“It’s amazing what a little motivation and a couple hundred bucks can get you at a crafts supply store,” Daphne said, dropping into a chair.
Izzie turned to face Patrick and Joyce.
“Mawmaw Jean didn’t just take a gris-gris bag with her everywhere she went, she also made all sorts of charms. She thought they protected her from evil spirits, or invoked the aid of good ones. And that got me thinking about the marks that your great-uncle made, Patrick. If that’s really what’s keeping the Ridden out of this neighborhood, what if we made portable versions that we could take with us when we leave? What if we carried that protection wherever we go?”
Patrick turned back to look at the table, his eyes narrowed.
“I don’t know,” he said, thoughtful. “I mean, it could work . . . but . . .”
“Didn’t your great-uncle teach you how to make them?” Izzie pressed on.
Patrick raised his eyes to meet her gaze, a somewhat stricken expression on his face.
“No! I mean . . . not really. He was going to, but . . .” He lowered his eyes, trailing off, and when he continued a note of sadness crept into his voice. “There wasn’t time.”
Joyce reached over and rested her hand gently on his arm, a comforting gesture.
“Well,” Izzie said, plowing ahead, “in that case we’ll just have to copy the ones that he left behind.”
She started toward the stairs to the second floor.
“Where are you going?” Patrick asked, raising an eyebrow.
Izzie glanced over, hand on the rail and already several steps up the stairs.
“I’m going to get my jacket,” she said, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. She pulled out her phone and held it up. “I’ve got some pictures to take, and it’s cold outside.”
“What?” Patrick stepped forward, holding up his hand for her to stop. “You want to go outside now?”
Izzie stopped on the third step up, leaning back and looking over the railing at them. “Why not? We’re wasting time if we don’t, I figure.”
“But . . .” Patrick glanced over at Joyce.
“Don’t look at me,” Joyce said. “You two are the mumbo-jumbo experts around here. I’m the science one, remember?”
With a sigh, Izzie went back two steps on the stairs so she could see everyone in the room more clearly. “Look, we need to be able to move freely around the city without worrying all the time that we’re going to get caught too far away from this neighborhood when the sun goes down. And there’s no way of knowing if we’re still not exposing ourselves to risk when the sun is up, since some of the possessed people can still walk around in daylight. So if there’s a chance that a charm—or amulet or whatever you want to call it—with those markings on it is going to keep us safe out there, then we’re wasting time not doing it right now.”
She looked around the room at the three of them.
“Besides, the markings will keep us safe here, right? So, I’ll do it by myself if I have to, but we’d be done a whole lot quicker if I had help.”
By the time she came back downstairs with her jacket, the rest of them were already wearing their own jackets and coats.
“All right, then,” Izzie said with a grin, heading for the door. “Let’s get to it.”
Fifteen minutes later, the four of them were in the alley behind Patrick’s house, using their phones to take pictures of the markings on the various houses on either side of the alleyway. In the distance they could hear the low murmur of the nightlife on Almeria a few blocks away on the other side of Mission, the low thrum of the music from the bars, the susurrating murmur of people talking and laughing as they walked down the sidewalks, or gathered to talk in small groups beneath the eaves. Though the air stirred with a faint breeze, the skies overhead were cloudy, and the light from the houses and streetlights below suffused the clouds, so that it seemed as if the four of them were moving through the shadows of the alley beneath a dimly lit ceiling far overhead.
Izzie had already snapped off a dozen or so high-definition images of the spiraling whorls etched high up on Patrick’s house, both with the flash and with what little usable light reached this far down the alley from the streetlight on the corner. Now she was a few dozen feet further down the alley behind another house that had been marked with the sign of the old man’s protection.
“This one is different,” she said, as she carefully framed the spiral markings in the shot. “I mean, it’s pretty similar, but it’s not identical.”
She glanced over her shoulder at Patrick, who was standing in the middle of the alley with Joyce, looking uneasy.
“It was an art, Uncle Alf always used to say,” Patrick answered, glancing from one end of the alleyway to the other, warily. “Knowing just what mark to put in a particular spot, to get a particular result.”
“Mmmm.” Izzie brought up her phone’s photo gallery and swiped through the images that she’d captured so far. “Tied to a specific geographic location, maybe?”
She looked back at Patrick, who was still shifting his gaze all around them, his eyes narrowed.
“Maybe,” he answered, sounding preoccupied.
Izzie put her hand on her hip, head cocked to one side.
“Listen, Lieutenant,” she said, tone dripping with sarcasm, “I thought the marks kept us safe from the Ridden here, even after dark. That was the whole reason that we all came back at your place tonight, right? So what’s got you so spooked?”
“I’m not sure.” Patrick spared her the briefest of glances before continuing to scan their surroundings. “Something doesn’t feel right. It’s like we’re missing something.”
Izzie noticed that Patrick’s hand was hovering near the handle of the semiautomatic holstered at his hip, and that he kept shifting in place, as if trying to remain
