If Teela couldn’t hear the ghosts, Mrs. Erickson could, and she moved fast for a woman her age, appearing around the door, dark eyes wide. She stumbled to her knees in front of Callis; she’d clearly recognized the voice.
“Callis, Callis, I’m here. You’re in my house. You’re safe.” She had to repeat this a dozen times before the words reached the child. “Jamal, what happened? What’s wrong?” Her gaze went to Teela, who was looking at Mrs. Erickson and Kaylin with a trace of annoyance.
“Teela did nothing wrong. I was trying to explain what we were doing here, what we were looking for, and I started to talk about portals.”
“Portals?” Mrs. Erickson predictably asked.
“I think we’re done with that topic,” Kaylin said quickly. “Because whatever it was Jamal remembered, Callis remembered, and...he just started to scream.” She turned to look at Esme and Katie; they were paler than usual, and silent, their eyes a bit too wide, as if they were seeing something Kaylin couldn’t. As she didn’t know how the dead could see, or even what they saw when they looked, she couldn’t pin it on simple memory.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Callis. Why don’t you all come with me to the kitchen? I can tell you about my day—it was very busy but highly unusual, and I think you might enjoy it. I met a Dragon.” She smiled brightly, the expression half-coaxing.
Katie said, “I want to watch her.” She pointed at Teela. Clearly Mrs. Erickson had never bothered to correct their manners, because no one who might be offended could see them.
“I’m sure she means no harm. She’s a Hawk.”
“She’s a Barrani. And she’s a Sorcerer.”
“She’s not a Sorcerer,” Kaylin told Katie. “Sorcerer has a specific meaning. She’s a mage, yes—but a lot of Barrani are. The bad ones are Arcanists.”
“Kitling, please.”
“Katie, you’re distracting them,” Mrs. Erickson said, a bit more steel in her tone. “They’re here to find out why you are trapped—or to find clues. I didn’t have the aptitude so I don’t have the necessary knowledge.”
“If I’m quiet?”
“I think you’ll distract Kaylin.”
“But she’s not a mage. You aren’t, are you?”
Kaylin said, “I’m a very, very, very junior mage, but sometimes I’m useful.”
“Oh. We’re not.”
Kaylin couldn’t think of anything helpful or comforting to say to that, but she rallied. “You keep Mrs. Erickson company. She’d be lonely living here all alone.”
Katie didn’t brighten up at the words, but she did nod, and when Mrs. Erickson left, she trailed after her.
“Are you quite finished?”
“Sorry. They’re—”
“Children. I know.” Teela frowned. “There’s nothing here that catches my eye—and I’ve been examining things very carefully. Can you see anything?”
Kaylin shook her head. “Mrs. Erickson isn’t a mage.”
“No, apparently she’s something more dangerous. I find it surprisingly hard to keep that in mind—it must be your influence.”
“She’d never purposefully harm anyone.”
“That doesn’t usually make a difference to my people. If she weren’t mortal, it wouldn’t make a difference to the Dragon Court, either. I’m frankly shocked that Sanabalis was willing to let her leave.”
“She hasn’t done anything wrong, and it would be against the Emperor’s Law to have her detained.”
“The Emperor is the law.” Teela exhaled. “Next room.”
The next room in the small house was clear, if one didn’t count the dust and the cobwebs.
“She doesn’t appear to use this room much. The house is small enough—I wonder why.”
If Kaylin had to guess, she’d say the children avoided the room. “I can ask.”
“Can you ask and return in reasonable time?”
“Guilty as charged. I’m afraid it has something to do with the kids—and if it does, there’s probably going to be a bit of a ruckus.”
Teela considered this with care.
“Why don’t we scan the room and if something comes up, we can ask. If the room is clean, I don’t see the point.”
“You do, you’re just being a coward.”
Kaylin grimaced. “I’ve never seen the kids like that. They thought you were Azoria, the dead Barrani Lord we’re not supposed to be investigating or mentioning. But if they thought you were Azoria, she wasn’t dead when she was supposed to be; she couldn’t be and have kidnapped those children.”
“I am capable of rudimentary math, yes.” Teela gestured and Kaylin’s skin felt a wave of pain. “I understand why the Barrani believe she is best left to the dust of history—but given the events of today, I am no longer sure I’m in agreement.” Teela frowned. “I think you’ll want to talk to the children. I can’t hear them; I’ll wait.”
“What have you found?”
“If you can separate Mrs. Erickson from the children, you might get more cogent answers from her.”
“Teela?”
“Something is vaguely off in this room. There is no sigil that I can detect, no obvious magic. But Azoria was considered a genius. She could be enormously subtle, although that wasn’t considered her strength.”
“Did you know her?”
“I knew of her. I didn’t pay much attention, given my position at the time, and by the time I had come into my own, Berranin as a line was long dead. Clearly, I should have been more watchful.”
“She wasn’t your enemy. You had enough of those.”
Teela nodded. “What do you see here?”
“A really dusty room with spiderwebs on the ceiling. But it’s darker. We could maybe open the curtains?”
Teela shook her head, and another surge of magic rubbed Kaylin’s skin raw. She was annoyed to see that it had been used to call forth a light.
“It’s not a normal light, so don’t start whining.”
Kaylin frowned. “It can’t be a weaker light than you normally call up.”
“No. It’s much stronger; it illuminates corners that our natural vision can’t always see clearly.”
“That’s not what it’s doing, for me.”
“What is it doing?”
“It’s...it’s kind of making everything look darker.”
“Everything?”
“No—I can see the light reflected on the floor here and there, but the rest of the room seems to be in darker shadow.”
“How much darker?”
“Darker. It was better without the light.” Kaylin started to move toward the curtains.
“Don’t touch them. Do not touch anything.”
“Standing on the floor okay?”
“Where you’re standing now, yes, and before you ask, I’m fine. But there is something off about this room. You can’t sense magic? Your skin isn’t reacting?”
“If someone hadn’t used two spells, I might be able to answer that question helpfully.” At Teela’s raised brow, Kaylin relented. “No, when I entered the room my magic allergy didn’t alert me the way it does with door wards and the spells you generally cast.”
“That’s less good. Fine, I’ll be patient. Ask Mrs. Erickson about this room.”
The children were not in the kitchen; Mrs. Erickson was. She was baking.
“I’m sorry to bother you,” Kaylin began.
“No, it’s fine. The children are upset and they’re in the parlor.”
“What are you baking?”
“Cookies. I know they can’t eat them, but I find baking very calming. I like to make things that people can enjoy. It isn’t world-changing, I know.” She said the last apologetically. “Is the corporal concerned about something?”
“There’s a small room behind the kitchen that’s covered in dust and cobwebs.” It reminded Kaylin of Evanton’s storefront. “It looks sort of like I’d imagine an attic would when no one’s been in it for decades.”
Mrs. Erickson returned to her mixing in silence.
“Do you have an attic?”
“No. We have a half attic, and it was occasionally used for storage, but it’s difficult to access without ladders, and it’s hard to store things that weigh very much there now. I have trouble with ladders.”
“And the room I mentioned?”
“It’s not used anymore. It hasn’t been used for a very long time. It was once a family room, admittedly a small one.”
“The children don’t like it.” It was a guess, but it was also a statement.
“When my parents were alive, they didn’t seem to mind it. I’m not sure why, but it became a place they began to avoid. Maybe because it reminds them of the loss of my parents. Maybe twenty years ago, they started to shout or cry anytime I went into that room—and you saw them today. It’s a bit upsetting when there’s very little I can do to comfort them or calm them down.”
“Do you know why they started to hate it?”
“No. And after the first few times I asked, I didn’t ask anymore. They became very much like you saw them just a few minutes ago. But in the beginning, they wouldn’t enter the room; by the end, they did everything they could to stop me entering it. Why are you asking?” She didn’t look at Kaylin as she asked the question, absorbed in the act of turning disparate bits of sugar and flour into something that would, with heat, become edible.
“Teela thinks there’s something off about the room.”
“Magical?” This time she did turn, her hands messy.
“She’s not certain—but I think she’s right. There’s something about the room that doesn’t feel right.” As Mrs. Erickson began what looked to be an apology, Kaylin shook her head.
“If you ever get out of the house and head to Elani, there’s a store there run by an ancient man whose storefront looks far worse than your room. It’s not the dust. It’s not the cobwebs. Teela would barely notice those. It’s...something else. I didn’t notice it until she invoked light—but the light somehow makes portions of the room look even darker. I’d like to borrow a lamp, if you have one,” Kaylin added.
“You think the darkness is somehow caused by magical light? Give me a second; my hands are a right mess.”
Aproned but with markedly cleaner hands, Mrs. Erickson lit a lamp with a glass hood. As she walked by what she referred to as a parlor, the children came out. Jamal glared at Kaylin.
“Mrs. Erickson doesn’t have to go into the room,” Kaylin told the truculent child. “We want a light that isn’t magical in nature, and she’s carrying it. I don’t disagree with you; I don’t think she should enter the room.”
“But you can?”
“I’m the Hawk, not Mrs. Erickson. So is Teela. I think you all did a good job of keeping her away from it.” She wanted to ask the kids why, but didn’t want to see them melt down or cry in terror, so she refrained. She did, however, tap Mrs. Erickson on the shoulder and retrieve the lamp from her hands.
“I think you should go back to the kitchen—I’m sorry to have interrupted you.”
“My mother used to love that room,” Mrs. Erickson said, as she handed the lamp to Kaylin. “My father loved it because she did. She was happy there.”
The children said nothing.
“We didn’t have a lot of money, but we had enough to get by. She had a painting done, of the three of us. I’d like to see it again; I haven’t looked at it for the better part of two decades.”
“I’ll try to find it—do you want me to bring it out of the room?”
She smiled. “I’m sure you have better things to worry about.”
Katie, however, whispered, “Don’t find it. Lose it forever.”
Kaylin made a mental note of that as she carried the light down the hall and into the room.
Teela stood in the exact same position she’d occupied when Kaylin had left. She raised a brow at the lamp, but said nothing.
“If magical light makes things darker, I thought normal light would let us see what the room looks like otherwise.”
“It’s not a bad thought, unless you intend to traipse all over the room because you can no longer see the darker parts.”
“The kids didn’t always dislike the room, for what it’s worth. Mrs. Erickson said it started maybe twenty years ago. Before you ask, she didn’t give specific dates. At first, the kids just started to avoid the room, but after a while, they started to demand she avoid it as well. They didn’t react well to her entering it.”
Teela nodded. “Two decades, give or take a few years?”
“That’s what she said. The room was in use while her parents were alive; apparently her mother really liked it. She had a painting done of the family when they were younger, and Mrs. Erickson wants us to find it.”
“It’s on the wall.”
Kaylin lifted her lamp. “Which wall?”
“The wall to the left of the door—it’s behind you.”
Kaylin nodded. “She said I can carry it out.”
“I assume she meant without causing any damage to it.”
“So do I. It’s a painting, how hard can it be to move?” As the words left her mouth, Hope—who had been so silent she’d once again forgotten he occupied her shoulder, pushed himself to his feet. Kaylin stopped moving and lifted the lamp. “You have something you want to add? Do not slap me in the face with the wing.”
Hope squawked without syllables and pushed himself off her shoulder, circled her face before he swatted her forehead with his tail.
“Technically he did obey you,” Teela said, amused.
Hope squawked again, but this time it was more than angry bird vocalization, because Teela’s amusement guttered. “He feels it very important that one of us avoid that painting,” she told Kaylin.
“Does he think it would be harmful to Mrs. Erickson?”
Hope squawked.
“Is there a reason you’re talking to Teela and not me when I asked the question?”
Squawk.
“He says it’s too much like work to squeeze meaning into your pathetic language.”
Hope hovered in air, squawking up a storm.
“I guess he doesn’t like it when you take liberties with his words.”
“Then he can use them himself.” Teela looked thoughtful. “When you asked about the painting and possible effects on Mrs. Erickson, his response was: ‘Too late.’ And to be fair, he’s telling me to keep as much distance as possible.”
“It’s a painting, Teela.”
“Indeed.”
“Her parents were normal, mortal parents.”
“I have no doubt of that. But he feels that the painting itself is something I, in specific, should avoid. I don’t believe you should take it outside of this room. I do believe that you’re the one who is going to have to examine it for magical signatures, unless you believe your familiar is being overly neurotic.”
“I’d like to.”
“But you don’t. Exactly my position, which will be right here.”
“It’s okay if I approach it?”
“You have Hope,” she replied. “And the marks of the Chosen. His words, not mine. The amount of trouble you can trip over when you have both has lost bets in the office.”
“Yours?”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
Kaylin walked toward the wall that contained the door; the open door had partly obscured the picture. She considered shutting the door but decided against. If they found whatever it was that was off and it proved to be dangerous, closed doors didn’t make speedy exit any easier.
She frowned.
“Teela, can you move the magical light toward the painting’s surface?”
The bobbing light moved—swiftly—toward the framed painting. As it did, the image in the painting grew increasingly dark, increasingly murky. Kaylin could make out the shapes of three people and the height of one chair, but they had no color and no other features; it was as if she was seeing them in silhouette.
“Move it away now?”
The light retreated. Kaylin lifted the lamp—the normal lamp—and held it out, her arm at full extension. The cloudiness, the inkiness, was gone. Beneath the glow of natural—or at least mortal—light, she could see three people clearly. A man sat in the center of a large chair, a woman sat on the upholstered chair’s right arm, and in the man’s lap, a young girl, her hair done in braids and wrapped around her forehead.
A sprig of flowers was caught in the weave of the braids, its leaves an odd, luminescent green. Although the effect should have been cute or charming, Kaylin found it disturbing.
“Well?” Teela prodded her.
“You can’t see it?”
“I can see the painting.”
“When your light came close, it became dark and cloudy; I could barely make out the figures. Under this lamp’s light, it looks like a portrait of a happy family. Mrs. Erickson wanted me to move it out of the study.”
“And?”
“I don’t even want to look at it, let alone touch it. There’s something wrong with it.”
“Be more precise.”
“For one, there’s a flower in the child’s hair—I assume that’s Mrs. Erickson—that’s an opalescent green. The opalescence could be paint—but it’s not reacting properly when I move the lamp.”
Teela was silent for a long beat. When she spoke, her voice was all edge. “Describe the flower.”
“It’s a flower, Teela.”
“This is not the time to fall back on ignorance or laziness. I did not ask you to name it. Describe the flower. Now.”
“It’s in her hair. It’s small. You don’t want me to get any closer to the painting and I have garden-variety mortal eyes—no pun intended.”
“Then move out of the door and clear the space you’re standing in. Leave the lamp on the floor where I can use it.”
“Teela—what exactly is it you’re afraid of?”
The Barrani Hawk appeared to be holding her breath; she released it in a long—and loud—exhale. “Let me describe the flower. Tell me if I’m wrong or right. Touch nothing.”
Kaylin nodded.
“It’s small, triangular in overall shape.”
It was. Kaylin said, “Continue.”
“The blossom, such as it is, is green—it should be a pale green with ivory and gold highlights.”
She shook her head. “It’s not. It’s a vivid, opalescent green. It has three leaves, and at the heart of those three is...I don’t know—purple, maybe? Generally speaking, I like purple—but this one reminds me a bit of...”
“Shadow?”
“Yeah, a bit.”
Teela said something in Barrani that Kaylin couldn’t understand. “We’re leaving,” she snapped.
“Teela—what’s wrong? Is it not just a painting?”
Listen to her, Severn said. It always came as a surprise when he chose to speak to her this way, but his tone mirrored Teela’s.
What isn’t she telling me?
She doesn’t want you to touch that flower, he replied.
But...it isn’t just a painting?
Oh, it’s a painting. But if she’s right, it’s a...seed-bed. That flower should grow nowhere but the green. And when it does, it doesn’t look like that; it shares the same shape, but not the color.
How do you know that?
Severn didn’t reply.
Kaylin bent and settled the lamp gently on the floor. She then stepped out of the room as Teela had suggested. Or demanded, which was probably the more accurate word.
Severn was in the hall; Kaylin saw that he’d unwound his weapon chain, which made no sense in a space this small—the chain couldn’t spin without embedding the blades in the wall. “I’ve been following your investigation,” he said, as he looked through the doorframe. “This is going to lead to some very, very unhappy Barrani.”
“Why?”
“Because, as Teela is beginning to realize, we can’t abandon the Azoria part of your investigation.”
“No,” a familiar—and disembodied voice—said. “You can’t. Teela is being careful, but it’s in her best interests to leave that room immediately.”
“Hello, Terrano. I’m surprised Jamal isn’t throwing half the house at your head.”
“He’d have to see it,” Terrano replied smugly.
“I can see him,” Jamal said, from down the hall. “You can’t?”
“No. He’s greatly improved by invisibility.” Kaylin waited for Teela to leave the room; the Barrani Hawk shut the door firmly behind her. She turned to Kaylin, or so Kaylin thought. When she spoke, however, she spoke to the familiar.
“Can you protect her if the flower truly blossoms?” The words were formal, almost stilted, the cadence slightly off.
Hope squawked, but the sound was muted, almost devoid of the usual irritation that made him sound like an angry bird.
“I can take care of myself.”
The next series of squawks were the usual ones.
“She’s got me,” Terrano said, his face absent the usual smug grin.
Kaylin wanted to shriek. “Tell me what’s going on, someone?”
“We will—but not here.”
“Is Mrs. Erickson going to be safe here?”
“Demonstrably. She’s lived here for the entirety of her life. I will, however, emphasize that she should not attempt to enter this room; her children are right.”
“But she used to use that room all the time while her parents lived.”
“We’ll talk about that later.” Teela was pale, her eyes midnight blue, her hands slightly curved in fists. She turned to Severn and said, “It is not a room you should enter while you bear those weapons.”
He nodded.
“I’m sorry—we couldn’t carry the painting out of the room,” Kaylin told Mrs. Erickson. The older woman had finished baking a tray of cookies, although by the look of it, more trays would follow. The baking that had been the only good part of a long day at the front desk made Kaylin’s mouth water.
“At this point, we’d like to ask you to follow the children’s lead. Don’t enter the room. Unless one of us is here, don’t open the door.”
Mrs. Erickson looked concerned, but nodded resolutely.
“When was the portrait painted, do you remember?”
“I must have been eleven. Perhaps a bit older—it was a long time ago.”
“Do you remember who the painter was?”
“Yes. Well, no. I don’t remember her name—but I do remember her. She was tall and slender, had hair that reached all the way down her back. Her eyes were an odd shade of green and she had perfect skin. But it was her voice that I liked best; it was almost musical, although she never sang.
“We met her in the market—she was sketching people for donations, having just arrived in Elantra. My mother was friendly; she struck up a conversation with the young woman, and in the end, the woman offered to do a family portrait. She came to our house with her paints and easels; Father helped her, and Mother teased him about it. The painter was a very beautiful woman.
“Then we sat for her. She did my hair. I remember that—it was such a strange hairstyle, but she said it was common where she grew up.”
Teela said nothing.
“And then she had us sit.”
“The flower in your hair,” Teela began.
“I’d almost forgotten about that,” Mrs. Erickson said, with instant and genuine delight. “It was a flower from her home; she had it in a very strangely shaped pot. I told her not to pick it, but she said that it was meant for a very special occasion—and what could be more special than this? She said she had seldom seen such a content, happy family—that she envied us and she wanted to capture the mood of our family perfectly, because time touches all things, but moments can be captured and preserved.
“She picked the flower carefully, and she braided it into my hair. Then she asked us to sit in the chair—my grandfather’s chair. I was a child, so I fidgeted a bit. The children disappeared during the painting.”
“Disappeared?”
“Well, they went to play somewhere else.”
Kaylin turned to Jamal, behind whom the other children had gathered. For the first time, they looked like the ghosts that occupied some of the more terrifying children’s stories; there was something about their eyes, unblinking and slightly too large, that threatened to overwhelm the proportions of the rest of their faces.
“Jamal, do you remember this?”
He didn’t answer. He didn’t appear to hear her. Kaylin frowned and took a step toward him; she could see her marks begin to glow because the light was reflected in all of the children’s unblinking eyes. “Jamal?”
Unsettled, Kaylin crouched to bring her face closer to his. He continued to stare through her—they all did.
“They didn’t see her,” Mrs. Erickson said, coming around the table, the brief delight of reminiscence broken. “But they won’t talk about that room or anything in it. Oh, dear.” Her expression became one of pure concern. “It’s very hard to reach them when they become like this.”
“Do they do it often?”
“Not often, no. Perhaps a dozen times in my entire life.”
“What does it mean?”
“They’re afraid, I think. But I could be wrong; sometimes they see things that I can’t.”
“But you can see the dead!”
“Yes. And the dead can see each other, or at least they can in my experience. The first time they reacted this way, it frightened me—I was young. But they returned to normal. I asked them what had happened, and they were surprised by the question. They don’t seem to retain or remember whatever it was that put them in that state.
“And I didn’t press it, even then. I think I was afraid they would leave.” She shook her head. “I was younger then, and far more selfish. I didn’t want to be alone, either. Now I worry about deserting them.” She shook herself. “Nothing bad has ever happened to them when they’re like this—they’ll be fine tomorrow.”
“They’ve never been like this for longer than a day?”
“No.” Mrs. Erickson closed her eyes, squared her shoulders, and said, “I’ll come by the Halls of Law tomorrow with the rest of the baking.”
Teela said muted goodbyes. Terrano said nothing, being invisible. Kaylin thought it interesting that Jamal could see Terrano when she couldn’t, but any questions about what he saw when he looked at invisible Terrano would have to wait.
The neighbor was no longer groveling on the lawn, which was the only point of cheer in the otherwise tense and gloomy walk home. Severn rewound the weapon’s chain as they reached the perimeter of Helen, who opened the door as if she’d been anxiously watching the streets for Kaylin’s return.
Kaylin hugged her house’s Avatar as she reached the front door. “How are the guests?”
“Surprisingly active, but they’ve made no attempt to leave their room. They are not, I think, afraid of the space itself, and I do not think they feel trapped. I can sense some of their emotions, but if there is thought, it is not structured in a way I was built to understand.” She glanced at Teela, and after a pause, nodded. “An’Teela wishes to avail herself of the parlor.”
“We can talk in the dining room.”
“I don’t believe she intends for all of the cohort currently under this roof to be in attendance.”
“Good luck with that,” Terrano said, snorting as he materialized.
Kaylin frowned. “We’re missing someone. Where’s Mandoran?”
“He’s not in Mrs. Erickson’s house if that’s what you’re worried about.”
“Only Terrano would be that reckless,” Teela added. She was paler than usual, or perhaps her eyes were darker; the effect was like a storm warning in the harbor.
“Come to the parlor,” Helen said to Kaylin and her partner. “I’ll have food there, so you can eat while you have what looks to be a difficult discussion.”
Teela closed her eyes briefly. “Parlor. And, Helen? I might avail myself of something to drink if it were offered.”
“Corporal Handred?”
Severn shook his head. “I don’t drink unless I’m working.”
“You don’t drink when you’re working, either,” Kaylin pointed out as she followed Helen.
“Some of my work involves fraternizing with people who consider themselves highly important; if they offer a drink, there are times when I can’t afford to refuse it.” He walked beside Kaylin until they reached the parlor door, and then followed her in.