Whatever she was talking about, it didn’t sound good. ‘Take a deep breath, Clare.’ As soon as I said it, I realised how silly it was telling a ghost to breathe but Clare didn’t seem to notice. Her hands had now also emerged through the solid door and were fluttering around in increasingly frantic movements. ‘Stay calm and tell me exactly what you see.’
‘It was that bastard, wasn’t it? The one who killed us. He’s been here. He’s messed with my stuff. He’s rooted through my things and seen everything there is to know about me. It wasn’t enough that he killed me and my entire coven, he’s taken my home and my life too!’
‘Clare,’ I soothed. ‘It’s okay. Just tell me what you can see. What’s on the door?’
She rubbed her face with both hands. ‘A wire.’
I nodded. ‘Okay, good. There’s a wire,’ I repeated aloud for Winter’s benefit. ‘Where is the wire exactly?’
Clare’s head disappeared momentarily as she went to check. ‘It starts at the bottom.’ She gestured to about a foot off the ground. ‘It runs horizontally from here to here,’ she said, motioning to either side of the door frame. ‘Then it stretches up to the top here.’ She indicated with her finger. ‘And there’s something hanging there. It looks like…’ She hesitated and stared at me.
‘Looks like what?’
Clare’s eyes were wide. ‘Like a grenade.’
I did my best to keep my feet planted in one spot and not go sprinting as far away as possible. Turning to Winter, I outlined what Clare had described. He nodded grimly. ‘It’s a tiger trap. The second we open the door the grenade will fall and—’
‘Kaboom,’ I finished for him.
‘Body parts everywhere,’ Clare breathed.
I grimaced. ‘I imagine so.’
‘You and him will be blasted apart. It’ll be impossible to tell which bits belong to you and which bits belong to him. There will be fragments of flesh and blood and bone and—’
‘Alright!’ I said overly loudly. ‘Thank you, Clare.’ Winter lifted a questioning eyebrow. I made a point of ignoring it. I already had vivid visuals running through my mind; I didn’t need to compound the issue by describing them out loud. ‘Is there another way in?’ I asked.
‘No.’ She paused. ‘Security is very important to me. I always made sure I lived somewhere with only one entrance. Otherwise someone might have been able to sneak in when I wasn’t looking and…’ She faltered.
Booby-trap her front door with a damn grenade, perhaps? I shook my head in disbelief. Enchantment made more sense than this. It was as if I’d somehow fallen into a Hollywood set – except I was no Sly Stallone.
‘I need to tell the police. And the Order,’ Winter said. ‘If Clare Rees’s house is booby-trapped then the others probably will be too.’
I straightened up. ‘Yes! Get the bomb squad here to deal with this. We can check into a hotel and leave them to it.’
‘Don’t be silly, Ivy,’ he said. ‘We can go round the back and find another way in.’
Uh-oh. The bad, squirmy feeling caused by the suggestion of blown-apart body bits began to intensify. No doubt Winter was going to suggest some convoluted ninja-esque entry. ‘But Clare said there’s only one door.’
A smile crooked up the corner of his mouth. ‘Ivy Wilde wouldn’t let a small thing like a door get in her way.’
You wanna bet? I opened my mouth to argue but Clare’s dejected face stopped me. ‘Fine,’ I grumbled. ‘But when my teeth are being picked out of your splattered brain matter, don’t come crying to me.’
***
Clare didn’t have any garden to speak of but there was a handy alleyway running down the back of the row of houses. It was surprisingly well kept; I guessed that, like her, her neighbours were concerned with appearances and were houseproud. There is nothing wrong with that, of course. Cleanliness is next to godliness, whatever that means. But the trouble with that sort of approach to life is that it never ends. Yes, you can take time to pick the weeds from the pavement outside and scrub your skirting board and make sure there’s no dust collecting in any evil corners but you had to keep on doing it. If I had to do it all this week and then again next week and then the week after that, why not just leave it till next month? Or preferably next year?
Winter put his phone away. ‘What are you huffing about?’
I did my best to appear innocent. ‘Nothing.’
‘You have that look in your eyes.’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
Winter persisted. ‘Yes, you do. It’s the same look you get when you start thinking about getting off the sofa to do crazy things like answer the door or go out to work in order to pay your bills.’
I drew myself up. ‘Well, you have that look in your eyes too. The one that says you just had to speak to the Order and you secretly wish you were still with them so you could feel important and wanted, and had a nice shiny badge to wave at everyone.’
Winter frowned at me. ‘The Order don’t have badges.’
‘I bet you wish they did though. That way, when you went to talk to someone, you could take it out and flip it open.’ I mimed doing just that. Then I deepened my voice. ‘“Raphael Winter. That’s Adeptus Exemptus Raphael Winter to you. Arcane Branch. That’s Arcane Branch in the Hallowed Order of Magical Enlightenment. I take my coffee black and strong. And I glower at everyone who dares to look at me without receiving permission first. And I enjoy venturing into buildings where there’s a good chance I might get blown up.”’
Somewhere behind me, Clare snickered.
Winter tilted his head, something dangerous glinting in his blue eyes. Then he let his body sag and his shoulders slump. ‘ “Ivy,”’ he mumbled in a higher-pitched tone than normal. ‘“Can’t be bothered to form sentences or to shake hands with you because it’s too much effort.”’ He froze. ‘“Wait,”’ he said with a sudden toss of his hair, ‘“do I smell pizza?”’
I put my hands on my hips. ‘Ha. Ha. Ha.’
‘“I might have to sit down,”’ Winter said. ‘“I’ve walked at least twenty steps already today and it’s been a bit too much.”’
I stuck out my tongue and he grinned. ‘Actually,’ he said in a low voice as if he were afraid someone would overhear, ‘I did want badges. I put in a suggestion to get them for everyone when I first joined Arcane Branch.’
I winced. ‘In the shape of witch’s hats?’
‘Not quite that bad. They needed to look official, not ridiculous.’
‘Of course,’ I smiled. ‘I once put in a suggestion that we pay a teenager to hang around our building and help with deliveries. You know, escort takeaways up to our door, that kind of thing.’
Winter’s eyes danced with amusement.
Clare peered at us. ‘I don’t get it,’ she said finally.
I dragged my attention away from Winter and glanced at her. ‘What do you mean?’
‘That was…’ she hesitated as if searching for the right word ‘…mean. You were mean to him and he was mean to you.’
I tapped the corner of my mouth. We’d needed a moment of levity amid all this serial-killer stuff but I understood what she meant. ‘It wasn’t mean,’ I said finally. ‘It was honest. We know each other very well. I suppose what we’re really saying is that we know the worst about each other and it doesn’t matter. We accept each other for who we are, regardless of our faults.’