His ancestors, Fox thought. Giles Dent, Ann Hawkins, and the sons they’d made together. “And they haven’t panned out, I know. We’ve all talked about this.”

“But I think-I feel-it’s one of the keys. They’re your ancestors, yours, Cal’s, Gage’s. Where they were born may matter, and more since we have some of Ann’s journals, we’re all agreed there must be others. And the others may explain more about her sons’ father. About Giles Dent. What was he, Fox? A man, a witch, a good demon, if there are such things? How did he trap what called itself Lazarus Twisse from that night in sixteen fifty-two until the night the three of you-”

“Let it out,” Fox finished, and Layla shook her head again.

“You were meant to-that much we agree on, too. It was part of Dent’s plan or his spell. But we don’t seem to know any more than we did two weeks ago. We’re stalled.”

“Maybe Twisse isn’t the only one who needs to recharge. We hurt it,” he repeated. “We’ve never been able to do that before. We scared it. ” And the memory of that was enough to turn his gilded brown eyes cool with satisfaction. “Every seven years all we’ve been able to do is try to get people out of the way, to mop up the mess afterward. Now we know we can hurt it.”

“Hurting it isn’t enough.”

“No, it’s not.” If they were stalled, he admitted, part of the reason was his fault. He’d pulled back. He’d made excuses not to push Layla on honing the skill-the one that matched his own-that had been passed down to her.

“What am I thinking now?”

She blinked at him. “Sorry?”

“What am I thinking?” he repeated, and deliberately recited the alphabet in his head.

“I told you before I can’t read minds, and I don’t want-”

“And I told you it’s not exactly like that, but close enough.” He eased a hip onto the corner of his sturdy old desk, and brought their gazes more level. His conservative oxford-cloth shirt was open at the throat, and his bark brown hair waved around his sharp-featured face and brushed the back of his collar. “You can and do get impressions, get a sense, even an image in your head. Try again.”