"All right, tell me what I need to know."

"Rowena keeps my body locked down on this bed, and when I send my spirit wandering, she shadows me. Wherever I roam, there she is, blocking me from this, blocking me from that. I try to watch her closely, but I didn't even know you existed until the succubus brought you to the house and she started raising the dead."

"Why me?" Quentin asked. "Do you know why?"

"All I can do is guess. Everything depends on how much she knows. Rowena was such a rebellious child. She hated me as soon as she was old enough to pluck memories out of my mind. She didn't understand what happened, and she wouldn't let me explain. She told me my mind was too loathsome for her ever to want to enter it again."

Daughters entering their mothers' minds. "What are you people?"

"Oh, Quentin, how dim are you really? We're witches. The real ones, not the silly ignorant women who prance naked and try to turn our affliction into a mystical religion. It's not something you can choose. Most people have only the faintest touch of the power. A glimmer now and then, that's all they get of the other side. But we grow up looking at the spirit as well as the body. We can see, we can touch everyone, both spirit and body. We hear words spoken aloud, but at the same time we can also hear the thoughts behind them. We can walk on our legs, but we can also send our spark out flying. We can see the living, but we can also see the dead, and when we know where they're anchored we can call them and make them come to us."

Quentin thought back to Sunday school, to the one story from the Bible that had a witch in it. The witch of Endor.

"That's right," said Mrs. Tyler. "It always bothers Christians and Jews that their scripture has such a tale in it. How could a woman who had chosen evil have the power to call a great prophet back from the dead? So they say it was fakery. Or it was Satan, pretending to be Samuel. But we know what she did and how she did it. All the dead are within reach. Saul knew Samuel. He must have had some relic of the old prophet—some of his hair. Maybe he even dug into his grave and took a piece of him. Brought it to the witch, and she used it to call him, and Samuel spoke to Saul through her. Maybe Saul was like you—he could see a little, if he really tried. It happened then, and that's how it happens now. That's how she called Jude and poor Simon and Stephen and foolish old Minerva."

"Dug into their graves?"

"Maybe not. They were all tied to the house, so she might not have needed relics. But why do you think Christians have always made such a big deal about relics of the saints? The power to call back their spirits—it was forbidden for them to use it, but they also coveted it. If you had a genuine piece of the finger of St. Peter, you could call him to you. There's nothing silly about it."

"So how did I call my sister Lizzy? I didn't have any part of her."

Mrs. Tyler was astonished. "You called back your sister? You called the dead yourself? When?"

"When I was a boy. The age your granddaughter is now. My sister was on the edge of death and I wasn't letting them take her organs for transplant. I sat alone beside her hospital bed, the way I'm sitting here beside you, and she came to me. Or at least she spoke inside my head. And told me that it was all right to let her go."

"You don't have to tell me the whole story. I see it now. Oh, my. Oh, no."

"What?"

"She hid that from me, the little spider. It changes everything."

"Changes what?"

"She knows more than I thought. She's not ignorant, she's just stupider than I ever imagined."

"What is it that she knows?"

"You aren't in thrall. She doesn't own you. Oh, why didn't I see it? Of course she sent a succubus instead of just enthralling you."

"Trust me, I was enthralled."

"On the contrary, you were enchanted, but not enthralled. You're still free."

"I guess."

"She thinks she can control the beast through you. Because you're so strong. And free. If you're enthralled when you let the beast out, it won't pay attention to you, it will go straight for her. But if you're free when it touches you, then it will want you. She's counting on your strength to draw it to you. It flows to strength. She thinks that when it's all inside you, taking possession of your body, then she can enthrall you and she'll control it."

"Control what?"

"The beast that took my little boy."

Quentin remembered the story Bolt had told him. "Rowena told Chief Bolt that you murdered your child before he turned two."

"I know she thinks that's what she saw in my memory, but it was not my boy that I killed. She didn't understand."

"Didn't understand what?"

"It had taken control of little Paul before his first birthday. Paul was beautiful and brilliant. He was going to be a glorious child of light. So few boys have the power, but he was the bright and shining one. But the beast saw him and came and stole his body. It took me a while to realize it. I thought at first that maybe some witch had enthralled my child, and I tried to find the link and break it. But the link was inside him. The thing owned his body, and finally I realized that it wasn't my Paul anymore, it was the beast using his stolen body. Paul was gone and I would never get him back. When the beast takes your body, it's his. There's no remnant of you left."

Now Quentin understood. "So Rowena did see you kill the boy."

"She saw my memory of cutting the living heart out of the beast. But she was a child. Of course she thought it was my little Paul. To try to stop me, the beast made his body cry and beg in Paul's little baby language. 'No, Mommy, don't hurt me, Mommy.' Rowena saw that. But I had seen the truth. He did things that none of us can do. He moved things with his mind. He destroyed things. We found them: a fly embedded in the midst of a pane of glass; locks opening without keys—ah, you've seen evidence of that? It was the beast."

"What's this beast? You mean the book of Revelation?"

"I mean the dragon. There might be many of them, but I've never heard of more than one upon the earth at the same time. It comes to a body that began human, but once the beast has it, the shape changes to whatever the beast desires. It came to Adolf Hitler when he was trying to paint in England, and it owned him from then on until it had no power left except to poison the body it dwelt in. It was in the ancient conquerors who built up piles of skulls and spread fear through the world. It loves death. It also hungers for strength. The stronger the human whose body it steals, the stronger the beast is until the human body dies."

"So it can be killed."

"How many suffer and die before it falls? Yes, it can be killed—eventually. And in this age, who is pure enough to kill it?"

"Pure? Like St. George?" Quentin couldn't help laughing. It was the cliché of romantic stories—slaying the dragon to save the maiden.

"Why do you laugh? Why do you think Rowena chose you?"

"Not because of my purity," said Quentin.

"What do you know about it?" said Mrs. Tyler. "You have to be pure to hold on to any of yourself in its presence. Her plan doesn't work if you're not pure."

Quentin laughed again, only bitterly this time. "She's going to be disappointed."

Mrs. Tyler ignored him. "If she had let me teach her, she would know that you can't control the beast. She must have seen my memory of the powers that Paulie seemed to have. How could she not have understood, if she saw so much?"

"Maybe she didn't believe about the beast," said Quentin.

"She knew the powers she herself had. She knew my memories were true. What other evidence did she need?"