“Has it seen you?”
“Not yet.” She opened her eyes, blinked, shivered.
And grinned.
“We’d better hurry. You can’t tie me up and leave me. You haven’t got time.”
I sighed, cussed.
“Stay behind me. Don’t use your Sight outside without warning me. Your word now, or I send you back to Mama, no second chances.”
She nodded. We made for the ground floor. I drew a frown from Gertriss by darting momentarily back into the kitchen. And then we trooped for the big red doors and the dark beyond them.
Marlo was there, an axe in his hand. The blade gleamed, and though it had never chopped anything but firewood that blade wasn’t anything I’d want swung at me.
A crowd had gathered. Those who could clustered at the three-bolt windows and peeped out, oohing and ahing at the dark like they could see anything at all.
No one stood anywhere near the doors though.
“I reckon you know your own business,” said Marlo, after a glance at Gertriss.
“And I reckon you should mind your own,” said Gertriss.
Marlo puffed up and went red, but before he could sputter out a response Lady Werewilk appeared.
She was dragging an umbrella stand that she’d stuffed with swords. “I thought you might need to be armed,” she began, trailing off when she saw Toadsticker and Marlo’s well-honed axe.
But Gertriss grinned like she’d just knocked over a bowl full of earrings.
“Oooh, I’ll take this one, if I may,” she said, yanking a short straight blade out of the jumble.
Lady Werewilk nodded, bemused.
“I believe it was actually used in the War.” She eyed the blades critically, selected one very similar, and damned if she didn’t spin it around in her left hand with as much skill as my old army sword master.
“I’ll be by the door with this, Mr. Markhat.”
I saluted her with Toadsticker, and she returned it-perfectly.
“I’m full of surprises.”
She threw back the bolts, and pulled the door open.
Marlo grunted, laid the axe on his shoulder and marched outside. I followed, Gertriss on my heels, and the three of us went half a dozen paces and stopped.
Gertriss laid her unlit torch onto the one burning by the door. It flared to life, trailing the stench of pitch. I grinned as Gertriss tried to figure out which hand to use for the torch and which to hold the sword.
“Torch in your right,” I offered. “Sword in your left, and then stick it point first in the dirt. You’re better off in a pinch with the torch anyway, unless you’re trained with a blade. Are you trained with a blade, Miss?”
The look she gave me would doubtlessly have sent an entire herd of pigs running for the stable or wherever it is that pigs are domiciled in quaint, scenic Pot Lockney.
Marlo helped by guffawing. Before Gertriss could turn on him, I motioned toward the barns.
“The woman with the big lungs is that way,” I said.
Marlo nodded. “So that’s where we head?”
“Nope. We go door to door like we don’t know where she is. That’ll take us that way anyway, but it won’t be quick. Gertriss, you keep an eye-a regular eye-out for women in the trees. Marlo, you watch the ground. If anybody’s been out here planting stakes while everyone was eating I want to know it.”
Marlo frowned. “We got banshees in the pines, and you’re worried about some damned surveyor’s sticks?”
“That’s what I was hired to worry about. And for all we know the banshee is the one leaving the stakes.”
“Banshees don’t give a damn ’bout land deals.”
“I’ll ask her when I meet her,” I said. My eyes were adjusted to the dark, helped by Gertriss’ flickering torch.
“Let’s get started.”
Gertriss managed to shove her shortsword through her sash. I put her at the back of the line so the light from the torch wouldn’t blind Marlo and I.
Eight outbuildings. It took us maybe twenty minutes to make a show of checking the windows and doors to see if they were all locked or shuttered-they were-and to light the door torches that flanked every opening. By the time we were nearing the barns, there was just enough stray torchlight flickering about to turn the Werewilk estate into something out of a nightmare.
Shadows danced. Huge old blood-oaks towered above us, spreading their boughs wide and blotting out the sky. The dancing red torchlight illuminated tossing leaves far above, giving the impression of furtive movement to join the dry, wooden whispers of the night.
Gertriss whispered occasional updates. She seemed sure the banshee was staying put, well out of the farthest reach of the torchlight.
I kept my eyes out for surveyor’s stakes and hoped she was right.
Marlo kept a white-knuckled grip on his ax and nearly let fly with it when a rooster flew down on his head from an outhouse roof to our right. Truth is, I nearly did the same with Toadsticker while Gertriss shamed us both by shooing the dim-witted bird away with her torch.
Finally, the last dwelling checked and found secure, we halted, gathered in the flickering half-circle of light cast by the door torches.
The barns loomed up a short distance away, more shadow than shape. A wind walked through the corn, and the ways the stalks bent and rasped made the hairs on my neck crawl the same way they had done on a regular basis during the War.
Gertriss caught my eye, glanced at the furthest barn, nodded slightly, just once.
“You two start bringing people out.” I spoke during a lull of wind so my voice would carry. “I’ll stay here, keep an eye out.”
Gertriss started to argue. I gave her a hard look. Marlo turned his back and started walking.
Gertriss handed me her torch.
“I hope you know what you’re doing.”
And then she was off, rushing to catch up with Marlo.
I figured I had maybe a quarter of an hour. It would take that long for the gaggle of staff to find their way home. So I stuck Gertriss’s torch in the ground, and then I walked to the edge of the light and I put my back to the barns.
Toadsticker’s hilt was warm and reassuring in my hand. Which made sticking it through my belt a difficult action to take.
The corn rustled. Leaves and limbs made dry furtive noises overhead. I imagined all manner of creeping horrors, slinking up behind me.
I’d had my back to the barns for maybe three long minutes-just enough time for Marlo and Gertriss to reach the House-when I heard a twig snap behind me.
I judged the distance to be maybe twenty feet.
And that, I decided, was plenty close enough.
My hand was already in my pocket. I moved it slowly.
I turned around. Slowly. Calmly. In my outstretched right hand was a slice of warm corn bread with a chunk of butter still melting in the middle.
And there she was.
Just standing there.
A banshee.
Every hair on every spot of my body stood on end.
She appeared to be a tiny woman, naked save for a liberal coating of dirt and spider-webs. I don’t mean a woman of small stature-I mean a human woman who had grown to full size and then been somehow shrunk down to a stature befitting a child. I’ve seen trick mirrors at Yule houses that can either shrink or enlarge reflections. The
