"And I saw they had a copy of our same book," Helen says. "Poems and Rhymes from Around the World."

These other people kept it open to the same page it was the night their child died. The book, the bedding in the crib, they were trying to keep everything the same.

"Of course it was the same page as our book," Helen says.

At home John Boyle was drinking a lot of beer every night. He said he didn't want to have another child because he didn't trust her. If she didn't know what she'd done wrong, it was too much of a risk.

With my hand on her heated leather seats, it feels as if I'm touching another person.

Driving through Colorado, Kansas, and Missouri, she says, "The other mother in the trailer park, one day there was a yard sale at their place. All their baby things, all folded in piles on the lawn, marked a quarter apiece. There was the book, and I bought it." Helen says, "I asked the man inside why Cindy was selling everything, and he just shrugged."

According to county medical records, Cynthia Moore drank liquid drain cleaner and died of esophageal hemorrhaging and asphyxiation three months after her child had died of no apparent cause.

"John was worried about germs so he'd burned all of Patrick's things," she says. "I bought the book of poems for ten cents. I remember it was a beautiful day outside."

Police records show three more domestic disturbance calls to lot 175 at the Buena Noche Mobile Home Park. A week after Cynthia Moore's suicide, John Boyle was found dead of no apparent cause. According to the county, his high blood alcohol concentration might've caused sleep apnea. Another likely cause was positional asphyxiation. He may have been so drunk that he fell unconscious in a position that kept him from breathing. Either way, there were no marks on the body. There was no apparent cause of death on the death certificate.

Driving through Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio, Helen says, "Killing John wasn't anything I did on purpose." She says, "I was just curious."

The same as me and Duncan.

"I was just testing a theory," she says. "John kept saying that Patrick's ghost was with us. And I kept telling him that Patrick was still alive in the hospital."

Twenty years later, baby Patrick's still in the hospital, she says. Crazy as this sounds, I don't say anything. How a baby must look after twenty years in a coma or on life support or whatever, I can't imagine.

Picture Oyster on a feeding tube and a catheter for most of his life.

There are worse things you can do to the people you love than kill them.

In the backseat, Mona sits up and stretches her arms. She says, "In ancient Greece, people wrote their strongest curses with the nails from shipwrecks." She says, "Sailors who died at sea weren't given a proper funeral. The Greeks knew that dead people who aren't buried are the most restless and destructive spirits." And Helen says, "Shut up."

Driving through West Virginia, Pennsylvania, and New York, Helen says, "I hate people who claim they can see ghosts." She says, "There are no ghosts. When you die, you're dead. There's no afterlife. People who claim they can see ghosts are just looking for attention. People who believe in reincarnation are just postponing their lives."

She smiles. "Fortunately for me," she says, "I've found a way to punish those people and make a great deal of money."

Her cell phone rings.

She says, "If you don't believe me about Patrick, I can show you this month's hospital bill."

Her phone rings again.

We're driving across Vermont when she says this. She says part of it while we're crossing Louisiana in the dark, then Arkansas and Mississippi. All those little eastern states, some nights, we'd cross two or three.

Flipping her phone open, she says, "This is Helen." She rolls her eyes at me and says, "An invisible baby sealed inside your bedroom wall? And it cries all night? Really?"

Other parts of this story, I didn't know until we got home and I did some research.

Pressing the phone against her chest, Helen tells me, "Everything I'm telling you is strictly off the record." She says, "Until we find the Book of Shadows, we can't change what's happened. Using a spell from that book, I'll make sure Patrick makes a full recovery."

Chapter 22

We're driving through the Midwest with the radio on some AM station, and a man's voice says how Dr. Sara Lowenstein was a beacon of hope and morality in the wasteland of modern life. Dr. Sara was a noble, hard-line moralist who refused to accept anything but steadfast righteous conduct. She was a bastion of upright standards, a lamp that shone its light to reveal the evil of this world. Dr. Sara, the man says, will always be in our hearts and souls because her own soul was so strong and so un——

The voice stops.

And Mona hits the back of the front seat, hits right behind my kidneys, and says, "Not again." She says, "Quit venting your personal issues on innocent people."

And I say for her to stop accusing. Maybe it's just sunspots.

These talk-oholics. These listen-ophobics.

The culling song's spun through my head so fast I didn't even notice. I was half asleep. It's that far out of control. I can kill in my sleep.

After a few miles of silence, what radio journalists call dead air, another man's voice comes on the radio, saying how Dr. Sara Lowenstein was the moral yardstick against which millions of radio listeners measured their own lives. She was the flaming sword of God, sent down to route the misdeeds and evildoers from the temple of——

And this new man's voice cuts off.

Mona hits the back of my seat, hard, saying, "That's not funny. Those radio preachers are real people!"

And I say, I didn't do anything.

And Helen and Oyster giggle.

Mona crosses her arms over her chest and throws herself back against the rear seat. She says, "You have no respect. None. This is a million years of power you're screwing around with."

Mona puts both hands against Oyster and shoves him away, hard, so he hits the door. She says, "You, too." She says, "A radio personality is just as important as a cow or a pig."

Now dance music comes on the radio. Helen's cell phone starts to ring, and she flips it open and presses it into her hair. She nods at the radio and mouths the words Turn it down.

Into the phone, she says, "Yes." She says, "Uh-huh, yes, I know who he is. Tell me where he's at right now, as close as you can pinpoint it."

I turn down the radio.

Helen listens and says, "No." She says, "I want a seventy-five-carat fancy-cut blue-white diamond. Call Mr. Drescher in Geneva, he knows the exact one I want."

Mona pulls her knapsack up from the floor of the backseat, and she takes out a pack of colored felt-tip pens and a thick book, bound in dark green brocade. She opens the book across her lap and starts scribbling in it with a blue pen. She caps the blue pen and starts with a yellow one.

And Helen says, "How much security doesn't matter. It'll be done inside the hour." She flips the phone shut and drops it on the seat beside her.

On the front seat, between us, is her daily planner, and she flips it open and writes a name and today's date inside.

The book in Mona's lap is her Mirror Book. All real witches, she says, keep Mirror Books. It's a kind of diary and cookbook where you collect what you learn about magic and rituals.

"For instance," she says, reading from her Mirror Book, "Democritus says that burning the head of a chameleon on an oak fire will cause a thunderstorm."

She leans forward and says right into my ear, "You know, Democritus," she says, "like in the inventor of democracy."

And I'm counting 1, counting 2, counting 3 ...

To shut someone up, Mona says, to make them stop talking, take a fish and sew its mouth shut.