Up ahead, in the middle of the block, a figure stepped out into the street. She was an older, slender woman in her late sixties or early seventies, wearing a billowy red blouse and black cotton pants. Strands of long gray hair blew back from her face in the breeze. She saw us, there was no way she couldn’t have, but she didn’t move, she just stood there in the middle of the street like a lunatic.
“Get away!” I shouted, waving. “Get inside!”
She stood her ground. I looked back, saw the gargoyle was gaining on us, then looked at the woman again. She didn’t look remotely frightened.
She extended her left arm. Her hand and forearm were sheathed in a long white glove, the kind someone might wear to a fancy ball, except she was only wearing one of them. Her right hand was bare. Something sparked in the palm of her glove, and then a column of fire exploded out of it. It arced through the air toward the gargoyle. As the flames passed over my head, I dropped to the pavement and looked up in time to see them envelop the gargoyle. The creature fell out of the sky like a burning comet. By the time it hit the street, there was nothing left but a few smoldering bones that looked like blackened twigs.
The woman lowered her arm. A thin wisp of smoke wafted from her glove.
My eyes were so wide I thought they might pop out. “That was amazing,” I said.
The woman nodded. “It was, wasn’t it?”
Before I could ask her who she was, a dozen big black crows swooped down from the night sky behind her. A moment later, they came together to form the Black Knight astride his armored horse.
Bethany shouted, “Behind you!”
The woman spun around. The jet-black horse snorted and hoofed the pavement.
“You,” she said. There was so much anger dripping from that one word it was immediately clear to me these two had met before. The woman raised her white-gloved hand again. Fire spat from her palm to wash over the Black Knight. But when the flames dissipated, he was unharmed.
The Black Knight reached for his sword. I pushed myself off the sidewalk and onto my feet. As soon as the Black Knight saw me, he froze, his sword halfway out of its scabbard. Then he pulled it the rest of the way out, leveled it in my direction, and urged his steed forward, the woman now all but forgotten. He wanted a rematch.
The Black Knight galloped toward me. I threw myself aside a second before his blade would have run me through, hitting the concrete with my shoulder. I rolled to a stop at the edge of the street, wincing with pain, and saw the Black Knight and his horse break apart. A dozen crows flapped their way into the night sky and didn’t come back. I stood up, rubbing my sore shoulder.
“That’s strange. I’ve never seen the Black Knight retreat like that,” the woman said. She studied our faces, then smiled. Deep dimples appeared in the shallow wrinkles of her cheeks. Her brown eyes twinkled as she smoothed down the sides of her blouse. “You must be Isaac’s friends.”
“Are you Ingrid Bannion?” Bethany asked.
“I am.” She looked up at the sky. “Maybe we should take this inside, where it’s safer.” She started walking toward an abandoned lot between two town houses in the middle of the block. A chain-link fence separated us from the patch of overgrown grass beyond it, but for some reason I had trouble focusing on it. It was like the empty lot didn’t want me to look too closely. I blinked and squinted, but the strange feeling didn’t pass. I wondered if I’d hit my head on the pavement without realizing it.
“Is the safe house close by?” I asked.
“Oh yes, it’s quite close,” Ingrid replied. She stepped up onto the sidewalk in front of the empty lot—and then kept stepping up right into the air. White-painted cement stairs appeared beneath her feet with each step she took, until finally she stood on the landing at the top of what appeared to be a freestanding stoop.
There was a house there, I realized, but somehow I couldn’t see it. The moment the thought struck me, the empty lot wavered like a mirage and a white, stucco-walled town house appeared in its place. It stood three stories tall and twice as wide as the town houses that flanked it, as if someone had bought two neighboring buildings and fused them together seamlessly. At the top of the steps, Ingrid stood before double doors that were crowned with a peaked, stone cornice. Both doors were decorated with holly wreaths sporting red plastic berries, though Christmas was still three months away. Lights glowed warmly through the thin white curtains in the windows. A collection of small Hummel figurines had been arranged on the inside of the windowsill next to the doors, all of them dressed like little ceramic shepherds with various musical instruments in their hands or pressed to their cherubic lips.
This was the safe house? I’d pictured something a little more formidable. Less Hummel and more iron bars.
Ingrid opened the front door and motioned for us to follow her inside. I climbed up the stoop behind Bethany and Thornton, hesitant to put my full weight on steps that had appeared out of nowhere. But when I put my foot down it was solid. At the same time, I felt something pushing against me. It came in waves, reminding me on some level of the tiny, imaginary hands I’d felt trying to push me away from the warehouse.
A few steps above me, Bethany spread her fingers as if she were letting a breeze run through them. “Ingrid, I can feel the ward around this place. It’s incredible. The strongest I’ve ever felt.”
“Oh, thank you, dear,” Ingrid said, holding the door open for us. “But I can’t take the credit. I’m about as good at casting wards as I am at programming my cell phone. No, it was put there by a dear friend.”
Was the ward what I was feeling pushing against me? Bethany had used the word before, but I still had no real idea what it meant.
The entrance hallway of Ingrid’s town house was narrow and smelled of lavender and Murphy’s Oil. A vase of dried flowers stood on the credenza along the wall, and arranged around its base were more Hummel figurines set on doilies. I took it all in, the quaint umbrella stand by the door, the wooden shoe rack beside it with the words GOD BLESS THIS MESS carved across the top. The outside was nothing like I’d expected for a safe house, but the inside made me downright uneasy. There were no guards, no weapons, nothing that made me feel safe.
Ingrid closed the front door, then locked the dead bolt above the knob. “This house may be protected by a ward, but there’s no harm in being careful.” She turned to us, rubbing her hands together to warm them after the cool autumn night air. “There now. You must be Bethany?” She extended her right hand, the one without a glove, and Bethany shook it.
“Yes, I’m Bethany Savory. This is Thornton Redler.”
Ingrid shook Thornton’s hand next, and the happy smile faded from her face. “Oh, dear. Oh, I’m so sorry, young man. What did those awful creatures do to you?”
He touched the scar on his face with his other hand. “It’s okay.”
“I don’t mean the scar,” Ingrid said. “When I touch someone I can see their aura. It’s a gift I’ve had all my life. A person’s aura shows me everything I need to know about them. For instance, Bethany’s aura is a bright yellow, almost lemon. That tells me she’s a woman of purpose, that getting the job done right is important to her. It also tells me she’s someone who doesn’t like it when things are unpredictable or out of her control. Not when it comes to her duties, or her personal life.”
A slight blush colored Bethany’s cheeks. I chuckled, and she shot me an annoyed look. Clearly, Ingrid had pegged her to a tee.
“Every living thing has an aura, from simple houseplants to the most evolved creatures,” Ingrid continued. “But not you, Thornton Redler. You don’t have any aura at all.”