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in Boston, but I can’t be sure of much beyond that. The truth is, I’m not even sure it was real.”
    She frowned. “I don’t understand.”
    “I might have dreamt it. It felt real enough, but I can’t think of anyone in this city with the strength or skill needed to cast such a spell.”
    “You said last night that there was a man in the tavern. A conjurer.”
    “I don’t think it was him,” Ethan said. He stood again and reached for his shirt. “But I should go. Something about this isn’t right.” He wanted to know more about the bespectacled man, and eventually he would speak with Janna. She might not have been responsible for the spell that woke him, but at least she would be able to tell him whether or not he had imagined it.
    He finished dressing and leaned over to kiss Kannice.
    “A spell as big as what you felt,” she whispered. “Could you have cast it?”
    Ethan hesitated, nodded. “Aye. But only by taking a life.”
    She didn’t blanch, or give any other indication that his answer had scared her. She merely said, “Watch yourself,” and reached up to touch his cheek.
    He wrapped his hand around hers for a moment. “Always.”
    He left her room, descended the stairs, and walked out of the Dowser into the street. The sun still hung low in the east, but the sky above was cloudless and a deep shade of azure. Vapor from his breath billowed into the morning air and was swept away by a cool breeze. A perfect autumn morning. No doubt October would bring gray skies and cold rains. But for today, at least, September maintained its gentle hold on the province.
    Ethan set out toward Cornhill and the South End, where he leased a room from Henry Dall, a cooper. He had food there and he liked to check in with Henry periodically, just to let the old man know that he was well. Henry might have been his landlord, but he treated Ethan as he would a son. Knowing that Ethan was a thieftaker, he worried when he didn’t hear from him for more than a day or two.
    As Ethan walked toward his home, he considered again Kannice’s question and his answer to it.
    The spells cast by conjurers fell into three broad categories. Elemental spells were by far the simplest, and also the least powerful. Using one of the basic elements—air, water, earth, or fire—a conjurer could summon phantom sounds or visual illusions to confuse a foe or deceive the unsuspecting. When Ethan’s mother first began to teach him and his sisters how to conjure, these were the spells she showed them.
    Living spells were more potent and more difficult to cast. As the name implied, a living spell drew its power from some part of a living thing: blood or flesh, hair, feathers, or fish scales, grass, leaves, or tree bark … Such spellmaking went far beyond mere illusion. Using living spells, a conjurer could heal with blood, as Ethan had done the night before, or he could could kill with it. A powerful conjurer might raise a wind or a storm; he might conjure fire or draw water from the earth.
    And yet, as powerful as living spells could be, they were nothing compared to killing spells. These conjurings required the taking of a life, and there were almost no limits to what they could do. A conjurer who was willing to kill for his spellmaking could reduce Boston to a pile of rubble or boil away the waters of Boston Harbor. He could rob others of their free will and force them to do his bidding, no matter how heinous.
    In all his years, Ethan had cast only one killing spell, and though he’d had little choice at the time, he was still haunted by the memory. But he had encountered conjurers who had no qualms about taking lives in order to enhance their power. The spell he had felt this morning was almost certainly a killing spell. That would explain not only the potency of the casting, but also the unsettled feeling that had plagued him since he woke.
    And once more, a voice in his head echoed, If it was real.
    Breakfast could wait, and so could