For seven days, Cordelia, Hester, Richard, Imogene, and Willard pore over Evermore's library searching for a way to break Evangeline's sorcery. Cordelia is exhausted but, with her mother away, she is freed from constant fear and finds the household united by shared work. She briefly wonders about Penelope's ghost but pushes the thought aside.

On the eighth day, Imogene discovers a promising tome titled On Reagents, Their Uses, and the Alchemical Work That May Be Done with Them, which contains a ritual for 'the breaking of sorcerous powers' using water, wine, and salt. The ritual requires four people, sigils, a chalk circle drawn around the target inside a triangle, and the invocation of each reagent by drinking it. The text claims it strips a sorcerer of magic permanently.

The group debates feasibility. Imogene bluntly suggests that, once stripped of magic, Evangeline could simply be killed; Hester warns that a sorcerer's death unleashes chaos, so the magic must be broken first. Cordelia, swallowing her guilt, agrees her mother cannot be allowed to continue harming people. Imogene proposes drugging Evangeline with laudanum to get her into the circle.

Cordelia suggests testing the ritual on Falada first. They watch the white horse roam the grounds, ringed constantly by Hester's vigilant geese. They plan to chalk the circle around him and invoke the reagents by drinking them, as Cordelia hesitantly recalls (without explaining) from Penelope's ghost. Cordelia warns that because Falada is Evangeline's familiar, any attempt will alert her mother. Hester resolves that if the ritual fails, they will kill Falada outright, and Imogene grimly notes that beheading kills nearly anything.