A warm dampness reached the flesh of Elinor's palm as the words left Morwenna's mouth: I'm bleeding. Impossibly, she jerked her hand back with a start, eyes widening further—they must have looked like saucers by now, Nora thought—as she looked at her mentor with a mixture of surprise, concern, and just a hint of suspicion.

"Merlin's beard!" Nora exclaimed in spite of herself, in spite of the etiquette driven into her from her earliest years, in spite of the respect she bore Mrs. Skeeter—but then, Mrs. Skeeter did not come into the office inexplicably bleeding. No, this was an entirely different creature. "What's happened?!"