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They built Maren a nicer version. Turned down the bed. Folded the towels into squares.

Kill it, my wolf says, which is not useful, because you can’t kill a house.

"Gage."

"I'm listening."

"You've washed that cup twice."

"It was dirty twice."

She looks straight at the lie and then she's decided I get to keep one.

We test it again in the yard at ten, because I'm not walking into that mansion tonight without having tried.

The salt ring from a week ago is still burned into the dirt by the fire pit. She stands at the edge of it and puts her hand out.

"Anything?"

"No."

"Try lower."

"It's not a height problem." Her jaw sets. “There's nothing to reach."

I move around behind her shoulder. I can't feel a seam any more than she can. But I watched her open the front step ward six days ago and I remember where her hand was when it happened, down and slightly right of where she keeps putting it, the way a person reaches for a light switch in a house they've just moved into.

"Four inches lower. Left."

She moves.

"Stop."

"Is that it?"

"That's where your hand was Thursday."

She stands there with her fingers spread in the cold air, reaching for anything she can. Still nothing.

"This is going to be humiliating in front of thirty witches," she says.

"You won't be reaching in front of thirty witches. You'll be reaching in front of me."

She turns her head. Doesn't say anything. Goes back to it.

We get nothing all morning. What we get instead is a system, which is worse and better. She points. I tell her when she's a foot wide. She can't feel the correction, so she just trusts where I say to move and holds and waits.

It's the least I've ever been able to do for her and it's the most useful I've been in six days.

Sid watches the whole thing from the woodpile.

She's doing it wrong.

"She's doing it blind."

Those are frequently the same.

They come at two.