Priceless

snagging her attention.
    I asked her what I always asked. “The child I seek, will I find her in time?”
    Giselle’s eyes flickered and the intelligence returned, though I could see it waver. “This child you seek, she is strong; you have time, I do not know if it will be enough, but you have time.”
    I stood to leave, pressing the stuffed elephant into her now empty hands. For all that she loved her stuffed animals, I never once saw one after I had left it with her, and I still had no idea what she did with them. I brought them now because it was one of the few times I got to see her smile.
    “Wait.”
    I froze in the hallway, Giselle’s voice drawing me back in.
    “There is another child, a child of golden sunshine and blue skies that seeks for you.”
    Every muscle in me tensed, my body paralyzed by the seer’s words. It couldn’t be what I thought, but I whispered her name without meaning to.
    “Berget.”
    The cold wind whipped through the house again, papers scattering about, a stack of books toppling over, and chaos ensued.
    Giselle scrambled to her feet and rushed past me, caterwauling like a banshee about blue socks, her hair coming loose from her bun and the strands of it whipping about her face, obscuring her features. She attempted to right the things the wind demolished. It only made matters worse; for every pile she straightened, another fell, taking two more with it.
    I shook myself free of the paralysis and reached out for Giselle, grabbing her by her bony shoulders, shocked at how thin she’d become.
    “Let me go, devil spawn! Blood seeker! Killer! Whore! Let me go!” I didn’t take the names personally. Though some were accurate. You can’t get too pissy when people are telling you the truth.
    I hung onto her shoulders, steered her back into the kitchen and plunked her into the green chair. She went limp and a voice came softly to my ear. “Sing for her, child.” I didn’t look around; I knew it was one of her guides. They loved Giselle, and so I did what they said. I sang.
    “
Trip upon trenchers, and dance upon dishes, my mother sent me for some barm, some barm; she bid me go lightly, and come again quickly, for fear the young men should do me some harm. Yet didn’t you see, yet didn’t you see, what naughty tricks they played on me? They broke my pitcher, spilt the water, cursed my mother, chided her daughter and kissed my sister instead of me
.”
    I trailed off, the old song from my childhood catching in my throat. They didn’t call it a melancholy tune for nothing.
    “So nice, dear. Perhaps you’ll sing to me again sometime?” Giselle’s coherent question surprised me, but I took it in stride.
    “Of course, Giselle. Will you be all right now?”
    She cocked her head and squinted her eyes at me. “Child, go home and get your blue socks; you’ll need them before the week is out.”
    I left her there in her kitchen muttering about blue socks, the elephant gripped in her frail hands and a cool wind blowing through her house.

~4~
    T he older style cell phone shook a little in my hand. I’d found if I held it just right it didn’t crap out on me too often. Pinching the phone between thumb and forefinger, I squeezed until the power bar came on. Milly’s number was normally embedded in my brain, but this time I had to look it up.
    Millicent, Milly to her friends, was my closest friend and the other girl Giselle raised. The term
raised
gives the impression that we were little when she took us on. I was sixteen and Milly was a year younger. Both orphaned in our own ways, me twice, if you want to get picky, both of us needing a mentor for the innate abilities that were becoming apparent.
    “Hello?” Her soft voice was raspy and it was obvious I’d pulled her from sleep.
    “Hey, witch. Get out of bed. We’ve got a bit of a problem.” I switched ears with the phone and turned the heat up with my now free hand. I could still feel the wind from Giselle’s house in my bones.
    She groaned. “Listen, I’ve barely been in bed for two hours. You know I don’t run on the same schedule as most people.”
    I nodded and said, “I know, I wouldn’t call if it wasn’t important. It’s Giselle. We need to get her out of that house. I have some money from this next case, but it won’t be enough for a care home.”
    She gave a sharp gasp, and I heard the bed creak in the background, then a soft exclamation that wasn’t Milly. I smiled. She was always having