choked every hallway. I actually had to walk sideways into the living room to fit past all the shelves of knick-knacks. And though they were notable for their number, I couldn’t help but notice that almost all of them were coated with a blanket of dust. Many of them had been jostled out of their poses and left there—a few of the Hummels lay on their side, looking forlorn, or maybe just sleepy.
Ophelia stopped our little silent, awkward tour in the kitchen. She poured herself a cup of coffee with unsteady hands. She didn’t offer me any. In fact, she went about the task in silence. It wasn’t until she stared into the sink drain for about thirty seconds without moving that I cleared my throat.
No response. I dropped the empty revolver on a little table next to the toaster. It landed beside the cordless phone with a prolific
“Christ!” Ophelia said. Half of her coffee slopped into the sink. She looked over her shoulder at me, under her drooping eyelids. “Forgot you were…never mind. Coffee?”
I shook my head and raised an eyebrow but said nothing. Knowing Puck, and I liked to think I did, even if only a little, this is not what I had expected from his granddaughter. Not in the slightest. Puck was a college professor. Puck knew sign language. Puck could be a gentleman when he wasn’t being a crazed lunatic. He ghosted class with every movement. Playful, irreverent class, but class unmistakably.
I took a deep breath. Ah, to hell with it.
“Puck sent me because—”
“Robin.”
I looked up at her. I’d intended on running right through the speech I’d been rehearsing on the walk over. The air I’d saved up sort of just…leaked out of my body.
“What…Robin?”
“My grandfather’s name is Robin Woodrow Goodman. Doctor, in fact,” Ophelia said, her harsh vulture voice returning. “His name is not
I tried to rub warmth into my face. And maybe even a little patience.
The thought of Morgan and Zack lying in hospital beds was beginning to plant seeds in my mind. In those distant train windows, that hospital had seemed dream-like, our problems interesting but hypothetical. But there, in the kitchen of Doctor—in fact—Robin Woodrow Goodman’s granddaughter, they began to feel real. And the knowledge that Abraham was all that stood between them and death did little to comfort me.
“Whatever,” I said. “He sent me here because I need your help.”
There it was. From the look on her face, that wasn’t surprising.
“Your somewhat…hands-on help.”
She shrugged and took a swig of coffee. The hand on her hip told me one thing—make it quick, sister.
“You don’t find it odd that you’re one-hundred-and-fifty year old dead grandfather has sent a fifteen-year-old girl—”
“Fifteen-year-old phantom—”
“Fifteen. Year. Old. Girl,” I said.
My nostrils flared. An upside-down teacup shivered on the counter next to her. She looked at the cup, then back up at me. Her smug look faded somewhat.
“He’s one-hundred-and-twenty-five, actually,” Ophelia said, quieter.
“Swell,” I said. “You don’t find any of this, I don’t know, weird?”
She downed her coffee. As she poured another one, she shrugged.
“Honey, I don’t mean to hurt your little ego,” she said. “But I’ve been dealing with dead Grampa Robin since before you were born.”
She turned.
“Lucy, is it?”
I raised an eyebrow.
“How—?”
“It’s a two-way street,” Ophelia said.
“Grampa used to pick up on our thoughts, dreams, particularly loud emotions—eventually it began to rub off on us. Not a whole lot—I only now and again pick up little inklings. Names more than anything, like neon signs sometimes.”
I nodded. She left the kitchen, and I followed. I knew I should hurry, and even though Ophelia had the warmth of a snow bank, I couldn’t just run off. I didn’t want to. So far, her answers were easy, off-hand. And those answers had become everything, hadn’t they? The things Puck couldn’t, or wouldn’t, say. To protect me.
Ophelia didn’t want to protect me. Hell, she probably wanted me to take a long walk off a short pier. She led me to a door at the end of a cluttered hallway and shouldered the door open.
“Story time,” Ophelia said, and walked into the room. I followed her inside.
I heard a click. A small green-glass shaded desk lamp burned to life. It illuminated a desk cluttered with leather-bound journals and ancient papers.
She sat down in the creaky leather chair behind the desk. “I don’t come here at night,” she said, and glanced around.
I followed her furtive gaze through the shadows, but I didn’t get a vibe from the room. Well, not a creepy one, anyway. I actually felt sort of comforted, safe. Maybe knowing Puck found some kind of refuge there in his living-life gave me solace. Or maybe I’m just a sentimental weirdo twit.
She hadn’t told me the room was Puck’s study, but she really didn’t have to. This was his real home, I knew. I could almost see it—Puck sitting at his desk, a calabash pipe clamped in his mouth, leaking tendrils of smoke from his lips like a sleeping dragon. Poring over volumes of old…history? Huh.
“Ophelia?” I said, and looked up at her.
She’d already cracked one of the leather journals on the desk, and was flipping absently through the pages.
“I brought you in here for a reason. Now, I don’t know why Grampa sent you—”
“My friends are in trouble—”
“Wait,” she said, and continued. “But there is something you have to understand first. Before anything else happens.”
My eyebrow came up. Couldn’t help myself.
“And you’re not going to want to hear it.”
Oh boy. I could feel her tone. It’s how I imagined a nun would speak to a pregnant teenager. Just a succotash of lost potential and guilt sliced thick. Add a pinch of sage wisdom and serve cold.
I actually…don’t know what succotash is.
“This…thing. This way you’ve chosen to live is a mistake.”
The anger showed up first. A hot swell of it boiled up into my face, and I half-stood from my chair.
“Lucy—”
“Stop. I didn’t choose anything,” I said. “And besides, you don’t know anything about my situation.”
She leaned back in the chair. The vulture voice returned, but icier.
“I know a few things, Ms. Lucy Day. You’re a runaway, right? Twice in as many weeks?”
“Shut up,” I said. The words barely fit through my teeth.
“You’re here tonight,” she said. “So my guess is you fell off the bandwagon of the living…what…last Friday?”
“Stop.”
“Can I take a wild guess? Maybe underage drinking and driving? Raped in an alleyway? Stop me when I get close—”
The base of her chair broke with a thunder-crack, dumping her onto the ground. She flapped her arms comically, but didn’t catch a hold of anything and ate it spectacularly. A live current of raw electricity sparked across the fingertips of my open right hand. I looked down at them, expecting to see lurid blue arcs, but saw nothing. I stood up.
“Feel good about that?” she asked, scowling.
“Yes.”
