Newman huffed and closed the door behind me. “You can follow me,” he said, orange and red sparks jumping from him in the Grey.
He led me up the stairs on the right, though now that I was inside, I could see there was a second staircase to the left that led up to the open gallery running across the otherwise-open vault of the living room. A closed hall at each end led to private rooms that gave off the dull, cold radiation of emptiness. The house had been designed for a lot of people, but it housed only two.
“Don’t get the impression I’m in favor of this,” Newman warned me as he started up the stairs, ignoring the heavy rail of a chairlift installed on the staircase’s back wall. “Whatever you’ve got to say, you’d best say it quick and get out. I don’t want you upsetting Jewel any further. She adored Steven. Don’t you believe anyone who says otherwise. Especially not Ridenour. That is one angry, bitter man, and you can’t trust a word he says.”
I raised my eyebrows, but I didn’t say anything. Newman cast a hard look at me as we reached the top of the steps. “Are you listening to me?”
“I am. But so far you haven’t said anything.”
“You have a fast mouth.”
I just used my fast mouth to smile at him.
He snorted again and led me down the hall to a door that stood ajar on the left—the water-facing side of the house. He tapped on the door and said his wife’s name. “You ready for us?”
Her voice came back, much softer this time than before. “Come in, Geoff. Ask our visitor to wait.”
Geoff looked at me and I shrugged, leaning back against the opposite wall in a show of patient nonchalance. He nodded and, for the first time, he didn’t scowl. The spiking energy around his head dimmed and he entered the room, taking care to block my view and close the door completely once he was inside. I loafed in the hall, watching the play of strange energy along the floors and shooting at random through the open spaces. It was a lot like what I’d seen on the shore outside the ranger station farther down the lake. I wondered whether it was the standard configuration of magic here, or if there was something special about the places where I’d spotted it so far. A few of the strands crawled toward me and started to curl around my body, stroking at me like the tentacles of a curious octopus. That, I thought, was not normal, so I caught one between my fingers, taking a cold electric shock for my pains, and flicked it away before I bent an edge of the Grey around me, making a thin, silvery barrier between me and the sneaking strings of energy. They pulled away with a jerk and disappeared into the walls.
I let go of my temporary shield as the door opened. Geoff waved me in.
I stopped in the middle of the room to look around before I went any farther. The space was dominated by the odor of illness and a large hospital-style bed that stood near the wall-wide window on the lake-facing side of the building. The center of the room was empty, but the edges were lined with various medical equipment and aids, including an unused wheelchair, a few locked cabinets, and shelf after shelf of big old books. A table stood against the wall opposite the bed with two dining chairs. Another, cozier chair sat near the head of the bed, away from the view and next to a bank of medical monitors and machinery with flickering lights and glowing switches. The last bit of wall between the bed and the window held a smaller table with a large, closed wooden box on top.
Jewel Newman sat in the bed, propped upright by the mechanism under the mattress and a buttress of pillows. She’d changed out of the antique housecoat and now wore an equally old silk bed jacket over her plain white nightgown. It made her look like a Hollywood ghost. I could see how crabbed and skeletal her hands were as she rubbed one over the other in her lap.
“Come over here,” she ordered.
I don’t care to be commanded, but since I wanted to get closer to her, I went. Up close, I noticed she was rubbing one particular, bent finger as if it hurt and she was trying to hide a slight swelling. She’d wiped the sweat off her face and I could smell powder. Apparently she still cared about her appearance.
“So,” she started, “you’re a private investigator—among other things.” She didn’t look at me. She kept her head straight, facing the wall opposite the bed, but her eyes strayed to the half-drawn curtains that covered the windows on her right. Her weak, colorful strands of energy reached out, waving in the air but never touching me. I guessed she hadn’t liked what I’d done to the one that had tried to curl around me in the hall.
“Yes,” I replied.
“And you have some news about my father.”
“He’s dead. But I think you know that.”
She bowed her head and stared at her feet under the white coverlet.
“They pulled his car out of the lake today,” I continued. “I assume you saw it.”
She took a slow breath. I could hear Geoff stir and start to move toward me, but she put out her left hand, waving a little to hold him off.
“I wasn’t at the window when they . . . retrieved it. How did they make the identification?”
“They haven’t yet. But it’s his car and I know the skeleton in it was his.”
Now she finally looked at me. “How? How do you know?”
“He told me.” I looked at her bruised finger—it was swollen and reddened as if the injury had just happened. It hadn’t been that way when she’d leaned on her canes earlier; she hadn’t favored one hand or cocked the finger up to relieve the pressure.
She followed my gaze and covered her misshapen hand. “You have a strong grip.”
I nodded, figuring she took physical control of her extruded energy and had taken the pain for it as well when I had pinched it off. “I didn’t realize that was you or I would have been gentler.”
She scoffed. “Don’t coddle me—I don’t like it. Now, I know you can touch the power and that you don’t like being poked and probed any more than I do. All right. Why did you come? What did you know? That’s what you need to tell me.”
“I don’t need to tell you anything, but your dad might appreciate it if I spoke up.”
She made a face as if she smelled something foul, but waved at me to continue.
“I saw his ghost on Tuesday. Down on East Beach Road. He said his death wasn’t an accident and he mentioned you and your sister.”
“Hah! I’ll bet he didn’t.”
“He said ‘my daughters.’ But he didn’t mention your names, which is why it took me a few days to find you.”
“More likely you were looking for some way to profit from what you knew. What did you think, that I’d give you a reward for finding the body after all these years?” Jewel snapped.
“No. Mostly I hoped your dad would go away if I found out what happened to him and got someone to do something about it. I haven’t seen him since we first pulled the car out of the lake. He went away. But it didn’t seem to be easy; the lake tried to keep the car.”
“It doesn’t give up its treasures readily,” she agreed.
“It gave up Hallie Latham.”
Jewel gave another of her dismissive snorts. “That was before the others came. That was before . . . all of this turned into so much filth and corruption.” She waved her bruised and shaking hand toward the half-drawn curtains, now turning a strange pink. She glanced toward her husband. “Geoff, you can go.”
He stepped up to the side of the bed and reached for her hands. “I won’t. Baby, you shouldn’t be alone with this . . . woman. You don’t know what—”
She batted him away with impatient swipes. “I know
He stepped back, shocked, and then started for the door.
Jewel relented just as he touched the knob. “I’ll call for you, dear. It won’t be long.”
He nodded, still dejected, and went out.
Jewel sighed. “He’s a good man. But I suppose it isn’t easy living with a witch like me. I’m a horrible old woman, sick and dying, and I want my own way. I want my way about this, too.”
“You can’t be very old, Mrs. Newman. Your father would have been seventy-two this year. So what are you . . . forty-five? Fifty?”
“I’m forty-nine. But I might as well be a hundred.” She picked up a small white remote from the table on the far side of the bed. “That’s what this lake has done to me. What pride and stupidity made of me.” The curtains drew back as she pressed on the remote with shaking fingers. “Do you know what they call this place? What they
