I wake up in my clothes, my alarm chirping, Ham scratching at my door. Seven thirty. I got maybe an hour of sleep. An hour later and I’m in my uniform, sitting on the damp wall of a crumbling mausoleum, drinking coffee out of a thermos. My yawns stretch out my jaw like I’m a snake swallowing eggs.

Elza pushes her way through the gap in the fence, wearing her dad’s old leather jacket over her school clothes. She makes her way across the graveyard, boots shiny with dew. “Are you all right?” she asks. “What happened?”

“You should probably sit down,” I say.

“You look grim,” she says.

“I didn’t really sleep.”

Elza wraps her arms around me. I return her embrace, but I feel awful. I’m going to have to tell her a lot of stuff I’ve been keeping secret, and I don’t think she’ll take it that well.

“Did you have another fit?” she asks.

“No. Look, sit down. I need to talk to you.”

“All right.” Elza sits beside me, folds one leg over the other. She winds a strand of hair in her fingers as I talk.

I give her the whole story, from us parting ways last night to me being dropped off at my house by Ash this morning. I tell her about Ilana and the Widow, Magnus Ahlgren, and my promise to Ash. She listens without saying a word. Halfway through, she takes out a cigarette.

“. . . so she’s coming by tonight to read the Book,” I conclude. “Or that’s what I told her, anyway. I don’t know. It was strange.”

Elza lets smoke leak from her mouth.

“Can you say something?” I ask.

“Honestly? I don’t even know where to begin.”

“Are you angry?”

“Am. I. Angry?” The words come out staccato.

“I’m really sorry that I didn’t tell you —”

“About what? What are you sorry about?”

“Elza, I’m really sorry I didn’t tell you about the Book of Eight. I shouldn’t have kept that a secret from you.”

“Berkley came back to Dunbarrow? He came to your house and you didn’t even mention this?”

“I . . . look, I —”

“Oh, just . . . save it. Seriously. So you’ve had it buried in the field behind your house this entire time. You can walk out of your own body and you didn’t think I needed to know about that, either? And then you just go flying up to this horrible house. Ash could’ve killed you —”

“I don’t think she would.”

“You don’t know her! We don’t even know she’s a person at all!”

“She is,” I say. “And she needs my help.”

“Well, at least I know how to get you to trust me!” Elza snaps. “Keep you prisoner inside a mirror! Because apparently you’re totally OK with sharing your every secret with someone who does that to you.”

“Elza, I do trust you.”

Her voice is like ice. “You know what hurts about this, Luke?”

“Elza —”

“What hurts is I thought we trusted each other. I thought I’d finally met someone I could share everything with. Someone else who saw ghosts. Someone else who knows more about what happens when you die than anyone might reasonably want to know. I’ve always been honest with you. And it really hurts that you’ve been keeping stuff from me.”

I don’t know what to say to her. She’s right. I should’ve told her. I don’t really know why I didn’t. I could tell her I wanted us to be as happy as we could, didn’t want to bring up the dark parts of my life if I didn’t have to, but that’s not totally true. Maybe I just wanted to pretend I was still normal, even if it was just to myself. Maybe I wanted to pretend it was entirely my decision to spend all my days hanging out with Elza in a graveyard while all my old friends avert their eyes when I walk past or do impressions of me having a seizure? I wanted to pretend there wasn’t some big dark anchor tied to my foot, pulling me away from them. It’s not that I don’t love her. I do. But sometimes it doesn’t feel like I ever had a choice about being with her.

“I’m sorry,” I say after a while.

Elza stamps her cigarette out in the wet grass. I want to take her hand, kiss her, but her expression stops me from moving. I just want to wrap my arms around her and go back to bed.

“I need you,” I say. “I can’t deal with this alone.”

“I’m very pissed off with you,” she says.

“I know.”

“I haven’t decided exactly how pissed off I am. But you’re on thin ice.”

“Elza —”

“Just don’t, all right? We’ve got other things to worry about right now. Whoever, whatever, Ash is, you told her you’d help her. Whatever that’s going to mean, we don’t know. But you’re giving her free rein this evening with the Book of Eight.”

“I never said ‘free rein’—”

“Luke . . . She. Is. Dangerous. She’s got a bound spirit, this Widow. You said this ghost knocked you down like you were hit by a car. She’s powerful. What do we have? Some hazel charms? Your dad’s rings?”

“I don’t think Ash will hurt us,” I say. Elza didn’t sit by Ilana’s bedside. It wasn’t Elza’s dad who broke Ash’s world apart, put her sister in a coma. Elza’s dad is an IT professional whose greatest pleasure in life is looking at birds through a pair of binoculars. He’s never come close to killing anybody, except perhaps by inadvertently inducing lethal boredom at a dinner party. Elza doesn’t have the kind of family you need to atone for.

“Well, I’m coming to your house tonight as well. I think it’s best if we both supervise her, don’t you? Since you apparently believe anything she says as long as she flutters her eyelashes at you.”

“Elza, that’s not fair.”

“Yeah, it’s not nice, is it? When someone treats you unfairly.”

The graveyard’s grass ripples in the wind.

“Look,” Elza says, “I’ll see you tonight.”

She walks away at a pace that doesn’t invite me to follow her. A few sulky spits of rain darken the gravestones. I put my thermos in my backpack, pull my hood over my head. That went about as well as I expected. I slip out of Saint Jude’s the way we came in, through the gap in the fence, pushing on into the school grounds.

Holiday, Ash, and Alice are standing just inside the school gates. When they spot me, they forge a path straight toward me.

“See? I said they’d be in their graveyard,” Alice is saying.

“Luke,” Holiday says, “I want to talk to you. Is Elza around?”

“You just missed her.”

Ash says nothing. She looks as exhausted as me.

Holiday gives me a brittle smile. “So when I got home from rehearsal, my mum told me you and Elza came to our house and went through my room and Ash’s stuff?”

“You know that’s, like, totally illegal?” Alice asks us.

“I’ve always stuck up for you, Luke,” Holiday says, glaring at me. “People say horrible things about you, and I always tell them to leave you alone.”

“Well, thanks,” I say.

Ash is fiddling with her nose ring, her face a perfect mask of boredom. She’s a good actress.

“Look, I don’t know if this was your idea of a joke or what, but it isn’t funny. It’s weird. Tell your girlfriend that, too. I’ve told my mum that if you come over again, she shouldn’t let you in, all right?”

“Sure,” I say.

“You’re such a total creep,” Alice says.

“I know you’ve got”— Holiday’s smile is stretched about as thin as I’ve ever seen it —“mental health problems. I’m sure it’s hard. I don’t want to cause more trouble for you.”

“I’m glad to hear you’re so concerned about my mental health problems,” I say.

“If you could give my DVD back, I’d appreciate it,” Holiday says.

“It’s in my bag.”

I rummage in my backpack. I wonder what Holiday would do if I told her the truth about Ash. It’s a moot point, I suppose. Holiday doesn’t have the mental framework to even begin to understand the truth about her new friend.

I pass Holiday her Best of Hannah Montana DVD, and she tucks it into her handbag with as much dignity as she can muster.

“Well, I hope this was at least funny for you,” Holiday says.

I don’t say anything. Ash’s gray eyes are boring into me, hungry, almost seeming to shine. Is Elza right? Do I trust her only because she’s a pretty girl? I remember thinking the Vassal was evil because he had some kind of skin condition, and he was actually the kindest of all my dad’s ghosts. I suppose it’s too late. I made a promise to her, and there’s no way she’s going to leave me alone now.

Holiday tosses her hair and walks away without another word. Ash and Alice flank her, making their way to homeroom. I look up at the sky: pale blue, dappled with high gray clouds. It might rain later, or then again, maybe not. It’s one of those spring days. Everything’s up in the air.

I meet Elza again after school, and together we make the walk up to Wormwood Drive in chilly silence. The clouds have clotted into a tumorous ceiling, a layering of grays and whites with occasional hazy glimpses of blue, like a half-remembered dream. The wind is high and cold, and the trees that are coming into bud seem misguided.

When I come in, Mum’s on the sofa with Ham, watching TV. He gets up when he sees me and rushes right at me and past me, going out into the hall to nose at Elza, who’s still untying her boots. Mum looks guilty.

“You’re always telling me not to let him up there,” I say.

“I know,” Mum says. “He just has such sad eyes, though, doesn’t he?”

“He’s got nothing to be sad about,” I say. “We treat him like a king.”

“He’s a good dog,” Mum says, and then her face lights up as Elza walks into the room. “Elza! Hello! How are you?”

“Oh,” Elza says, “I’m fine, Persephone. Just came by to do some studying. Mum’s working tonight”— her mum’s a nurse —“but she can pick me up later, after her shift, if that’s OK?”

“You can stay over if you like,” Mum says. “Save her making a trip after work.”

Ham butts and snorts at Elza while she scratches his furry shoulders. I’m left standing in the doorway as Elza makes her way into the room, my mum and my dog hanging on her every word. Sometimes I wonder if my family wouldn’t secretly like it if Elza were the one who lived here, and I just came by to visit sometimes.

“We’ve got an owl living out back,” Mum’s telling Elza, who smiles as if it were the best news anyone had ever given her. “Haven’t you heard it, Luke? The last few nights?”

“Yeah,” I say, remembering the field past midnight, the first time I met Ilana and the Widow. I shudder. “I’ve heard it a few times.”

“I’ll have to tell Dad,” Elza says. “I’m sure he could identify it by the hoot alone.”

“It’s a lonely sound,” Mum says.

“I don’t think I’d mind being an owl,” Elza says absently, stroking Ham’s snout.

“Me either,” Mum says.

“They’re beautiful creatures,” Elza says.

“Drifting through the night,” Mum says. “Sitting under the moon.”

“Eating small mammals whole,” I say. “Spitting up dry little pellets of bones and skin.”

Elza, Mum, and Ham all look at me with naked disgust.

“Does anyone want tea?” I ask.

They do, and I take the excuse to vanish into the kitchen. Elza still hasn’t spoken to me directly since this morning. Exactly how angry she is, I can’t tell. We have arguments, of course. We’re different people in a lot of ways. Elza likes sitting still with a book; I like running around with a ball. Elza likes movies in black and white, preferably with subtitles, and I like movies where as many things as possible explode at the end. I think Elza is too quick to brand people she doesn’t even know as “stupid” or “dull.” Elza thinks I get far too emotionally invested in local soccer teams. She really hates that I wear polo shirts. I really hate that she smokes. She can’t stand trance, and I think most punk bands need to learn how to play their instruments. Elza encourages me to grow my hair and will sometimes try and coax me into buying some old cords or a moth-eaten tweed jacket while she’s rooting around in a thrift store, and for my own part, I wonder if she really has to put on black lipstick and a spiked dog collar just to go out and buy a quart of milk. You get the picture. At our core, though, we’ve always been an unshakable team. My Host saw to that. Elza saved my life, and had several near-death experiences herself along the way, and the bond we formed seemed to be unbreakable.

That is, until today.

Mum has chai; Elza favors Earl Grey. I’m still suffering from my lack of sleep last night, and I’m brewing up a big strong pot of coffee for myself when there’s a sharp knock at the front door. I make my way into the hall and open up to find Ash standing on the front step. She’s wearing a white backpack and carrying what looks like a briefcase made of dark polished wood, an unexpected palette change. It has a leather strap that hangs from one of her shoulders. She smiles.

“Hello, Luke. I’m here to work on our project?”

Her charming greeting is slightly spoiled by the presence of the Widow, white-robed and glaring, stranded just at the end of our drive, beyond the protective influence of Elza’s hazel charms. It’s possible for Elza to grant Ash’s servant entry to my house, but I’m not about to ask her to do it.

“Your friend has to stay outside,” I say in a low voice.

Ash frowns. “I was hoping —”

“No,” I say. “Just you.”

“She was a Priestess of Osiris. She knows the Book. I might need her opinion on some passages.”

“You can go to the end of my drive and ask her, then. She’s not coming in.”

Ash looks back at her ghost and makes a small motion with her left hand. The Widow bows and then blinks out of existence.

“You still don’t trust me, do you?” Ash asks.

“Not quite.”

“Fair enough. Still,” she says, laying her wooden case down in my hallway, “I’m trusting you. Without her, I’m totally defenseless.”

“What’s in the box?”

“My father’s reading equipment,” she says.

I never knew you needed equipment to read the Book of Eight. I just opened it up and used my dad’s number sequence, which even now I can’t say I totally understand. I think his notes are still at Elza’s house, actually. I should have thought to bring them over. What was it Dad called them? The sequence. I wonder if Ash has a sequence inside her wooden case.

“You should probably meet my mum,” I say. “Elza’s in there, too.”

Ash raises her eyebrows, a gesture I find difficult to interpret in this particular context, and moves on ahead of me into my living room. Elza looks up at her with suspicion and hostility, Mum with drowsy welcome, and Ham with crazed joy. He rushes up to Ash and buries his head into the space between her knees, grunting like a wild hog. He nearly knocks her over. Ash falls back against the wall and, laughing, scrubs at his back with one hand. Ham is usually pretty good at judging character. He was afraid of the Host from the start, but seeing him so relaxed and friendly with Ashana Ahlgren seems like a good omen. Elza remains suspicious, hunched up in one corner of our sofa.

“He’s so big,” Ash says cheerfully. Her public voice is much more dizzily Californian than her real one, a voice honeyed with the sound of beaches and palm trees and wide, dazzling oceans.

“Ham’s a deerhound,” Elza replies in a voice as cold as the damp foggy moors around Dunbarrow. “They’re known for being pretty sizable.”

“Mum,” I say, “this is Ashley Smith. We’re working with her on a project. Ash, this is my mum, Persephone Cusp. And you already know Elza.”

“Persephone,” Ash says with a warm smile, “so great to meet you!”

“It’s always nice to meet one of Luke’s friends,” Mum says. “Are you American?”

“Yup — I come from Marin County, just north of San Francisco. I’m here on an exchange program.”

“It must be very beautiful out there,” Mum says.

“Oh, sure,” Ash says, “but I like it here, too. It’s bleak, y’know, but also beautiful?”

Mum nods at this, seeming pleased, like Ash just told her something enormously important. Maybe my family could just adopt Elza, and Ash as well.

“Would you like some tea, Ash?” I ask.

“Oh, no, thank you. I’m really eager to get started on our work,” she replies.

“Enthusiasm is a great gift,” Mum says. “What are you working on?”

“Old documents,” Ash says.

“Math,” I say at the same moment.

“We’re doing a project on the arithmetic of ancient hieroglyphs,” Elza says after a pause, getting up, giving me a cold look.

“That sounds very interesting,” Mum says. “I really think there’s a lot we can learn from looking at ancient civilizations and how they lived. What kind of hieroglyphs?”

I’m a little bit surprised at this question. The old version of Mum wouldn’t have asked any more questions. She’d have waved her hand and smiled. I like that she’s getting her life back on track, but she’s becoming dangerously interested in what I’m up to.

“Early period,” Elza says firmly, heading for the door.

“Yeah,” I say. “Really early.”

We head upstairs to my room, Ash leading the way, even though she doesn’t actually know where we’re going. The wooden case thumps against her shin. I push past her once we’re on the landing, close enough to smell the faint tropical hint of her shampoo, and then lead us into my bedroom. Looking around, I find myself wishing I’d had time to straighten the place up. It’s not as bad as Elza’s room, but there are dirty clothes all over the floor, three cereal bowls with muck congealing in the bottom of them, a few pairs of boxer shorts drying on the radiator. My bedsheets haven’t been changed for a while, and there’s a stuffy smell to the whole place. It’s a long way from Ash’s sparsely furnished house. She stands in the middle of my room, still holding her wooden case, looking at the black-and-white photos Elza took of me back in January. I’m out on the moors with Ham, snow turning everything white around us. Elza developed the prints herself. Ham and me are far away, about to vanish behind a snowcapped boulder, just two little figures in a huge blank landscape.

“These are great,” Ash says.

Elza flings herself down on my bed.

“Thanks,” she says.

“Did you take them?” Ash asks, sounding amazed. “You’re so good.”

“We’re not friends,” Elza says flatly. “I don’t know what you want with Luke. But I don’t like it, and I don’t like you.”

“OK. I understand,” Ash says. She doesn’t seem hurt; more thoughtful, like she’s seriously considering Elza’s point.

“And flattering me, telling me just how much you love my photography,” Elza continues, “isn’t going to change my opinion of you one bit. Are we clear? I’m not Holiday. I know you’re a necromancer. I know you’re trouble.”

“So about the Book . . .” I say.

“It’s all right,” Ash says. “She’s not Holiday. I get the message.”

Ash walks over to my desk and sweeps my papers into a pile at one edge. She puts her wooden case down in the center, next to my laptop and my French-to-English dictionary.

“Say what you want about Holiday,” Ash continues, offhand, “but at least she’s not in denial about the whole ‘hair spray and leather’ thing being played out.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Elza spits. “You look like someone who’s just been deprogrammed from a cult. What is with your clothes?”

“It’s my family color,” Ash says. She doesn’t seem particularly angry.

“Please,” I say.

“What?” Elza snaps, looking like she wants to fight me now as well.

“Can we just do what we need to? You asked to be here, Elza.”

“Someone needs to keep an eye on her,” Elza says.

“I’m just here to look at the Book,” Ash tells Elza. “I want to help my sister. I presume Luke has filled you in that far.”

“It’s down here,” I say. I need to give us something else to do, or these two are going to bicker all night. I kneel down and take out the bottom drawer of my wardrobe. Buried under a mound of socks and underwear is the toolbox that I originally hid both the Book and my dad’s rings in, still with scraps of mud clinging to it from the excavation. I open the latch and take out the Book of Eight.

It’s small and thick, about the same size as a pocket dictionary, with a pale-green leather cover and pages the color of a smoker’s teeth. There’s an eight-pointed star embossed in gold on the front cover, and the Book is sealed shut with silvery clasps. I haven’t touched it since the day I buried it. The leather feels cold and smooth under my fingers. The Book’s size and weight belie the depth of information concealed within it. The pages are endless, inscribed with symbols of the utmost magical power. The Book of Eight is a dizzying monster that took over my mind, and I’d hoped I’d never have to look at it again.

Ash can’t take her eyes off it.

“This is Octavius’s edition, isn’t it?” Ash asks.

“Who?”

“Octavius. Your father’s Shepherd. He made this copy himself.”

“Did he?” I ask. I try to spend as little time thinking about that black-eyed bastard as possible. “He never mentioned it.”

“Seems unusually modest of him,” Elza says.

“It’s definitely his,” Ash says. “I’ve read descriptions of it. Supposedly he had it bound in his father’s skin.”

“Er . . .”

I gesture energetically for Ash to take the Book from my hands, but she turns back to my desk and unlocks her wooden case. Elza sits up with a look of astonishment on her face as the case opens up. I can’t see what’s inside — Ash’s body is between me and the desk — so, still holding the Book of Eight, I move closer to Ash, peering over her shoulder. Her reading equipment turns out to be something remarkable.

The case opens like a normal briefcase, but what’s inside is a strange, intricate network of clockwork and mirrors and slender strips of brass that unfold upward with a gentle creaking sound. It looks a little bit like the interior of a typewriter — lots of thin strips of metal and ribbons of black silk. It must have been made by hand. Ash seems awkward and hesitant about using the device, and she spends a long time adjusting various gears and runners, carefully encouraging different bits of the device to rest in their proper places. At one point she takes out a small bottle of oil and dabs a few droplets onto a joint that’s refusing to extend properly. Me and Elza don’t say a word. When Ash is done, she steps back, one eye closed as she examines every part of the machine. When she’s satisfied, she reaches into her bag and takes out a large piece of black cloth.

The finished device is difficult to describe, part typewriter and part clockwork and part tower of mirrors. It’s made of old brass and polished wood, and although it was originally compacted flat inside the case, it’s now expanded upward a considerable distance. The device seems to be supporting a periscope of some description, which is aimed downward at an angled wooden surface. There’s a smell of old metal and oil and dust.

“What on earth is that?” Elza asks.

“As I said,” Ash replies, draping her black cloth around the highest part of the periscope, “this is my reading equipment. My great-great-grandfather made this.”

“For reading the Book of Eight?” I say.

“Yes,” Ash says. “It’s for the Book. My family discovered a way of reading it without risking some of the more dangerous side effects. If viewed through eight mirrored wards, the Book has considerably less power over the reader. And the clockwork page-turning mechanism makes entering long sequences quicker and less exhausting.”

She gestures at the typewriter part of the device. I see that there are eighteen keys: nine white keys with numbers on them, and nine black keys with the numbers inverted. I think I’m beginning to understand.

“So you put the Book of Eight into this thing?”

“Yes,” Ash says in a tone that suggests she’d like to get on with exactly that.

“How does it run?” Elza asks, her earlier hostility fading now that we’re faced with something that interests her.

“Clockwork, with a hint of magic. It draws power from my sigil,” Ash says. “Luke, do you want to open up the Book?”

“All right,” I say. I walk over to my door, take the raincoat off its peg. My dad’s sigil — focus of his, and my, power — is still in the inside pocket. I slip it onto my right ring finger. It feels heavy and cold. I haven’t worn it since last Halloween. I don’t like how it feels, having it back on my finger.

I move over to the desk and, trying not to think about the unusual provenance of the Book’s binding, stroke the green cover with my right hand. The clasps on the cover respond to the sigil’s power at once, snapping open, the Book of Eight rippling and moving, pages turning, coming to rest on a blank double spread in the exact center of the volume. Appearances are deceptive when it comes to this Book: the pages are infinite, and so any given point of the Book is its center. Ash reaches out a trembling hand and turns one of the pages. We’re still in the center of the Book, still on a blank spread.

Ash lets out a long breath.

“This is really it,” she says.

Elza is frowning again. Last time I read the Book of Eight, I was trapped in some kind of trance state for days, and it clearly has had lasting effects on my mind. She’s scared of the Book, for good reasons. I don’t think she even likes to see me in the same room with it. She’s winding and unwinding a strand of hair in her fingers.

Reverently, Ash picks up the Book of Eight and slots it into her reading device. It rests on the wooden lectern in the middle of the machine. Ash then gently arranges various spokes and levers, placing them in between the pages of the Book. There are nine on the left-hand side, nine on the right. When she’s done, they’re slotted in between the pages of the Book, for nine pages on each side. Ash presses the first of the white keys. There’s a smooth mechanical click, and the levers turn the Book’s pages one to the right. She presses a black key, and the pages turn one backward, toward the front cover. Ash grins.

“Still runs like a dream,” she says.

“So you just type?” I ask.

“Yeah,” Ash says. “This is how you input sequences. He got the idea when he first saw a typewriter, obviously. He was a clever guy.”

“What are sequences, exactly?” I ask. “I never understood that.”

“Mapped paths through the Book. They’re usually pretty reliable. There are variants, of course, some paths that split into several different useful routes. Or you can just go rogue, hope you find something useful . . . hope the Book doesn’t kill you.”

“The Book can kill you?” Elza asks.

“Oh, easily,” Ash says with a grimace. “It eats your mind. Nasty. My dad lost an aunt that way.”

“That’s rough,” I say uneasily, thinking of the symbols I drew on Monday. Is that what’s happening to me?

“He wasn’t that bothered,” Ash says. “Magnus wasn’t especially sentimental about anyone. I think you’ve met her, actually.”

“We have?”

“She was Horatio’s Oracle. A gift from my father.”

“Oh,” I say. I think of the Oracle: white dress, white veil, bare white feet. I never saw her face, so I have no idea if she resembled Ash.

“Your dad gave his own dead aunt to Luke’s father as a servant? I thought they were enemies,” Elza says.

“They were friends first,” Ash says, in a way that suggests she’d like to move along to another subject.

“How long will this take you?” I ask her.

“I really don’t know. A few hours, maybe. It’s hard to say.”

“So what are you actually looking at?” I ask.

“You view the book through mirrors and treated panes of glass.” Ash gestures at the viewer. “You put your head under the cloth and peer into the viewing pane.”

“And you’ve never done this before?” Elza asks.

“No,” Ash says. “I know the theory, though.”

“What if something goes wrong?” Elza says.

“Well, then I’m in a lot of trouble. But I’m not doing this for me.”

Elza doesn’t say anything. Ash looks over at me.

“Just do what you need to,” I say. “We’ll be right here.”

“Thanks,” Ash says. She looks scared and excited. She rubs her temples, then sits down at my desk. She drapes the black cloth around her head and stares into the viewing pane. She starts to tap at the keys. I presume she has memorized the sequence she needs. The machine turns the Book’s pages, back and forth, and Ash starts to type faster and faster. Soon her tapping has reached a frantic pace, and when I ask if she’s all right, she doesn’t answer. Elza looks at Ash and shrugs.

“She’s gone,” Elza says.

I sit down on the floor. Elza’s still on my bed. I want to talk, but I don’t know what to say. I don’t know if Ash can still hear us. It’s a creepy situation, being in the room with someone who’s there but not. I think about what Elza went through last year, hiding me in her spare room for three days, not sure if I’d ever snap out of it. When I look over at her, I know that she’s remembering those days, too. Despite our argument, I can see she wants me closer. I sit up next to her on the bed, and her hand intertwines with mine.

Ash ends up reading the Book of Eight for just under two hours, nowhere close to my record. The noise of typing suddenly stops, and she sits bolt upright, throwing the black cloth off her head.

“Are you all right?” I ask. I’m doing homework; Elza is reading a paperback.

Ash’s eyes are wild, and her pale face is tinged with green.

“What happened?”

“Ash —” Elza says.

Ash tries to talk, then gulps and crams one hand over her mouth. She pushes past me and rushes out of the room. I follow her, not sure what’s going on, and hear her retching in the bathroom. I press my head against the door.

“Ash! Are you all right?”

I hear her spluttering. Wet sounds.

“Ash?”

“I’m fine,” she says, muffled.

“Do you need some air?”

“That might be good,” she says.

Elza is at the doorway to my room, her eyes narrowed.

“What’s up with her?” Elza asks.

“I don’t know,” I say, then, “Ash, are you really all right?”

Ash unlocks the door. She’s dabbing at her mouth with toilet paper. She gives us a sheepish smile.

“Interesting book,” she says lightly.

“What happened?”

“I just came out of it funny,” Ash says, without meeting our eyes. “It’s no big deal.”

“If you’re sure.”

“Did you get what you needed?” Elza asks.

“I did.”

Ash doesn’t seem like she’s about to say anything else. There’s an awkward pause. What exactly did she see in the Book? She’s holding something back; anyone can see that.

“So what do you have to do?”

“Let’s go and get some air,” Ash says. “I could do with a look at the sky.”

“All right,” I say. “Sure.”

Me and Ash go downstairs. Elza stays behind to hide the reading machine and Book, in case Mum pokes her head in. Ash doesn’t say a word to me, keeps mouthing something to herself, under her breath. I get Ham’s leash and fasten him up, and then we set off into the backyard. It’s getting dark now, with just a slim band of navy blue left at the horizon. The clouds have melted away. Overhead I can see a thin scattering of stars, the hard glint of satellites.

When we reach the stone wall, I stop to wait for Elza. Ash leans on the wall, looking out over the fields at the inky black bulk of the hills and forest beyond them. I’ve got some treats for Ham in a zipped pocket of my coat, but he can smell them and keeps nosing at that side of my body, trying to nibble his way through. I fend him off as best I can.

“This is a nice place,” Ash says, gesturing back at my house.

“It is,” I say.

“You should see our house in Marin sometime,” Ash says. “We’re right by the ocean. It’s gorgeous. The sunsets in California are unbelievable.”

“Right,” I say, unsure if this is a serious invitation or just one of those things people say to pass the time. I still don’t quite know how to feel about Ash. I look at the house. I can see Mum, lit up in the kitchen window, making herself some dinner. Her face looks open and calm, and I feel glad. I’m happy with how much better she’s doing these days.

Elza comes into the kitchen. I watch them talk for a moment while Elza puts her boots on. Mum laughs, soundlessly, behind glass. I’m struck, in the way you sometimes are by truths that are blindingly obvious, by just how much I love both of them.

Elza opens the back door, briefly a silhouette against the warm white light of the laundry room, and then she’s an indistinct black shape in the garden, a shadow making its way among other shadows. As she gets closer, I see her face and hands, the glim of a lighter flame. She has to try a couple of times, cupping her cigarette with maternal hands, before she can get it lit.

I turn back toward the field and see the Widow is standing close to us, just beyond the protective range of the hazel charms. She’s still and calm, looking at me and Ash with her oil-black eyes, spear protruding from her chest. Her white gown doesn’t so much as ruffle in the wind.

Elza stands next to me. “So that’s Ash’s ghost?” she asks me.

“This is my retainer,” Ash says to Elza. “She is bound as the Widow.” Ash raises her voice, gestures at the spirit. “This is Elza Moss,” she says. “She and Luke are friends to us.”

“I am glad to meet you, Elza Moss,” the Widow says, betraying no pleasure whatsoever with her face or voice.

“Likewise,” Elza says with a thin smile.

“I wanted us all here,” Ash says.

“So what did the Book say?” I ask.

Ash looks back at my house. I’ve let Ham off the leash, and he’s snuffling at a tree by the garden shed. Ash fiddles with her nose ring. Her white clothes catch the light coming from my kitchen, and she looks spectral and strange, almost like a spirit herself. She runs a hand through her old-woman hair.

“There is a way I can heal Ilana’s wound,” she says. “I need both of you to help me.”

“Both of us?” I ask.

Elza says nothing. Her cigarette flares in the dark.

“How much do you know about demons?” Ash asks me.

“I know they’re bad news,” I reply.

“Luke’s dad had one,” Elza says. “We both had some run-ins with it. It nearly killed me a couple of times. I guess you could say I’m not a fan.”

“I’ve met it, too,” Ash says. “The Fury. ‘A shadow, with the aspect of a wrathful beast.’”

“I know the Fury was the spirit that hurt Ilana,” I say.

“It cut part of her soul away and ate it,” Ash says. Her face is creased, and I know she’s remembering that night again.

“Sorry,” Elza says.

“What happens to spirits who’ve been eaten by a demon?” Ash asks us.

I look at the dark garden, the house, the stars. I still have trouble believing what’s happening to me sometimes. What happens to spirits who’ve been eaten by a demon? It’s like someone coming up to you and asking what flavor of sky is your favorite. The question makes no sense.

“I don’t know,” I say, but my mind runs backward through time to the night when I stood on a distant gray shore and spoke to the Devil and my father. I remember the Vassal vanishing into the Fury’s white-hot gullet. I remember asking the Devil about the Vassal, my only loyal servant, and what the Devil told me in response. He compared the Vassal to clay being baked into a pot. The process of being fired, in the kiln, has changed it forever.

“They become something else,” I say. “The demon . . . it doesn’t just look like a furnace. It is one. They turn spirits into something different.”

“Yes,” Ash says.

“So the demon eats them,” Elza says, “and then what?”

“It consumes them. They become part of the demon’s spirit flesh. All the sin and greed and guilt, the lust and anger and envy of the spirit, it all becomes part of the demon. Makes it bigger.”

“So they’re gone?” I ask.

“Not quite,” Ash says. “Not entirely. See, everyone — every human being — has a part of them that’s good. That’s worth something. Some have a small part. In some people it’s nearly invisible, the size of a grain of sand. But everyone has it, and demons can’t feed on that part of a ghost. They can’t digest it. So it sits inside them. It collects. The goodness, the virtue of these spirits, it just sits there and builds up over the centuries.”

“Like a pearl,” Elza says.

“Just like a pearl,” Ash says, nodding. “It’s a kind of spirit pearl, I suppose, made up of the best parts of every person the demon ever ate. It’s more than a pearl. It’s the most fantastic object in creation, according to people who’ve seen one. It’s called the nonpareil.”

“The none-parry-what?” I ask.

“Nonpareil,” Elza says. “It’s a French word. It means ‘without equal.’”

“Sorry I spoke,” I mutter. How does she always know this stuff?

“And if we get this nonpareil,” Elza continues, “you can fix your sister? Ilana?”

“Yes,” Ash says. “The Widow and I have suspected for years that this would be the method. And now I know for certain. I know the rituals and incantations that will make it possible. But I need your help.”

“To do what?” Elza asks.

Ash swallows. “To resurrect my sister, it is not enough that we obtain a nonpareil, and trust me when I say that would be hard enough. We need the exact nonpareil that her spirit has become part of. We must hunt down your father’s demon, the Fury, and remove the nonpareil from its body.”

I somehow knew this was coming. I knew and didn’t know. I close my eyes, remember the Fury: the eighth and greatest of my father’s servants, a towering black shadow with infernal hollows for eyes. A mouth like a volcanic rift. Hands like tormented roots dipped in tar. I can’t imagine a more dangerous spirit to pit ourselves against.

“How?” I ask.

“The Fury was yours,” Ash says in a low voice. “It was part of your Host, Luke. The Fury was bound to you, and although you broke the binding, a trace of the bond remains still.”

Ham is rooting in the compost heap. He’s a dim gray shape in the darkness.

“There is a rite,” Ash continues, “the Rite of Return. If you perform this rite at a passing place, you may summon any of your freed servants. It is your privilege as their old master. They must attend to you, if they are able. The demon will answer to you. We can call it up from the darkness where it lives and bind it, and then we can kill it.”

“No,” Elza says.

“Elza —” I begin.

“No,” she says louder, turning to Ash. “Are you crazy? No. Absolutely not. Luke said you could read the Book of Eight, and you have. You know what you need to know. We’re done.”

“I was afraid you might feel this way,” Ash says.

“That thing nearly killed both of us,” Elza snaps. “It nearly killed me twice. It did kill Luke. It went inside his mother and made her stab him to death. It’s a monster. It’s a living black cloud of misery and rage. You have no idea what the two of us went through, what Luke had to do to get rid of this thing. You want to invite it back to Dunbarrow? Give it a one-way ticket into Liveside? Are you serious?”

“Yes,” Ash says coldly. “I’m serious.”

“Do you understand what that demon is capable of? Do you —”

“Yes!” Ash screams. “Yes! I do! I was six years old! It ate my family! It ate my sister! It’s a monster! I feel sick just thinking about it, and I’m still prepared to face it again!”

The girls are face-to-face. Ash, a head shorter than Elza, still looks ready to tear her apart. Ham is hiding behind the shed, peering around the corner at us. I see that the Widow has her hand on the shaft of her spear, although what she intends to do with it, I don’t know. Ash is trembling.

“I know what I’m asking,” she hisses, staring Elza right in the eye. “I know.”

“Then you’ll know why we can’t possibly help you,” Elza snaps.

“You have to.”

“Why?” I ask. “I’m with Elza. I don’t want to see that thing ever again. If you want to kill it, you summon it. I don’t see why I have to help you.”

Ash’s face is tense, unhappy. I look her in the eye.

“I’m sorry,” I say gently, “but what you’re asking is too much. I can’t do this.”

“I see,” she says, looking from Elza to me and back again. “I see.”

“Summon it, cut it open, do whatever you want,” Elza says. “Just not here. Not around us.”

“How many demons do you imagine there are?” Ash asks me.

“I don’t know,” I reply.

“There is one for every page in the Book of Eight, or so they say. There’s an infinite number of demons. How easily do you think I would find the demon that carries Ilana’s spirit in its belly?”

“I don’t see how —”

“It could take more years than our universe has existed for,” Ash says to me. “If you perform the Rite of Return at a passing place, your demon will return to you. The demon bound as Horatio’s Fury. The one we want. It will take you moments. You’ll save Ilana’s life, and mine. And you won’t help me?”

“The risk —” Elza begins.

“My sister will die. There’s nothing I wouldn’t risk to save her. Nothing.” Ash seems close to tears. She composes herself. “Still, I see you won’t help me without there being something in it for you.”

“That’s not what we’re saying,” I tell her.

“No, no, no,” Ash says. “You clearly want something out of this for yourself, so . . . how does a hundred thousand pounds sound? Each.”

“Well . . .” I say.

“No,” Elza says.

“Hey,” I say to her, “can’t we talk about this? A hundred grand each —”

“No, Luke. I’m not letting that thing back into Liveside. No way. Not for a hundred million.”

“All right,” I say, seeing the look in Elza’s eyes. “No deal, Ash. Sorry.”

Ash sighs. She shakes her head slowly, like she’s embarrassed it came to this.

“You’ve been having dreams, haven’t you?” she asks me. “Sigils, stars, magic circles? I saw you writing on the board the first day we met. The same thing happened to my great-aunt. Before she died.”

“What are you saying?” I ask.

“Your mind is going,” Ash says. Her gray eyes bore into me. “Day by day. Hour by hour. The Book of Eight is inside you, and it’s eating you alive. You’re going to go mad and die, Luke Manchett. I know this for sure.”

“What . . . ?” Elza says.

I look up at the sky. Try to breathe. My legs are shaking.

“Of course, it doesn’t have to happen like that,” Ash says.

“You can help me?” I ask.

“Oh, so now we’re talking about helping people?” she sneers.

“How can you help him?” Elza asks her.

Ash doesn’t reply. Instead she turns to the Widow and makes a motion with her left hand. The ghost reaches inside her white robe and draws out a dim object. She holds it out for us to see. I lean over the wall, squint in the darkness. The Widow is holding a cup made from gray stone. It’s an old cup, the kind of thing you’d probably call a goblet or chalice.

“Water from the River Lethe,” the Widow pronounces.

“The what, now?” I ask.

“It’s one of the rivers that flow through the underworld,” Ash says. “The River of Oblivion. The waters help the dead who drink there forget their lives.”

“So how does that help us?” Elza asks her.

“When used on living beings, the water can have milder effects,” Ash says. “How do you think I could just move into Holiday’s house?”

“Their memories,” I say. “They remember inviting you . . . but it never happened.”

“As I said,” Ash replies, “I have my ways.”

“And this helps Luke how?” Elza asks.

“If Luke summons his Fury back into the living world, I’ll give him a drink from the chalice. With the Widow’s guidance and the Lethe’s water combined, I know that the Book of Eight’s pages can be forgotten. He’ll have his mind back.” Ash fiddles with her nose ring again. “I was going to do this for you anyway, once we’d gotten hold of the nonpareil, but since you won’t help me willingly, I’m making this my price.”

“So you —” I begin.

“Your life for my sister’s life,” Ash says. “That’s the deal. Take it or leave it.”

I look up at the stars, the bright sliver of moon. I close my eyes, and maybe it’s just because Ash was scaring me, but I find I can see the contents of the Book crawling over the insides of my eyelids: thin jagged lines, crescent moons and eight-pointed stars, magic circles and sigils and diagrams of stranger shapes I can’t even name. I try to will them away, but they flare even brighter. I imagine them like locusts, swarming through my synapses, devouring the words and images and the memories I keep there. I want them out of me.

I open my eyes. I can still see the symbols, faintly, swimming in the darkness. They blend with the night sky, monstrous constellations, flaring and dancing in the spaces between the stars. The moon itself seems branded with a vast sigil, a symbol of power, blaring out across the universe. I shake my head and they’re gone.

“I’ll do it,” I say.

Elza doesn’t say anything.

“I need both of you,” Ash says.

“Why?” Elza snaps. “What could I possibly do to help you?”

“I need you to kill the demon,” Ash says to her.

“What on earth are you talking about?”

Ash slowly reaches into her white jacket and takes out a knife. Clearly she was never as defenseless as she made out to be. I should have patted her down or something before I invited her inside. She lets the weapon balance on her right hand, holds it out so we can see it. I move closer.

The knife isn’t made of metal. The blade is only a few inches long, made from strange white stone, and the hilt is silver. I can see symbols, runes of some kind, cut into the pommel. I rest my hand on the knife’s blade. It’s smooth and cool.

“What is this?” I ask Ash.

“An heirloom,” she replies. “It’s an old witch blade. It’s made from one of my ancestors.”

“Why are you showing us this?” Elza asks.

“The knife was carved from a necromancer’s thigh bone. It was made by the Daughters of Lilith to destroy demons. In the hands of someone with Lilith’s blood, it will kill the Fury and cut out the nonpareil.”

“What are you talking about now?” Elza asks her. She sounds almost panicked.

“You have her blood,” the Widow says.

“Who? Lilith? She’s a myth,” Elza says.

“She lived and breathed,” the Widow says. “Her blood is in your veins.”

“Did I just miss something?” I ask them.

“Lilith was the first witch,” Ash says. “Adam’s first wife as well, if you believe that part of the story. Which I don’t.”

“You said yourself,” I remind Elza, “when we first met. You said there might be witch blood in your family.”

“I said there might be,” she says, voice trembling. “I wasn’t sure. Besides . . . Lilith. It’s like saying you’re descended from King Arthur or something.” She takes a final drag on her cigarette and drops the butt into the long grass, grinding it out with her boot. “You’re absolutely certain about this?” she asks Ash.

“The Widow is,” Ash says. “She felt it in you.”

“The line is weak,” the Widow says. “Her blood is thin within you. Such is the way now. But Lilith’s daughter you remain. This knife will know your touch.”

I’m remembering other things about Elza, too. The way the Shepherd called her witchlet. I never asked him exactly what he meant by it.

“And she was real?” Elza’s asking them.

“Real as you or me,” Ash replies. “So. Will you help us, Lilith’s daughter?”

“If you’ll save Luke,” Elza says, “I’ll do it.”

“When we have the nonpareil, I will give Luke a draft of the Lethe’s waters. The pages of the Book will be forgotten. I swear.”

“I swear it, too” comes the Widow’s cold voice.

“And we can trust you?” Elza asks them.

Ash holds out the knife to her, hilt first. Elza reaches out and takes the silver handle. She raises the witch blade up to her face, turning it over in the moonlight, frowning down at the markings carved into the bone.

“I’m defenseless,” Ash says in a whisper. She tilts her head up to the night sky, exposing her neck. “I left my guard outside this house. I’ve given you my only weapon. Either you trust me, or you can open my throat right now.”

Elza snorts.

“Kill me, then,” Ash suddenly screams. “Do it! Either help me or kill me!”

We both take a step back, scared, even though Elza has the knife. Ham starts barking.

“Ash, my mum’ll hear us —” I say.

“I’m not going to murder someone in Luke’s yard,” Elza says.

Ash’s face is horrible.

“We want to help you,” I say. “We really do.”

Elza, still pointing the knife at Ash, gives me a look.

Ash calms as quickly as she did last night when I was trapped in the mirror, but what I saw in her face was real desperation and terror. This seems like her last chance.

Ham butts at my thigh.

“It’s all right,” I tell him.

I notice that Mum is still looking at us through the kitchen window. I don’t think she can see the knife, but it’s probably worth playing it safe.

“Let’s go inside,” I say. “And keep calm.”

We work out the rest of the details back up in my room. The Rite of Return isn’t linked to any particular day or lunar phase, so we agree to perform it tomorrow night. We end up agreeing that we’ll keep the witch blade, and Ash can keep the Book of Eight — which Elza had already packed up inside the reading machine, folded away into a compartment within the wooden case — until tomorrow night, as a gesture of mutual trust. I’m hesitant, but Elza seems remarkably relaxed about the exchange. Maybe she’s hoping Ash really will steal the Book, so there’ll be no chance of me using it again.

It’s past ten o’clock when Ash finally leaves. Mum’s gone to bed. I watch from the end of our driveway as Ash recedes into the darkened street, a small white figure, walking silently into the shadows beneath the trees. Wind rustles their branches. A cloud covers the moon.

After Ash is gone, I lie with Elza on the beanbag chair in my bedroom. There’s a DVD playing, but we’re barely watching it. Ham lies at our feet. It’s harder to feel angry with each other now that we know what we have to do. Elza’s head rests on my shoulder. Her finger traces infinity signs on the back of my hand. The witch blade lies on the floor beside me.

“Are you afraid?” Elza asks.

“Now, is that any way for a Daughter of Lilith to be talking?”

“Don’t call me that,” she says, with the first smile I’ve seen out of her in a while. I press on with the joke, trying to feed my anxiety into it.

“I’m not sure if I can keep dating you now. You’ve got distinguished blood.”

“Yeah, you’re right. You’re only a necromancer, Luke? I don’t think so.”

“Maybe I need to date someone from my world. A lady necromancer. A beautiful lady necromancer, with beautiful white hair —”

“Oh, just stop it!” Elza’s laughing now. “She’s not even that good-looking! Her face is, like, completely flat, and those gray eyes are just spooky.”

“I don’t think jealousy is very becoming to a Daughter of Lilith.”

“Luke, I will slap you! I’m serious! Stop calling me that!”

“A million apologies, my dark lady —”

“I hate you,” she says, still grinning. “Honestly. It’s so embarrassing. Daughter of Lilith . . . It’s, like, a great name for an all-girl metal band or something. I can just imagine it embroidered on a denim vest. . . . But OK, seriously, are you afraid?”

“Of the Fury?”

“Of Ash.”

“I don’t know,” I say. “I don’t think she wants to hurt us.”

“No,” Elza says. “But I think she would if she had to.”

I think back to Ilana’s bedside. The way Ash’s face looked when she sat there with her sister. I remember Ash breathing out white light, her twin drinking it into herself.

“She’s got her reasons,” I say.

“People die,” Elza says. “You need to let go of them. They move on to other places.”

“So you think she should let her sister go?”

“Maybe.”

“I don’t think she can.”

“I mean, what we’re going to do? This is madness. Summoning Horatio’s demon back from Deadside? I’m supposed to cut it open? Take the most perfect object in creation out of its belly? It’s insane. What she’s asking of us is beyond crazy.”

“I don’t want to go mad and die, Elza. I don’t think we have a lot of choice.”

“Can we not . . .” Elza starts to say something, then bites it back.

“Can we not what?”

“Is there some other way we could get hold of that chalice? Do we have to help her?”

“You think we should steal it from the Widow? Do we even know if that’s possible?”

“I mean, we can just borrow — if all you need is a draft . . .”

“I don’t think so, Elza.”

She sighs, tugs at her hair.

“I don’t see how we could,” I continue. “I mean, could we steal that spear from her? Isn’t it, like, part of her, somehow? And it wouldn’t be right.”

“No,” Elza’s saying. “I was thinking the same thing.”

“So tomorrow night, then,” I say. “Devil’s Footsteps. We follow Ash’s plan.”

“Seems like it.”

“I don’t see what else we can do,” I reply.

“Ash must really love Ilana,” Elza says.

Ham grumbles and turns over in his sleep. I look out the window at the dark sky. The moon looks back at me, bright and white.

“If I died, Luke . . .” Elza’s saying.

“If you what?”

“If I died before you,” she says again, talking slow and low, like she’s half asleep, “I wouldn’t want you messing around with stuff like this. Just let me go.”

She nestles closer against me.

“Elza . . . why are you saying this?”

“I just . . . I hate seeing Ash trying to tear the world apart to bring someone back to her. It’s not . . . healthy. You can see it in her. She’s too hungry. She wants to put the world back to how it was before. And she can’t. It’s not possible.”

“Neither of us is going to die,” I say. “Not for a long time yet.”

“Of course not,” she says.

We watch the DVD.

“But if,” Elza says again, later. “If I do. Just let me go. Do you promise?”

“This is getting kind of intense, Elza. Can we, like, drop it?”

“Sorry,” she says. “Being around Ash puts me in a funny mood.”

We lie together on the beanbag, Elza’s breath tickling down my neck, and somewhere along the line we fall asleep.