Jane’s iPhone informed her that Harris had called her seven times in twelve hours. The first time was to make sure that she was still alive, the second to tell her that Maeve had woken up briefly, the third was to remind her that she should probably get rid of her phone if she was on the run, and the last four just said, “Call me. Please.” When the phone rang again for the eighth time, Jane decided to bite the bullet and answered.

Which was how, that Saturday, Harris came to be seated next to her at a triangular table at Book and Bell, Dee’s favorite occult bookstore-slash-reading room on the Lower East Side. The furniture looked like leftovers from a public school, and the worn red carpet had a similar surplus feel. But the walls were covered with books, and the owner (all flowing skirts and frizzy blond hair) had discreetly returned to the front room, leaving them alone.

“Okay,” Dee announced in the tone of someone formally calling a meeting to order. “Now this place is pretty good, but I’ve also brought some resources from home.” She tapped a heavy-looking military-style backpack beside her wooden chair. Then she turned to Jane expectantly, and Harris followed suit.

After a moment’s uncomfortable silence, Jane slammed her unevenly glazed mug of tea on the scarred table. “You two are supposed to help me. If I knew where to start I wouldn’t be so pathetically screwed right now.”

Dee smirked. “Well, we could start by voting in a club president, but I’m afraid Jane just shot herself in the foot. It’d be down to the two of us, Harris, and I’d hate to see you get beat by a girl.”

“Touché,” he said with a sly grin of his own.

“Anyway . . .” Jane prompted. “What did you bring?”

Dee kicked open her backpack and turned it upside down.

“You lugged all that from Brooklyn?” Harris asked in an impressed tone. Dee smiled modestly. Neither of her friends had been thrilled about the idea of bringing the other into Jane’s quest to learn magic, but it seemed they were quickly warming up to each other.

Jane rolled her eyes and rifled through the pile. There were a few dusty, cloth-covered books, an assortment of crystals in muted amber and rose, a vial of lime-green powder, a bronze pendant, and a silver knife so slim it had to be a letter-opener. “I guess we could all just take a book and start reading,” she suggested.

“Don’t be a wuss,” Dee complained. “I’ve been waiting twenty years to meet an actual witch. Now that I’ve got one—well, one-and-a-half,” she amended with an apologetic nod to Harris, “I want to play!”

Jane frowned. They had tried to access her magic for over an hour after the botched Wicca meeting earlier that week, but without success. Jane knew she needed to learn about her magic and she was willing to try, but there was such a thing as too much pressure. Dee seemed to read her look because she playfully poked Harris in the side. He jumped. “We have three people now,” Dee reminded Jane pointedly. “That’s a magic number, a Circle. Like the seven of us back at my place, before you sent them all running for the hills, at least. And one of us is even packing a little extra power this time.”

One of them was back at your place, too, Jane thought, remembering Brooke’s wide-eyed stare when she had realized that Jane’s mind was touching hers. But Jane had kept that theory private, even from Dee. No one deserved to be outed as a witch if they didn’t choose to be.

Jane obediently helped Dee to arrange the letter opener—“the athame,” Dee corrected piously—and a couple of the crystals on the table between them. Dee scattered some of the green powder around it, giving a husky laugh when Harris sneezed.

“Is it okay that we’re doing this here?” Jane asked uncertainly.

“I’m friends with the owner,” Dee replied. “She doesn’t care if I make a mess, as long as I come armed with baked goods.”

Jane sat sharply upright. “You have cookies? Here?”

“They will be your reward, if you cooperate.” Dee looked so smug she was practically purring. “Everybody hold hands,” she ordered serenely. “Jane’s about to knock over that blue crystal in the middle.”

Jane glowered at the blackmail, but she obediently reached out her hands. Dee’s was warm and calloused, Harris’s cool and smooth. She ignored the little spark that skittered down her spine when he pressed his palm to hers. She closed her eyes and tried to quiet her mind. The shop smelled like green tea and patchouli, and a dog was yapping its little head off a few floors above them.

“Every inch of your body holds magic.” Dee’s husky voice was hypnotic. “Begin at your feet, and look for it.”

Maybe when all this is over and I’m tucked away on some private island, I’ll get a dog, Jane thought to the pink darkness behind her eyelids. Maybe a boxer or one of those wiener-looking ones. A dachshund?

“Focus. Feel the power in your feet.”

A spark shot through her left ankle. Soft as cat whiskers, it twanged and purred and tickled her Achilles tendon. Or maybe a Doberman or a rottweiler, in case Lynne ever comes looking for me. Do they make Doberweilers?

“Focus, Jane. Keep your mind on your power.”

Jane sighed, but concentrated on emptying her mind. She tried to put her thoughts on a cloud and let them float away.

“Good. Now, gather it up and let it flow to your knees and spine,” Dee intoned.

Jane’s spinal column shivered with electricity.

“Okay, now lift it gently and concentrate every scrap of power behind your eyes.”

Suddenly the warmth spreading through her body took flight and nestled behind Jane’s eyelids, which vibrated as if her skin had been hit with thousands of tiny shocks.

“Ow!” Jane’s eyes flew open. “That hurt!”

Dee grinned. “Small price to pay for having ‘the power.’ ”

Jane scooped up a book and threatened to throw it at her.

“Hold hands!” Dee reminded her insistently, and Jane was pretty sure that Harris was trying not to laugh. Another jolt ran through her stomach, but this one had nothing to do with magic. Were Dee and Harris . . . flirting?

Dee pushed a strand of dark hair behind her ear. “I want you to gather your power again and focus every prickle of magic on moving the crystal off the pile.”

Jane nodded and fixed the blue stone with a ferocious stare. Her eyes narrowed and she refused to blink, even though the dusty air was making her eyes water.

Nothing happened.

She sighed and slumped forward. Bet Lynne could do it on the first try.

Harris squeezed her hand reassuringly. “You can do it.”

“Copper Top is right. I know you have it in you.” Dee centered the crystal once more.

“Thanks, Elvira,” Harris answered sardonically.

Irritated, Jane stiffened her spine back upright. Focusing intently, she gathered the magic again, clenching her jaw grimly as she fought to hold on to the electricity. It instantly slipped through her fingers. She blew through her lips and stared balefully at Dee. “Okay, I suck at this.”

“You don’t suck at this,” Harris supplied helpfully, stretching his long legs out to the side of his undersized chair. “You just suck at focusing.”

Jane stuck her tongue out at him.

“Try again,” he urged gently, and she felt herself begin to glow under his sparkling green eyes. Stop that, she told herself firmly, but her self didn’t seem to be listening.

“You’ve mentioned that things around you tend to break when you’re upset. Tap into that feeling, if you can,” Dee suggested. “What makes you mad?”

Lynne.

Jane’s fists automatically clenched and her lips curved into a frown. Crossing her legs, Jane took a deep breath and thought about everything she hated about her soon-to-be mother-in-law. Lynne picking that stupid pouf dress. Lynne cutting those annoying egg-white rectangles. Lynne making her son seduce me. Lynne running Maeve down.

Suddenly, all Jane could hear was the pounding of her heart, and all she could see was her targeted crystal. It was blue, but one corner was filmier than the others, so milky as to be almost white. There was a flaw running most of the way through the middle, and a few smaller ones at the poles. Electricity crackled in Jane’s ears and she sent sparking mental feelers out toward the crystal to study it further, to bring it closer to her eyes.

The crystal shuddered.

Then it began to swim and waver, and it seemed as though sparks were inside the crystal and it was glowing as if it were on fire. Then dark spots filled Jane’s eyes. She fell limply out of her chair, her head striking the thin industrial carpet.

When she came to, Harris and Dee were leaning over her, grinning from ear to ear.

“I fainted?” she asked, but her leaden tongue turned it into something more like “Ah fayagh?” She grimaced.

“Not before you moved the thing,” Harris told her proudly, fanning her with one of Dee’s paperbacks.

She glanced at Dee for confirmation. Dee, her mouth so wide it looked as though her smile would split her face, stuffed a cookie into Jane’s mouth, which Jane took as a yes.

In the midst of their gloating, Jane caught sight of the book that Harris was using to fan her face. She tried to grab it out of the air, but her reflexes sucked, and instead she wound up brushing her hand lightly across Harris’s smooth chest. He didn’t seem to mind, and a small part of her liked that fact. Down, girl. She refocused her attention on the title waving back and forth in front of her face: A True History of Witches and Magick, by Rosalie Goddard.

“This,” she whispered, tapping the book lightly with two fingers. She was happy that her mouth seemed to be a little more obedient now, but there was no need to push her luck with unnecessary words. “We start here.”

Dee snapped into action as crisply as a soldier, all traces of laughter and cookie bribes vanishing instantly. She slid the book into Jane’s bulky purse, leaving Harris clutching empty air in confusion. “Love that one,” she chirped. “Misty—that’s the owner—has Goddard’s diaries in the back, so I’ll take those. And Harris, you need to start talking to your family, any time you don’t need to be with your sister. Jane, get me a list of Goddard’s sources to cross-check as soon as you can, but in the meantime your main responsibility is to practice your little blond head off. Okay. Everybody know their jobs?”

The three of them glanced around at each other, their eyes grave and their jaws set determinedly. If this was a war, they had just become an army.