She smiled brighter to break through those clouds. “I did, yes, thank you.”

“Martha!” Pete’s voice rang through the hall. “Martha! Come look at this.”

“Will he be needing a bullhorn? I’m not sure the neighbors heard.” Tom—or maybe Earl; everyone called him something different, perhaps contributing to the poor man’s confusion—lifted his chin and walked on by.

“What is it now?” she grumbled to herself, startling at the sight of a red-haired doll with a devilish smile standing at the end of the hallway, where the path turned right to another set of rooms and then some stairs leading to the back of the third floor. Standing, on its own. But a doll like that shouldn’t have been able to stand; its feet were too small and body top-heavy. The thing had an enormous head. Maybe it was leaning?

She slowed, Pete momentarily forgotten. There was definitely a feeling of something being off in this house. Like a presence, or presences, resided here. She’d seen two different doors move on their own—one opening, and another closing. Pete had said it was probably the wind, and that if she didn’t watch it she was the one who’d get shipped off for losing her faculties. She had no idea what he was talking about, but she knew what she’d seen. No breeze in this house could’ve blown those doors open and shut that fast. He might not believe in ghosts, but she did, and this house was plenty old enough to have a whole bunch of them.

That didn’t explain the doll, though…

She approached it slowly, half wondering if it would come alive, like in those scary movies.

“Don’t go scaring yourself, Martha. Those are only make-believe,” she murmured, getting within feet of it and peering over, trying to see if it was leaning.

“Martha!”

She jumped and squeaked, slapping her hand onto her mouth.

“I’m coming!” she hollered at Pete. “I don’t have a jetpack on. Hold your horses.”

A little closer and she could see over the doll’s head. The back of its head touched the wall. It was leaning. Someone had clearly placed it there.

“Of course they did.” She shook her head. “Of course someone placed it there. It couldn’t have just walked there on its own.”

She rolled her eyes at herself and took a deep breath. The house was getting to her.

Pete stood at the base of the stairs that led up to the third floor, this set reserved for the house staff of old, she bet. There was a larger and grander set nearer the front of the house. He held a big battle-axe positioned across his body, the edges gleaming. There wasn’t a stich on him.

“Pete!” She jammed a fist onto her hip. “For the love of God, put some clothes on!”

“Why? Martha, the whole place runs around naked. It’s like a damn nudist colony. If they can do it, I can do it. You don’t have a set of begonias, you just don’t understand.”

“Would you stop saying—” She tried to will herself some patience. “Maybe not, but I have a set of garden shears and have done a lot of pruning in my day.” She paused to let that sink in. “Pete, you are a guest in your daughter’s house. She doesn’t want to see you with your testicles out. Put on some clothes.”

He gave her a long-suffering sigh. “Fine. But look at this.” He hefted the large axe.

“Where on God’s earth did you get that? Go put it down before you slice off a thumb. Or something else.”

“There’s a whole attic of this kind of stuff. I found it when I was looking for some mousetraps. Come on, come look at it.”

Curiosity getting the better of her, she said, “Oh, all right.”

By the time they scaled the two sets of stairs, she was feeling it. The fatigue didn’t last long as she surveyed the attic, the far wall absolutely covered with various weapons, polished to a high shine. Above each hung a small white square of paper with elegant scrawl in black. She squinted at them in surprise—each bore a fairly common person’s name.

“And check this out.” He placed the axe on its pegs below the name Jake and crossed the space with bare feet.

“Careful, you might step on a nail.”

“Or a spike!”

“Yes, fine, or a spike. I don’t know why you insist on one-upping me all the time…”

He opened a drawer and extracted a large red stone. “She’s got a whole drawer full of these things. Looks like a ruby, doesn’t it?”

“Pete, now, I don’t know about looking through her things.”

“She said all this stuff came with the house. Maybe she doesn’t even know they’re here. Boy, wouldn’t it be something if it was a real ruby?”

“Of course it isn’t a real ruby.” She peered at the costume gemstones. “This is probably for crafts or something.”

“Or look at this one…” He pulled out a blue stone the size of the end of his thumb. “This could be worth more than our car.”

“No one with precious gemstones like this would keep them in a drawer in the attic. Why are those weapons labeled with names, do you think? That is a bit odd.”

“This whole place is a bit odd. They went looking for a deer last night, acting like it was some first-rate spy or something. They launched into some big talk about tracking and smelling and defenses—build a fence, you know? Deer can’t climb fences. That’s all the defense you need. I think that big guy is some sort of plant nut or something. He really seemed worried about that deer eating Jessie’s flowers.”

“He’s caring. Don’t you see the way he looks after her, pulling out her chair and guiding her through doorways? He’s a real Prince Charming. I’d say she still has the chance to meet the love of her life. Matt wasn’t it, we always knew that. What if Austin is the real Prince Charming?”

“Prince Charming had a castle, not a flower complex. Don’t start, Martha. She doesn’t need to be set up. The kid just got out of a marriage. She’s bruised. Let her find her own way.” He pushed the drawer closed. “Do you remember seeing a garage? I don’t think chasing rats through a house with a battle-axe is the right way to play it, no matter how fun it sounds.”

“Sometimes she just needs a little push, is all.” Martha made her way down the stairs again, gripping the handrail tightly. Thinking about that red-headed doll down below. “Careful here, Pete, these are steep. I wonder if maybe I won’t round up those dolls and put them away after all.”

Click.

“Jiminy crickets,” he said, “there’s another bit of plaster coming loose down the hallway there. This place is going to fall down around us.”

Eleven

“Here we are.” Mr. Tom stopped in front of what looked like a small house with a wraparound porch, heavily screened by two large maples. The noonday sun dappled the uneven sidewalk in front of the establishment, the tree roots pushing at the concrete. No sign announced a business and no cars waited in the parking lot to the right.

“This is Agnes’s?” I asked, just to be sure, so tired that I barely knew my name.

We’d traveled through the entire wood last night, finding just one spot where Austin could pick up a scent. Just one. No scents, beyond the usual floral bombardment, trailed to or from the spot of munched flowers. Jasper had pinpointed the location perfectly, halfway from the flowers to the property line, the place where the deer had disappeared. If Jasper hadn’t remembered the exact path he’d taken, Austin might never have found it.

The intruder was definitely a shifter—I didn’t know how Austin could tell, but he was sure—and shifters couldn’t also be mages. Being a female gargoyle came with sorceress/mage perks, but whatever gene or magic turned a person into an animal shifter allowed only that one kind of magic. Which meant the deer shifter was using potions or elixirs—potions apparently being the stronger of the two—created by a master craftsman who may or may not be Elliot Graves.

The person at the front of the house hadn’t been concealed. Their scent was all through the yards along the right side of the road. They were not a shifter, but beyond that, Austin couldn’t tell.

The deer’s late-night visit had opened up another question: if intruders had the ability to visit Ivy House unseen, were there others besides the deer that had walked around the property? Ones who didn’t have a taste for flowers?

We still didn’t know if those prowling the front were connected to those prowling the actual grounds. We didn’t know much of anything, actually.

We’d gotten home just before dawn, and any sleep from then until midmorning had been fretful and plagued by dreams of fire-breathing deer sporting glowing red eyes. Some even had rocket launchers mounted on their backs. I kept waking up thinking the house was under attack.

Maybe it was, albeit silently. Stealthily.

“Yes. This is it.” Edgar beamed, standing down the sidewalk a little with Niamh and Ulric.

“This is a lovely little spot,” my mom said, she and my dad having tagged along with the group. She looked around the quiet street, somewhat removed from the downtown strip. “It is just so lovely here. So peaceful and green. Just gorgeous.”

“Shall we?” Austin lightly touched the small of my back, the absence of pressure giving me a chance to linger on the sidewalk if I wanted.

“Do you guys want to check out the downtown shops and the tasting rooms?” I asked my mom. “This is just about gardening stuff, in here.”

“Insects,” Mr. Tom said.

I nodded and rubbed my eyes. “Right, yeah. Bugs.” If my parents thought it was actual gardening, they might want to check it out. “We’re just looking for something to take care of bugs.”

“Flowers and capes,” my dad said, shaking his head. “I think you’re too wrapped up in flowers and capes.”

“Oh, never mind.” My mom waved him away. “Are there some little shops we can visit?”