“Not even for the inheritance he’s going to get from Ginny?”

“He isn’t getting anything from Ginny,” I guffawed. “Ginny made no secret of the fact that she thought Maisie was the only one of us who was worth a spit and polish. It wouldn’t be Thanksgiving dinner without her announcing that when she was gone, she planned on leaving everything to Maisie.” I realized I had stepped in it.

“Well thank you for your time, Miss Taylor.” He stood up abruptly, if a bit stiffly. “I can let myself out.” He smiled and left the room, leaving me with the strong sense that I had just been had.

SEVEN

“Mercy! Mercy!” an excited squeal came from behind me. I almost jumped out of my skin, but then I turned to see Wren standing in the corner.

“Were you in here the entire time?” I asked.

“Yes,” he responded, looking down. “I just wanted to show you this,” he said as he held up another new toy, this time a blue pickup truck.

“You know you aren’t supposed to come into a room without announcing yourself,” I said, trying my best to sound stern. But how can you get angry with a little boy who has been a little boy forever, even before you were born? A child you once played with yourself? A child who isn’t even really a child? When dealing with Wren it was easy to forget that he wasn’t real, that he had started out as Uncle Oliver’s imaginary friend. But when a young witch with as much power as Oliver has invents a playmate, that playmate can truly take on a life of its own. While Wren looked as real as could be, he was in actuality just a thought-form, a bit of imaginative energy so thoroughly well imagined that it had been able to separate itself from the one who originally envisioned it.

Wren dropped to his knees and began to push the truck up to me, running it over my feet as if they were speed bumps. After a moment, he stopped playing with it and looked up at me. “I don’t like that man,” he said, trying to change the subject just as a real child might.

“I don’t think I like that man much either,” I said. I put my hand on his head, and his warm, glossy curls felt so real to me. After all these years and too many games of ring-around-the-rosy to count, I don’t know why it still surprised me, but it did. Even though he looked just like any other kid you might see riding his tricycle down the street or tagging along with his parents in a store—your average six-year-old—Wren was an uncanny creature, something unnatural to this world. And it didn’t seem right that there weren’t any outward signs of that.

Iris told me that Wren had faded away by the time Oliver hit puberty. The family had thought he was gone for good, but he had evidently been dormant, waiting for the arrival of another child to reawaken him. That child had been Ellen’s son, Paul. By the time Maisie and I were born, Wren had already returned to being an accepted part of the family, never growing or aging past his initial incarnation.

“My truck is better than Peter’s,” Wren said.

“And how do you know that?” I asked, amused.

“I’ve seen his truck. His is old.”

“Yeah, but his is real,” I said, regretting it instantly. He stood and kicked the truck away, causing it to roll into the far corner.

The door opened, and Ellen stuck her head in.

“Ellen!” Wren squeaked and ran toward her, totally deserting the toy truck that had captivated him only seconds before. She came into the room and knelt down next to him, kissing his forehead and pulling him to her.

Ginny had often complained that “it” should be dissolved and laid to rest. The family’s job was to maintain the line, not pluck at it like a guitar string. But after Ellen’s son Paul died, she had latched onto Wren. No one, not even Ginny, had had the heart to rip another child from Ellen’s arms, so in spite of Ginny’s churlishness, a tacit agreement seemed to exist in the family that Wren would be kept “alive.” I suspected it was the combination of booze and this need to hold onto an illusion that was siphoning off Ellen’s power. He had to be getting his juice from somewhere; I doubted that he was pulling much from Maisie, who had no need for him anymore, and I had none to give him.

“I can’t find my ball,” he said, addressing Ellen. His lower lip poked out comically, causing Ellen to laugh and hug him even more tightly. I was concerned about what he was doing to my aunt, and I knew it wasn’t natural for him to be here with us, but I couldn’t help it. My heart went out to him like it would to a real child.

“Don’t worry, baby,” she said. “If we don’t find it, I’ll set Connor on the case with his pendulum.” She looked up at me. “And you, young lady, don’t you worry about Adam. He’s going to realize he is barking up the wrong tree soon enough.”

“He thinks one of us did it for Ginny’s money,” I said.

“Aunt Ginny didn’t have any money of her own. She got her stipend from the trust just like the rest of the family does. Just like you and Maisie will, starting on your next birthday. Nobody’s going to gain financially from poor Ginny’s death. What she had to give wasn’t money. It was knowledge.”

She reached out and took my hand. “He’s wrong, you know, this detective. It wasn’t anyone from the family, close or extended, who hurt Ginny. If a witch with bad intentions had been approaching her, Ginny would’ve sensed the danger from a mile away.” Ellen weighed her words. “Someone born of the power, we have a signature, something like a vibration. When we get near someone like us”—she looked away from me, maybe feeling a bit guilty for excluding me—“that vibration either falls in sync and kind of hums along with ours or is like nails scraping against a chalkboard.” She let go of my hand and turned her attention back to Wren. “Ginny would have sensed it if a rage-filled witch was coming at her.”

“But if she could know when a witch was coming at her, why couldn’t she tell if a normal person was headed her way? Seems to be a hell of a blind spot,” I said and then regretted having used the word “normal” for non-witches.

“I would say ‘regular’ instead of ‘normal,’ ” Ellen corrected me, but I could tell she wasn’t really upset. “Whoever hurt Ginny was regular. But they certainly weren’t normal. My feeling is that the person was probably deranged. You know how disturbed people tend to get more excitable during a full moon?”

“Sure, it’s why we have the term lunatic,” I said.

“Precisely. It’s kind of the same when a crazy person, pardon my lack of political correctness, approaches the line. The vibration causes them to become more unhinged than they might typically be. And Ginny was the focal point, the anchor for our portion of the line. So you end up taking crazy and turbocharging it.” She paused. “As far as Ginny not picking up on a threat, I suspect she thought she could control the situation. That she underestimated the strength or craziness of whoever attacked her. All the same, the killer is not one of the family.”

“Yeah, I know, but I don’t think I helped convince Detective Cook of it.”

“Don’t worry. He will chase his tail a bit, but he is keeping an open mind. And by open, I mean open enough for me to poke around in a little.” She placed her hand on Wren’s head.