“Only on the plants on the deck closest to the house,” she said. “The roses were deadheaded, and those nasty little oxalis that get everywhere had been pulled up.”

  “So, useful changes?”

  “Yes, useful. I don’t usually bother though,” she said.

  I fought the urge to laugh. The identity of her intruder was childishly simple; she was going to be furious with me for pointing it out.

  “And inside the house, did you ever have food prepared for you?”

  “How did you know?” she exclaimed. “The toast is always warm when I walk into the kitchen even though I wake up at random times. Neat little triangles, too, just the way I like it.”

  “And none of this rang any bells?” I asked.

  “Bells?” She looked out onto the deck, where brass wind chimes hung off the greenhouse. “Have I summoned a demon or something?”

  “You’re an expert in hearth magic, Helen,” I said. “How can you not see the obvious?”

  She glared at me. “Spit it out, girl.”

  “A house fairy has moved in,” I said. “You should celebrate.”

  Like a punctured tire, she spasmed, then slumped back into her seat. “No,” she whispered. “That’s impossible.”

  Even with my unusual talent for seeing the fae, I myself had never seen a house fairy.

  “It’s not impossible,” I said. “Sometimes house fairies aren’t blocked by boundary spells. Be glad you’ve got free domestic help. Well, except for the bread and honey you should put out now and then. Warm milk too, isn’t that what they like?”

  “How should I know what they like? I don’t like fairies! Let them stay outside where they belong.”

  I flinched and looked around. “Don’t say that,” I said in a low voice. “You really don’t want to offend him.”

  “Him?”

  “They’re usually male,” I said. “But I’m not positive. They’re super rare.”

  Helen swore under her breath. “I can’t believe this.”

  “Why are you so upset? He can’t hurt you. He’s already done wonders with the place.”

  “Wonders?” Helen slapped the table. “My house was wonderful before. Now it’s boring. He’s ruining all the character.”

  “Dust and clutter isn’t character,” I said. “Now you can walk down the hallway without tripping on something.”

  “I never tripped,” she said. “It’s visitors who trip. And I want them to. So they aren’t tempted to come back.”

  Talking about visitors reminded me of my own motivation for being there. “Speaking of which, I’m surprised you’re letting so many witches stay here for the conference. Is it just the three?” I was still sad she’d taken the biomatter.

  “Isadora and I go way back. Zack is… well. Other people find his looks irresistible, but it’s his resources that I appreciate. As for Emily… She was a trainee here, like you, and used to come by. Later she continued her work in New York, made the right connections, and left the Protectorate. Now that she’s got real money, she can compensate me properly.” She cleared her throat. “Zack and Emily both make it more than worth my time to put them up for extended visits.”

  “Why did you reveal Emily’s identity to me?” I asked.

  Tugging at her hair, she looked away. “Felt the right thing to do.”

  I wasn’t convinced. Helen didn’t do things because they felt right. “How long has she been here?”

  Helen’s gaze flickered over to me. “It’s been over a week.”

  “You like her enough to let her stay that long, yet you still exposed her secret to me like that?” I asked.

  A flush rose in Helen’s cheeks. “You’re glad to know, aren’t you? It makes you grateful. Enough to help me with my problem.”

  I nodded. “Yes, that’s more like you,” I said. “Nothing comes for free.”

  “I will continue to answer your questions with the expectation you will assist me further,” she said.

  An idea was tickling at the back of my mind. “Did Zack and Emily know each other in New York? They both lived there at some point. Are they friends now? Was he the connection you mentioned?” They hadn’t seemed to be, but I’d just met them.

  “As far as I know, Emily and Zack aren’t close,” she said. “They seemed to meet here.”

  “When was that?” I asked. “How long has Zack been here?” I knew he and Isadora had come separately from what I’d overheard in the library.

  “Two weeks ago,” she said. “He wanted to get out of New York for a while. Sometimes he gets tired of having such an effect on people, especially women. He needed a break that only the private home of a powerful witch can provide.”

  “So you’re letting him intrude into your precious domain just for the money?” I asked. “Not because you like looking at him too?” Even Helen couldn’t be immune to his overwhelming good looks.

  “Just for the money?” she asked. “It’s not spare change we’re talking about. His shoes cost more than your house.”

  “Okay, okay.”

  “Fling a truth spell at me,” she said. “You’ll see I’m telling the truth.”

  “No, no, I believe you.” If anyone could be immune to whatever attractiveness enchantments were on Zack, it was probably Helen.

  She clapped her hands together. “So, enough questions. What are you going to do about my intruder?”

  “You’re just going to have to get used to him,” I said. “Any discomfort you’re feeling will go away soon enough if you can just sit back and appreciate what he’s doing for you.”

  “But I don’t appreciate⁠—!”

  “Where’s the scrapbook?” I asked.

  Helen crossed her arms over her chest. “You haven’t helped me.”

  “Yes, I have,” I said. “I gave you the answer you needed. Your mystery guest is a house fairy. As you’re always going on about, knowledge is more valuable than any amulet. Now you know you don’t have to worry.”

  “Of course I have to worry! You know what house fae do when they’re unhappy? Demon’s balls. Bread and honey? Warm milk? What in Shadow do you think I am, a musical nanny from the old country?” Helen tugged at her hair, pulling more white strands skyward. “I’m doomed, Alma. A creature who doles out swift punishment for a lack of hospitality has possessed my home. My home. The world is out of balance. This never should’ve happened.”

  I gave up and let myself smile. It was too funny. “Maybe you should think of it as karma,” I said. “The world is working to put itself into balance. Maybe you’ll end up opening a bed-and-breakfast.”

  With a screech, Helen cast a red-hot-needle spell at my head that wiped the smile off my face. I doubled over, gasping, my cheeks stinging with pain. I struggled to add another layer to my defenses.

  Maybe I’d come back later to see the scrapbook. My magical energy stores were already half depleted, and it wasn’t even noon. I hated being with so many powerful witches at one time. It was like trying to roast marshmallows in a wildfire.

  Staggering a few steps away from her, I put my hand on the wall for support. Annoyed I wasn’t yet able to block the pain, I slid my palm over to the doorframe molding and began to draw power from the wood under the paint.

  I’d hoped for old and powerful redwood, walnut, or Douglas fir, but instead found weak, diluted particle board.

  New. The house fairy must’ve replaced the original woodwork with readily available modern materials. It looked nice, but… come on. Couldn’t a fairy do better than that? All I could pull from it was a thin tendril of magical power, as if the original energy had been filtered through a mound of gravel.

  For the first time, I sympathized with Helen. I’d be furious if somebody moved into my house and replaced the redwood without my consent. And my home was only a rental.

  I pointed a finger at her. “I helped you, but you attacked me. I’ll remember this.”

  “Put that down,” she said, eyeing my hand.

  “You hurt me.” I realized I was feeling the emotional damage as much as the physical. “What kind of relationship is this? I thought we were friends. I help you out so you stick a hot needle into my eye?”

  “You were laughing at me.”

  “I smiled. Give me a break. Your ego is out of control. You deserve to have a hobgoblin take over your greenhouses.”

  Helen fell back a step as if I’d struck her head-on with all my power. “H-hob—” she stuttered “Don’t say that.”

  “You deserve it.”

  A house fairy, the stories said, could do a lot of harm if he became displeased with you. His obsessive domesticity could turn vindictive.

  “I’ve asked for nothing,” Helen said. “I didn’t summon him. If he’s unhappy, he should just leave.” Then, seeming to realize she was tempting fate, she slapped a hand over her mouth and frantically looked around the kitchen and out the window.

  I did the same. Unlike Helen, I might actually see him. From what I’ve heard, however, they were nocturnal, doing their beloved laboring while the humans were asleep. They were supposed to be large for a fairy, almost knee-high, but that could just be an assumption based on how productive they were. I saw no sign of any fairy like that, though out in the garden were clouds of tiny insect-sized fae as always.

  “The safest thing is just to be nice to him,” I said. “I know that won’t be easy for you. It’ll be good training for becoming a better human being.”

  “I’ve reserved the best bedroom for you,” Helen said suddenly. “It’s got the best view. And the heating is good. I put the expensive sheets⁠—”

  “I’m not staying here.”

  “You have to. Of course you will.”

  Helen had always been outrageous, but this was a new level. “I can’t risk you doing something to me while I sleep.”

  “I can’t risk it doing something to me.”

  “Not my problem. I’ve got a dead witch to deal with.”

  “I’ll show you the scrapbook if you⁠—”

  “I’ve already helped you enough to see that scrapbook.” I pointed at her again. Now my powers had been restored enough to put power into the threat. “Show it to me now.”

  She gritted her teeth, but I was able to hold her to her promise. With a strangled cough, she bowed her head.

  “Fine,” she choked out. “Follow me.”

  She led me up the stairs, now softly padded with a new rug in rich gemstone colors, to a bedroom on the second floor. More evidence of the diligent house fairy was obvious: the repaired banister, the polished woodwork, the bright sunlight pouring through clean windows onto an antique rolltop desk.

  “It was Isadora’s,” Helen said, lifting the lid. “She made it after a summer of training next door.”

  The scrapbook looked old-fashioned and inexpensive. Under the simple black cover, the cream pages sticking out were uneven.

  “When was that?” I asked, moving closer. I scanned it for a moment to be safe before touching it and opening it to the first page.

  Helen hesitated. “Hard to believe, but about twenty years ago. Zack and Isadora are in their forties now.”

  I stared at the first page in the book. Carefully taped in the center was a photograph of young Isadora and Zack smiling into the camera.

  Bookshelves filled the frame behind them. It looked like a library.

  “Is that...” I began, my heart beating faster.

  “Yes, they used to spend a lot of time in there,” she said. “Luana’s library.”

  Chapter

  Thirteen

  I peered more closely. “Isadora looks different.” Her smile was lopsided with a lot of white teeth showing. “She looks happy.”

  “Huh,” Helen said. “Funny you say that.”

  “Funny? Why?”

  Helen paused. “I’d say she was both happy and unhappy back then. Very moody. Laughing one minute, crying the next,” she said. “I didn’t think she’d survive training.”

  I thought about the unemotional, analytical scholar I’d met. She didn’t seem moody, but she was a lot older now. “It’s stressful working over there. I cried a lot too.”

  Helen snorted. “Such a waste of valuable bodily fluids,” she said. “Keep going. There’s a picture of Luana I figured you’d want.”

  I flipped the next page. Taped in the center was a dried rose and an old bus transfer. Holding my palm over the rose, I cast a scanning spell that exposed an emotional residue that was still surprisingly passionate.

  “Come on, I don’t have all day.” Helen reached over and turned the next few pages herself. “There. That’s the kind of thing you need. She didn’t let herself get photographed very often. You owe me.”

  “I don’t owe you anything,” I mumbled automatically, leaning forward to look at the photo. It was a group shot, poorly lit and slightly out of focus, of at least twenty people. I reached into the waist pack I wore and took out a small plastic magnifying glass. Seth teased me about carrying one, saying it was too Sherlockian, but I often found a use for it. Sometimes nonmag technology was the most efficient way to see something.

  I held it over the photo and studied the small white-haired woman in the cable-knit cardigan. She wore a pink visor that hid half her face. With the turtleneck swallowing her chin, there wasn’t much left of her to look at.

  “She’s the old lady in the bottom row,” Helen said, hovering too close to my shoulder. “Far left.”

  Since the other witches in the photo were all middle-aged or younger, I’d already recognized Luana. “I can see that,” I said, nudging her away. “You’re blocking the light. How about you go downstairs and let me look at this myself?”

  She didn’t move. “Not a chance.”

  I moved the magnifying glass over the other faces, but there wasn’t anything that jumped out at me. It was an old photo, and none of the witches looked familiar—so before Zack and Isadora’s time. The hairstyles looked like maybe the late eighties or early nineties. It was hard to tell from the clothes because Protectorate witches used to only wear head-to-toe black uniforms.

  “It’s interesting Isadora has photos from before her time,” I said. Unlike Luana, whose album hadn’t had any people in it at all.

  “She used to be really into people back then,” Helen said. “She asked a lot of personal questions and seemed genuinely interested in the past. It was really annoying.”

  “She’s a historian,” I said.

  “Good thing she found a productive outlet for that curiosity,” Helen said, “otherwise I never would’ve kept in touch with her.”

  With a sigh, I turned the page. Another dried rose, this one pink. Another hint of romance wafted up to me. “She didn’t have friends? Never got married?” I turned the page again to another photo of Isadora with Zack and several others.

  “Isadora?” Helen asked. “Obviously Zack is smitten⁠—”

  “No, I mean Luana. She always kept to herself?”

  “Why shouldn’t she?” Helen asked.

  “Just because you don’t want friends or relationships doesn’t mean it’s normal.”

  Instead of snapping at me, she became thoughtful. “Actually, she did do one thing recently that surprised me. It probably doesn’t mean anything.”

  “What?” I asked quickly.

  Helen rolled her eyes. “Don’t get excited. She just asked me to tea. We happened to bump into each other near the farmers’ market one day. We ended up sharing a table at a café. It was a little awkward, and I honestly don’t know why I agreed to it.”

  Finally a personal story. Nobody at the Protectorate seemed to have ever interacted with her on a social level. “What did you talk about?”

  “Nothing at all. She barely spoke. We spent most of the time looking out the window at the birds, identifying them now and then. I think we spoke at most twenty words each.”

  “This was when, exactly?” I asked, disappointed there wasn’t more. “Just before she died?”

  “No, months ago. Two or three.”

  “And it had never happened before?” I asked.

  “Like I said, she kept to herself,” Helen said. “We both liked it that way. We nodded at each other sometimes over the years. She liked my roses.”

  I looked down at Luana’s blurry face in the photo. She was such a mystery. “Did you ever know her to be close to anyone?”

  Helen didn’t answer. Sensing something odd, I turned to look at her. “What is it?”

  “An old coot came to her funeral claiming to be her fiancé, but everyone knows he’s crazy,” Helen said. “He’s spent at least the past thirty years sleeping in the public library on Jersey Street.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “I suppose you’re going to go talk to him.”

  “Of course I’m going to go talk to him. He’s a witch?”

  “Barely. Nothing to do with the Protectorate. He’s got just enough magical skill to get away with stealing food and hiding from people,” she said. “He’s homeless, Alma. Luana probably said good morning to him once in 1991, and he’s been dreaming about her ever since.”

  “She didn’t mention him when you had tea?” I asked.

  “Of course not. He’s delusional.”

  “What’s his name?”

  She tried to take the book away from me, but I clamped my fingers around it. “Hal,” she said finally.

  “Last name?” I asked.

  “No idea.” She tried again to take the book, but I held tight.

  “I’m not done.” I turned through more pages of flowers and bus tickets until I found one last photo of Isadora, Zack, and an older man in a black-and-green robe. Although it was a candid shot, the print looked as if it had come from a digital camera. High resolution, sharp focus. The witch had unusually vivid green eyes.

  “You’re lucky I’m sharing this with you,” Helen said.

  Staring at the last photo, I got the feeling she was right—but I didn’t know why. Isadora was gazing at Zack with the same big, goofy smile I’d seen on the first page, in contrast to the aloof, distracted attitude she seemed to have with him these days. I wondered if he’d done something to make her withdraw emotionally back then.

 

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