Dead Reckoning

any kids of her own. Hadley put me through hell, and she didn’t even care enough about Hunter to plan for him. I don’t want it.”
    “In all fairness, she didn’t expect to die young. . . . In fact, she didn’t expect to die ever ,” I said. “It’s my belief she didn’t put Hunter in her will because she didn’t want anyone to know about him and come looking for him to use him as a hostage for her good behavior.”
    “I hope that’s the case,” Remy said. “I mean, I hope she thought about him. But taking her money, knowing how she turned out, how she earned it . . . that would make me feel sick.”
    “All right,” I said. “If you think it over and change your mind, call me by tomorrow night! You never know when I might go on a spending spree or put that jewelry down on the table at one of the casinos.”
    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