CHAPTER ONE

STARTING OVER

HAVING MAGIC WOULD be awesome, if only there weren’t people willing to kill me for it.

There are, as far as I know—and my knowledge is like Swiss cheese with a number of holes in it—only three ways to naturally have magic. It can be studied and practiced for years on end to gain skill, or one can simply be born magical like an Iron Dwarf, harpy, or an elf. Don’t ask me about vampires, I’ve been told they’re extremely rare, and no one likes discussing them.

My friend the professor, wherever he is, has learned several lifetimes’ worth of skill, being a phoenix wizard who can rejuvenate himself when time weighs too heavily. He has unlimited lifetimes to spend learning his spells. I can’t pontificate about those born with it. I’m just learning about the different folk who exist in a world I never thought possible.

And then there’s the third, reviled way—theft. Out-and-out stealing magic from those unsuspecting or unable to defend themselves. The professor wouldn’t tell me how it’s done, but I gather it’s really something terrible, like stealing a soul.

There are articles which can store power in their core, but they are few and far between. Someone has to have charged them in the first place, so the magic in those items is simply transferred.

As for me, I’ve been possessed. A relic known as the maelstrom stone has decided to embed itself in the palm of my left hand and there it stays until I give it away or die, which is why I’ve been hunted. Now the stone itself has power which it lends to me when needed, and it also absorbs other relics, increasing its ability almost at will. I could easily be convinced that it is alive, somehow, and . . . well, hungry. One of those relics made a sorceress of me, but don’t ask me what happens if I lose the stone. I don’t know. I don’t even have a good guess, unless I lose it in the most drastic way possible, over my dead body.

What I do have is a healthy respect for self-defense. I’m an enforcer for my college field hockey team, meaning I can run—and I can hit, jar, bump, trip, tackle (discreetly), and scramble at will. Off the field, the stone can help me throw up a defensive shield and so can the awesome bracers the Broadstone dwarven tribe gave me for my twentieth birthday. As a sorceress, my power lies in recognizing the magic sunk into other objects and calling that power into my usage. This is a little dicier than it sounds because I didn’t used to have the Sight necessary to recognize and name the power so I can own it. I do now, thanks to shards of the Eye of Nimora which my stone absorbed. That’s another magical object possessed by the Iron Dwarves and which they use in their judicial system. There was a slight accident when I retrieved the Eye for them (it had been stolen) and it broke when dropped. Not much damage, thank goodness, but two distinct splinters snapped off, and my maelstrom stone didn’t hesitate to gobble them up. They reside in the stone and are a little temperamental about opening and viewing, but we’ve reached an agreement. I think. I would have given them back so the Eye could be whole again, but their loss doesn’t seem to have weakened the original relic and my stone has never regurgitated anything it’s swallowed. And my power grows.

No, I don’t rest easy, even at night.

Especially then.

I wasn’t surprised when something woke me. Nights are the worst, because things can creep in and out through the veil of dreams, the sort of things that nobody wants to deal with.

So when I rolled over in the dead of night, in that still, silent, and frozen week after Christmas and New Year’s, an unwelcome presence took me right out of my sleep. It ran across the edge of my conscious thought like a tiny beast with razor-sharp and ice-cold toes.

I blinked up at the ceiling, and listened. Had something entered the house? It shouldn’t have been possible, but the professor no longer lived here and his wards might be weakening. My overgrown pup, Scout, snored from the corner of the mattress. Whatever I’d heard, he hadn’t. My bedroom felt cold outside the covers, and I didn’t want to leave them. I pulled them up under my chin until I realized that I’d already passed the point of falling asleep again. I hate it when that happens. I slid out of bed quietly and found the bedroom floor as chilled as the air. It could have been the weather, with snow that comes and goes and icy rain following it in, and everything seems interrupted and left for dead.

My robe didn’t hang on its usual hook by the closet. My mom must have taken it to wash, so I grabbed my favorite oversized T-shirt and pulled it on over my boy shorts and athletic bra. I don’t sleep in cozy nightgowns or pj’s in case I have to react. In the faint light from the hallway, my shirt proudly read: We Ar the Champi ns. I tend to wear my favorite shirts to smithereens.

In the hallway, I still heard nothing, but something hung in the air. It smelled moldy and musty and left a slimy feeling down the back of my throat. I’d never encountered anything like it before and wasn’t happy about meeting up with it now.

Just past my doorway, there’s a niche in the hallway wall. A vase and a bouquet of what looked to be budding red roses about to open, resided there. They’re not flowers. They’re tell-tales, a mostly reliable alarm system. As I approached them, I could see that every flower had opened wide, looking like daisies scared straight. I put a finger out and stroked a velvety petal. It shivered under my touch and then leaned into it. Something had definitely alarmed them.

They looked toward the street side of the house.

Turning, I made my way slowly down the hall, trying to avoid squeaky boards. Scout joined me, a little sheepishly, his golden tail hanging low in an apologetic wag for letting me explore the unknown alone. I put a hand on his head. “Quiet.”

He gave a little snuff of understanding.

I opened the next bedroom door, which had been the professor’s room, although it had been empty now for months. The bed stayed made and no dust lingered on the wardrobe or nightstand, but the area had that smell of being unoccupied. Or maybe the musty smell from the hall followed me in. I looked at the bed where his walking cane with the large quartz decorating its handle caught a bit of starlight through the curtained window. It glowed like the diamond it resembled. I smiled to see it so bright and clean. It had been through a lot, that crystal, turning dark and opaque, and we’d thought it would never recover. I guessed that’s why the professor left it behind. It’s one of those relics I mentioned.

I stepped around the single bed and headed to the window. The curtains were askew the tiniest bit, and if I were careful, I could look outside on the street without being caught spying. I positioned myself, Scout promptly sitting down on my left foot to anchor me.

Down below, a mist danced along the street and sidewalks, up and down the block, and I could see frosted patterns on the ground. Lampposts up and down the block seemed a little dimmed; the shadows they cast were barely decipherable in the overall gloom. I could see two porch lights on down the block but no lit windows in the houses. Everyone in the neighborhood but me seemed to be safely asleep, but it was the streetlight directly below that drew my attention. It cast shadows where none should be, shaped like nothing I’d ever seen before, and which didn’t belong there. How can something cast backward silhouettes?

The curtains at the window wiggled a little as I pulled one aside, just a slit, to better look down at our street. It’s odd, but our streetlights change intensity. They burn brighter once warmed up. On a winter night like tonight, with a heavy mist that might turn into a light snow by morning, the streetlights barely seemed to cut into the evening. Midsummer was like that, too, as though the day had been long and bright enough that we deserved a milder, gentler illumination. Tonight, every light seemed to be pitching a losing battle against the cloak of evening. I could see little more than outlines although many were longer and deeper than expected. That hair-tickling feeling didn’t go away. Something was leaning against a lamppost out there. I saw it.

I leaned close enough that my breath fogged the window a little. I watched it for the briefest of moments, trying to separate true shadow from illusion, and then—it seemed as if I had caught its attention as it looked up at me.

If it hadn’t moved, I wouldn’t have seen it. Stretching and turning, it seemed, as if suddenly becoming aware of my study.

Instinct jumped me backward. I dropped the curtain, breath thudding out of my lungs for a brief moment as my heart did a skip and a thump, and I fought to inhale. But the thing I found watching . . . just the hasty glimpse before I retreated . . . had looked up with blazing red eyes.

I’d seen Steptoe like that once when he’d lost control over his demonic powers, and I’d hoped never to see such a sight again.

I stepped back two, three steps from the window, just in case my silhouette could somehow be visible. I didn’t want to draw attention. I took a ragged breath or two. My hand remained in the air, and I stared at my palm, my left palm, where the Eye of Nimora often looked back at me, and it awoke.

Two, small red slits opened to observe my world. But these eyes, though supernatural, held absolutely no resemblance to what I’d just seen below. There was no malevolence, no sinister aspect, but on the street—I’d felt a wave of malignance turned upward, toward my window, toward me, as the thing below searched.

My foot took a step all by itself. The rest of my body wanted to follow. To go see what the hell was going on, to find out what sat on my street by my front door and driveway and glowered at the world. I knew that would not be smart. I could feel the icy presence of malice drifting outward from it, whatever it was. I stared at the curtains, transfixed, while my heart thumped heavily.

What had I just seen? Like watching a train wreck, I couldn’t stay away from the vision.

What was it doing here?

Eyes narrowing, I looked for it, and then I spotted it among the spiked silhouettes. Something nearly impossible to see.

Not a wisp of the curtain moved. I hadn’t given myself away, but it had caught me . . . or had it? If it was surveilling the house, it could be gazing all over, not just where I stood. I waited until my heartbeats steadied and Scout went from sitting on my foot to lying down on it, paw across his nose as if he could also smell the evil odor creeping through the upstairs. When I leaned close to look again, the shadows had scattered—splintered across the road and sidewalk as if they had never been out of the ordinary and grotesque. It had disappeared or melded into the evening. I couldn’t detect it even though I felt it. Slimy. Rotten. Evil.

So I did that thing that one should never do—I went downstairs, determined to go outside in search of what might have been happening. Nearly every Gothic horror written or filmed tells you Do Not Go Out Wandering. It’s deadly. It’s exactly what the enemy wants. It is usually fatal. But this was my house. We’d been driven out of our other home by poverty and addiction and found refuge here, and I wasn’t about to let it happen again.

So I went anyway, my dog tucked against the back of my leg as if knowing what I planned to do and hoping I’d change my mind. Scout is smarter than the average dog, being of exceptional bloodlines . . . half elven, half Labrador retriever . . . with a predicted longevity of thirty years or so. His devotion to me is endless, except now he took a corner of my droopy T-shirt in his jaw and didn’t want to let go when I got to the door. He had no intention of going out the front door and worked to keep me from accomplishing it.

I pushed him aside with a stern “off,” and he retreated with a whine, his eyes sad and his ears drooping. The moment my bare feet touched the porch, I nearly turned around and bolted back inside. Cold radiated upward as if attacking; my whole body went icy, setting my teeth to chattering. I’d explore, but I’d do it in a damned hurry, I decided. Something inside me, probably my common sense, tugged at me to go back.

I didn’t.

The shadows had all shrunk to normal size and dimensions, with no sign of what had been there. Something wicked had been here . . . I could feel it in every tingling nerve . . . but it had passed, and I was no closer to knowing what it was.

I walked about the lamppost and watched the shadows dance as I did: all normal, no grotesque rendering. I peered at the iron structure itself, to see if anything had been left behind but hoarfrost and saw nothing. Even that smell had dissipated, or I had gotten used to it because it no longer hung on the evening air. Yet . . . when I looked at the ground, I saw one distinctive shoeprint outlined there. It seemed to be fading even as I studied it. I hadn’t brought my phone with me, so I had no chance to take a shot. It looked like a boot print, long and narrow with a distinctive heel but definitely man-sized, and then . . . it disappeared into the mist.

I retreated back to the safety of the house and had trouble closing the front door because of Scout’s relieved and exuberant welcome. My feet tingled in the warmer air. I tugged on his neck.

“Enough already. Back to bed. Let’s not disturb anyone else. I don’t want a lecture.”

And I could hardly wait to shove my toes back under warm covers again.

As I passed the tell-tales upstairs, I saw they had lost their exaggerated pose and slumped back into sleepy buds as though nothing had ever been wrong. I wondered if Steptoe, my friend who’d given them to me with the express purpose of having an alarm in the house, had even noted their panic. If not, then something dangerous had been watching the house—and almost nobody knew it. What measures we had in place hadn’t been enough to protect us. That would have to change.

As I pulled the covers back up, and Scout arranged himself alongside, I thought of how we’d been driven out of the home that had been my safety and haven for most of my life. If not for Aunt April and her generosity, we wouldn’t have the place we did: rickety structure, old-fashioned plumbing, and all.

Once upon a time, I had had a father. I thought him awesome until he caught the gambling bug, so I killed him. And no, I didn’t shoot him or take an ax to him although half my high school at the time thought I did when he disappeared suddenly. We’d had a shouting match when I found out he’d cleaned out my college fund, and I shoved him away. Magic’s greedy jaws swallowed him whole. He hasn’t been seen by the general public since. I didn’t believe in him or magic then. In the ensuing years, my mother and I lost our house, our savings, and our credit cards, but at least we had each other.

If I’d known then what I know now, I might have done things differently. Yes, he had an illness, and magic had a grip on him as well, for he’d used it to increase his luck which fed his addiction. Can’t do that. The House always wins.

Magic has a price; when it comes to take its due, it can be fairly messy. It’s not pretty. Don’t ever believe it is. It is the stuff of blood, sweat, and tears. Add a little cursing—but that will lead you into the dark side. Avoid that, if possible. Because the price is high enough as it is. I lost a father . . . and gained a family I never expected.

Power imbues all of us, like sunlight and shadow, and those who can see it, sense it, or bend it hold a definite advantage over those of us who cannot. I want to use it to right those wrongs in my life that changed everything—but magic doesn’t work backward, only forward. There’s a balance to the powers of life, and then there’s chaos which thrives on the messy bits. The forgotten pieces. The ragged overlaps.

I wouldn’t have magic at all, but it chose me for reasons I have yet to understand. Chaos decided to burrow into me and stick. It seems permanently attached, and don’t think others haven’t tried to take it any way they can, including over my dead body. As for devouring . . . well, my stone has inhaled a cursed ring and a book on Dark Arts, as well as those bits of the Eye I mentioned. As for why the breakage of the Eye of Nimora didn’t really seem to hurt it, well, the darn thing is a gem big enough to choke a horse.

Sorcery struck me, not that differently from a bolt of lightning, but forgot to leave me with a set of directions, and I’ve been struggling ever since. Lightning not only struck twice, but it darn near incinerated me.

There’s a steep learning curve to dealing with my new reality and, if not for my sake but others, I’m running out of time. The power I have to manipulate is stubborn, sometimes angry, possessive, and impatient. Chaos stones are adept that way, I’ve been warned, although there are excellent moments. I’ve also been told by those who know that magic mirrors the person who wields it, but I don’t think so. Maybe. Maybe not.

Magic can’t mend things, well, magically. Not in reality. It’s like pulling a piece of elastic to change its shape. The form will change, but conditions alter and oftentimes—abruptly—everything snaps back. The snap can be killer. Like super glue, power is best used in small, very careful doses, trying not to get your fingers stuck together. I can’t trust magic to do the ordinary stuff I need done, but I have this situation.

Two floors below me, in the basement of this creaky old house, I found my missing father, fallen into a crack between dimensions. He’s out of place. I drove him into that jeopardy, and I need to get him free. I’m fairly certain a conjuring put him there, and it’s going to take the same to pull him out—and it needs to be soon. He’s a poltergeist in our cellar, and he’s fading. I can’t get him out without knowing how he got in, and I haven’t been able to determine what happened. It’s time for me to go visit my father and see how he’s faring. It’s one of those not pretty, very messy moments I hate.

I fell asleep in a tangle of thoughts and emotions and didn’t wake until Scout put his damp nose to my cheek, signaling he needed to go outside and be fed. I got up and prepared for my day, deciding I could wait no longer to check on my father.

I sat down on the cellar steps, pulled my glove off my left hand, and put my palm out, hoping the little red slits highlighting the marbled stone set in my hand would open, which they often will not do. They glow red. They also bring heat into the marble of the stone. One sees, the other consumes, and all of it is a pain in my existence. I hadn’t known about any of this until I met Professor Brennus Morcant Brandard, a crusty old guy on a charity senior meal route. When he set his house (and himself) on fire, the phoenix wizard called me for help, and I answered. I’ve never been certain why it was me he called. Maybe no one else answered his first or second attempt, but then I showed up. Life has not been the same since. I’ve met a host of magical beings, good and bad, and been infested myself. It’s rather like having a virus that can cure one fatal disease but gives you another, highly troublesome one, in exchange.

While I sat, hand open in the air, thoughts stampeding through my brain, I took stock of my current situation, including the apparition which had awakened me.

Other life projects loom in front of me, besides rescuing my father, which include falling in love with Carter Phillips, finding our now missing phoenix wizard professor, establishing world peace, and curing childhood hunger. Oh, and declaring my major at Sky Hawk CC. I really don’t count on any other burdens because these seem tough enough as it is. Well, Carter isn’t tough. I mean, he is tough, but loving him isn’t, and I’ve had strong hints that he might feel the same way back.

I sat in a moment of quiet and searched the cellar for my father. I felt it the moment the Eyes opened in my palm, and a subtle warmth traveled from my hand to my face and eyes. What was dim was now illuminated. Storage boxes piled hither and yon glowed with magical possibilities—they belonged to the professor and were all we could salvage of his former life and burned-out house. Although the boxes are battered and look like ordinary cardboard, I can see the auras that dance about them. Tiny motes of starlight have drifted in from upstairs, whirling about like fireflies. And there, in the corner, stood my transparent father. He lifted a hand in greeting. A green haze surrounded him; if he were a tree, I might think that was good. But he’s not, and it looked sickly to me.

“Dad.”

A small gust of cold air surrounded me. “Don’t try to talk,” I tell him. “I’m just checking in. Goldie and I are visiting Broadstone Manor tomorrow, so I’m hoping to finally get some of the information on how this happened, so we can undo it.”

The ghost reacted not at all. Did he understand what I said? I waved my palm. “Goldie is the harpy who was married to Mortimer. She knows he kept journals, and he told me once he thought he knew how all of this might have happened, so I am thinking he noted it down before he died.” My dwarven friends were detail oriented, and the Broadstone clan was a pillar of their community. I counted the late Mortimer as a friend and his son, Hiram, as a close friend.

My see-through dad cut a hand through the air, a negation, a warning, a signal to stop, as emphatically as he could.

“No? Why not? This is good news.”

He drifted closer but stopped halfway across the cellar as if the maelstrom stone put up a barrier he could not cross. And it might. It’s a very defensive item and has saved my life more than once. Now I needed it to save his. I might add that any saving it had done was probably self-preservation of its own interests and not necessarily mine.

But he halted and shook his head.

“The Broadstones are friends. So is Goldie. I’ll be fine. You can’t wait much longer, and this is the only break we’ve had.”

The air about me grew so chill I expected snow or hail to start falling.

“I did this to you,” I told the apparition. “We fought and I sent you away, and you got into some kind of trouble and shoved between dimensions and this is all my fault. I’m the only one who can fix it. I thought . . . I thought you’d taken everything away from me that I’d planned, but what I have now instead is . . . well, it’s better. I have friends I could never have believed even existed, and Mom is doing well, finally, and we not only survived, we thrived. But you belong here, as part of us, and I have to find a way to bring you back. I won’t lose you again. So you better get used to the idea that I intend to undo what I did.”

My father held both hands palm up and stood watching me.

“You’re not going to talk me out of this. If I do nothing else with the magic I’ve got, I will free you. I will.”

He sliced a finger across the air again, an unmistakable gesture, killing my plans.

I stood up abruptly. “Look. I know what I’m doing. I’ll be fine. You’re the one I’m worried about, all right? I have the stone and my bracers for protection, and a harpy warrior on my side, and the Iron Dwarves, not to mention Carter and Steptoe, and you’ve no one but me. I’d say I’m in good shape. I’ll check in with you tomorrow when I get back.”

Upstairs, I heard Scout’s toenails clicking on the floor as he scrambled to go bark at someone at the front door. I closed my fist, shutting down the Eyes, and although I could feel the ghost-touched cold, I couldn’t see him anymore.

“I’m doing this,” I finished. “And you’ll be happy I did.”

As I shut the cellar door in the kitchen behind me, I half-expected to see the lesser demon Steptoe looking like the dapper chimney sweep he emulates, or my mom, or just about anyone else appear but my best friend Evelyn Statler.

But there she is, with Scout doing half-grown Labrador puppy circles around her feet, in hopes of 1) tripping her or 2) getting a treat. She is as slender as a willow sapling, dressed in expensive casual, and her blonde hair is tousled down below her shoulders. She puts me to shame. I’m taller than she is, but lanky, with a dusting of freckles accenting my blue eyes, and my brunette hair cascades down also but somehow never looks so casually wonderful and windblown as hers.

Before she could be knocked over by Scout, she plopped down in a kitchen chair. “You’re going to the Broadstones tomorrow and I need you to take me with you and you have to introduce me to Hiram’s folks, and then you have to come home with me and introduce Hiram to my parents.”

I’d obviously had other plans after my visit and had no idea how she’d found out about any of them. Needless to say, I was not expecting to get my ears assaulted with what I’d just heard. Nor had I any idea their dating had gotten this serious sounding.

“Please,” Evie coaxed. “You’ve got to help me on this.”

Scary as it is, I’d rather wrestle magic to a standstill again than get in between Evelyn Statler, her new boyfriend the dwarf Hiram Broadstone, and her parents. Even if she did plead for help.

I’d also rather stand on my head and poop bricks, but she is my best friend on the human side and Hiram on the magic side. There shouldn’t really be “sides,” but that appears to be a major facet of my current life. And there she sat, eyes open wide and slightly weepy, begging me to be a bridge. I’m pretty sure she doesn’t know Hiram is an Iron Dwarf which means he hasn’t decided to share his antecedents with her yet, and that tells me I shouldn’t get concerned. Why get involved in a fight sooner than necessary, right?

I shifted slightly. Evelyn’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. She stood up and held her hands out.

“You’re not going to do it, are you?”

“What does Hiram think about this?”

“Oh, he . . . ah . . . well . . . he’s fine with it.”

“You didn’t tell him.”

She swung her chin away from me, and her light blonde hair bounced about her shoulders. “Not exactly.”

Hiram is what I would call a grown-ass man. More grown than Evelyn has any idea because Iron Dwarves live about two hundred years near as I can figure and, although he’s a young man in his clan, he’s probably close to Evelyn’s father’s age. All of which means, if he wanted my help and thought he needed it, he’d be here asking for it.

“I think you’re jumping the gun on this,” I told Evelyn.

She still wouldn’t look at me. “Meeting my family?”

“Not that, but making a big enough deal out of it that you feel you need muscle on your side. You don’t need muscle to say ‘Hi, Mom and Dad, this is my date Hiram. We’ll be back before midnight and bye!’” I told her.

“I don’t have a midnight curfew.”

“Maybe you should. I can advocate that when I handle everything else if you wish.”

“Oh, shut up.” Evie sat down again and twisted her hands in front of her. “It isn’t a casual date. I’d like him to escort me to the swearing-in, and that’s a big deal.” Her father had won the mayoral electoral contest in November, and she was right. It was a big deal. Hiram’s presence there probably would need parental approval.

I thought I still might be able to dodge the bullet she aimed at me. “The party celebration? Or the actual inaugural?”

“Either. Both.”

I sat down next to her and bumped shoulders. “You guys have been going out for two months now and he’s not met your parents?”

“No.”

“Why?”

Her fingers knotted. “We agreed we weren’t going to date. I had classes and he’s in business. But we just couldn’t stay away from each other.”

“Awwww.”

She punched me in the arm. I pretended to rock away from the blow. Actually, it wasn’t bad. She’d taken up some self-defense classes since getting caught in a political riot and having someone bash her in the shin. Seriously, though, I couldn’t believe the honor bound and solemn Hiram hadn’t taken steps to meet the parents early on. Time for me to narrow my eyes at her.

“Wait a minute. You haven’t told them you’re dating at all. You’ve been . . . oh, I dunno . . . at study groups or cheer practice or over at my place.”

Evelyn blushed, a lot deeper than I ever have, starting at the hollow in her throat and working its way up her neck and turning her face a cherry color.

“No wonder it’s awkward.” I ticked facts off on my fingers. “One, Hiram doesn’t know you’ve been fibbing about him and two, your parents don’t know you’ve been lying to them, and three . . .” I raised an eyebrow. “These things come in threes. What have I missed?”

“Nothing.”

“Hiram doesn’t know you have been sneaking around to see him.”

“No.”

“And your parents truly have no idea?”

“They’ve been busy getting Dad ready to take office. It’s a lot of work. I didn’t want to bother them.”

“A relationship with Hiram is a bother?”

“No, no . . . he’s wonderful. Fun. Intelligent. A gentleman.”

“Then what’s the problem?” I waggled my raised eyebrow.

She sighed. “I might have asked him to marry me.”

“What?!”

“We agreed that’s too serious too soon, but  . . . it feels so right, Tessa.”

I felt as though a brick wall had fallen on me and it was difficult to get words out. “What are you thinking? You hardly know each other. Nothing about this is going to feel right to Hiram when he finds out they don’t even know about him. And your parents—” I stopped, not finding any words to describe her parents’ probable reaction.

She drew close and leaned her head down onto my shoulder. “I know,” she said miserably. My shirt grew wet under her cheek as she wept quietly. If I were in the same spot, I’d need friends who wanted to help. I couldn’t not help her.

Plus, I wanted to stay on Hiram’s good side. The invite to his home was not easy to come by; the harpies and the clans have been at odds for decades, and Mortimer’s and Goldie’s marriage had gone against all those bad feelings. But I needed her to find his journals. Those diaries could hold invaluable information on what had happened to my father and how to help him. This, for me, was literally a matter of life and death. Putting Evelyn in the middle of it would complicate things horribly. But it would be worse to try and put her off. She could be relentlessly determined.

“All right,” I said, not altogether selflessly.

She pulled back, her face lighting up. “Great!” Evelyn had another thought and gathered up her purse onto her lap. The purse in question is the size of a briefcase that could hold a small elephant or maybe even Scout, and her entire arm disappeared inside it as she reached for something. “I almost forgot! This was on your front porch.”

The envelope she withdrew was sized 9 x 12, a beautiful parchment structure with a wax seal on the back flap, and my name in calligraphy on the front. No address, though, which made one wonder how it had gotten delivered, and that gave me a Harry Potter flashback.

I slid an invitation out.

YOU ARE SUMMONED, TWO EVENINGS HENCE, TO THE SOCIETAS OBSCURA. AN ESCORT WILL PROVIDE TRANSPORTATION.

The black borders edging the paper seemed both appropriate and threatening.

Aaaaaand here came more trouble, right behind the shock and awe.