I eased back. “I don’t see any sign of watchers—paranormal or otherwise—but there’s a remnant of something I’d like to get a closer look at. Do you see anything?”
“No. Dad must be very confident.”
“That’s not reassuring.”
“No, it really isn’t. I hope Sam’s all right. It’s been a couple of days. . . .”
“The house looks otherwise normal, but we’ll know more up close,” I said.
We walked down the street toward the house, hand in hand like a couple of lovers out for a stroll. Nothing was interested in us, except a cat that sat on the top of a wall and watched us with a show of indifference. We crossed the street toward Sam’s house but leaving enough room to approach at an angle without going straight through the front gate. I stopped again to drop into the Grey and look more closely at the tracks of magic someone had left behind.
Correction: two someones. The two strands of energy residue weren’t identical, though they were very similar. I hadn’t seen magical signatures quite like them before. They weren’t a spell, but the residue itself was shaped into knotted and jagged lines that resembled gouges in wax or clay more than calligraphy—they seemed incised on the surface of the Grey, though they didn’t react magically to my inspection or prodding in any way. It almost seemed as if the people who’d caused them trod more heavily on the Grey than other creatures of magic, whose usually thin and fluid tracks faded swiftly. The black threads felt cold and smooth, but with an edge of grit to them, the twining white more angular and brittle. I closed my hand around one and pulled a little. It snapped and crumbled away, leaving a fading dust on the silvery surface of the mist world. Once broken, the rest of the line began to fade as well. I touched the other one, finding it a little warmer to the touch and rougher on the surface, though it was equally fragile when crushed in my hand.
I stepped back from the Grey and leaned my shoulder against the wall outside Sam’s house for a moment, thinking as Quinton watched me.
“So . . . ?”
“I can’t figure it. Two magical people have been here and they walked around the house like they were casing it, but the traces they left seem to be magically inert and fragile. And those traces are weird in their own right, being two colors that twine together—black and a creamy white color I’m not familiar with. Compound energy rarely remains in such distinct strands—it tends to blend. But these are more like . . . threads of disparate energy twisted together. Really odd.”
“Sam said our father had two other people with him—a man and a woman—whom she didn’t feel good about and who didn’t speak or come close,” Quinton said. “I’d assume the marks belong to them.”
“I can buy that—I never saw anything like this from your dad, but I can’t figure out these people’s intention or what they may have done.”
“These traces don’t seem to be a trap or a spell or anything like that?”
I took off my hat and paused to smooth my hair back into the scarf tied at my nape as I thought about it. Then I shook my head. “No, they don’t feel like anything active or even lying in wait. They shatter easily, too, and I don’t feel any movement of magical energy when I break them, as I would with a spell, ward, or trap of any kind. It’s like snapping a burned twig and getting a bit of charcoal on your hand, but nothing more.”
“That sounds a lot creepier than you may think.”
I had to shrug. I’m no longer sure what’s creepy to someone more normal than me. “I think it’s some sort of deliberate residue—like graffiti—but it can’t be meant for us, since neither of us recognizes it. But I don’t believe there’s anything here to cause us concern. Let’s go in and talk to your sister.”
Deciding we had nothing to lose, we went to the front gate and pressed a button on a call box mounted to the faded stone wall. Through the iron gate I could see a small slice of the front of the house, which was built of the same material as the wall. The upper story was plastered, but the lower was not and the tawny stone had the mellow, soft look of rock that’s been in the weather a long time.
I heard something mechanical move and looked up to see a small camera in a steel housing turn our way from the top of the gatepost, sheltered by palm fronds. The gate buzzed and fell open a half inch. We glanced at each other and walked into the yard, closing the gate behind us.
The front yard had been cultivated into a neat lawn bounded by the palms and a close-growing row of prickly pink rosebushes that hugged the wall. The perfume of jasmine drifted on a breeze from the sea that snuck over the wall behind the house. We got only a few steps up the laid-stone path before the front door opened and a young brunette stepped out with a baby in her arms.
“Jay!” she shouted, running toward us as fast as the jiggling weight of the baby would allow. I had to remind myself that only I and my lover’s underground friends called him “Quinton”; to most of the rest of world he was either James Jason Purlis, deceased, or Reggie McCrea Lassiter, depending on whom you asked.
Sam was slim and short—her head wouldn’t have come up to my cheek. I stood still and watched her in silence as she closed the distance to her brother, and I thought that they looked more alike than I would have expected even of siblings. She moved awkwardly, as if her knees and ankles didn’t work quite right, and yet her demeanor was confident, the energy around her predominantly cool and calm with only threads and occasional sparks of orange anxiety and scarlet anger.
“Hey, short-stuff!” Quinton replied, removing his hat, his face alight at seeing her even in these circumstances.
She stopped short in front of him and raised her eyebrows—the expression was exactly like one of her brother’s. “‘Short-stuff’? Just for that, you get to hold Martim—he’s wet. You have spectacularly bad timing, big brother.”
“At least it’s some kind of spectacular,” he said, returning the hat to his head and accepting the squirming bundle of baby, who began to wail the moment he was no longer in his mother’s arms. “Oh boy, you weren’t kidding. He is wet,” Quinton said, holding the baby out in front of him.
Sam gave him a hard look and scooped Martim back onto her hip. “That’s not how you hold a baby.”
Quinton grinned at her. “I know, but now I’m not the one holding him.”
“Sneaky, big brother. Very sneaky. Come on inside and we’ll change him.”
“We?”
“Yes. It’s your penance.” She looked at me. “You must be Harper.”
I nodded. “I am. And I’m terrible at changing babies, unless you mean in some existential kind of way.”
Sam forced a laugh, her aura jumping a little. She was trying very hard to make the scene look good for the neighbors, but playing nice with a stranger was difficult under the circumstances. “You don’t have to change anything. You look exactly as I knew you would.”
She turned to lead us inside before I could ask what that was.
The house was old—European old, not American old—and had a thin, clinging film of history that wasn’t particularly dramatic. Sam noticed me looking around the wood-and-stone interior.
“It’s mostly restored to the original—or as close as we could get and still be practical,” she said. “It used to be the vineyard manager’s house when the estate was still producing wine.”
“It’s lovely,” I said. I really did like it—I have a taste for old things and not much appreciation for things sleek and modern—and the house was warm and cozy. It hadn’t been a perfectly happy place all of its existence, judging from the energetic colors and the ghosts, but it was now. Or it had been until a few days ago.