He smiled, just a little. "You're a good woman," he said, and returned to his girlfriend and his son.
I started the drive home with a clear conscience and a happier heart.
I'd worked half of the early shift that day (Holly had taken my half and her own shift), so I was free. I thought of brooding over Gran's letter a little more. Mr. Cataliades's visit to us when we were babies, the cluviel dor, the deceptions Gran's lover had practiced on her . . . Because surely when Gran had thought she smelled Fintan when she was seeing her husband, she was seeing Fintan in disguise. It was hard to absorb.
Amelia and Bob were busy casting spells when I got back. They were walking around the perimeter of the house in opposite directions, chanting and swinging incense like the priests in the Catholic Church.
Some days I realized it was all to the good that I lived out in the country.
I didn't want to break their concentration, so I wandered off into the woods. I wondered where the portal was, if I could recognize it. "A thin place," Dermot had called it. Could I spot a thin place? At least I knew the general direction, and I started east.
It was a warm afternoon, and I began sweating the minute I started to make my way through the woods. The sun broke through the branches in a thousand patterns, and the birds and the bugs made the thousand noises that left the woods anything but silent. It wouldn't be long until evening closed in and the light would fracture and slant, making the footing uncertain. The birds would fall silent, and the night creatures would make their own harmony.
I picked my way through the undergrowth, thinking of the night before. I wondered if Judith had packed all her things and left, as she'd said she would. I wondered if Bill felt lonely now that she was gone. I assumed nothing and no one had popped up in my yard the night before, since I'd slept through the hours of the dark and into the morning.
Then all I had left to wonder about was when Sandra Pelt would try to kill me again. Just as I began to suspect that being alone in the woods wasn't a good idea, I stepped into a tiny clearing about a quarter of a mile, or less, slightly southeast of my back door.
I was pretty sure this was the thin place, this little clearing. For one thing, there was no reason for it to be clear that I could see. There were wild grasses growing thickly, but there were no bushes, nothing above calf-high. No vines stretched across the area, no branches drooped over it.
Before I stepped out of the trees, I gave the ground a very careful examination. The last thing I needed was to be caught in some kind of fairy booby trap. But I couldn't see anything extraordinary, except perhaps . . . a slight wavering in the air. Right in the middle of the clearing. The odd spot--if I was even seeing it right--hovered at the height of my knees. It was the shape of a small and irregular circle, perhaps fifteen inches in diameter. And in just that spot, the air seemed to distort, a little like a heat illusion. Was it actually hot? I wondered.
I knelt in the weeds about an arm's length from the wobbly air. I plucked a long blade of grass and very nervously poked it into the distorted area.
I let go of it, and it vanished. I snatched my fingers back and yipped with surprise.
I'd established something. I wasn't sure what. If I'd doubted Claude's word, here was verification he'd been telling me the truth. Very carefully, I moved a little closer to the wavery patch. "Hi, Niall," I said. "If you're listening, if you're there. I miss you."
Of course, there came no answer.
"I have a lot of troubles, but I expect you do, too," I said, not wanting to sound whiny. "I don't know how Faery fits into this world. Are you all walking around us, but invisible? Or do you have a whole'nother world, like Atlantis?" This was a pretty weak and one-sided conversation. "Well, I better go back to the house before it gets dark. If you need me, come see me. I do miss you," I said again. Nothing continued to happen.
Feeling both pleased that I'd found the thin spot and disappointed that nothing had changed as a result, I made my way back through the woods to the house. Bob and Amelia had finished their magical doings in the yard, and Bob had fired up the grill. He and Amelia were going to cook steaks. Though I'd had ice cream with Remy and Hunter, I couldn't turn down grilled steak rubbed with Bob's secret seasoning. Amelia was cutting up potatoes to wrap in foil to go on the grill, too. I was pleased as punch. I volunteered to cook some crookneck squash.
The house felt happier. And safer.
While we ate, Amelia told us funny stories about working in the Genuine Magic Shop, and Bob unbent enough to imitate some of his odder colleagues in the unisex hair salon where he worked. The hairdresser Bob replaced had become so discouraged by the complications of life in post-Katrina New Orleans that she'd loaded up her car and left for Miami. Bob had gotten the job by being the first qualified person to walk in the door after the previous one had walked out. In answer to my question about whether that had been sheer coincidence, Bob just smiled. Every now and then, I saw a flash of what fascinated Amelia about Bob, who otherwise looked like a skinny, rough-haired encyclopedia salesman. I told him about Immanuel and my emergency haircut, and he said Immanuel had done a wonderful job.
"So, the work on the wards is all done?" I asked anxiously, trying to sound casual about the change of topic.
"You bet," Amelia said, looking proud. She cut another bite of steak. "They're even better now. A dragon couldn't get through 'em. No one who means you harm will make it."
"So if a dragon was friendly . . ." I said, half teasing, and she swatted me with her fork.
"No such thing, the way I hear tell," Amelia said. "Of course, I've never seen one."
"Of course." I didn't know whether to feel curious or relieved.
Bob said, "Amelia's got a surprise for you."
"Oh?" I tried to sound more relaxed than I felt.
"I found the cure," she said, half-proudly and half-shyly. "I mean, you did ask me to when I left. I kept looking for a way to break the blood bond. I found it."
"How?" I scrambled to conceal how flustered I was.
"First I asked Octavia. She didn't know, because she doesn't specialize in vampire magic, but she e-mailed a couple of her older friends in other covens, and they scouted around. It all took time, and there were some dead ends, but eventually I came up with a spell that doesn't end in the death of one of the . . . bondees."
"I'm stunned," I said, which was the absolute truth.
"Shall I cast it tonight?"
"You mean . . . right now?"