The twins descended on Oona like two hulking monsters.

Deacon launched from Oona’s shoulder, attacked the twin with the mustache, batting at his head and clawing at his face. The second twin came straight at Oona, clearly intent on smashing her skull with his thick club. Oona dove out of the way and the club crashed against the floor, sending the dagger skittering across the ground.

The girls screamed as the first twin (the one Oona thought of as Mr. Mustache) began to swat at the open air, trying to whack Deacon with his club. But the bird was too fast. Deacon clamped hold of the man’s mustache and soared upward. Mr. Mustache’s scream was so high pitched, it might have belonged to one of the girls.

Oona jumped back as thug number two took another swipe at her. The swing missed her by mere inches, crashing instead against the side of the chair where Sanora had been cowering, and sending her flying across the room. A quavery wail escaped her lips as she slammed against the floor and then fell silent.

“You brute!” Oona shouted, snatching up a broken chair leg. “You’d strike a helpless little girl?”

The giant man raised the club, and when Oona brought up the chair leg to protect herself, she stumbled over another bit of broken chair and toppled to the floor. She clamped her eyes shut, thinking that this was it, certain the club’s blow would send the life rushing out of her—but the blow never came.

There was a loud thunk, and the man staggered forward. His massive body spun around and collapsed against a carved-stone bookcase. It took Oona a couple of seconds to realize what had just happened. The thug’s twin, Mr. Mustache, had accidentally clobbered his brother with his own flailing club.

Then came a sharp shriek of pain as Mr. Mustache caught hold of Deacon in one enormous hand and shoved the raven against the wall. He raised the club, clearly meaning to flatten the bird, even if it meant crushing his own hand in the process.

Oona knew instantly what she had to do. She sat up, aimed the chair leg at Mr. Mustache like a rifle, and the words escaped her mouth without her even having to remember them.

“Lux lucis admiratio!”

A blaze of sparkling lights erupted from the end of the broken chair leg, shooting across the room and knocking the club from Mr. Mustache’s thick-fingered hand. His grip weakened, and Deacon fell to the floor with a thump. Mr. Mustache cried out in surprise as a second burst of lights picked him up and hurled him across the room. He slammed against a bookcase and collapsed to the floor, bringing an avalanche of books with him. The starry lights swirled around his head, lingering just long enough to singe the ends of his bushy mustache, and then they disappeared altogether. The man’s eyelids fluttered briefly before sliding closed. He was out cold. Oona dropped the broken chair leg and hurriedly pushed herself to her feet.

“Deacon!” she called, and ran to him. “Deacon, are you all right?” Her voice cracked, and her eyes glistened wetly. She knelt to pick him up. Once he was in her hands, she could just make out his faint breath and the beating of his heart against her palm. His body shuddered, followed by a short cough. One eye opened, peering up at her.

“I’ve been better,” he said, and winced as he moved his leg.

Oona felt all of the breath leave her body in a great sigh of relief. “Oh, Deacon. You had me frightened there for a moment. Are you badly hurt?”

Ruffling his feathers, he said: “I believe I may have injured my hip.”

“Can you move it?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“Then at least it’s not broken.”

“Can’t be sure about that,” he said.

“Oh, you’d know if your hip was broken,” said Katona. “I broke mine once, almost a hundred years ago, and I can assure you, there’s no worse—”

“That’s quite enough!” Deacon shouted. He stretched out his wings before hopping to Oona’s shoulder. She felt him wobble for a moment, but he managed to keep his balance. “I believe we should be more concerned about Miss Crone than my hip,” he said.

Oona glanced across the room to where Sanora lay motionless. Filled with apprehension, Oona hurried to the girl’s side, but even as she knelt, she could see that Sanora was beginning to stir. Oona placed her hand on the young witch’s shoulder, helping her to sit up.

“Are you badly injured?” Oona asked.

Sanora gazed up, her vast eyes blinking dazedly. “I … I think I will be all right. The chair took most of the blow.”

The crumpled remains of the chair lay in a heap near the table, along with the broken chair leg Oona had used to cast her spell of light. What surprised Oona the most was that, when she looked at the splintered piece of wood, she didn’t feel one stitch of guilt. She had used magic, and yet there was no trace of the horrible sense of betrayal she’d felt only the day before when she had unintentionally fixed the broken magnifying glass. This time there had been nothing unintentional about it. This time it had been her choice. Lux lucis admiratio. The Lights of Wonder: the very spell that had gone wrong nearly three years ago beneath the trembling leaves of the fig tree. This time the magic had done precisely what she’d intended. This time it had felt exactly right.

“Can you stand?” Oona asked the witch.

“Think so,” said Sanora, and Oona helped her to her feet. Like Deacon, the girl wobbled slightly, but she appeared less hurt than Oona would have guessed, and the dress was remarkably undamaged.

Mr. Mustache moaned on the floor, and Oona approached him warily. His club lay near his limp hand, half buried beneath a pile of books. Oona kicked it away.

“We should tie these two up before they come to,” she said, and then, remembering that she had dropped the dagger to the floor, she quickly scanned the room. For one panicky instant she did not see it anywhere … but the panic was short-lived and she let out a sigh. There it was, lying on the floor in front of the bookcase filled with newspapers, safely out of everyone’s reach. If any of the witches wanted to get to it, they would need to get past Oona, and presently all the witches were standing near the table, staring at her with a kind of openmouthed wonder.

“What is to be done now?” Deacon asked.

“We must still find my uncle’s true attacker,” Oona said. “Nothing else is more important. Red Martin has disappeared.”

“There’s a tunnel that goes all the way to the hotel,” Sanora explained. “That’s how we get the root. He’s probably halfway back by now.”

Oona frowned. “Well, he is still the legal owner of Pendulum House, and he intends on stopping the pendulum at midnight.” She turned to face the witches. “As it seems that you are all now out of Red Martin’s good favor, I’m afraid your only hope for procuring turlock root for your beauty cream will be from Pendulum House. So I suggest that you all help me in any way possible. We must destroy Red Martin’s legal ownership.”

“Turlock root at Pendulum House?” several of the girls said at once. They looked at one another in surprise.

“Yes. It grows in the inner garden,” Oona said. “But you’ll just have to trust me on that. I’m sure once we have restored the Wizard to his human form, I might be able to convince him to allow you all some reasonable access to the roots.” She walked to the bookcase and stood over the dagger, peering down at its unblemished blade before turning back to face the girls. “But only under the condition that you return the dresses to Madame Iree’s showroom, and admit to having stolen the daggers from the museum.”

Oona slid one of the yellowed newspapers from the shelf—an old edition of the Dark Street Tribune—and knelt down. Moving as delicately as possible, she slid the edge of the paper beneath the dagger, rolled it around both handle and blade, creating a thick tube, and then picked it up. The paper was just thick enough so that Oona could hold the dagger without getting burned. She could still feel the closeness of the dagger, but the paper had reduced the fiery sensation to a kind of tingling heat in her hand.

Deacon half whispered in Oona’s ear: “It’s a good thing that Red Martin did not pay too close attention to the precise wording of the dagger’s enchantment.”

“What do you mean, Deacon?” she asked.

“Well, according to the enchantment,” he whispered, “once Red Martin had brought the dagger into the room, he could have still used it, regardless of who actually held it.”

“You mean that even though he no longer had the dagger on him, he could have still used it to kill me?” Oona said, her heart seeming to skip a beat.

“Yes … so long as you were no more than ten paces away, and he could see you, then he could still have used the enchantment to throw it with his mind,” Deacon replied.

For a moment Oona didn’t know what to say. It seemed that she had been very lucky indeed. She had a sudden fear that Red Martin might suddenly realize his mistake and step back into the room. But from the way he had turned and run, she suspected that Red Martin was currently far away from Witch Hill. And then a new thought struck her so forcefully she nearly dropped the paper. “Of course!” she whispered.

“What is it?” Deacon asked, his voice brimming with concern.

“It’s … It’s … of course, Deacon! Why did I not see it before?” The newspaper continued to tingle in her hand like fiery nerves.

“See what?” Deacon implored, but she did not answer. Instead, she retrieved Sanora’s flimsy black dress from where she had tossed it to the ground and handed it to the young witch.

“Sanora, I suggest you return to your own dress quickly,” she said. “We need to go.”

“Where to?” Deacon asked.

“First things first,” Oona replied. “We will return this dagger to the museum. And then we must find the inspector and gather all the other applicants. I know who attacked my uncle.”