“Get your ass back in the house.” He wasn’t looking at me, he was scanning the garden for signs of intruders. “I mean it, Squirt. There’s nothing you can do out here except make yourself a target.”
“For once, we agree,” Linus murmured. “I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
Hating that they had ganged up on me, and that they were right, I stomped back into the foyer and stared up at the chandelier. “What can you tell me, girl? You’ve got to give me something here.”
Woolly projected images in my head, the chaotic jumble difficult to understand since houses and people didn’t process information the same way. One picture I had no trouble recognizing. The front porch stood out in stark relief. That was the unharmonious area I had already identified. There were other flashes too: a radiant starburst, a fallen tree limb, and two English peas. None of them made sense.
I patted the wall to let Woolly know I was proud she had done her best. “Where’s Amelie?”
Boaz, right behind me, no doubt to make certain I followed orders, blanched. “She didn’t do this.”
“What?” I fully disconnected from Woolly and shook my head clear. “I didn’t say she did, but we both felt the tremors. Where is she? Why didn’t she come running too?”
The rest of the blood drained from his face. “I don’t know.”
“Let’s split up.” She had to be here somewhere. Linus hadn’t bound her to the house as he promised his mother, but surely Amelie wasn’t so foolish as to have used the distraction to escape. “We’ll cover more ground that way. Start in the attic? I’ll take the second floor.”
We raced upstairs together, peeling apart on the landing. I shoved into her bedroom. Empty. I moved on to mine. Empty. Other rooms lined the hall. I ducked my head into each of them. Empty, empty, empty.
Amelie wasn’t here.
A flash of blue light snared my attention as a small boy popped into existence beside me. He wore a dark blue sailor suit with sagging ankle socks and dirtied canvas shoes. A matching cap, wrinkled within an inch of its life, sat at a jaunty angle on his mass of blond curls. “What’s wrong? I heard yellin’.”
Apparently good diction was a respect paid only to strangers or parents, and I was neither. The more comfortable Oscar got with me, the more he relaxed, and the more suffixes he axed off words.
I affixed a smile on my mouth for his sake. “We can’t find Amelie, that’s all.”
“Is she playing hide-and-seek?” The black voids of his eyes sparkled like polished coals. “Can I play?”
“Sure thing, kid.” I could use all the help I could get. “First one to find her wins.”
“Deal!”
Magic swelled in the room, easy to sense through my connection to Woolly, and he vanished.
I met up with Boaz out in the hall as he was climbing down from the attic. “Well?”
“No luck.” He folded the access ladder up then secured the hatch behind him. “She wouldn’t leave.”
Blue light blasted my corneas as a boyish face appeared at the end of my nose.
“I found her,” Oscar crowed. “I win! I win!”
Smiling to acknowledge his victory, I cut my eyes toward Boaz, but Oscar wasn’t great with hints.
In all the excitement, the little ghost had forgotten we couldn’t talk openly in front of Boaz for his safety.
“Since she’s not inside,” I reasoned with Boaz, “she must be outside.” I made a subtle gesture at hip level for Oscar to lead the charge. “The wraparound porch covers a lot of real estate. We need to search all four sides.”
Indecision warred with Boaz’s driving need to secure his sister. “I’m going with you.”
On the porch, I nudged him in one direction while Oscar and I went another.
“This way.” Oscar gripped my hand and tugged me along after him. “She must have felled asleep.”
“Fallen,” I corrected absently, and then winced at the habit I had picked up from Linus.
We raced around to the left side, which pulled the carriage house into view, but there was no Amelie. The back porch was the same. Not expecting much from the right side, I almost tripped over her crumpled form before Oscar slammed on the brakes.
Hitting my knees on the wood, I checked her pulse. Steady. That was all I knew to do.
“Good job, kid.” I ruffled his hair. “We’ll talk prizes later, okay?” I held a finger to my lips in a reminder that his living with me was a secret between Linus and me for now. Not even Amelie could know since telling her was the same as whispering in Boaz’s ear. “Can you go play with Woolly?”
“Sure.” He bobbed on the breeze. “She lets me play in the secret room when I behave.”
Gut sinking into my toes, I grasped for him. “I don’t think that’s such a good—” my fingers sliced through air, “—idea.” The urge to smack my forehead itched my palm, but at this rate I would give myself brain damage. “Woolly, tell me you’re not letting him play in the basement.”
A breeze whistled innocently through the eaves.
Fiddle-de-dee-sticks.
We three had to have a chat about boundaries before he went poltergeist and got us all in trouble fooling around unsupervised down there.
“I found her,” I called out as Boaz rounded the corner. “She’s breathing, but she’s out cold.”
On a hunch, I pulled up the leg of her pants, exposing her sock and the tattoo Linus had given her to contain the dybbuk’s energies. The reddish-black ink glittered and swirled, almost alive under her skin. I touched it, and the magic burned hot. I yelped and stuck my fingertip in my mouth.
“What is it?” Boaz crowded her other side, phone pressed to his ear, but his attention shifted to his call before I could tell him. “Heinz, hey, my sister’s unresponsive. I need you here yesterday.” He paused. “Thanks, man. I owe you.”
“Her tattoo is hot.” I turned down the top of her sock and checked for scorch marks, but the fabric appeared to be fine. For the sake of thoroughness, I also checked the cuff of her jeans, but it wasn’t blackened either. “Can you feel it?”
He pressed a single finger to the intricate design that reminded me of a Celtic knot. Showing no visible reaction, he cupped her whole ankle in his wide palm. “Her skin feels normal to me. The ink does too.”
“I don’t get it unless—” I chewed my bottom lip. “You can’t feel it because you’re…”
“I’ve been Low Society all my life.” An amused smile tugged up one side of his mouth. “You can say it. I’m not ashamed.”
“It’s not that,” I hurried to assure him. “It’s about magic.”
“Ah.” He took my hand and examined the pinkened skin on my finger. “That makes sense.” He kissed the stinging tip. “You designed the tattoo. Does that link you to its magic?”
“I redesigned the sigil, but Linus tattooed her.” I was having trouble looking away from his mouth. “If anything, it should respond to him, not me.”
Embedding ink in skin wasn’t the same as using ink with a brush or in one of his modified fountain pens on skin. But he must have proven the method safe or else the Society wouldn’t have granted his patent. The one thing I still believed in was their dedication to customer satisfaction as it applied to their profits.
A faulty product created no revenue stream and kicked the door open for lawsuits that cost money, two fates worse than death according to the High Society. Therefore, tattooing sigils must be a valid magical application with no lasting side effects that might prompt a disgruntled customer to demand restitution.
All my anger toward Amelie stalled out as I held her hand, linking our fingers, waiting on help to arrive.
The distant clang of the garden gate as it closed had me straining to hear footfalls cushioned by grass.
“Grier,” Linus expelled my name on a relieved breath when our eyes met.
“Oh, look. The cavalry has arrived,” Boaz grumbled. “Will Woolly even let him on the porch?”