Much to Sonora’s disappointment, we don’t go through the linen closet door the next morning. Instead, after breakfast we walk over to Bramleyhaugh to find Geordie, Wendy and Jilly around the big wooden kitchen table drinking coffee. The remains of their breakfast has been pushed into the center of the table. Wendy is seated, a stack of books beside her. The three of them are poring over a map in one of the books when I come in, escorted by the dogs. Bobo’s always the first greeter.
“You have the best life,” Wendy says after a chorus of “Good mornings” all around. “First you get to go to Crescent Beach and now you’ve met Duncan Fairweather. You’ll probably get to go to Kingsmoor College and meet Master Mage Stoddard and all the staff.” Her eyes get a little dreamy. “And maybe even Oliver Tye.”
I settle into a chair as do Geordie and Jilly. Geordie pushes a mug and the coffee pot over to me.
“I have no idea who any of those people are,” I say as I pour myself some coffee.
“Oliver Tye,” Jilly says, “is the hapless hero.”
“Only in the first book. By the end of the series he’s a Master Mage.”
Jilly lets out a large theatrical sigh. “Great. Spoil it for us.”
Wendy puts a hand to her mouth. “But you said you wanted me to tell you about it.”
“Ignore her,” Geordie says. “She’s just playing the fool.”
Jilly looks put upon but laughter dances in her eyes.
“Just tell me,” I say, “is Duncan a good guy or a villain?”
“A little of both,” Wendy says. “You start out hating him and his twin sister Daisy in the first book, but then it turns out they have the best of reasons for tormenting Oliver when he first arrives at the college. They believe that their parents were killed by Arden Tye, a rogue Master Mage who also happens to be Oliver’s uncle.”
“And did he?” Jilly asks.
Wendy turns to her. “Did he what?”
“Kill their parents?”
“Well, yes, but Oliver had nothing to do with it. They don’t become friends until the end of the third book when Oliver risks his life for the Fairweathers and kills his uncle in a wizard’s duel.”
I try to look interested, but it’s hard to get excited about wizard stories when you know the real world has all sorts of magic in it. I mean, I have a door in my house that leads to an otherworld. How does a book compare to that? Still, there are some things I need to know.
“How do Duncan and Daisy get along?” I ask.
“They’re really close—I guess both from being twins and orphans. The only family they have is each other. Daisy’s the dominant one, but they’re both opinionated.”
“Did she ever pull a disappearing act in the books?”
“She disguised herself as a boy at the end of the fourth book and spends the first half of the last book infiltrating a gang of boys-only hedge mages. Rumour has it the Big Bad who’s been trying to kill Oliver through the whole series started out as a hedge mage, so Daisy’s trying to find out the truth behind it all.”
I think about that for a moment.
“Are there pictures of them in the books?” I ask. “And I guess I’d like to see pictures of them from the movie as well.”
Wendy turns to the stack of books beside her and pulls out a slim oversized volume called The Fantastic Art of the Kingsmoor Chronicles. She flips through until she finds a full-page picture of the actors who played the twins. The guy in the picture doesn’t look at all like the Duncan I met.
Before I can comment on that she flips through one of the novels until she comes to a pen-and-ink drawing of the pair. The guy in this picture looks much more like Duncan, and I say as much.
“Well, if belief is important,” Wendy says, “the books are way more popular than the movie was. It kind of tanked.” She taps the illustrated novel. “This is a special limited edition of the first novel, which came out after the series finished. So far, they’ve done the first three books, but I don’t have the other two. The art’s by Jaden Storm.”
“I’ve never heard of him,” I say. “Is that even a real name?”
“I don’t know. We could look him up.”
I look to Jilly, but she shakes her head. She doesn’t know him either.
“We could ask Saskia about other work he’s done,” Wendy says. “All I know is that the Magers—the diehard readers—went gaga over his versions of the characters. When you go to the fan pages they’re almost all illustrated with scans of his art instead of pictures from the movie.”
“I wonder if Duncan has a picture of his sister,” I say.
I take out my phone, go to my contact for him and send him a text.
“What are you thinking?” Jilly says.
“I’m not sure yet. But we can’t go looking for someone if we don’t even know what they look like.”
Jilly nods.
“But,” I go on, “if she disguised herself as a boy once, maybe she’s done it again.”
“Good point.”
“The big question is why’s she gone AWOL. If we can figure that out, we can probably figure out where she is.”
My phone pings. There’s a response from Duncan with an image attached. I hold my phone up near the illustration in the book and we all lean in closer to compare the two.
“That’s pretty close,” Geordie says.
“So these Eadar are based on the books rather than the movies,” Jilly says.
I’m about to agree when there’s a knock on the front door. Geordie gets up to answer it, but I have a funny feeling so I hurry after him, reaching him just as he opens the door.
And there’s Duncan standing on the porch.
“What are you doing here?” I say. “And how did you even know I was here?”
“I followed the trail of the text I sent,” he says, “but I can’t seem to come in. Who did your wizardwork?”
Jilly, Wendy and the dogs are now crowded up behind Geordie and me. Oddly, the dogs aren’t barking. They just sit and stare at him.
“Our what?” I say.
Duncan waves a hand that doesn’t seem to indicate anything specific. “I’ve never seen protective wards like this,” he says. “They’re fascinating.” He pauses. “And very effective.”
“You didn’t answer my question,” I say. “Why are you here?”
“Well, you didn’t answer my question. The one in my text.”
I frown. “Yes, we’re looking into what happened to your sister. No, we don’t have anything to pass along.”
“Maybe he should just come—” Jilly begins, but I cut her off.
“No. You heard him. He can’t come in because of protective wards. Have they ever stopped anybody from coming in before?”
I look from Geordie to Jilly and Wendy.
“Well, no,” Jilly says.
“So maybe there’s a reason why they’re keeping him out.”
“Don’t be rude,” Duncan says.
“Careful’s not rude,” I tell him. “We’ll contact you if we have any news or other questions.”
He holds up his hands, palms out. For a second I think he’s going to throw some spell at us.
But all he says is, “Fine,” and stalks off the porch.
We stand in the doorway watching him go. When he reaches the end of the walk he abruptly vanishes.
“Actually,” Jilly says. “It was a little rude. He’s our client.”
I sigh at her use of the word until I remember my conversation with Christiana last night. I decide to take the high road. I resist the urge to protest that we’re not real detectives so, ipso facto, we can’t have clients.
I take a deep breath. “I just think,” I say, “it’s telling that whatever’s protecting the house didn’t want to let him in.”
“It was a good call,” Geordie says. “We don’t know anything about him.”
We all turn to Wendy.
“Don’t look at me,” she says.
“But you’ve read the books,” I say. “Is he dangerous?”
“Well, he’s not as powerful as Oliver, but nobody in the books is.”
“That’s not answering the question.”
“I know. It’s just—it was kind of cool to see him standing there on the doorstep when I’ve only ever read about him.”
Geordie laughs and ushers me out of the way so he can close the door.
“Let’s find out a little more about him,” I say as we head back to the kitchen, “before we start inviting him into our lives. Anyway, we have ghost girls to deal with first.”
When we’re all sitting around the table again I pull out the lace glove and tell them about my conversation with Christiana last night.
“Seriously?” Jilly says, pretty much bouncing in her seat. “We can take the dogs there whenever we want?”
I hold up a finger and wait for her gaze to track to it.
“Yes, we can,” I say, “but could we maybe focus on the glove? Do you think I should try it?”
“Not by yourself,” Jilly says.
The others nod in agreement.
“There’s only one glove,” I say. “Only one person can wear it.”
“This is true,” Jilly says. “But I can still be with you when you use it. There’s no way I’m letting you go off into danger on your own again, thank you very much. Once was enough.”
“I wasn’t alone. I had Gabi and Joe and his crew.”
“So when do you want to try it out?” Jilly asks, staring at the glove with a mixture of awe and curiosity.
I glance at Geordie and he gives me a helpless shrug. I know what he’s feeling. It doesn’t matter how much you want to protect Jilly, she’s just going to run with whatever she’s decided to do.
“Today,” I tell Jilly. “But first I promised Sonora a walk in Christiana’s wild acres.”
Jilly goes from serious to giddy in an instant. “I can’t believe we can go there whenever we want. I can’t wait to see it.”
“You and Sonora both.”
“Are you guys coming?” I ask Geordie and Wendy.
Christiana said that the more people who believed in her wild acre the more real it would be so I figure, since they’re also her friends, it should be okay for them to tag along.
Jilly is ridiculous when we’re standing in front of the door to my linen closet. Like a kid in a candy store, she keeps having me open and close the door.
Shelves of linen.
Wild acres.
Shelves of linen.
“Enough,” Geordie says. “You’re driving the poor dogs crazy.”
I open the door again onto the wild acres and the dogs go racing out. We follow at a slower pace. As soon as we’re across, I tie a pillowcase I brought to the nearest tree to serve as a marker. We can still see the inside of the hall in my house through a door-shaped rectangle in the air, but I worry about not finding the right spot if it should close before we get back.
“Remember when you refused to believe in magic?” Jilly says to Geordie.
He smiles. “Ah, those were the days.”
I give him a surprised look.
“I’m kidding,” he says. “But it did make life less complicated.”
“The complications were always there,” Jilly says. “We just didn’t see them back then.”
“You didn’t believe either?” I say.
Geordie and Wendy laugh.
“No, I always believed in once upon a time,” Jilly says. “Even when half the time I thought it was all in my head. What I had trouble with was the happily ever after.”
Geordie puts his arm around her shoulders. “But we’ve got that figured out now.”
Jilly lifts her head for a kiss.
“Jeez, get a room,” Wendy says.
“A room, a room!” Jilly cries and spins away from Geordie. “We’re in Christiana’s backyard. How cool is this?” She turns to me. “Where’s her house?”
“It’s not a house. It’s more like the furnishings you’d expect to see in a house, except they’re in a meadow surrounded by oak trees. And to be honest I have no idea where it is. I wouldn’t barge in without an invitation anyway.”
Jilly’s so gleeful at the moment that she can’t muster any disappointment. “I’ll just have to finagle an invitation to come over,” she says.
The dogs are in heaven. They keep disappearing into the thick grass of the meadow, popping back to make sure we’re still around, then plunging back in. We’re following a path that winds its way through groves of trees and meadows. It’s wide enough that we can walk two abreast.
I understand Jilly’s good humour. We’re all smiling and in high spirits. It’s like there’s something in the air that lifts our hearts. It smells so pure, filled with the natural scents of the earth and green growing things. There’s no city noise, just birdsong and the hum of insects. I can’t imagine mixing the right colour to match the perfect blue of the sky overhead. Squirrels scold us from the trees.
“So who do you think put protection wards on our house?” Jilly says after we’ve been walking awhile.
“The professor must have,” Geordie says.
“Or Christy,” Wendy says.
Geordie shakes his head. “Christy doesn’t know magic. Wait—did Christy learn how to use magic?”
“He’s your brother,” Jilly says. “You’ll just have to ask him.”
“Maybe it was Joe,” I offer. That seems most likely. He’s protective of all the Stanton Street regulars, but especially of Jilly.
“I think it was Goon,” Jilly says.
Geordie and Wendy both nod in agreement.
“The professor’s housekeeper?” I ask.
“Olaf Gooneskara, actually,” Wendy says. She pauses for a moment before adding, “And a goblin.”
“Goblin-like,” Jilly corrects her. “He was actually a skookin. In fact he was the king of the skookin.”
I lean over and give Jilly a little shoulder pat. “You’re putting me on, right?”
She puts a hand on her heart. “Swear to God. He was the grumpiest creature you’d ever meet. Sophie and I named the studio after him—he’s the grumbling part. I don’t think he ever twigged to it.” She grins merrily as though she got away with something.
“Dream on,” Geordie says. “I doubt anything ever got by Goon.”
“So did he move to Mabon with the professor?” I ask.
“No, he fell in love,” Wendy says.
“It was terribly romantic,” Jilly adds. “She was a dentist’s assistant, originally from the hill country outside of Tyson, and he was the self-exiled king of an underground kingdom. The last the professor heard from him was that they were living in Tasmania.” She takes a few more paces, then adds, “I have to admit, I still miss his grumpiness.”
The pine and cedar have given way to stands of oak, birch and chestnut. At one point, we have to ford a stream by way of a strategic array of stepping stones.
“I wonder what the edge of Christiana’s wild acres will look like,” Geordie says. “Will there be a sudden, mysterious, impenetrable mist, or will we just come to a big drop off?”
“I hope it’s clearly marked,” Jilly says. “I wouldn’t want Bobo to—”
“Shh!” Wendy says and points ahead.
We all stop and stare in wonder. Ahead of us, the woods open into another meadow and standing in the middle of the tall grass and wildflowers is an enormous stag. His antlers are at least fourteen points, and almost as wide as his length. His deep brown gaze settles on us, but he doesn’t seem alarmed. A moment later, three does come soft-stepping out into the meadow to join him.
I worry that the dogs will bark their fool heads off and run toward the deer, but they join us on the path and seem as caught up in the magic of the moment as we are.
I don’t know how long we all stand there gazing, but finally the stag blows a soft huff of air and walks off to the far tree line, his harem following close behind.
We all look at each other with silly smiles plastered on our faces.
“That was…that was amazing,” Wendy says.
We all nod in agreement.
“I’ve never seen a stag in the wild before,” Geordie says. “It’s always just does.”
We continue along the path, but the dogs head into the meadow to snuffle around where the deer were standing. Jilly calls them right back. “Deer poop,” she explains at my puzzled look. “I don’t feel like giving dogs a bath, and boy would they need it if they decided to have a roll-around.”
We’ve walked for another ten minutes or so when I spy something white fluttering from a low branch hanging down beside the path ahead of us. I realize it’s my pillowcase.
“We must have walked in a big circle,” Wendy says.
Geordie nods. “Except where’s our doorway back?”
I walk past the the pillowcase. Looking at the path from this new perspective, the rectangle appears, and through it, a view of my hallway—which seems very bizarre, all things considered. How often do you see a doorway in the middle of a woodland path?
“We should bring a picnic lunch the next time,” Jilly says as we troop back into my house.
I’m the last one through. Jilly puts a hand on my arm as I close the door.
“Just one more time,” she says.
I know exactly what she wants. I open and close the door a few times for her.
Shelves of linen.
Wild acres.
Shelves of linen.
Jilly’s eyes are shining with delight when we finally go downstairs.
Tam’s having a late breakfast when we come into the kitchen. He looks so confused at our appearance that I can’t help but laugh.
“Where the hell did you all come from?” he says.
“From Faerieland!” Jilly cries.
Her voice goes up in pitch, which makes Bobo so excited that he starts to bark. The domino effect sets Sonora off. It takes a few moments to calm the sudden chaos.
“Didn’t you know you have a magic door upstairs?” Jilly says when it’s quietened down.
Tam shoots me a suspicious look like this is some game and we’re having him on. Rather than try to explain, Jilly and I take him back up to the linen closet. He’s very quiet when we come back down to join the others.
Geordie puts a hand on his shoulder. “It gets easier,” he tells Tam. “Especially if you don’t try to find a logical explanation.”
“Right.”
I raise my eyebrows at Jilly. “Ghost girls,” I say.
She nods. “Yes, all play and no work makes for a frivolous existence.”
“Should I even ask?” Tam says.
Wendy laughs. “Probably not.”
She and Geordie head for Stanton Street while Jilly and I go in the opposite direction, leaving Tam standing in the kitchen, a slightly stunned expression on his face.
I didn’t think we should bring the dogs with us to the police station, but Jilly waved off my argument with a “They’re part of our team so they’ll just have to get used to it.” I don’t know about this supposed team she claims we have, which now apparently includes the dogs as well, but Jilly can be obstinate about where Bobo can and can’t go.
Detective Cray isn’t one bit happy about the dogs. He’s not happy with Jilly being there either. And he’s really unhappy when he hears we intend to go inside the cell to communicate with the ghosts.
I don’t bother arguing since I figure it will only make him dig in his heels. Somehow Jilly manages to follow my lead and stays quiet. That she can hold back her usual self is something to behold, but she sits there looking like innocence personified.
We wear him down with our silence until he finally mutters something under his breath and leads us to the elevator.
There’s a new detective at the desk when we come out of the elevator. He introduces himself as Chad Waller. He’s a big man like Cray, but seems to have a natural good humour which Cray lacks. Like Detective Namome, he locks all his paperwork away when he hears why we’ve come.
“So you talk to ghosts, do you?” he says to me.
“When they’ve got voices.”
I’m wearing the black lace glove, but neither detective remarks upon it. They probably think it’s some pretentious affectation, like I’d actually imitate Michael Jackson. As if.
Cray leads the way to the end of the hall where the ghost girls are locked up. Both Sonora and Bobo stop at the cell that held the werewolf yesterday. It’s empty now, but the dogs are fascinated, walking back and forth in front of it, smelling where the glass meets the floor.
I put my hand on the glass, then turn to Cray. “What happened to your other…guest?” I ask.
Cray turns to see where I’m looking, but he won’t meet my gaze.
“He got transferred,” he finally says.
“Is that a euphemism for he was killed, or that he was sent to an otherworld?”
Waller snickers and Cray shoots him a dirty look. He takes a step closer to me, using his height to try and intimidate me.
“Who told you we do things like that?” he asks.
I don’t back down. “You’re not answering my question.”
“I’m not here to answer questions,” he says and continues down the hall.
Jilly and I exchange glances. She sticks her tongue out at Cray’s back and I smile, but his attitude is beginning to piss me off.
The girls are all slouched against various walls in their cell as we walk toward them. They look up at our approach with disinterest—all except for the cheerleader. She bounces to her feet when she recognizes me. I lift a hand in greeting and she waves back.
“I take it you can still see them,” Cray says.
I don’t bother answering him. While I adjust the glove for the umpteenth time, Jilly tells the dogs to lie down and stay. They keep looking from her to the ghost girls, which tells me they can see them as well as I can. The other girls are watching me now, but only the cheerleader is on her feet. The dogs seem uneasy, especially Bobo, but Jilly waits them out. When they finally settle, she joins me in front of the glass.
“Any time,” I tell Cray.
I put my backpack down beside Sonora and take out a pencil and pad of paper.
“How’s that going to help?” Cray asks.
I shrug. “Are we going to do this?”
I sense a reluctance in Cray as he works the keyboard. The glass partition slides up into the ceiling, which I wasn’t quite expecting.
“That’d make a great patio door,” Jilly says.
I smile and we step inside.
I’ll admit a certain anxiety when the partition slides back down, sealing us in with the ghosts. They’re all standing up now—even the one that was ignoring me, face to the wall, when I was down here yesterday.
It’s hard to get a read on any of them except for the cheerleader. She seems so grateful that I’ve come back—that I’m actually trying to help—that her eyes are welling with tears. I stand by the table and explain how the glove works, then ask her to put her own hand on it.
The punk girl steps forward, reaching for it, but the cheerleader pushes her away. I make a mental note that they’re able to interact with each other.
“One at a time,” I say and point at the cheerleader. “You first. You seem to be the oldest.”
The cheerleader and the punk have a wordless staring match until the punk gives her the finger and turns away. The other girls have been watching with interest, but seem okay to just watch how this plays out.
The cheerleader reaches out and puts her hand on top of mine. As it slowly comes to rest, a cold numbness spreads through my fingers. In moments it has that awful dead feeling, as though I’ve slept on it. I can’t suppress a shiver.
“Are you okay?” Jilly asks.
“I’m fine.”
At least I hope I am. The creepiness of all of this is starting to rev up inside me and all I want to do is take off the glove. But I smile at the cheerleader and try not to let what I’m feeling show.
“What’s your name?” I ask her.
She lifts my hand to pick up the pencil and I can’t begin to describe how eerie it is to see my hand moving without my controlling it. She writes on the pad.
Sandy Collins.
“Do you know who killed you?”
She shakes her head. I don’t know her name.
“What can you tell me?”
My hand writes, pencil scratching on the paper. I went to bed in my own house. When I woke up I was in some kind of barn. Tied up and hanging upside down from a rafter. I don’t know how I got there.
I lift my gaze from the page to look at her, horrified. Her face is expressionless, her eyes not seeing anything for a long moment.
“That’s so awful.”
She focuses back on me and nods.
She cut my throat, then she washed herself in my blood.
I can’t process this. Jilly is reading over my shoulder and I can feel her go very still. Sandy is still using my hand to write.
She stole my life. After I died she took my baby fingers and put them in her box.
It takes me a few moments before I can clear my throat.
“I’m so sorry for you,” I finally manage.
I watched her do it five more times. Every ten years she would bring another girl to that barn, except one year she brought two.
“What year was that?”
I don’t know. I lost count of time.
My hand pauses for a moment, then continues to write. She silenced us, then said the magic was in our youth, our blood, and the fingers she took, but now that essence was hers and it would keep her young forever. That was true. She never changed. She always looked the same age as she was when she killed me.
I look at the carved box on the table. “The—all your fingers —are here, in this box?”
She nods. Only our baby fingers.
She kept it with her, my hand continues to write, and we all had to tag along whenever she went anywhere. She burned our bodies, so all that’s left of us is in that box. She bound us to it.
I’m starting to feel really tired. A listlessness is creeping through me. I remember Christiana’s warning about draining my essence, but I can’t just leave this off here. I need to find out more.
“What happened to her?”
I don’t know. She went away where we couldn’t follow because she left the box behind.
“Do you know how to open it?”
Magic. She opened it with magic. Only magic can open it.
“When did she go away?”
I don’t know. It’s hard to hold on to time.
“Do you know the names of the other girls?”
She shakes her head. They’re like me. They don’t have voices. We can’t talk.
I stare down at the pad where she’s been writing all of this with my hand.
“You have a voice now,” I say. “I’m going to figure out a way to set you free.”
The punk girl comes forward. She gives Sandy a sudden shove away and grabs the glove with both hands. It’s like a huge shard of ice shoots up my arm and into my shoulder as she tries to take control of me. Not just my hand. All of me.
I want to call out but my throat is frozen. I can’t talk. I can’t even breathe.
It spreads down to my chest, up into my head. I hear a shouting in my ear. A girl’s voice. I can’t make out any words—only her fierce rage.
I want to fight her control of me, but I can’t muster the energy.
Spots are floating in front of my eyes and I realize I’m going away. I can tell a slender cord is all that holds me in my body, and it’s being cut away.
And suddenly it’s all gone. I find myself sprawled across the table, my face inches away from that horrible box. I realize the glove is no longer on my hand. I see Jilly holding it. She’s backed up against a wall, the pencil Sandy was using hovering in the air at face height. The table I’m leaning on starts to buck—held in place only by the bolts that attach it to the floor. Pages start ripping from the pad and whirl round inside the cell.
I push myself up and grab the pencil. It squirms in my grip but I hold onto it with both hands. I can see the punk girl staring at me, her lips pulled back in a snarl as we fight over the pencil, the torn pages whirling around. Then Sandy yanks the punk girl’s feet out from under her, breaking her concentration.
At some point Cray must have opened the glass partition. I can hear the dogs barking as he pulls Jilly out. Waller is beside me. I shake my head as he reaches for me and concentrate on grabbing the pages from the pad, focusing on the ones with writing on them. When he sees what I’m doing, he helps me grab the last few.
All through this Sandy is holding back the punk girl. As soon as we’ve got the last of the paper, I stagger out into the hallway. Waller’s right behind me as the partition slides back down.
“What the hell happened in there?” Cray demands.
I realize that I’ve sunk to the floor, a mess of paper clutched to my chest. “One of the girls went poltergeist on us,” I manage to say.
Waller has a bit more sensitivity. “Are you okay?” he asks me.
I shake out my hand. It’s all pins and needles now. I feel like I’ve just run a marathon or gone fifty rounds with a world champion. But I nod my head.
“I think so,” I say. “Jilly?”
“I’m fine. Hush,” she adds trying to calm the dogs. “No one’s in danger anymore.” Sonora nuzzles my neck and face but I’m too exhausted to comfort her.
“I think you saved my life,” I tell Jilly.
“What happened?”
“The punk girl tried to hijack my body. If you hadn’t gotten the glove off when you did…”
Jilly looks at the offending black lace in her hand.
“This probably wasn’t such a good idea,” she says.
“Except now we’ve got something to work with. Maybe we can help them.”
I’m not feeling much stronger, but at least the blood is returning to my hand.
I start putting the pages in order, which takes almost all the strength that I have. When I’ve got the pages right I look up at the others standing there.
Waller reaches down and helps me to my feet.
I look back into the cell. The punk girl races to the glass and pounds against it. It startles everybody else and sets the dogs to barking again. Sandy looks horrified, but I give her a slow thumbs up.
“What did you learn?” Cray asks. “We could only hear your side of the conversation and we couldn’t see what you were writing.”
I hand him the pages. When Cray reads the cheerleader’s name his face goes pale, then fills with barely contained anger.
“There must be a file on her in your records department,” I say. “We’re going to need to see it.”
“No.”
“Excuse me?”
“I want you out of here. I don’t know what the hell game you’re playing, but your involvement in anything to do with this task force is off the table.”
He turns to Waller. “Get them out of here.”
Then he turns his back on us. He stares at the ghosts even though he can’t see them.
“What’s going on?” I say. “You’re the one who wanted our help.”
He doesn’t turn around. “And now I don’t. And if you’re not out of this building in five minutes, I’m going to find something to charge you with and throw you in one of these cells.”
“You’d better come along,” Waller says.
Once again, Jilly is uncharacteristically quiet. She gives me a nudge and I follow the detective back to the elevator.
“What happened back there?” I ask Waller when we’re riding up to the task force’s main office.
He gives me a sympathetic look. I can tell he’d like to explain, but his loyalties aren’t with us.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “You heard the boss. If he wanted you to know, he’d tell you.”
“You know we’re going to figure this out anyway,” Jilly says.
He shakes his head. “Honestly, I’d just let it go. You don’t want Detective Cray as an enemy.”
“It’s too late for us to walk away,” I tell him. “I made those girls a promise and I plan to keep it.”
We reach our floor and the doors hiss open.
“Your funeral,” Waller says as Jilly and I step outside.
I think I catch a glimpse of Duncan outside the police station—across the street and down the block—but he disappears before I can be sure.
“Did you see that?” I ask Jilly.
“See what?”
“I thought I saw Duncan spying on us from down the street.”
Jilly frowns. “I guess he really wants us to go looking for his sister.”
“I suppose.”
Cray kept the papers with Sandy’s side of the conversation on them, but everything she told me is burned into my memory. We might not have the resources of the NPD to help us move ahead, but we don’t need it. We have the internet. And Saskia.
It’s slow going as we make our way back to Stanton Street. I end up having to lean on Jilly for the last few blocks because it seems like I can barely put one foot in front of the other. Sonora is pressed to my leg and whines the whole way.
Jilly settles me on the couch in the studio, then comes back a few moments later with tea and a sandwich. Sonora’s so focused on me that she doesn’t even try to mooch.
“You need to replenish your energy,” Jilly says.
“I don’t think I can eat or drink anything.”
“Humour me and try.”
I end up polishing it all off and feeling much better. Jilly drops the glove on the coffee table.
“That’s not something we’re trying again,” she says.
I agree with her, but privately I can’t make a promise that I won’t keep if I need to get more information from Sandy.
When Jilly sees I’m doing better she goes off to get Saskia, but comes back with Wendy instead. Wendy sets her laptop on the coffee table before sitting down beside me to give me a gentle hug, which is a little awkward with Sonora glued to my side.
“Saskia’s not around,” Jilly says, “so I thought we’d let Wendy put her skills to use and see what we can find out.”
Wendy nods and opens her laptop.
“So,” she says as she starts typing. “I guess I’ll enter Sandy Collins, 1950s, unsolved murder—”
“Better check for disappearances,” I say. “If a body was never recovered it wouldn’t necessarily be considered a homicide. Also, it might have been the early sixties.”
“And put in cheerleader,” Jilly adds.
Wendy nods and adds our suggestions.
“What do you think got into Cray?” I say as Wendy starts sifting through whatever hits her search has called up.
“Beats me. He was already working at being a hardass when we first got there, but that was completely out of line. He seemed to be mad at you, specifically.”
“I guess he thought I faked all that writing.”
Which reminds me that Cray has everything that Sandy wrote down for me.
“I need to make some notes,” I say.
Jilly pushes my backpack over to me from where it’s sitting on the floor beside the couch. I take out my laptop and quickly type in what I can remember, which is all the facts, if not Sandy’s exact language.
“I think I know what got the detective all worked up,” Wendy says. Her gaze is fixed on her screen. “Oh, jeez. Did you know he had a fiancée who also worked for the NPD? She was killed by wild dogs.”
“What?” I say.
“That’s tragic,” Jilly adds, “but I don’t see the connection to his behaviour today.”
“Oh, sorry,” Wendy says. “Come look.”
Jilly sits on the other side of her and we both lean in closer to see the screen.
“This is just a news story about how his fiancée got killed,” Wendy says. “It came up while I was double-checking something else I read on another page.” She goes to another of her browser’s open windows. “Here—see?”
There’s a lot of text on this page, but my eye’s immediately drawn to a small grainy picture of Sandy in her cheerleader outfit, hair tied back in a ponytail, a bright smile on her lips.
“She disappeared in the fall of 1962,” Wendy goes on. “No one ever found out what happened to her. She never resurfaced. A body was never recovered.”
“What is this site?” I ask.
“It’s a true crime blog that came up on my search. The guy who writes it focuses on unsolved crimes—murders, disappearances, bank heists. If you read the post he’s got on Sandy, you come up with the very interesting fact that she was Detective Cray’s aunt, on his mother’s side. That’s what got him interested in police work. He was just a kid when his aunt disappeared but—well, here. Read what he says.”
The way she vanished out of our lives has haunted me ever since. I know what that pain feels like. There’s a hole in your life and the questions never go away. My mission as a police officer is to make sure that no one else has to feel the sorrow my family feels.
“Okay,” Jilly says. “That doesn’t excuse him, but it does explain the stick up his ass.”
I nod. “He thinks I did a little research, then made out like I was talking to his aunt just to prove I’m on the level. What I don’t get is how a guy like him came to be in charge of a task force on the paranormal. It doesn’t even fit his mission.”
“No kidding,” Jilly says. “And it’s obvious we’re not going to get any help from him. We’ll have to figure this out on our own.”
I turn to Wendy. “Can you do an image search of missing teenagers in this area from, say, 1970 on?”
“Why that date?”
“Sandy said the woman who killed her repeated what she did every ten years.”
“Got it,” Wendy says. “But we’re not going to get many hits pre-internet.”
She gets the search going, then swaps computers with me so she can read what Sandy told us while I look at photos.
“God, there’s a lot of Native kids,” I say.
“What’s the ethnicity of the ghost girls?” Wendy asks.
“They’re all white,” I tell her as I keep scrolling.
But the girls on the screen aren’t. There are so many of them. Brown, black, white. How can there be so many missing girls?
“This is heartbreaking,” I say.
Jilly nods, her eyes hooded, the ready smile absent from her lips. It’s hard to tell what she’s thinking, but I know she was a missing girl, once upon a time. Or rather, an unwanted girl, which is probably a good enough reason to go missing.
But not like what happened with the ghost girls, butchered by some sick freak.
I’m just about to give up hope of finding any of them this way when a familiar angry face pops up, topped with a Mohawk. It’s the punk girl who tried to hijack my body. I click the link to find out her name was Debbie Owens, AKA MisRule. She disappeared in the fall of 1982.
By the time I get to the end of what the search has to offer, I have two more names.
Victoria Bell is the girl who looked like a science or math nerd. She disappeared in the fall of 2002.
Brooke Hardy is the one in flannel shirt and jeans who looked like she was into grunge. She disappeared in 1992. Also in the fall.
I copy all three pictures and send them to myself along with notes on their names and links to what I could find about them online. It’s amazing. The three of them went missing pre-internet but I found them because their families are still looking for them.
I might have passed by photos of the others simply because the photos don’t do them justice. Some people look really different when their faces aren’t animated.
I close Wendy’s computer and put it on the coffee table, then lean my head back.
“Tell us more about Kingsmoor,” I say to Wendy to get my mind off of what happened to the ghost girls. “Where is it supposed to be, according to the books? How does the magic work?”
“Well, the magic’s pretty complex—or at least learning it is. They have to be able to accurately place their position in regards to the celestial bodies and take into account everything around them whenever they want to work magic—ley lines, vortexes, any kind of energy source. They also have to memorize reams of incantations and intricate finger movements. That’s why it’s a college. The students start off with some promise and then spend three years absorbing all this stuff in excruciating detail until—if they pass—it comes as naturally to them as breathing.”
“Back up a minute,” I say. “What was that about finger movements?”
Wendy lifts her hands and makes her fingers do a weird, convoluted dance. Then she laughs.
“I figure it looks something like that from the descriptions in the books.”
“But the finger movements are an important part of the—what? Spell?”
Wendy nods. “The hedge mages say that the source of a mage’s power is in their little fingers and their heart’s blood.”
I look at Jilly and see her coming to the same conclusion as I have. The weirdness of synchronicity—how there’s no discernible connection between two things and yet it’s there—is mind-blowing.
“And if you took somebody’s blood and little fingers away from them?” I ask. “They wouldn’t be able to do magic anymore, right?”
“Well, no. They’d be dead.”
“But would a mage have anything to gain from stealing somebody else’s magic?”
“That’s exactly what Jerad Sloan—the Big Bad—was doing until Oliver stopped him.”
“When were these books written?” I ask.
“I think the first one came out in the late nineties—I’d have to check the exact date.”
“But long after the first girls went missing.”
Wendy puts a hand to her mouth. Now she gets it too.
“This doesn’t make sense,” Jilly says. “We’ve seen Duncan and he looks like he does in the illustrations from the books. The world he comes from exists because of the books and their big fan base.”
I nod. “But what if the magic described in the books is a real thing? What if it existed before the books, and the author found out about it and used it for his magic system?”
“And based Jerad Sloan on a real Big Bad,” Wendy says.
I look from her to Jilly. “Am I crazy? How can this be connected?”
“You did say you saw Duncan watching us when we left the police station.”
“So is he after the box of finger bones?” I turn to Wendy. “Would they have any power on their own?”
“I don’t know. Probably. Those bones are keeping the ghosts trapped.”
“Or,” I go on, “is he afraid that Daisy’s involved, either to gain power for herself, or maybe he thinks she’s going to be the next victim? Maybe she already is the next victim and that’s why she’s missing.”
“We need to see if we can find a connection between the girls,” Jilly says. “Maybe they have a specific blood type, some genetic marker. And maybe a connection between them can tell us who targeted them. The woman probably inserted herself into each of the girls’ lives before she grabbed them for her…ceremony.” She pulls a face, remembering what Sandy wrote.
I shake my head. “Sandy didn’t know the woman’s name.”
“Saskia will be able to figure this out a lot faster than we'll ever be able to,” Wendy says.
“I totally agree,” I say. “And it looks like we have to go to the Kingsmoor world.”
Wendy’s eyes light up and I add, “Yes, you should come, too. We’ll need a guide.”
“And do what there?” Jilly asks.
“Talk to Oliver Tye, for one thing. He already defeated one of these freaks. Maybe he’ll help us find and defeat the other.”
“Except he lost all his magic taking Jerad Sloan down,” Wendy says.
“Did he lose his tongue, too?” I ask. “Because otherwise he can still tell us things we don’t know.”
Wendy nods.
“The one thing we’re not doing,” I say, “is hitching a ride with Duncan Fairweather. If he’s playing us like it’s starting to seem he is, he could dump us over there and we’d never get home. I want to go in and out under our own steam.” I look to Jilly. “Do you think Joe would help us?”
“I can ask him.”
I take out my phone to check the time. “That’d be great.” I give Jilly a considering look. “Do you still think sleuthing’s fun?”
She shakes her head. “Right now? No, but it’s important.”
I think about that then give a slow nod.
“It’s almost dinnertime,” I say. “I’m going home. Shall we get back together tomorrow morning?”
Because I’m watching for it, I catch a few glimpses of Duncan as Sonora and I walk home. He thinks he’s being subtle, but there aren’t a lot of places to hide on our route, and skulking behind various shrubberies and along the sides of garages doesn’t really cut it. I’m tempted to call him out the next time I spot him, just to watch him jump, but I refrain.
Tam’s sitting on the steps playing a guitar when Sonora and I arrive. It’s amazing that he can do that in the middle of October, but so far we’ve had a really balmy fall. I sit on the step beside him while Sonora does a quick check of the garden and the oak out front before she sprawls on the grass.
“I guess we need to think of getting the coco matting on these stairs for winter,” I say.
Tam lays a hand across his guitar’s strings, stilling them.
“It’s just a linen closet,” he says. “I’ve been up there a half-dozen times today, but whenever I check, it’s just a linen closet.”
“It needs me to become a door to Christiana’s wild acres,” I tell him.
“Since when did you become magic?”
“I’m not. If someone gives you a key to a front door, does that automatically make you a locksmith?”
“Of course not.”
“This is the same thing, only the key’s in my head.”
“So…magic.”
“Yes, but it’s Christiana’s magic, not mine. Do you want to come see? I thought I’d walk Sonora there before dinner anyway.”
“Absolutely. It’s been driving me crazy all day.”
He gets up and goes to the front door. I call Sonora up onto the porch, then look up and down the street. No sign of Duncan. I wish I was magic so I could put one of those protective wards on our house. I don’t like the idea of him being able to come in whenever he wants.
Tam sets his guitar on the sofa and we head upstairs.
“Unbelievable,” he says when I open the door onto the wild acres. He sticks a hand in, waving it around, feeling the difference in the air. “I was so sure this was some kind of trick you and Jilly had cooked up.”
Sonora’s been waiting eagerly for permission to go through. As soon as I give her the hand signal she bolts into the tall grass. Tam and I follow at a normal pace. Standing on the path, Tam runs a hand across the tops of the grass and weeds. He bends down and scoops up some dirt, letting it sift back down through his fingers.
I wait for him, taking deep breaths of the pure air.
“Where does the path go?” Tam asks.
I shrug. “The last time we stayed on the main one and it brought us back to here.”
“So…”
“You choose a direction.”
He sets off taking the same route we did this morning.
Dusk was already creeping in when I got home to find Tam on the steps with his guitar. The days are growing shorter, fall turning to winter. Here, there’s still plenty of light and it feels more like spring on the verge of summer. So it seems Christiana’s version of changing seasons doesn’t quite jibe with Newford’s.
There’s a sudden kerfuffle in the grass and Sonora comes bounding out. She checks to see that we’re still here and then off she goes again.
“Are you going to show this to Nick?” Tam asks.
“Probably not.”
“Things aren’t going well?”
“They’re fine. He just likes me a lot more than I like him.” I smile at my brother. “Which should be a familiar sensation to you.”
He shrugs. “I try to tell them like it is, but they never believe me.”
He attracts girls and it’s no surprise to me. He’s a great musician. He’s good-looking and kind. But he’s always cared more for music than anything else—has ever since he first started to play. The girls consider him a project. That it’ll be different with them. It never is and they drift away.
“I’m not judging,” I tell him.
“You never do.”
We come to a spot where a smaller trail branches off to the right.
“Where does that go?” he asks.
“I have no idea.”
“But we won’t get lost?”
“I don’t think Christiana would let us.”
He doesn’t ask how she’d know, and I wouldn’t know how to answer, but I still feel it’s true because she assured me we’d be safe here.
The new trail winds through stands of birch, cedar and maple before it lets us out into a meadow with the most enormous apple tree I’ve ever seen. As impossible as it seems, it’s laden with fruit and blossoms at the same time. The scent is intoxicating. The apples big, red and gleaming.
“Maybe we’re in Eden,” Tam murmurs, “and that’s the Tree of Knowledge.”
“I don’t think so. But it is amazing.”
I hear a footstep behind us on the path and turn to find Christiana. Sonora immediately shows up to greet her, accepts a pat, and is gone again. That dog loves it here.
“Go ahead and have one,” Christiana says, nodding at the tree. “This isn’t Faerieland where if you eat or drink you’re trapped forever.” She smiles. “If it was you’re already doomed by having my tea and cookies last night.”
“Hey,” Tam says.
He smiles the way you do when you meet a friend, and I realize I shouldn’t be surprised that they know each other. Tam’s been playing with Geordie a lot since the summer and Christiana goes to most of her brother’s gigs.
“Hey, yourself. I liked that song you sang last week at The Black Fox.”
Tam mumbles something in reply, which means it was one he wrote. He’s terrible at accepting compliments on his songs.
I reach up, pluck an apple and bite into it. The flesh is both sweet and tart, the juice running down my chin, and I feel a sudden lift of spirits. I didn’t know how tired I still was until the apple gave me this little kick of energy.
“How did the glove work out?” Christiana asks me.
“That’s a long story.”
“Have you two had supper yet?”
I shake my head.
“Then we should go to my house and you can tell me all about it over a meal.”
I exchange a quick glance with Tam. Eye contact is all we need to read each other.
“That’d be great,” I say.
Tam can’t get over Christiana’s living arrangements. While Christiana and I fuss around in the kitchen area—me making a salad as she puts together a pizza from scratch—he walks around and around the living area trying to absorb the idea of these furnishings and her home in a woodland glade. He asks some of the same questions as I did—like, what does she do in inclement weather—and gets the same answers.
Sonora divides her time between watching him and checking to make sure neither Christiana nor I have some little treat for her. Christiana’s already taken out some leftover rice casserole for her to have when we’re eating.
Occasionally Tam drifts over to where we’re working on dinner and asks if he can help. Finally he settles on a kitchen chair and starts to talk music with Christiana. I’d be surprisedif her depth of knowledge matches his, except I don’t know her well, so almost anything she says or does could be surprising.
We start on the salad while we wait for the pizza and I tell them about my day while we eat. It takes a while. Sonora gets fed and the pizza’s on the table by the time I’m done.
Tam shakes his head. “Joon, you’re going to give me a heart attack—you know that, right? I’m too young to have a heart attack.”
“I’ve got it under control,” I tell him.
“Yeah, that’s why some ghost almost hijacked your body.”
“No, that’s why I had Jilly there to look out for me. We considered how that might happen, so we were prepared.”
Tam just shakes his head again.
“I have to admit,” Christiana says, “I’m feeling a little guilty for my part in this.”
I hold up a hand. “Stop right there. Nobody made me do this. I didn’t go into it with blinders on.”
“Why can’t you just take up skydiving or scaling skyscrapers?” Tam asks. “You know, something cozy and safe compared to fighting vampires and ghosts.”
“You’ve fought vampires?” Christiana says.
“Kind of—remember those Bloods I told you about?”
She nods.
“But I had Joe and a couple of his friends to help me, and they weren’t really vampires. I’m not sure what exactly they were.”
“Vampires,” Tam repeats.
“We’re getting off topic here.”
“No,” Tam says. “We’re totally on topic because now you’re planning to go off to some magic college world to fight wizards.”
“I’m not planning to fight anybody. I just want to find out how to free the ghosts of those girls and stop what happened to them from happening again.”
Tam turns to Christiana. “Are you her friend? Please tell her how crazy this is.”
“It’s dangerous,” Christiana says, nodding, “but it needs to be done. And if nobody else steps up, then we have to.”
“We?” I say.
Christiana gives me a brilliant smile. “I can help you get to Kingsmoor College. Joe’s not the only one who knows their way around the otherworld.”
“I don’t know why I bother,” Tam says, resting his chin on the cup of his palm.
I lay a hand on his arm. “I get it, Tam. I really do. I’d be worried sick if our roles were reversed. But I’m still doing this.”
“Then I’m coming with you.”
I shake my head. “I train all the time. I’m familiar with a lot of different fighting styles and weapons. You’re not.”
“That was just in movies and the show.”
“That’s right. The training I did was for those roles. The roles were fake, the fights choreographed. But the training was real.”
“Did you train how to fight a wizard?”
“No. But like I said, I’m not going to fight. I’m going to get advice from a guy who’s gone up against a creature like this before. That’s all.”
“And I’ll be with her,” Christiana says.
“So you know how to fight wizards?”
She smiles. “No, but I know how to beat a quick retreat from one world into another. Speaking of which, I should go have a look at the backyard of Jilly’s house and decide the best place for a door to here.” She smiles. “I could key it to you as well as her, and then you could walk home from Bramleyhaugh through the wild acres instead of city streets.”
My heart does a little backflip. “I would love that.”
“Why can’t it be in their house like it is at ours?” Tam asks.
“There’s a protective ward on the Stanton Street house,” Christiana says. “My door wouldn’t work from it.”
“But Joe gets in and out,” I say.
She nods. “Joe’s special. And for all we know, he’s the one who put the ward on Jilly’s house in the first place. He’s very protective of her.”
I nod. “I think everybody is.”
“This is true,” Christiana says.
We both laugh because that’s something Jilly says all the time.
“We should probably get going,” I say.
Tam bounces to his feet. At first I think he’s that eager to leave, but instead he starts collecting the dishes from the table.
“Leave that,” Christiana tells him. “I’ll get them in the morning.”
“Do you think you could key my door so that Tam can use it, too?” I ask.
“Of course. I’ll walk you back and we can do it right away.” She glances at Tam. “Next time bring your guitar. I’d love to hear you play without some drunk shouting in the background.”
We both get up as well and I help Tam stack the remaining dishes in the sink, which doesn’t seem attached to anything, but water still comes out of its faucet and drains away somewhere.
“You’re going to have to explain the physics of this to me sometime,” Tam says.
“That’s easy. It’s magic.”
“Yes, but…” His voice trails off.
I bump his shoulder with my own. “You’re honestly better off not thinking about it too much. Whenever I do, it feels like my head’s going to explode.”
“That’s how I’m feeling right now.”
“Exactly. So stop thinking about it.”
“Come on,” Christiana says.
Night has fallen outside her magical home but there’s a moon so bright that it’s not hard to see the path. Sonora stays by my side for the walk back.
“See, how can there be a moon up there?” Tam says.
I make an exploding sound and mimic the debris flying everywhere with my hands.
“Okay, okay,” he says. “I get it.”
“But I am curious about the seasons,” I say. “You said the wild acres have them, but it feels more like spring here than fall.”
“I set them to Australian time. That way, on the hottest summer days you can cool off with winter here. And you don’t get cabin fever because winter outside is summer here.”
“I can’t tell you how much I appreciate access to all of this,” I tell her. “And thanks for letting me bring this one, too.” I tap Tam’s shoulder. “I should have asked first.”
She waves off my thanks. “Extra eyes make it easier for me to keep it all from disappearing through neglect. Here’s your door.”
There’s a faint rectangular outline marking it. I’d been wondering about finding it as soon as we left Christiana’s home, but I’ve discovered there’s something like a homing beacon in my head telling me where it is. I knew we were about to arrive before Christiana spoke.
We step through into the second floor hallway of our house with Christiana and she closes the door behind us.
“You have to believe it will lead you to the wild acres,” she tells Tam, “otherwise you’ll just find a linen closet.”
“Okay,” he says, but he sounds dubious.
“Believe,” Christiana tells him.
She steps up to him and kisses him on the lips.
“Now try it,” she says.
He does and there are the wild acres, glowing in the moonlight. A fresh breeze wafts into the hall and the moonlight illuminates his face.
He grins. “So the kiss was like the spell to make the magic work?”
Christiana laughs. “No, I just wanted to kiss you.”
Then she steps out into the wild acres and closes the door behind her. The hall plunges into darkness until I hit the wall switch.
“She is so into you,” I tell Tam.
“What? No she isn’t.”
“No, of course you’re right,” I tell him. “What could she possibly see in you?”
Then I walk down the hallway to my bedroom with Sonora, singing softly, “Tam and Christiana, sitting in a tree…”
“Don’t be so juvenile!” he calls after me.
“K-I-S-S-I-N-G,” I finish before I close my door on him.