Mara was standing just inside the screen door when we climbed the back stairs. “Good morning to y’both. Have y’brought us a dog, then?” I’d never been able to read Mara’s energy, and today her face was just as difficult. She wasn’t ready to show me what she thought of our appearance at her door. Our friendship had been a little cooler since I’d nearly gotten her husband eaten by a monster, even if it had been more than a year ago.
“Only temporarily,” I replied. I wasn’t surprised she’d known we were coming. Mara is a witch, after all, and her spells on the house were more sophisticated than they looked.
She opened the door to let us pass. “Did y’take down that wretched blood spell on the garden gate? I thought to do it in a bit, but I wanted to see who’d be coming along to trip it. Not surprised as it’s you.”
I entered the house, hearing the muttering of the grid fade to a distant water babble. The magical calm inside eased an unsuspected tension from my shoulders and I took a deep breath of the quiet. “Good guess.”
She scoffed. “Hardly much of one: You’re the only person we know who consorts with vampires.”
“So you saw them cast the spells?”
“No, but I’ve developed a nose for ’em.” She looked at Quinton and cracked her blinding, infectious grin. “And how is it with you? Are y’keeping herself here out of trouble?”
“Don’t seem to be.”
“Ah. I see. Well, come inside. I’ve some coffee and scones on—if y’can get them before Brian.”
Brian, the Danzigers’ three-year-old son, was scaling a chair beside the long kitchen counter as we entered. His mother snuck up and tapped him on the shoulder. “And what is it you’re playing at? Hm?” she asked as he jumped in surprise.
Brian turned to face her and bit his lower lip, his eyes huge, shifting side to side as he tried to come up with an excuse. “I sawed a mouse.”
Mara didn’t look convinced. “You saw a mouse on the counter?”
Brian nodded with vigor and tried to look sincere. “Yes, Mama. Big mouse. It was gonna take the scones.” Brian’s s’s came out a bit lispy through a gap between his front teeth.
“Oh, I see. A very large, black-haired mouse, I suppose. And was this very large mouse named Brian, by chance?”
“Umm ... no... .”
Mara raised her eyebrows and fixed a stern look on her son. Brian deflated and looked at the ground with a sigh. I gave him another two years to figure out that his mother really did know everything—at least everything he didn’t want her to. There was no longer a ghost in the house, spying on every move, but that didn’t mean there weren’t other ways for Mara to get information.
Mara straightened up and took a small biscuitlike thing off a plate, wrapped it in a paper towel, and handed it to Brian. “ You may have one scone—just one, mind. You may take it out to the back garden to eat it and then y’can play with the dog.”
Brian’s face lit up. “Did we get a puppy?”
“Mara ...” I started. “Are you sure . . . ?”
She gave me an arch look. “Now y’wouldn’t be bringing us a vicious killer dog, would you?”
“No....”
“Then we’ve nothing to fear.”
I still wasn’t sure sending Brian out to play with Grendel unsupervised was a good idea. The boy was rambunctious and I didn’t know how the dog would react without someone he already knew around to cue him. I saw Mara whisper something over Brian’s head and draw a quick shape over him with her finger.
The charm dissolved into a rain of tiny blue stars that seemed to stick to him as Brian turned and charged for the back door, shouting, “Hi, Harper! I’m gonna see the doggie!”
“No scone for the dog!” Mara called after him. Then she looked a bit worried. “I suppose he’ll be all right a moment....”
Quinton glanced at me. “Grendel doesn’t stand a chance,” he muttered. “I’m betting on the kid.”
Mara stuck her head out the kitchen doorway and called out to her husband. “Ben! ’Tis Harper and Quinton. Come down, can you?”
We could hear him clumping down the stairs from the attic, the old wooden steps musical and echoing under his tread.
A shriek came from the backyard. Quinton, Mara, and I bolted back out to the screen porch and stared out at the yard. I don’t know about them, but I figured Grendel—the appetite on legs—had eaten Brian by now. But no: The boy was rolling around on the ground all right, but the dog was prancing about, wagging his whole butt in the air as Brian guffawed in whoops and gales like the maniac version of his mother’s own laughter.
Brian rolled onto his belly and, as we stared, Grendel trotted over and shoved him onto his back again, licking his face and nuzzling at him. Brian pulled himself up with his hands locked around the dog’s powerful neck and Grendel just stood there, grinning. Grendel received a lot of pats and scritches that rendered the dog into a wiggling mass of glee.
“Oh, yeah, the dog’s a goner,” Quinton murmured in my ear as Brian and Grendel started chasing each other back and forth across the yard.
“Hey, when’d we get a hellhound?” Ben Danziger asked from behind us. We all turned around—perfect synchrony that would have made Balanchine proud—and stared at him as he stood in the doorway from the kitchen and gazed over our heads at the yard beyond the screen. “Well, it doesn’t have three heads, so it can’t be Cerberus,” he added.
“That’s my neighbor’s dog, Grendel,” I said. “And no, he does not have a cat named Beowulf.”
Ben broke out laughing and almost fell, stumbling on the threshold plate of the doorway.
“We’re dog-sitting. My neighbor . . . got shot last night.”
Ben’s laughter cut off short and Mara looked alarmed.
“He’ll be OK,” I assured them, “but he can’t look after the dog for a while. And since it’s my fault he got shot—”
Quinton cut me off. “No, it isn’t. They were trying to kill the dog and Rick was just in the wrong place. That’s not your fault.”
“I told him to take the dog to the door.”
“You didn’t tell him to let it off the leash.”
Mara made sharp cutting gestures at us. “Stop it, the both of ya. I assume you’d not be here, arguing in my home, without a good reason. So. Whyn’t ya sit down and start tellin’ it, soon’s I’ve brought out a bit of food? I’ll not be listenin’ to such bickerin’ before breakfast.” She shooed us into wicker chairs around a wooden table and dragged Ben with her back inside to fetch and carry. Quinton and I kept eyes on Brian and the dog, but they only continued to play as if we weren’t there.
I refused coffee once it was offered, which got me some raised eyebrows, but I’d already had more caffeine than I needed if I was going to get any sleep soon. I played with a couple of the small biscuit-like scones Mara put in front of me along with a glass of water. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to tell the story—that was a big part of the reason we’d come—but I needed to put my thoughts in order before I started in. Quinton wouldn’t tell the tale for me, even if he’d known it all. It was an insane story, if you considered it. It was only because it had all built up over time, a bit here and there, that I could believe it myself.
“There’s a bit of a problem at my place and . . . I hoped we could presume on your hospitality for a day or two,” I started, keeping my voice low so as not to alarm Brian. “I haven’t had a lot of sleep lately and my condo isn’t safe for us to stay in right now. We need someplace secure to catch up and do some planning until things get better. I can’t imagine any place safer from Grey things and I don’t think we led any here. The spell on the back gate didn’t get a chance to alert its caster when I dismantled it, so no one should be coming to check, either.”
Mara made a face. “So things are bad, then.”