Ember

**Ember** (Jillian Bach), born **Mary Harden Trent**, is one of the main villainesses of "The Witch in the Wardrobe," the antepenultimate episode of Season 5 of *Bones* (airdate May 6, 2010). A direct descendant of 17th century witch Emily Quimby, she is a member of the Circle of Moonwick Coven, a group of Wiccan white witches whose High Priestess is Rowan.

## Backstory/Heel Turn

Moreover, Cheri Byrd joined the coven under the witch name Zephyra, only for her to be ex-communicated later on after she became a user of black magic motivated by greed and an insatiable thirst for power. Along with trying to curse real estate developer Mario Trivisonno into losing his hair after he tried to strong-arm her into selling her land to him, she was also paid by Murray Hudler to attempt to cast a dark spell on his ex-wife (who left him for their lawyer) using her wedding dress and a strand of his hair; it was to no avail. Additionally, Zephyra robbed the burial plot of Emily, stole her bones, stitched them back together, and hoped to use them to increase her evil power.

Discovering the connection between her and Emily, Ember purchased the bones of a bat—after which she, Rowan, and the rest of the coven performed a ceremony to keep Zephyra's villainy from spreading, with her reaction being to repeatedly curse at them and cast spells. Rye flour was used during the ceremony in question, but unbeknownst to them, it was infected with a fungus that caused LSD-like hallucinations when it was inhaled. When the white witches inhaled said fungus, the ensuing hallucinations caused them to become so paranoid of Zephyra's power that they all stabbed her dead, with the wounds they inflicted being at the precise points of a pentagram; at some point, Ember stuffed the bat bones into her throat.

## Events

Ember's first appearance came when Dr. Temperance Brennan and Seeley Booth watched her and her fellow Wiccans as they performed their Waning Moon ceremony—which had them wearing white robes as they burned a small effigy of Zephyra and sprinkled more rye flour onto their fire as a way of bidding farewell to her corporeal existence. After that, all of the women took their robes off, much to Seeley's surprise. He then talked with Ember and Rowan about the ceremony, who told him about its purpose before the former cited Zephyra's greedy and immoral activities as the reason she was banished from the Circle of Moonwick Coven.

The discoveries of the theft of Emily's bones, the bat bones, and the fact that Emily was Ember's direct ancestor caused Ember herself to be brought in for questioning. Figuring she was close to being caught, the villainous criminal confessed to the purchase of said bat bones but deceptively claimed that she neither hurt Zephyra nor had knowledge of how she had treated Emily's burial plot with disrespect. Even so, this was followed by Ember being officially unveiled as one of the murderers, with the pentagram pattern of Zephyra's wounds exposing the rest of the coven as the other murderers.

The episode's climax had Temperance, Seeley, and Dr. Lance Sweets recounting the roles of the fungus and the Wiccan white witches in Zephyra's death to the witches themselves, including their shared motive for performing the ceremony that went awry. Ember completed the reveal by stating that they were trying to help Zephyra, along with mentioning her behavior in the moments leading up to her demise. After that, they were all arrested offscreen.