Magic calls to magic, Jane thought wildly as Charles moved closer to the bed. “Wait a minute,” she pleaded urgently. “Charles, wait. Is it ‘Charles’? ‘Charlie’?” He stared at her, momentarily confused. Whichever. “Just wait a second.”

He shook his head and grabbed her ankle; she instinctively shot her focus out toward the painting again. This time, free from the other witches’ stifling presence, it flew off the wall, but it drooped low before it reached Charles’s meaty shoulder, and ended up bouncing harmlessly off of his leg. In spite of herself, she caught herself admiring the older witches’ skill. How the hell long before their knockout wears off?

Charles wrinkled his nose, then touched her other ankle and squeezed. Hard.

“Stop!” she demanded, cringing from the feel of his meaty fingers on her skin. What now? What now? A wave of panic threatened to overcome her. How could she stop him—and how could she do so quietly enough that Lynne and her drones wouldn’t hear the slam of his body against the wall? If they rushed back into the attic, she’d never get another chance to get away.

And even if she did manage to hit him hard enough to do real damage, she’d still be tied to the bed, with her power coming back in slow dribbles.

Charles’s clammy hand grabbed her big toe and wiggled it back and forth, almost as though he was playing “This Little Piggy.” Jane thrashed her legs, trying to sit up and free herself from the bed. Charles’s smile drooped and he shook his head. He wrapped his fleshy hand around her throat and pinned her back to the bed.

She shuddered violently, and a flash of confused images invaded her mind—a tattered doll with the smiling face half wrenched off, a shattered mirror, a threadbare blanket. Charles’s thoughts.

But his thoughts didn’t feel lustful, as Lynne clearly wanted them to be. They just felt . . . lonely. Jane set her jaw, struggling to take a breath. I’ll have to work with him, she decided. There has to be something in there.

Summoning all her energy, she dove into Charles’s mind. Like Malcolm’s, it offered just a thin skin of passing resistance—but unlike Malcolm’s, it was a jumbled mess.

Charles howled and increased the pressure around Jane’s neck. No, no, no! Jane thought frantically, gasping for air. With her mind’s eye, she grabbed onto one of the memories spinning in Charles’s brain. Miraculously, the movement stopped and a scene blossomed in her mind.

“You’ll be getting a new friend in the house,” Lynne told Charles lovingly, in a distant memory. But before Jane could see more, colors blurred and suddenly a slightly younger Charles was in the attic, pounding on the door and ripping apart the bed as footsteps retreated down the hallway, leaving him all by himself. In the memory, Charles took a tarnished silver object out of his pocket and clutched it in his palm.

Jane fought desperately to take a breath. Still locked inside of Charles’s disordered and confused mind, she pushed as hard as she could.

The thought moved.

“You’ll be getting a new friend in the house,” Lynne repeated, more clearly this time. “Do you understand what I mean by ‘friend’?”

Charles’s eyes widened. For a moment, he loosened his grip on Jane’s neck and stared at her. Jane took a greedy gulp of air.

Charles tried to brush the memory away, but Jane held on for dear life. After a few moments, Charles returned obediently to the memory she held in front of him.

“I’m your brother,” a bored-looking eighteen-year-old Malcolm told Charles, who was still in diapers in spite of looking too old for them. Charles gaped at him, and Malcolm rolled his eyes in annoyance. “Whatever—it’s like having a friend. Except you’re never going to have one of those, so . . . Mom, do I have to? The kid’s a turnip.” Lynne’s response was too soft for Charles to hear, but Malcolm was apparently chastened because he turned back to his little brother. “Look, we’re friends, okay? It means I’ll always be nice to you, and that I’ll look out for you, and that you do the same when you can. I’m leaving tomorrow for school, so it’s not like—” Malcolm glanced to the side where Lynne was presumably standing before going on. “So I’ll be away for a while, but I’ll visit. I’ll be back at Thanks—” Another glance. “Christmas.” He began to turn toward the door, and sadness welled up in Charles. Abruptly, Malcolm turned back, holding out something in his hand. “You could hold on to this for me, until I get back.”

Charles held out his hands eagerly, and Malcolm dropped a silver Yale key chain into them. Charles stared up at him with adoration before leaning forward and sinking his teeth into Malcolm’s leg.

“Ow! Damn it! Mom, would you—” He shook Charles off violently, and the child collapsed on the ground, sobbing. “Oh, for the love of . . . Never mind. I got it.” He bent down to look Charles in the eye, holding him firmly by the shoulders just in case. “We’re friends, remember? That means you never, ever hurt me, and I don’t hurt you, either.”

“You’re hurting me, Charles,” Jane told him firmly, forcing her voice not to tremble. “This hurts.”

Charles backed away, confused, and Jane dug through his mind for what she needed, to drive the point home.

“You’ll be getting a new friend in the house,” Lynne said, showing Charles a snapshot of Jane that Malcolm had taken on one of the narrow back streets of the Marais. She was laughing happily, pale blond hair whipping around in the wind like a flag. They had gone to a museum and then sat for hours in her favorite café with the orange walls, sipping hot chocolate.

“We’re friends, remember?” Malcolm said. “That means you never, ever hurt me, and I don’t hurt you, either.” The key chain spun between them, the silver gleaming.

Charles inhaled deeply, and Jane almost cried with relief when Charles reached into his pocket and pulled out a tarnished Yale key chain. He turned it over and over in his hands.

“We’re friends, Charles, so you won’t hurt me, and that’s good! Because I need you to help me right now. And then we’ll go to my room and you can pick out anything you want, like that key chain, to remember that we’re friends, just like you and Malcolm. Okay?”

He stared at her balefully, and then turned and shuffled toward the door.

“Wait—Charles! Wait!” she squeaked. Charles flinched at the sound of her voice, but he didn’t open the door. “I can’t go anywhere right now; that’s why I need your help. Can you untie these ropes? Otherwise I can’t . . . help you find your present.” She almost said, “Otherwise I can’t leave,” but realized just in time that Charles might not consider that to be as much of a problem as she did. She showed him Malcolm’s key chain again, pushing the memory discreetly away before he bit Malcolm.

Fortunately, Charles seemed to like the present idea because he returned purposefully to the bed. The knots were complicated and extremely tight, but she merged her thoughts with his. Her mind helped direct his, and within minutes, she was rubbing her sore wrists and legs.

“Good,” she breathed, casting her mind toward the locked door. The tumblers felt simple and blissfully loose to her tired magic, turning almost of their own accord, and then she was free. For now, at least.