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apprehension. Besim hadn’t thrown a bunk Cassandra. She had been doing bad magic—or at least, he’d think it was bad magic. And if he was right about that …
    She considered her options. She could tell Dag the truth, that she had bewitched someone, and that by “someone” she meant him. That’d be the end of her professional credibility. She and Pap could be horsewhipped out of Lost Pine, or Dag could bring law against her. Baugh’s Patent Magicks were bad for business, but a turn in the county jail would be an awful lot worse.
    Or she could go up to Old China and sort the mess out for herself.
    She walked away quickly, the cheerful notes of “Sweet, Sweet Spring” chasing her into the darkness.

CHAPTER TWO
The Corpse Switch
    Emily walked briskly up to the Old China Mine, jumping from rock to rock along the narrow pony path that wound alongside the darkly rushing You Bet Creek. The night had grown bitterly cold, and patches of snow glowed blue in the moonlight. She pulled her buffalo coat tighter around herself, glad now that she hadn’t put her winter flannels away too soon.
    Besim’s Cassandra puzzled her. How could the Corpse Switch have failed, and what was a blue star doing in a mine? But the part she kept coming back to was the part of least immediate interest: the name Lyakhov. The name seemed so familiar. Could Besim have stumbled across something useful? Something about her mother?
    Of her mother, Emily remembered nothing. It was not that her memories were sketchy or vague—they simply did not exist. She remembered when she’d first come to Pap’s cabin. But before that, nothing. A clear demarcation—a horizon beyond which stretched only shadow.
    All Emily’s efforts to find out more had been thwarted. Her mother had left so little behind. Emily reached up, feeling for her hair sticks, reassuring herself that they were still there.
    She’d made Pap tell her the story a hundred times. How her mother had staggered into Lost Pine on an icy black night twenty years ago, just after the first snows had fallen in the highest passes, frostbit from her toes to her blue fingertips. Five-year-old Emily was clinging to her chest, a man’s woolen coat pulled tight around them both.
    The timber camp workers had gotten her inside, bundled her up in front of a blazing fire. She had made only one impenetrable utterance before losing consciousness:
    “We must get to the Cynic Mirror.”
    Pap had been called. He’d piled counterpanes and quilts over the delirious woman, coaxed powerful herbal tisanes down her throat. He spoke spell-words over her, remonstrated with her departing spirit, but nothing was any use. She died within days.
    Lyakhov. Could it have been her mother’s name? Then that would make her Emily Lyakhov, as Besim had called her. She’d heard names like that, names ending in -itch and -ov, among the thick-bearded Russians who drove cattle through the passes. They sometimes stopped to ask Pap for charms to ward against curses and the evil eye. They always asked for hot tea to drink, and jam to put in it.
    Deep in thought, she hardly noticed when the moon slid behind the clouds and darkness fell like a blanket. Having roamed the mountains most of her life, she had no difficulty keeping to the path, and was not unnerved by the scrapings, squeaks, and hoots that surrounded her. But when there was a huge pop and a flash of dazzling white light, her heart stopped in her chest. She spun, balling her fists.
    “Dag?” she called. “Is that you?”
    “Of course it isn’t.” A man’s voice, irritable. A spare form held up a pine stick that glowed with magical incandescence. “He was asleep in a corner when I left. Your absence took the steam out of him. Make your love spells pretty harsh, don’t you?”
    “Mr. Stanton?” Her voice was high with disbelief, then a ferocious whisper. “What are you talking about? Love spells?”
    “Oh, please. I was riding back from Dutch Flat last night, and I