An Uncertain Magic

Book 2: Green Witch Cycle

by AM Kvita

Genres: Fantasy action & adventure; Contemporary Fantasy; Urban Fantasy

Synopsis

“An impressively assured urban fantasy that packs a paranormal punch!” —Publisher’s Weekly on An Unlikely Coven (starred review)

In An Uncertain Magic, the second book in AM Kvita’s award-winning Green Witch Cycle, Brooklyn's most chaotic coven has to take on ancient gods (yes, gods) to avoid a magical apocalypse and save the city. No big deal.

Joan Greenwood has been adjusting nicely to her life away from her powerful family of witches. She has an apartment full of friends, her dream job at an architecture firm, and a constant companion in the sentient magic that makes up New York City. For once, everything’s coming up Joan.

Until her best friend gets possessed.

There’s a god wearing his skin, a new cult springing up around him, magic is going haywire, and things go from bad to worse when Joan’s rival-turned-crush Astoria Wardwell arrives from California with the news that her best friend is also possessed. That’s one hell of a coincidence, but the two have to work together to save their best friends before these gods corrupt them. Unless their pesky feelings for each other get in the way.

 

Release date: October 27, 2026

Publisher: Orbit

Print pages: 384

Sample

Unfortunately for Joan, she had never quite mastered the Greenwood sense of self-importance, the one that had endowed generations of her family with an unshakeable aura of confidence.

But two years after breaking from her coven, she had gotten much, much better.

Good enough to stand in this room and irritably think Where is she? instead of vividly imagining what it would be like to blow herself up and take the entire family with her.

No, she was evolved now. Not healed but healing, and that was a good enough reason to be uptown in enemy territory when Grace and Mik were home in Brooklyn having a pizza night.

The other reason was her mother.

Who had abandoned her a few minutes ago.

Joan scanned the room for her.

“Do you think he loves her?” Selene asked, scaring the hell out of her daughter as she slid an arm through Joan’s. Joan rubbed at her chest ineffectively as she tried to calm the thunder of her heart. They stood in the Greenwood Mansion foyer, watching the crowd at Molly’s engagement party mill and chat. Across from them, Merlin was holding court with Janet Proctor at his side. This house looked the same as it always had, the same as it had the night Joan left it for the last time, a duffel bag on her back and her hand in a splint. It looked the way Greenwood tradition dictated it look, even though it had been basically torn to pieces by Fiona. And Joan. And kind of Valeria too.

“Don’t answer that,” Selene said after Joan’s long silence, grabbing a drink from a nearby waiter and downing it. “I’m being inappropriate.”

Did Joan think her recently divorced father loved Janet Proctor, who was definitely still married? No, Joan didn’t think of Merlin as capable of love. Want, maybe. Not love.

“You think they’re…?” Joan couldn’t bring herself to say it.

“They absolutely are,” Selene said with disdain, gaze dissecting Merlin. “He thought I never knew, but I could tell every time. If you know what I mean.”

Ick. And sad! And… “I don’t really want to linger on the fact that he’s been having affairs,” Joan said. “I might, you know, kill him.”

“Get in line,” Selene muttered.

Joan had grown in many ways, but this was one she hadn’t quite mastered yet. How to talk to her mother like they were friends, or equals. When Molly had told Joan their parents were getting divorced a year ago, Joan hadn’t predicted the innocuous text from her mother six months later, asking to meet. To repair whatever bonds still lay between them. Sometimes her mother looked at her and she wanted to crawl out of her skin. Sometimes her mother pulled her into a hug and Joan felt some child version of herself healing. She was in so much therapy for it.

But she liked it, enough that when Selene had asked her to come to Molly’s engagement party with her, Joan had, against all odds, despite Mik’s protests and Grace’s utter confusion, said yes. It was hard for Joan to justify her naive optimism to other people. She’d tried so many times with her roommates, but they only saw what her mother had done wrong. They couldn’t process the way Joan wanted her to do right and be different, the way she craved it and made room for it, just in case. Who wasn’t a little stubborn, even when your friends made you feel adored, in wanting the person who was supposed to love you first, love you the most?

Joan was fairly certain she had her therapist on the brink of running onto some train tracks.

Molly hadn’t expected either of them to attend, not Joan, not Selene, but for Molly—well, Joan felt she’d make a lot of things possible.

For about one hour.

The clock ticked down. Twenty minutes left before her contract ran out and she fled into the night. Whether Selene stayed or went was entirely up to her.

“Where is the waiter?” Selene asked as she twisted around to search the room. There was a small circle of silence around the two of them. Joan was accustomed to being a pariah, but she could tell how much it bothered her mother by how tight her grip was on Joan’s arm.

Joan tugged her toward the grand maroon drapes hiding the balcony doors. It was safer to be out of the way. “Mom, you don’t want to get drunk.”

“Excuse me, I am not drunk.” Selene leaned heavily on Joan. “I’m tipsy. And my ex is here with his new woman. I’ve always hated Janet, you know. I’m sorry. I know, Jo, not your responsibility.”

Joan really hated hearing her mother apologize. She’d had so many conversations about it with her friends and mental health professionals. She’d longed to hear her mother say sorry for years. Decades. And now it only made Joan sad, and giddy, and lost. Like some fight was over between them, and without it, Selene wasn’t a towering, indomitable figure. She was a woman who had loved a man who wasn’t good for her and become someone she shouldn’t have. Now she had to reassemble her life.

She was graying, new lines pressed into her face.

Joan breathed in. Can you make her immortal until I figure my shit out?

New York skittered up her spine. You are a child.

That, despite everything, reassured Joan.

In the two years that she had been developing her ability to converse with the magic that made up the city, it had gotten easier to reach it. She barely needed to channel to sense its consciousness swooping close to her. It had learned to put up with her inane questions. She had learned to love its many voices and cryptic messages.

“There you two are,” Valeria said, sweeping closer with Ronnie on her arm. The room parted for them, pretending not to watch as the duo stopped in front of Joan and Selene.

Selene straightened. Joan slouched harder.

Ronnie looked at them, something like amusement kindling in her disconcertingly pale eyes. “How much longer on the clock?” she asked.

Valeria sent her a questioning look.

“I have no idea what you mean,” Selene said warmly. “It’s so lovely to see you both. It’s been too long!”

Twenty minutes, Joan mouthed exaggeratedly. What the fuck did she care if they knew? Molly knew—that was what was important. Everyone else here was just… collateral damage.

A smile touched Ronnie’s face. “We should chat, Joan. Sometime soon.”

Yikes. “Oh, I’m good,” Joan blurted out. She couldn’t fathom what this was about, but Joan could count the number of times she’d had one-on-one conversations with Ronnie on one hand. Well, two hands, to be fair. They’d once spent a very memorable Christmas shivering outside together to avoid a holiday party. That was their relationship—finding common ground in avoidance. Ronnie despised the social aspects of being married to Valeria. Joan felt a great affinity toward her in that sense.

Selene nudged Joan in horror. Her mother was still unlearning social grace. Joan gave her as many lessons as she could, but Selene was not a natural. Too much poise.

“She can talk now,” Selene said, offering her child up as a sacrifice, and Joan remembered all the reasons she hadn’t gotten along with her mother in a very long time.

“Not here,” Valeria said warningly. Which was in itself terrifying, because if Valeria knew what this was about, it probably had something to do with the family, which meant Joan would contort herself into all sorts of new shapes to get out of it. She hadn’t so much as spent a holiday with them in two years. This engagement party was the first time she’d been part of the family since she left.

“Not here,” Ronnie agreed. “I have a few more things to arrange. I will call you.”

Joan needed to smash her phone.

“I am trying to help you,” Ronnie reassured. “Ask your city.”

Ask your city blah, blah, blah—Joan should bite her. Can you smite her?

New York didn’t respond to that, shifting uneasily.

Huh. You don’t like her?

New York flared briefly, conversation stuttering in the room as the witches felt magic shift. Ronnie’s gaze was unflinching.

She is very old, New York said. Older than us.

Witches lived a long time. They did not live to surpass the age of a city that had been founded hundreds of years ago. Joan couldn’t tell if the uneasiness setting up shop in her bones was hers or her city’s.

“Okay,” Joan said, in the same way you’d meet up with an old coworker and they’d go, How have you been! We should catch up! and you’d say, Okay! and simply never follow up on it.

Valeria’s gaze was darting between them. She cleared her throat. “Joan, how’s the new job?”

“Not new,” Joan said, maybe more icily than was necessary. She forced her shoulders to stop hunching so badly. It was wrecking her neck. She’d last seen her aunt five months ago at Molly’s house. Joan was leaving after a weekly dinner; Valeria was coming. They’d exchanged pleasantries, like strangers, on the steps. But it was Valeria who had struck the deal that let Joan exit Manhattan. It was Valeria, Joan knew, who kept Merlin away from her. Molly had made that much clear.

“I started at Wista’s firm over a year ago,” Joan amended. “It’s great. I like her a lot, and the work is good.” And so what if she’d applied to the High Witch of Brooklyn’s architectural studio as a little fuck you to Merlin? So what if Wista Redd had hired her? So what if Joan wasn’t totally convinced it was because of her portfolio and not her name and had suffered immensely from imposter syndrome ever since? She was an artist. She was made to suffer.

“Good,” Valeria said, already distracted by commotion across the room as Merlin’s group of fawning sycophants laughed at something he said.

The awkward silence between them was legendarily bad.

“And the Coven meeting?” Selene tried, fishing around for small talk.

“You know how it is,” Valeria replied, refocusing.

“A nightmare?” Selene supplied.

“That and more.” Valeria reached out and patted Selene’s arm. “You’ll be there?”

Selene sputtered, something Joan had never seen her mother do. “Me?”

“Take this however you will, darling, a reassurance or a curse: Once a Greenwood, always a Greenwood.” Valeria tugged Ronnie on, moving to greet the next set of guests. “You’ll always be the mother of my nieces, whether my brother is legally bound to you or not.”

“Valeria,” Ronnie chided.

Valeria looked at her unhappily. “Fine. Selene, you will always be my friend, whether or not you’re his wife. Call me sometime.”

Ronnie again. “Valeria.”

“I’ll call you,” Valeria said hurriedly. “Fine! Enough of you, woman.” She ushered them away.

Selene and Joan looked at each other, flabbergasted. Joan had never heard Valeria sound so pedestrian. So awkward. So relatable.

Selene blinked some more, mouth hanging slightly open. “But I don’t even want to attend the Coven meeting,” she said, sounding lost. “I always hated it. There are too many people, and we have to spend the entire week subtly insulting each other. And Poppy Wardwell comes and makes me want to kick her in the shins.”

Which meant, of course, that Astoria Wardwell was likely to attend as well. Joan’s heart gave a little pitter-patter. In less than a week, on the fall solstice, witches from across the US would assemble for their annual coven meeting, report in from their states, have little panels. A big magical conference that lasted a week. And New York was hosting.

Which meant, for the first time in two years, Astoria would be returning to the city.

Oh, Wren had invited Joan out to LA a million times. She’d invited all of Joan’s friends, in fact, and they desperately wanted to go. But Joan wasn’t brave enough to face her crush, not when Astoria had somehow become the benchmark Joan measured her dates against.

Astoria’s arms are sexier, she’d think, sitting across from a perfectly nice woman at a restaurant.

Astoria would have been infuriated by that joke, Joan would think sadly as her date giggled at her.

She’s just… funnier, hotter, wittier, more magnetic, more protective and provocative, more everything than you. Joan was ruined for all other women. It was so pathetic, she went back to contemplating the blowing-up plan. She stretched her right hand, the one that got sore still when the humidity was wonky or when magic was doing something weird. Blowing up would be a quick way to go, which was attractive. Joan would rather that than slow torture.

“Do you think I really have to attend?” Selene muttered.

The clock moved. Seven minutes.

That was enough. The slowly increasing rate of her heart made clear an hour was her maximum here. She’d gotten over a bit of her passivity around her family, but she missed it most of the time, because now she was prone to anger and irritability. And that was much harder to control.

“Let’s find the happy couple, I have to say goodbye,” Joan said, and began towing her mother through the crowd toward the last place she’d seen Molly and Nate, all glowing and in love.

They were not there.

“Where the hell…?” Joan muttered, taking a few steps up the stairs to get a better vantage point. Déjà vu hit her like a truck. She’d stood here at Astoria’s welcome party two years ago and spotted her and Wren entering the room.

She shook her head. Stop being pathetic.

New York made its presence known with a brief ruffle of wind through her short hair. It liked when Joan thought about Astoria. Freak.

“I know where they’ll be,” Selene declared, and then it was her turn to drag Joan.

Right into the kitchen.

Waitstaff bustled around the chef’s kitchen, moving things in and out of ovens, washing dishes, plating trays. Humans, witches, vampires, fae, they were all here working their minimum wage jobs. The room was oddly quiet despite the chaos, and it wasn’t hard to spot why.

There were intruders in their space. Not just Joan and Selene.

Molly and Nate were in here, wedged in a back corner, sitting on the ground and eating canapés. They froze when Joan and Selene entered, beelining for them, and Molly frantically attempted to brush crumbs from her chest.

Nate had a hand over his mouth, watching them with wide eyes. Before Joan could even say anything, he spoke.

“I couldn’t listen to Merlin call me son for one more second,” he said. “He won’t stop. I know he’s your dad, but he also keeps calling me Nick, and it’s just to put me in my place.”

“Do you want me to make him hallucinate something really scary?” Selene offered. “Something that’ll make him scream and embarrass himself?” She leaned in conspiratorially, a little swirl of illusion magic around her. “Maybe… pee himself in fear?”

“Mom!” Molly protested.

“What? No one would even know,” Selene said, wiggling her fingers. “I can be very subtle, you know. Once or twice, when I was really very mad at him, I’d make him see an ant crawling on his arm, and he’d slap at it frantically.”

The three of them looked at her in horror. Horror and pride, on Joan’s part at least.

“Only when he had done something very bad,” Selene assured. “Like cheated on me again.”

Joan cleared her throat. “On that note, I think we should stab him. Barring that, my time is up.”

Molly glanced at Nate’s watch. “Oh! It is! Can I go with you? We’re about to do toasts, and I asked everyone to stick to three minutes, but Dad said, ‘It’s not your party. Your aunt is throwing it, isn’t she? She sets the rules.’ And then George told me Dad’s speech is twenty-six minutes. I had to stuff some food in my mouth so I don’t faint halfway through.”

“We have pizza in Brooklyn,” Joan offered, hooking a thumb over her shoulder. Right on cue, her phone buzzed. Her ride was here.

“Fuck yes,” Nate said, levying himself to his feet and then gently helping Molly, planting a kiss on her cheek once she was properly upright.

“I wish,” Molly said. “But… you know.”

Joan did know.

Molly was often pissed off at Merlin. She was mad, and she was hurt, and she was sad, and she was frustrated. But she still thought she needed him. Still loved him or whatever. Still wanted him to be her dad and she his daughter, and to inherit everything he had said she would.

And this world of Greenwoods and mansions and parties and coven meetings, Molly wanted to be in it. Even without her little sister and with her mom halfway out. So she talked shit, and she hid in the kitchen with Nate, but still, her aunt threw her engagement party.

Joan and Molly had waged so many arguments about it, late at night and early in the morning and at midday, tensions always rising. And Joan knew part of the reason it disappointed her so supremely was because if Molly left too, Joan would feel validated. But it mainly enraged her because she understood it. She was long past hoping her father and aunt would love or value her, but she remembered what it had been like to need it.

“I’ll stay,” Selene said, moving to Molly to hold her daughter’s hand and pat it, maybe not even registering the fact that she’d had to let go of Joan to do it. They’d always been closer.

Joan was left alone on her side of the invisible line. One she’d drawn. She stood by it. But it was hard not to feel like she was missing out. She imagined what it would be like to change her mind, go grab her mother’s other hand, and sit through Merlin’s excessively long toast. It was pure fantasy. She’d never be able to overcome her own rising panic to stay and hang on to the fringes of her sister’s life.

Joan swallowed hard. “Well, I love you,” she said. “Both.” Another pause. “All three of you.” Her throat was suspiciously scratchy. “Have fun? Especially you, Nick.”

“We won’t,” Nate assured. He gave her a short one-armed embrace. Molly gave her a bear hug, and Selene, after only a moment’s hesitation, because they were both still unsure what was right and what was wrong between them, gave Joan a hug too.

Joan left the room first. It would have been too sad to trail behind them.

Despite the text she’d received, Joan still had to wait three minutes for her ride to arrive.

She wished she were drunk. But that would have made her soft and squishy prey, and she had wanted to get in and out in her neat hour.

It was nighttime, and mid-September, and lovely outside. She inhaled, deeply, trying to settle the rumbling in her chest, box breathing until the world felt bearable again. Her brain slowed its cataloging of the night, pictures whirring by with less and less velocity, until things clicked back into place.

One moment stuck out, obviously. How old is Ronnie?

New York gave its uncomfortable little shudder again and refused to reply.

What an alarming turn of events.

A sleek black car pulled up in front of her, and she yanked at the door handle obnoxiously until it unlocked, sliding into her seat as CZ grumbled.

“You’re going to hurt her,” he said, petting the wheel.

“How old do you think Ronnie is?” she asked, buckling in.

“That’s a trick question. I’m a gentleman—I’d never guess a woman’s age.”

“I pinky promise not to tell her.”

“Why does it matter?”

New York slid by outside the car, sparkling in the night. CZ had the air conditioner on too high. Joan turned it off and cracked her window to let a thin whistle of air in. “I don’t know yet,” she muttered.

CZ was drumming his fingers on the wheel incessantly.

“You antsy about something?” she asked.

“What?” He looked down at his hands and stilled them. “Oh, I don’t know. Just been feeling a bit wound up lately. The air feels buzzy.”

Buzzy. Everyone around her was being weird. Her mom, her aunt, New York, CZ. Joan was the last bastion of normality in a strange and twisted world.

“Did Wren text?” he asked. “They get here in what, a few days? How are you coping?”

She knew what he was doing—he was small talking to avoid asking her about the engagement party, in case she didn’t want to share. That was fine. Joan didn’t want to share. But the only thing she wanted to talk about less than her family was Astoria.

“Mom’s convinced Dad is shacking up with Janet Proctor,” she said. “The latest in a long string of affairs.”

CZ whistled. “Alright, let’s get into that.”

It was late, so they made their way to Brooklyn within a reasonable time frame, and CZ pulled up at Joan’s apartment building and into his parking space.

“You’re staying over?” Joan asked as they got out.

CZ grunted a yes. Upstairs, Joan unlocked the door and stepped into one of her favorite places on earth.

Mik and Joan had been determined to decorate the apartment as soon as they moved in. They’d spent a lot of time sending online listings to each other, wandering flea markets, and making trips to thrift stores. The result was a brightly colorful, perfectly neat space filled with plants, disco balls, and cat trees.

“Hey!” Mik called from the green velvet couch, barely taking their eyes off the TV screen. In their lap, Joan’s enormous queen of a black cat, Muse, twitched an ear. Grace was next to them, but she looked at the door as they entered and smiled softly. Joan liked to believe it was directed at her, but it was for CZ, and Joan was learning to play second fiddle to him. Even a full year into their relationship. Even though Joan had spent a year before that pushing them toward each other like they were her dolls, yelling KISS! as their little plastic faces collided.

You said you were working on this.

This damn city. You’re not my therapist.

I do not enjoy listening to your pathetic and insecure thoughts.

Well. You’re in the wrong head, then. And she had come from the wrong place to be having this conversation, because being around her mother still fried her nerve endings, and being in that house still dredged the lake of her insecurities.

“Hey, babe, here,” CZ said. That was definitely for Grace; Joan was already turned to the wall, hanging up her keys. A long silence stretched, long enough that she turned in confusion to see what they were all doing behind her back.

Everyone was looking at her expectantly. “I’m babe?” Joan asked in alarm, registering the bright blue gift bag CZ was holding out to her.

“Don’t even do that,” he said. “You’re going to piss me off so badly.”

“You’ve been babe way longer than I have,” Grace added.

“I have two babes,” he said. “Both are very important to me.”

“And I’m just here,” Mik said.

Joan’s shoulders, still carrying the tension from her night, finally settled into place. She accepted the bag, opening it to find a little plush toy inside. A crochet black cat, one that even matched Muse’s ragged ear.

Tears welled up in her eyes.

“Aw, babe,” CZ said, folding her into a hug that smashed KnitMuse into her chest.

“We just wanted you to know we’re proud of you,” Grace said. “Even though Mik and I were against the engagement party and you clearly had a bad time.”

“Grace!” Mik hissed.

Joan wiped her tears on CZ’s shirt and pulled away. “I’m totally normal about this.”

Sure.

CZ made a noise of disgust and disappeared into Joan’s room, clanging around in her drawers to emerge in a shirt she’d stolen from him ages ago. One that was significantly less wet.

“You knew I had that?” she said sheepishly.

“You wear it proudly to brunch, like I’m too dense to realize you’re a thief,” he said. “Thank the gods Grace doesn’t fit into any of my stuff, or I’d be naked on the street.”

Grace wrinkled her nose. “I just don’t think our styles match very well.”

CZ laughed, kicking a cat toy out of the way as he walked over to kiss Grace. Mik groaned when CZ shoved their legs off the couch to sit, and they started arguing about respect and personal space. Joan clutched KnitMuse to her chest, bending down to scratch Real Muse behind the ears as she wandered over with a little mrow.

The apartment was warm and cozy. There was a drawing on the fridge that Joan had done, waiting for her sister at a restaurant. A scribble of an island, lost in the sea, that she’d dreamt of a few times. Mik had written the phone number for the building supervisor on it. Muse’s cat bowl was on the counter, washed and left to dry after someone had fed her dinner. There was pizza in the microwave. Cold, but waiting for her.

She grabbed a slice.

She settled in.

Astoria Wardwell had been remade three times over the course of her life.

In that way, she was like her house, which had been redone in 1929, 1983, and then two years ago when Astoria had acquired the property. This was also Astoria’s third remaking. She had moved fully out of her mother’s house and started to make something that was wholly her own.

Something that she could build, and something that she could ruin.

The throwing knife left her hand and embedded in the stucco of the wall. Astoria was on her back patio, surrounded by an arsenal of weapons: Swords stacked on racks around the garden, shaded from the sun. Crossbows, whips, staffs, and even a scythe she’d purchased once in a fit of greed. Throwing knives tore up the wall. The back of Astoria’s house was full of pockmarks, scuff marks, and jagged holes. She used it as target practice. Often. Anyone who saw it looked on in horror. Astoria often sent Joan pictures of it, just to rile her up into a string of key smashes.

That was always safe territory. A picture, uncaptioned. So much of Astoria felt like it had been reinvented in the time since she’d left New York and Joan Greenwood’s merry band of troublemakers.

A gentle wind was whirling the soft strains of music coming from Astoria’s speakers when her mother stepped out of the tiles imprinted with triple spirals. The Wardwells had an affinity for charms, seals, and wards. They were the last two Wardwells, Astoria and Poppy, though Astoria was vaguely aware of distant cousins who possessed other last names. Poppy, like her mother before her, was Head and High Witch of California and LA, respectively.

Poppy had embedded a portal spell in her daughter’s courtyard so that she could pop over whenever she liked, and she had the right to do so, she insisted, considering she had bought this house for Astoria for quite the pretty penny.

“Story, there’s something we need to check on,” Poppy said, calling her daughter by the nickname Astoria had tried to leave behind when she was six. Poppy sat in one of the polished wood chairs by the outdoor table and scratched Zelda, one of her two greyhounds, behind the ears. Prospero sniffed the bushes.

“Check on?” Astoria said, walking over to yank a knife out of the wall. It was hot out, and she had been at this for an hour. Tiny curls had escaped her braid and were sticking to her temples. She hadn’t slept much; she had been on call until the wee hours of the morning, because Mercury was in retrograde and that always sent the magic world into a fit, despite the fact that research did not indicate a clear connection between celestial bodies and worldwide magic. But if enough people thought it did, then the truth didn’t matter. Chaos reigned.

She had three hours before she was meant to meet Wren for lunch, and she did not feel like going on one of her mother’s errands beforehand.

“It wouldn’t be any fun if I told you, sweetheart,” Poppy said. They shared the same dark hair and middle-brown skin, though Astoria’s father had been half-Mexican and Astoria’s hair was looser than Poppy’s coils, which were currently held back with a multicolored headband.

Poppy wore gold in her ears and on her throat and around her fingers, dripping with the pieces of metal she had charmed: To understand this language or that. To make her quicker on her feet, see better, hear better, anything that would give a leg up to the Head Witch of a faction that specialized in training their witches to patrol and police. California was ordered and neat, and any Others who stepped out of line would face the swift justice of a witch.

Moon Creatures.

Joan and Wren both hated when Astoria called Moon Creatures Others, like her mother.

Astoria threw the knife again, grabbing hold of the air to guide it, letting magic whistle through her hollow body. It hit home perfectly. If she could have scooped out her internal organs, chiseled a path through her bones to let magi. . .