toothbrush. If she was going to kill me, she could at least buy me a meal first.
“Not right now, I’m not.”
That made me hopeful.
I took the map from her. It was a cheap tourist map, covered with little icons showing the locations of local landmarks and restaurants that had paid for the privilege. Crude squiggles represented the cliff. Behind us, to the north, was the bay the town was named for. Ahead of us in the dark at the south end of town was some sort of light house, supposedly, although I couldn’t see any lights.
Acorn Road was at the northeastern end of town. We were at the southwestern end. I made note of the route we needed and started off.
So far I had not seen a single cop. That struck me as a little strange. Most small towns station at least one car near the bars. I didn’t know if they were busy with an emergency or were kicking back at a doughnut shop somewhere.
Now that she was not burdened with the map, Annalise picked up the scrap wood again and stared at it. The design churned slowly. It didn’t slow down or speed up. It didn’t change much at all. It just kept moving and moving.
What ever this meant, Annalise didn’t like it.
As I drove through the neighborhood, streetlights lit up three more black marks just like the one the gray worms had left in the gravel lot. One started at the top of a bright yellow plastic slide. Another lay across an asphalt driveway beside a skateboard and helmet. The last began next to a pile of windblown, rain-warped schoolbooks.
Not beside a riding mower. Not a Harley or a pickup. Only kids’ things.
I found the Bentons’ house and parked on the street. There were only five or six other cars on the block, and Annalise’s Sprinter stuck out like a sore thumb. I didn’t see any lights switch on or any curtains draw back. No one peeked at us. It seemed we had come to a small town where the neighbors were not particularly nosy. In other words, the Twilight Zone.
Annalise strolled up to the front door and rang the bell. When there was no answer, she rang it again. No answer. She lifted her foot to kick the door down.
“Wait,” I said. I took the ghost knife from my pocket.
The ghost knife was nothing more than a small sheet of notepaper covered first by mailing tape, then actual laminate. On one side of the paper was a sigil like the ones on Annalise’s ribbons or our tattoos. This one I had drawn myself.
It was a spell. My only one.
The ghost knife slid into the door as if the wood was only smoke. I drew the mark down through the dead-bolt latch and pushed the door open. The dark house lay waiting for me.
The first time I went to jail, it was a trip to juvie for a handgun accident that had crippled my best friend. There hadn’t been any formal charges over that, but it set a sort of precedent.
The second time was when I lived in Los Angeles. I’d been working as a car thief, stealing popular models and driving them either to a chop shop or else down to the docks at Long Beach to be shipped and sold overseas. It was fun, sort of. I was in a crew of jack-offs and morons I could almost rely on, and I didn’t have to carry a gun, which was a big plus considering my history. When I was busted for a bar fight, and wouldn’t testify against the jack-offs and morons, the cops made sure I did a couple of years.
The third time was last year. That didn’t go well, in part because it was how I met and made enemies with Annalise. The cops arrested me following that fiasco, too, but after a couple of months the charges were dropped. I had a lawyer hired by the society to thank for that, along with a lot of forensic evidence that appeared to have been tampered with and/or incompetently handled.
It hadn’t been, of course, but no one in the legal system was ready to recognize the aftermath of supernatural murder. Even the lawyer the Twenty Palace Society hired thought I was being framed and tried to convince me to sue the Seattle PD.
I didn’t bother. When I’d walked out of the court house just this afternoon, Annalise was waiting for me. Now I was here in this town, and I wasn’t expecting to see the end of the week. What was the point of filing a bunch of legal papers?
The point of this digression into the not-so-distant past is that I had a history with cops and jails. I didn’t want to go back. Also, I’d never broken into someone’s house before. Not a stranger’s house, at least.
So I felt an unfamiliar chill as I pushed the Bentons’ front door open. The house was quiet. I hesitated before entering.
There’s a feeling of power that comes from invading someone’s space. I’d felt it when I’d stolen cars as part of Arne’s crew. I’d sit behind a steering wheel, beside their fast-food wrappers or what ever, and know I was taking something very personal. A simple action like readjusting the seat-
“Would you hurry up?” Annalise snapped. “I don’t want to stand here all night.”
“Sorry,” I said. “I’ve never done this before.”
“Well, don’t step in that,” she said, pointing.
There was a long black streak on the carpet that led to the door. I hopped over it into the living room. The streak led out the door and turned left toward the sea. I was glad I hadn’t stepped in it.
Annalise shut the door and surveyed the room. She laid the scrap wood against the wall. The design continued to churn.
I looked around the empty house. Could there be a predator somewhere here?
“What do we look for?” I asked.
“Start by following this snail trail to its source. I want to know what happened here and why. Look around. Be
