Jesse held up a hand, a little frustrated. “Okay, okay, I believe you.” He was beginning to understand why witches made Scarlett a little uneasy. At least with the other Old World creatures, you knew what they wanted and what they could do. He wished Kirsten could just hand over trading cards with all the witches’ stats. “We operate under the conclusion that it’s a golem. But what exactly could you do if you had a golem, the Book of Mirrors, and Lilith’s amulet, all at once?”

“Oh, God.” Kirsten said. “I hadn’t even gotten that far. I have no idea; there are too many variables, and it depends a lot on what kind of witch you are…death magics,” she said suddenly, paling in the midday sun.

“What?”

“A golem to be your henchman, and possibly take the lightning strike if something goes wrong. The Transruah, which collects the energy of life.” Jesse got the feeling Kirsten wasn’t entirely aware of his presence anymore, and fought the urge to hurry her along. “With the right magics, the right specialty, you could live forever, like I said before…kill someone remotely…even bring someone back from the dead…”

“Slow down,” Jesse said, before she could speculate any further. “This is getting too big, and there’s too much we still don’t know about what Olivia and this witch are planning, or when. What do we focus on first?”

“The golem,” Kirsten said immediately. “That’s their muscle. If we could dismantle the golem right away, it would cripple them and make the witch much more hesitant to begin the Transruah spell.”

“Okay, how do we kill the golem?” Jesse asked, feeling like an idiot as the words left his mouth.

He looked across at Kirsten, who was frowning. “I’m not sure…I need to consult some texts. A golem is one of those creatures that has many different legends and stories. Most of it is folklore, some of it is truth.”

Jesse couldn’t resist. “You mean like witches?”

She smiled. “Touché.” The smile faded from her face as quickly as it came, and she gasped with a sudden realization.

“Kirsten?”

“It’s tonight,” she said solemnly, turning in her seat to face him. “Whatever Olivia and her witch are doing, it’s going to happen tonight.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s the winter solstice,” she said, as if that explained everything.

“The longest night of the year, right? What does that have to do with anything?”

Kirsten gave him an incredulous look. “You don’t…the solstice is a holy night for many religions and pagan rituals. I usually have a big party for all the witches, sort of like a multi-holiday party. I canceled this year because of Denise and Erin.”

What did a canceled party have to do with the bad guys’ plan? “Does that really matter for Olivia and her partner?”

“It could,” Kirsten said, excitement in her voice. “The solstice has particular relevance for Lilith, and for the connection between life and death, though I don’t know all of the specifics. Jewish magic has never been a specialty of mine. But if I were summoning power for a big spell, using Lilith’s amulet, involving the dead, and I didn’t have a coven to back me up…yes, this is the night I’d do it.”

Jesse tried to follow this line of thought. “You’re saying it’ll make the witch even more powerful?”

“Yes,” she said simply.

“Can you narrow down the time frame any, based on those rituals?”

Kirsten chewed on her lower lip as she considered his question. “If she were worried about us finding her, she’d go a little early, like ten o’clock, to throw us off. But I’m guessing this witch wants every bit of power she can grab. She’ll cast at midnight.”

Jesse checked the dashboard clock. It was barely noon. “So we’ve got twelve hours.” He restarted the car and turned it back toward the freeway. “Does knowing it’s a golem help us find the witch who made it?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” she said distractedly. “Animation magic is a very unique specialty, and animating and controlling a golem would require an enormous amount of power. I’m not even certain that I could do it. I certainly don’t see any of my witches having that kind of…muscle.”

She sounded so trusting when she talked about her witches, and Jesse raised his eyebrows. “Would you necessarily know?”

Kirsten snapped to attention, looking across the seat at him. “A very good question. A few weeks ago I would have said yes, of course, I know all my witches. But now…” She turned up her palms in a helpless gesture. “I don’t know. If one of them really wished to, I suppose she could be hiding her level of power from me.”

They drove in silence for a few minutes. Jesse was trying to process the new information. This golem thing sounded like a cop’s worst nightmare. Even assuming Kirsten could figure out how to kill it, they had to find it first. And if they couldn’t find Olivia, and they had no way of figuring out which of Kirsten’s witches was secretly helping her…“Scarlett,” Jesse said aloud.

“What?”

“Scarlett can gauge power.” He took his eyes off the traffic long enough to meet Kirsten’s. “She told me once she gets a sense of how powerful the vampires and werewolves are, when they come into her…aura, or whatever. I asked her about you guys”—Kirsten gave a short nod, understanding that he meant the witches—“and she said…how did she put it? That you all have a low-level buzz when you’re not trying to use magic, and when you do use it the buzz flares up. She said your buzz is stronger because you’re more powerful than the other witches she’s met.”