Chapter 4
Old Friends
By mid-afternoon, the Hadwin house had found its working rhythm, or as much rhythm as a house could find in a crisis.
Honey had taken the desk in her place, working through the steady trickle of cats who had not yet been registered.
Out on the wraparound porch, Maeve Byrne and Oona Pierce were halfway through what Edgar had brought them from the cellar.
Their familiars, Pepper and Bramble, curled up together close by.
"My third husband," Oona said, "was a great fool. I outlived him by two centuries and I am not sorry."
"My da was a great fool," Maeve said, "and I lost him too soon, and I am very sorry."
"That'll do for a start."
Phineas Grove was making methodical rounds of the parlor with a leather notebook and a stub of pencil.
He had started after breakfast and not stopped.
He crouched at each cat he could find, asked after them in three different languages, looked them in the eye, and wrote something small and careful in his notebook before moving on.
The longest he had stayed with anyone was Quill, the grey tabby on the back of the settee.
There, the two of them had spoken in a soft language Honey did not entirely recognize, which had the slopes of Romanian in it but the cadences of something older, and Quill had answered, occasionally, in the same.
But Phineas had not stayed. He had risen and moved on to the next cat, and the next, and the next, his notebook moving with him.
Honey, at the desk, glanced over at him more than once. He was working through her parents' parlor with a kind of patience that did not feel like a guest's. It felt like a man looking for something. Whatever it was, his notebook kept filling.
Across the parlor, through the open back door into the dining room, the long table held the enchanted tracking map.
Edgar stood at the foot of it with his lavender-tipped marker in hand.
Lazlo stood at his shoulder. At Edgar's desk under the window, Rhoda sat with the bayou book open against a stack of reference volumes.
Two more lay open beside it. A small pad of paper at her elbow held her own quick notes, half-thoughts she had been chasing since before dawn.
She had not slept or stopped reading, and she had not yet found what she was looking for.
"And these," Edgar gestured down the eastern seaboard with the marker, "these little pulses, are bonds. They go dim when a familiar passes. They go gold when there's a new bond formed."
"Remarkable." Lazlo's eyes roamed across the map with slow attentive care. "And the desk in the parlor. The slit. Where do the pages go."
"Down to the vault. Every page knows its file. They sort themselves on the way. Been workin' that way since my granddaddy."
"Marvelous." Lazlo nodded. "And the older bonds? The ones from long-passed witches? Where are those held?"
"Below, mostly." Edgar's marker hovered over a small bright town in Andalucía. "The vault. They drop down to coin form when the witch passes, and the file goes into the sleeves."
"All in one place? Remarkable."
"Has to be. Don't dare separate 'em." Edgar pushed out a heavy breath.
"Of course not." Lazlo's free hand drifted into his coat pocket, idly, and his thumb began its slow work on the rabbit's foot.
Roam, who had been leaning in the parlor doorway watching Honey work the desk, lifted his head.
He turned a quarter inch toward the front of the house.
"Someone's comin' up the drive."
Through the open dining-room door, Edgar set the marker down. "I thought we were protected."
"It's Sean."
Three soft taps on the door.
Roam crossed the front hall and opened it.
On the porch stood Sean McLeary. Hat in hand. His brown coat buttoned against the afternoon cold, and his eyes were the green of a difficult winter sea.
"Hey, Roam." Sean's voice was low. "This is an official visit, friend. Leahnora asked me to come up."
Roam read his face. "Come in."
Roam brought him through the parlor and into the dining room.
"Sean," Edgar said. "What's happened?"
Sean turned his hat once in his hands. "Mr. Hadwin, sir. Mrs. Hadwin. I've a dispatch from Salem. I'd ask if I could speak with the three of you. And Roam. Privately, if it can be arranged."
Rhoda turned to face him. "This house does not have privacy right now."
"Mrs Hadwin, I…"
"Together, sweetheart."
Sean McLeary had been a detective long enough to recognize a woman who had decided how a thing would happen in her own house. He gave Rhoda a dipped nod.
"Aye, ma'am. Together."
Honey rose from the desk in the parlor and crossed in. Phineas Grove set his notebook on the side table beside the bookcase and followed. Maeve and Oona came in from the porch.
Lazlo stood silent by the glowing map.
"It's news," Sean said. "And it isn't good." Sean turned his hat once more. "At fourteen hundred hours today, Salem dispatch was contacted by the magical constabulary of Sibiu, in Romania. They've found Nadia Costin in her flat. She's been killed."
Rhoda reached for Edgar.
"How." Edgar's voice was quiet.
"Strangled, sir." Sean's eyes did not flinch off Edgar's. "It looks like she let someone in. There's no sign of struggle at the door. There's a teacup on the table with two saucers."
"Goddess help her," Rhoda breathed.
"I'm awful sorry, ma'am." Sean bowed his head.
"They discovered her late last night, by their reckoning.
Maybe a few days. They're still workin' it.
There'll be more from Salem in the morning.
I came up myself because," Sean's mouth tightened, "because she was one of yours, ma'am.
And because well it might be all connected. "
At the end of the dining table, the teacup in Lazlo's hand made a small soft sound against the saucer.
Everyone turned.
Lazlo's free hand had come up to his mouth. His eyes had closed. The white silk pocket square was at his face.
"Forgive me," he said. The words came through the silk. "Forgive me, my friends. I had not… I had not…"
Rhoda crossed the dining room in three steps and laid both hands on Lazlo's shoulders and held him.
"Sit down, Lazlo. Sit down. Edgar, get him a chair. Sean, give us a moment, please."
"Of course, ma'am."
Edgar pulled a chair away from the table and set it behind Lazlo.
Rhoda lowered him into it. Lazlo sat. He kept the silk to his face for three long breaths.
The room did not move. Honey at the foot of the table, Roam behind Sean, Phineas a step back, Maeve and Oona standing together against the sideboard.
Lazlo lowered the silk.
"You will think me a poor old warlock." His eyes were wet.
"But she was my friend. I knew her many years.
She came out of Sibiu with her hair in a braid and one of her grandmother's spells in her pocket and nothing else.
Eighteen, she was. Maybe nineteen. She came to my office and she sat down across from me and she told me she was going to be the youngest field agent FACTS & FIBS had ever sent into the Carpathians.
And do you know what I said to her." He looked at Rhoda. "I told her she would be."
Lazlo sniffed into the silk.
Outside, the wisteria rustled and Dean Martin tilted his head toward the lawn and counted softly under his breath.
"Sugar," Dean Martin said. "Three in the grass."
Lazlo continued. "We worked together for years," Lazlo said. "Nadia. Nadia was the bravest girl. She was the bravest I have ever known. She…" His voice caught.
"Sugar," Dean said. "Two more in the grass."
Honey turned her head a fraction toward the side window of the dining room. Out on the side lawn, five new cats had settled themselves in the cold grass. Then two more, blinking up at the house with the same puzzled lost arrival.
Honey's eyes crossed to Roam, who had already started toward the window. Neither of them said anything.
"She was like a daughter to me." Lazlo's voice had dropped to a near-whisper. "She was the bravest. I should have… I should have…"
"You don't have to," Rhoda said. "Sean. Was there anything else."
"Salem will send what they have, ma'am, as they have it." Sean's voice was lower than ever. "I'm to ask, sir, ma'am, has Miss Costin been in touch with this house recently? Anything that struck ye. Anything irregular."
Rhoda looked at Edgar.
Edgar shook his head slowly.
"Not in months," Edgar said. "She was overdue to file a report. We'd been waitin'."
"That'll be the last thing from me, then." Sean nodded. "I'll let myself out. Mrs. Hadwin, sir. Mr. Varga. Friends. I'm awful sorry."
"Thank you, Sean." Rhoda gave him a half smile.
Sean inclined his head once and turned. He went down the hall to the front door. The bells on the inside of the door rang softly behind him as it closed. The dining room was very quiet.
Lazlo lowered his face into the silk again. His shoulders shook once. "I beg your pardon, my friends. May I, may I be alone, for a little while. I would like to go upstairs."
"Of course." Rhoda laid a hand on his shoulder. "Take all the time you need. Come down when you can."
"You are very kind." He patted her hand.
He rose, crossed to the parlor and scooped Duchess up with him.
They climbed the staircase at a slow, steady pace.
The dining room sat in the quiet of a death.
Rhoda lowered herself back into her seat at Edgar's desk.
Edgar laid one big hand on her shoulder and did not say anything.
Honey's eyes had gone wet. Maeve Byrne, against the sideboard, broke first.
"That was the worst kind of news," Maeve said. Her voice was low and rough.
"Aye," Oona said.
A long beat.
"Did he say…" Maeve's eyes went to Edgar's. "…did he say strangled."
"He did."
"In her own flat," Honey said.
Maeve drew in a long breath. Then her face changed. The hedge witch in her, fiery, protective, never far below the surface, came forward by an inch.
"Could it be the Telling," Maeve said. "Could a thing like this be, somethin' to do, with what's happenin' in this house. Could this be more workin' under the noise."
"It's an old fear, that," Oona said. "And a fair one to ask. But, my dear. Murder is murder. There were murderers before there was magic in the world, and there'll be murderers after. A man with bad hands does not always need bad magic."
"He might." Maeve argued. "He might. I will not say he might not.
But Nadia Costin lived in a flat alone, and somebody who knew her well enough to share a cup of tea with her, and what that takes is no more dark magic than what every woman in this room has feared on her way home any night of her life. "
Oona nodded.
"Aye," Maeve said. "Aye. I hate that ye're right, Oona."
"So do I, love." Oona grabbed her new friend's hand.
Phineas Grove had not, through all of this, said anything. He was standing where he had been standing for the whole of Lazlo's grief, a step back from the table, on the doorway side. His face a blank canvas. When Edgar looked at him, Phineas gave the smallest acknowledging dip of his chin.
"Mr. Hadwin. Forgive me. I should leave you to your family to grieve, I think. I've intruded long enough." Phineas began to back away.
"You haven't intruded a moment, Phineas. You are our guest." Rhoda assured him.
"You are very kind. Perhaps, perhaps I'll just step away for a little. I should like to think or read perhaps." He took two more steps backward.
"Of course." Rhoda nodded and closed her eyes.
Phineas pivoted and walked into the parlor at the same pace Lazlo had just taken up the stairs.
He crossed to the chair beside the heavy old bookcase.
He sat. He took the small leather notebook from the side table, opened it on his knee, scribbled something, and set it back down.
Then, after a moment, he stood again. He turned to the bookcase. He ran his fingers along the spines.
The bookcase was lined with the books a working witch like Rhoda Hadwin had collected over the years.
Phineas's eyes moved along the spines slowly.
Crawford on Inherited Bonds. Edwards on the Carpathian Familiar.
The big red Bondsmiths' Almanac. A thin grey monograph on suppressive enchantments he had not seen since his student days.
His hand paused on the grey monograph. Then, slowly, his eye drifted from the spines to the small gap between the side of the bookcase and the wall.
The gap was dim and narrow, as old as the bookcase.
In the gap was a cat. Phineas Grove went perfectly still.
The cat in the gap was an old black tom.
His coat was dust-dark and patchy. His ribs were too much against his skin.
His eyes were the copper of an old coin worn smooth.
He was so small he might not have been a cat at all, except for the eyes, and the eyes were looking back at Phineas with a steady wary stillness.
Phineas did not move. He did not turn his head. He did not call out. He did not so much as draw a breath that was different from the breath before it.
His mouth, when he spoke at last, was a whisper.
"Ah, what do we have here," he said. "Hello, my old friend."
The black tom blinked once.