid from her mouth and pushed the bowl away.

Hemlock handed her a cloth—the neatly folded linen square from the table. Hazel managed a feeble smile. She had been right about the puzzle of items—though it was difficult feeling particularly pleased while her nose and throat stung.

“Are you all right?” Hemlock said.

Hazel wiped at her mouth with the cloth. “Yes.”

Hemlock, crouching on his haunches, moved his legs out from under him and sat on the floor. He let out a heavy breath and ran his hands over his face. “What was that, Hazel? What were you thinking?”

“I was thinking I was trying to find my father.”

“By performing necromantic magic? Do you understand what you’ve done?”

Hazel stiffened her back. “I’m not a fool, Hemlock. I know what I’ve done.”

He stared at her, his brow furrowed. “Then how can you sit there and pretend that it’s all right?”

Hazel tightened her jaw. “I’m not pretending anything. I did what I needed to do!”

“Do you hear yourself? Do you even recognize yourself? Because from where I’m sitting, I’m not sure I recognize you at all. Maybe you’re right—maybe you are just like your father. Maybe I’m the fool for not listening.”

Hazel swallowed and looked away, feeling as if he had wrenched a knife in her gut—wishing his words hadn’t held so much truth.

He sighed. “I’m sorry. That was unworthy of me.”

“No, you’re completely right.” She made herself look at him. “I am undoubtedly just like him. How else can you explain what I’ve done? I know how to work necromancy, Hemlock. I wish I didn’t, but I do. I doubt it’s a coincidence.”

They fell into silence.

“What do we do now?” Hemlock said.

“I… saw a light after I drank the potion. I think that might be where he is.”

He frowned. “A light? What kind of light?”

She squinted her eyes. “It’s hard to explain. But the bone I ground up, after I drank the potion, it’s like it glowed. I saw the same light off in the distance. I think it might be him.”

Hemlock stared at her, and Hazel forced herself to hold his gaze. Then he asked, “How far was it?”

“I don’t know. The world looked different. I couldn’t say how far. I don’t even know where it was. A building, perhaps a mill, up on a hill.”

He nodded. “Well, then. I suppose that means we’ll have to find the hill.”

“You don’t have to come along.”

“What?”

“I know you’re not comfortable with this. I’m not comfortable with it. But I need to see this through. You don’t.” She took a breath. “I wouldn’t blame you if you wanted to leave.”

Hemlock shook his head and took her hand. “There’s no turning back now, Hazel. For either of us.”

He helped Hazel to her feet, and they left the house and returned to the inn.

But when they got there, they found their shared rooms empty and their siblings gone.