We scrambled to our feet and raced down the stairs. Coco and Larson were still standing together over Ivy's covered body, but they both looked up in alarm as we ran down the last few steps to the parquet floor of the hall.
"How did you get up there?" Larson asked, looking up the way we'd come then back over his shoulder at Ricci still standing in the doorway. Ricci shrugged, but after the officer turned back again his face darkened and I could see he was figuring it out.
"Where's Charlotte?" I asked Coco.
"I don't know," Coco said. "I thought she was…" she looked back at Ricci standing alone at the door.
"She just came downstairs. We were following her," I said.
"She didn't come down here," Coco said.
"Second floor," Sophie whispered, and we all three turned to go back up the stairs.
"Hold on," Larson said. "That area is off limits."
"Obviously we had permission to be up there since that's where we came from," I said. It always worked in the movies if you pretended like you belonged wherever you were trying to be. But I think it worked better if you had some sort of uniform to back up your story.
"They were supposed to be watching me," Coco said and sounded genuinely chagrined. "I gave them the slip so I could come see Ivy. But I suppose I better get back to my room before you tell my mother."
"Yes," I said.
"We'd be in more trouble than you, you know," Sophie said.
"I know. I'm sorry," Coco said and left Larson’s side to come over to us.
But he didn't look like he was buying it.
"Ricci, watch the door. I'm going to escort them to Coco's room and make sure they stay there," he said.
That was less than ideal, but it was better than being in the ballroom. He waved for Coco to lead the way as he brought up the rear. Coco climbed the steps to the second floor then turned down the darkened corridor to the right.
As much as it had looked empty when we'd passed it before, there really were guards outside the master bedroom. But there was a little niche off the corridor, just deep enough for a pair of chairs and a large potted plant dying a slow, sunless death between them. One of the officers was sitting on a chair, but the other was pacing in front of the door. He raised an eyebrow as he saw the three of us following Coco, but relaxed when Larson came into view.
"This is mine," Coco said, opening a door at the very end of the hall.
"I'll be right out here," he said as we all passed into the room.
"Thank you," Coco said as if he were doing us a great service. Then she shut the door and waved for us to follow her past a little lounging area and then her canopied bed to the windows that overlooked the back garden.
"Did you find out anything?" she asked. Her eyes were red-rimmed from the crying, but she looked more at peace now, less crazed and tense from everything she was holding back.
"Not really," I said. "Someone up there was very angry, but we don't know who, and it still doesn't mean that this wasn't all an accident."
"But someone knocked me down," Coco said.
"I know," I said. "We haven't stopped looking. We're just running out of ways to look."
Coco's shoulders slumped. "If we don't give them someone else to blame, they're going to blame Edward. I already lost my sister. I don't think I can stand to see Edward…" She put a hand to her face, squeezing the bridge of her nose hard as if to stop the tears. "I wish there was a way I could help him."
"You are helping him," I said.
"You're helping us help him," Brianna said.
"If you're up for it, there is something else you can do for us," Sophie said.
"Anything," Coco said, her eyes brightening.
"We need to talk to Charlotte. She seemed pretty upset, and I think she's afraid of us," Sophie said.
"Why would she be afraid of you?" Coco asked.
"She saw something that looked strange. We just want to explain it to her," Sophie said.
"She knows all the hiding places that you know," I said.
"Not all of them," Coco said.
"You're the perfect person to find her," I said.
"Probably the only person who could," Sophie said. "If you can get past the guard at the door."
"That won't be a problem," Coco said and turned to pull her nightstand away from the wall, revealing the outline of another little door. "But what are you going to be doing while I look for Charlotte?"
"We have to discuss some things with each other," Sophie said. "Compare impressions."
"List what clues we have and our theories and what we'll do next," I said.
Coco nodded. "If it helps, there's a chalkboard just over there in my old play area. I haven't used it in years, but there's still chalk in the tray."
"Thanks," I said.
"When you find Charlotte, bring her back here at once," Sophie said. "It's important."
Coco nodded then stooped to crawl inside the little door.
"It might be too late," Brianna said, biting her lip. "She was terrified. And if it isn't witches she thinks we are, it's surely something worse."
"But who would she tell?" I asked.
"Mary? Or Ricci now that she's friendly with him?" Sophie said.
"And would they believe her?" I asked.
"We just have to hope that Coco gets to her first," Sophie said.
"But I wonder how much she saw of what we were doing?” Brianna said. "Without a gift for magic, she should only have been able to see the three of us holding hands."
"Well," Sophie said. "Maybe more than that."
"Like what?" I asked.
"Well, you were sitting sort of three-quarters turned away from her, so I don't know how much she saw of your face, but it was…"
"Scary," Brianna said.
"Scary?" I said.
"You were doing that thing you do when the power hits you," Sophie said. "Hair floating, eyes glowing with this electric fire."
"And you were floating," Brianna said. "Just a bit."
"Wow," I said. "I hadn't felt any of that. I hadn't even felt particularly powerful. It felt like I couldn't even summon my own magic. I was trying so hard, but it wasn't coming."
"Oh yes, it was," Sophie said, and Brianna nodded.
"What do you mean?" I asked.
Sophie looked at Brianna then held out her hands, palms up. One looked perfectly ordinary, the one that had been holding Brianna's hand.
The other was bright red as if she had tried to take a hot pan off the stove without using any sort of mitt.
Brianna held out her hands and the hand of hers I had been holding looked if anything, worse.
"I'm so sorry," I said.
"Your power is strange," Brianna said. "I wished I understood it better. It's like you have infinite amounts, and yet so little control."
"I'm sorry," I said again.
"No, I didn't mean it like that, like it's your fault," Brianna said. "I meant control like…" She looked to Sophie for help.
"Like too much raging water trying to pass through a very tight space," Sophie said. "The more you try to control it, the more you increase the pressure on that water. I don't think you can make it… less."
I looked down at my own unmarred palms.
"Should we try the spell again?" Brianna asked. "It will be trickier at a distance, but we could still try."
"No, I don't think we'll bring that anger into focus," I said.
"It didn't feel magic, at least," Sophie said. "Maybe that's why we're having so much trouble with it. For once, our murderer isn't a magical person or an ordinary person using a magic artifact. We might not be equipped for this."
"Maybe," I said, but I wasn't convinced. There had to be something we could do. We were witches.
"Maybe we couldn't focus it because it was coming from multiple people," Brianna said.
"So now we're going with conspiracy?" Sophie asked.
"No, the flow was going the other way," I said. At their confused looks, I added, "I think it had one hidden source, but it was flowing so strongly towards so many other targets, we couldn't pinpoint it."
"We searched for signs of magic before we came into the house, and we all agreed there weren't any," Brianna said. "But what if we did that sort of search again, not for a magical person, but just for any person with ill intent?"
I barked out a laugh, and they both shot me an alarmed look. "Sorry. It's just that, Otto already told us that a ton of the partygoers are gangsters or guys working both sides of the law. I think we're going to be drowning in ill intent."
"Malevolence, then," Sophie said. "That was the overwhelming feeling I was getting."
"I got anger," Brianna said.
"Me too," I said. "But whoever or whatever was angry, that was a malevolent being."
"I agree," Sophie said. "This wasn't a normal person driven to murder. This was a person who was mad at the whole world and took it out on Ivy."
"Okay," Brianna said. "Let's try looking for that. A dark heart, I guess."
"A dark heart," Sophie and I agreed.
We sat down on the rug in front of the fireplace that was just barely glowing with the light from a banked fire. Then we took hands and closed our eyes.
Nothing happened.
"Amanda," Sophie said. "You have to do this."
"I'm doing it," I said.
"No, she's right. You're holding back," Brianna said.
"I don't want to hurt you again," I said.
"You won't," Sophie said, but then hedged. "Maybe don't try so hard to bring anything vague into focus. Let's just see what a casual look around shows us."
"Okay," I said and squeezed their hands. "I can do that."
I glimpsed the world of threads for only a fraction of a second this time before the waves of warmth started rolling between us. Then I watched with half-opened eyes as I began to picture the home around us.
It was like watercolor dots of emotions again. Or maybe more like blots, the edges undefined, flowing like the painter had made a second pass of the brush with too much water. Or like a wind was blowing through them, disrupting their outlines.
But I could tell they were people even without seeing the pattern of the threads. I could sense a blot that was swirling with so many different colors fighting for dominance, a blot that was moving with determination from room to room at the back of the house on the first floor.
Coco. Coco on a quest to find Charlotte, letting her drive to complete that quest push all of her other feelings to the back of her mind. But they were still there, roiling away.
I turned my attention away from Coco and spread my awareness over the entire house, then floated it up from floor to floor.
So many blots of color. So many minds processing so many emotions.
I lingered the longest on the blot I saved for last: the one that was Edward. I watched the colors swirl around inside him, the way the invisible wind or brush of water moved through it, pulling bits away in tendrils that tapered off to nothing. I didn't know what it meant, this thing that I was seeing. I expected it was part of Sophie's way of seeing patterns.
But the colors spoke to me. I could feel his confusion and sadness and fear.
And loneliness. More than anything else, he was feeling alone.
I wished there was some way I could disrupt those feelings, to replace them with a feeling of another, warmer color. He was surrounded by people who cared about him. Otto and we three, but also Coco and even Coco and Ivy's father. Their regard and worry for him was real. I could see those watercolor tendrils that tapered off their own blots pointing his way. If I saw just threads and not colors I was sure they were all connected.
But Edward couldn't see it. And he wasn't feeling it.
Brianna and Sophie squeezed my hands, and at that signal, I opened my eyes. I blinked the visions away. When we finally took a real look at each other, we all shook our heads at once.
"Nothing," Sophie said. "I didn't feel a single person with anything like that anger inside of them."
"Nor I," I said.
"I didn't even sense where Charlotte was," Brianna sighed. "And we know she's still in the house. Are we doing this correctly?"
But none of us had an answer to that question.
"Have we run out of things to try?" Sophie asked.
"No," I said. "I want to talk to Edward."