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It wasn’t Gillian.

“Morgan?” he said before he thought, and she turned on him, with blood in her veins and fire in her eyes, and he understood nothing as he was levitated off the ground by a mere gesture.

“Where is she?” she demanded, her voice echoing louder than the flames.

“You’re human,” Kit said stupidly, because it was all he could think of. “How?”

Because that wasn’t a new body that she had found for herself. It was the same dark hair whipping in the wind, the same features, the same everything that the ghost had had. It looked like the spirit had somehow been made flesh.

And then he understood, before she even replied, and screamed a warning to those behind him.

“Don’t hurt her! She’s back in her body—”

“Not for long,” the dhampir’s voice said, and a smear of blue passed Kit too fast for him to stop her.

But not too fast for someone else. The girl suddenly froze, so abruptly that she toppled over, writhing and cursing, against the ground, fighting the control that someone was exerting. Kit didn’t have to wait long to see who.

Mircea appeared, walking carefully into the glade, his eyes as bright as the fire ringing them and his focus on Morgan. “That was you on London Bridge,” he said. “You were in your own body there, as well.”

“How clever,” she sneered. “When the truth is right in front of you!”

“And that was your coven we fought, then?”

“The same that you’ll be facing now, should you defy me. I have them looking for Gillian, but they haven’t found her.” She looked back at Kit. “Where is she?”

“I don’t know—”

“Liar! You went after her—”

“And lost her in the chaos! You’ve seen it out there. It’s madness!”

The witch did not appear to be convinced, but Mircea dragged her attention back to him before she could respond, speaking as calmly as if they weren’t in a haunted forest that was busily burning down.

“You took a new form in 1595, for you had no choice,” he said. “You were dead by then. But in this era, you still live. You therefore possessed your own body—”

“Why do you care, vampire? Care about your friend, who is going to die if he doesn’t give me what I want!”

“—in order to command your coven to search for Mistress Gillian. But why? Why do you need her so badly? You have the ring—”

But the golden tongued master had made a mistake, for that question seemed to infuriate Morgan. She snarled, and her power tightened around Kit, to the point that he would have screamed if his chest wasn’t currently being crushed. And her eyes flashed blue fire.

“The ring was useless, as you well know!” she threw it on the ground where it lay, gleaming softly. “But you needn’t have bothered switching it out, vampire. The real one would have done little more.

“I spent so much time breaking witches out of Circle confinement, to try to find someone who knew where the four rings were. Only to have one finally tell me the truth—that it didn’t matter. They never used them!”

Mircea looked up at the boiling cauldron above them, which seemed to argue against that assertion. “They never used them?”

“No. Perhaps they couldn’t find the damned things, either! So many of the coven leaders dead already, and half the time taken unawares; others in hiding. Who knows where the rings ended up?

“I couldn’t find them all, and without them, my plan would never work—”

“And what was your plan?” Mircea asked. “You stole the Ring of Water before the Armada came anywhere near these shores. If you expected to take over the Mothers’ spell, why deliberately weaken it by removing a quarter of its power?”

“I wasn’t taking it over,” Morgan spat. “The Mothers needed all of the rings to call the storm, but I had extra power from my ally; I could do it alone. And I didn’t need the covens here to protect me—I had a demon! The idea was to use the rings to leash the power of all the English covens, putting it under my command—”

“And use their power to obliterate the Circle.”

“Yes! But without sacrificing the covens to do it! But I needed the rings, or so I thought, only to find out that the Mothers used something else!”