“You selfish bitch,” she managed, jaw still gripped in rigor mortis.

Natalie stood, shocked, silent and shaking, as she regarded the mud-covered figure in her dining room. Charlize had returned to her.

She took two quick steps forward, tears in her eyes and joy in her heart; Charlize backed away.

“Why did you do this to me?” Charlize choked. “Why did you bring me back?”

“I wasn’t ready, Charlie,” Natalie whimpered. “I couldn’t—”

“But I was!” Charlie reached for the steak knife laid out beside Natalie’s dinner. She tightened her death-stiff fingers around the handle. “I was done! At peace. Resting.”

“Charlie, please.” Natalie’s tears soured, no longer revelling in a miracle but drowning in shame. “I couldn’t live with you gone.”

“That’s why you’ve always been the selfish one.”

Charlie took the blade to her throat and slashed.

Loretta Lynch spends her mornings grinding bones and it’s not to make her bread. She’s not a giant, or a witch, or any other of those silly creatures you might have read about in your fairy tales.

Loretta Lynch is an alchemist, and she knows how to live forever.

It hadn’t been easy, finding the recipe. A life time of work, quite literally. She’d poisoned herself once or twice and quit much more often. But just days before her fifty-third birthday, Loretta tried one last formula. She clutched the phial to her chest and said a prayer to the nameless gods.

Down her throat it went.

That was many years ago now. I was but a boy then, you see. And you were likely not even born.

Yes, you can buy her panacea, if she happens to like your face. But visit her store with care, good child: she charges more than coin.