At the sound of a car door slamming, I nearly jumped a foot in the air. Spinning around, I found Marty getting out of his hearse.

  “Finn!” Marty called out as the two of them fist-bumped.

  “I’m here for the day,” Finn explained.

  “Cool!”

  “Yeah, you know that guy who RJ saw looking through his window?“ Marty nodded, so Finn continued. “They caught him at Haven High, so the police said all the schools were closed today.”

  “They caught him?” Marty asked as he looked at me.

  I shook my head. “Well, they didn’t exactly catch him… that’s what they’re trying to do.”

  Marty nodded and then returned his attention to Finn. “Well, we can use your help today, dude.”

  I looked up at the Tayir House and shuddered involuntarily. “I don’t have a good feeling about this place,” I whispered to Wanda.

  She gave me a big smile and then cocked her head to the side as she studied the looming and intimidating house before us. “It’s probably nothing. In fact, I bet one of Henner’s infamous creations developed a mind of its own and attacked a ketchup bottle in the guest room.”

  I tried to smile but couldn’t. “Yet, the housekeeper is missing.”

  Wanda waved my concern away. “I bet she decided to take a quick vacation or maybe she’s down with a cold or flu or something. Just because she didn’t say goodbye before she left, doesn’t mean something awful happened to her.”

  Just then, Henner came out of the large and ornate front door. I couldn’t help but notice that he appeared… nervous. It was an expression I’d never seen him wear before. He mumbled a quick thanks to us for showing up—and then gave Finn a hurried hello before opening the front door and holding it wide for us to enter. A chill fell over me as I walked into the grand foyer—and grand it certainly was.

  “Sheesh!” Finn said as he took in the great expanse of ceiling and staircases. Then he turned to Henner with wide eyes. “Your house looks like a haunted mansion you see in movies!”

  “Just… stay close to me, okay?” I whispered.

  Morning sunshine beamed through the floor-to-ceiling windows of the living room, beyond the foyer, highlighting the cobwebs in the corners. In fact, there were cobwebs all over the ceiling and I could understand why—the ceilings had to be twenty feet high! I looked up at the curved staircases that bedecked either side of the entry to the landing high above.

  “I thought we could… walk through the house and see if either of you pick up anything,” Henner offered.

  “Pick up on anything?” Wanda repeated.

  He nodded. “Any sort of magical residue, maybe?”

  “Where do you want us to start?” I asked as I turned to face Henner. “This place must have hundreds of rooms.”

  “Well, it doesn’t have hundreds of rooms,” he corrected. “But it definitely has a lot. We can start with the room where I first heard footsteps. Follow me.” He led the way upstairs.

  “Footsteps?” Finn repeated, looking at me with wide, concerned eyes.

  “Do you want me to take you to Wanda’s and you can stay with Astrid?” I asked him again, all the while completely regretting my decision to bring him. What was I thinking? Clearly, I hadn’t been.

  He took a few seconds to think about it. “No, Mom, I want to stay here with you. I think… I think it’s important that I face my fears… and ghosts.”

  I reached out and pulled him into an embrace as feelings of pride welled up within me. “Well, I can’t promise there are any ghosts here, but if there are—”

  “We’ll both see them,” he finished for me.

  I just nodded as Wanda looked over at us and shook her head. “You both are like watching a bad Lifetime movie.”

  Chapter Six

  The Tayir House was, in a word—grand.

  Elegant rugs covered wide and old mahogany wood floors, carved plaster moldings dominated the ceilings, and crown moldings running the perimeter of each room made the rooms appear fit for a king. The whole house was still decorated in the style that must have been fashionable in Betanya’s early days. The ornate, carved wood furniture alone must have been worth a fortune.

  “This house doesn’t even look lived in,” Finn commented, and I had to agree.

  Henner stopped the tour and looked back at him. “That’s because it’s not really lived in. Most of the rooms haven’t been touched in decades, really, but that’s just because there are too many of them and I’m just here by myself.” He took a breath. “That and I spend all my time in the basement because the rest of this place,” he paused and looked around himself. “Gives me the creeps.”

  “You’re not the only one,” Finn added.

  “It looks like the home of a governor or senator or something,” I said.

  Henner showed us to the very top floor, the third. Then we passed down a long corridor complete with eerie oil paintings of people I assumed were Henner’s lineage.

  “This reminds me of the Haunted Mansion at Disneyland,” Finn whispered as he clutched my hand a little tighter.

  “As long as no animated suits of armor come after us, I’ll be okay,” Wanda muttered.

  I turned to look at her. “You’re familiar with the Ghost Mansion?”

  She scowled at me. “Of course. I happened to be present at the grand opening of Disneyland. Walt Disney was a friend of Mother’s.”

  I wasn’t able to respond because Henner waved us into a bedroom at the end of the hall. Once we all were assembled, he explained: “This is the room where I heard really loud footsteps in the middle of the night and when I came to investigate, no one was here.”

  Wanda approached the window and looked out over the grounds below before turning back to face me. “I don’t sense anything in here. Do you, Poppy?”

  I shook my head. “Nope, nothing.” Then I looked at Finn. “Do you pick up on anything?”

  He was silent for a few seconds, but then shook his head. “I ain’t found sh—”

  “Finn!” I interrupted as he burst into a big smile, quoting his favorite movie, Spaceballs. Marty immediately broke into peals of laughter while Henner continued to worry his lower lip. Clearly, his mind was elsewhere.

  “Come to the next room,” Henner urged as he led the way back into the hall, before walking into the adjacent bedroom. Then he turned to face us again as I took stock of the room.

  An old canopy bed occupied most of the space aside from a matching wood dresser in the far corner. The indigo velvet curtains on the canopy bed appeared new and matched those covering the windows. Everything in this room was done up in shades of blue.

  “What happened in here?” I asked, wondering why we were pausing in this room.

  “When I was in the kitchen a week or so ago, I was pretty sure I heard footsteps in here too and when I came upstairs to check, the old lamp that used to be on the dresser over there,” he paused and pointed. “Had fallen on the floor and shattered. Unfortunately, the kerosene soaked into the rug,” he continued, but Wanda interrupted him.

  “You can’t call that a rug,” she pointed out, looking down at the stretch of glossy blue flowers beneath our feet. The rug was large enough that it almost touched each wall.

  “Isn’t it a rug?” Henner asked, frowning.

  “It’s an Aubusson rug,” Wanda corrected. “Very expensive and very beautiful.”

  “But still a rug?” Marty asked.

  “Still a rug,” I answered.

  “Anyway, most of the kerosene fumes have aired off by now,” Henner finished, although he pointed out the stain on the rug where the lamp had broken.

  I frowned. “How long has this activity been going on?”

  “Well, it hasn’t been going on,” Henner corrected. “I heard footsteps and sounds and then Mrs. Nicholson disappeared and that was it. I haven’t heard anything since.”

  “How long ago did you hear the footsteps and sounds?” I asked.

  He shrugged. “Maybe a week to two.”

  “And that’s when Mrs. Nicholson went missing?” I asked, to which Henner nodded.

  “Yes, a week ago. I called to report her missing that very same day.”

  “Why would you call it in?” Wanda asked, frowning at him. “Why didn’t the woman’s family handle it?”

  Henner looked at her. “Mrs. Nicholson was single and childless. She lived alone. As she tells it, she came to work for my grandmother—”

  “Betanya?” Wanda questioned, apparently just to make sure we were on the same page.

  “Betanya,” Henner nodded. “When she was a very young girl and worked for my grandmother up until Betanya’s disappearance years ago. They were close.”

  “Then Mrs. Nicholson must have been pretty old?” Finn asked.

  “Yes, she was elderly.”

  “Well, maybe she isn’t missing, maybe she just simply died,” Wanda said with little interest.

  “Wanda!” I admonished as Finn snickered.

  She looked at me. “I hate to break it to you, Poppy, but old people die—it’s just what happens.” Then she faced Henner. “Maybe Mrs. Nicholson just kicked the bucket while she was making the rounds and you haven’t found her yet because this house is so big?”

  “Wow,” Finn said, and gave Wanda an expression of admiration. “She just says whatever’s on her mind.”

  “Right and some people see shrinks for that,” I added with a frown at Wanda, who just shrugged.

  Henner looked a bit perplexed. “No, I don’t think that’s what happened. I checked every room and if she’d died in the house somewhere, I think I would have smelled her by now?”

  “Gross,” Finn muttered.

  “What makes you think something bad happened to her?” Wanda asked, sounding impatient again. “Maybe she just decided to retire and didn’t feel the need to explain because she didn’t feel the same loyalty to you that she felt toward your grandmother?”

  “She decided to retire halfway through cleaning the house?” Henner asked, his eyebrows meeting in the center of his forehead.

  “Yeah, that doesn’t sound right,” Marty agreed.

  “I don’t think she would have just left without saying anything,” I added.

  Henner nodded. “The police checked her apartment after she was missing a good few days and they said she wasn’t home and as far as they could tell, hadn’t been.”

  “Did they give you any clues as to where she could be?” I asked.

  He shook his head again. “They weren’t much help.”

  Henner crossed the corridor to another room, and we dutifully followed him. As soon as I walked into the next room, I gasped because it looked like a gallon of red paint had exploded in the center of the room.

  “This is what makes me think something bad happened to Mrs. Nicholson,” Henner explained.

  Not only did bloody handprints dot the walls, but long smears of blood connected them, covering most of the room at hand level. Large dark patches of what looked like blood stained the carpet and the bedding. Blood even smeared the windows. I immediately grabbed Finn and covering his eyes with the palm of my hand, started to escort him out of the room, but he pulled away from me.

  “Mom, I already saw it.”

  “Well, that doesn’t mean you should keep on seeing it.”

  “Otherwise I have to wait in the hall by myself?”

  “I will wait with you,” I started, but Finn shook his head.

  “I’m okay, Mom.”

  Marty walked up to Finn and wrapped an arm around him.

  “Your mom is right, buddy, you shouldn’t be in here to witness this.”

  “Sorry, Finn,” Henner apologized again. “I should have thought to tell you to wait outside. My head is just a big mess lately.”

  “Your head isn’t the only mess,” Wanda said as she frowned at him. “Why haven’t you cleaned this up?”

  “Because… well, Biohazard cleanup was set to come in after the police did their own investigation, but I asked them to… to leave it.”

  “Why in the world would you ask them to leave it?” I asked as I walked Finn into the hall and waited there with him. He sat down, back against the wall, and faced the opposite direction of the room. I leaned against the doorjamb facing the others, so I wouldn’t miss any of the details.

  “Because I thought it would be important for you… both to see this,” Henner answered, motioning to Wanda and me.

  I heard Marty ask, “Is it blood?”

  “I’m pretty sure,” Henner answered as Marty turned to face him with wide eyes. “Now do you see why I’m worried?”

  Wanda nodded, but didn’t appear to be processing the information. Instead, she held her arms out in front of her and closed her eyes, circling a few times. When she opened her eyes again, she shook her head.

  “Even if something happened to Mrs. Nicholson in this room, I still don’t feel any magic here,” she said as she turned to me and shook her head. “There’s no supernatural element in this space and no spirit entity, either. Are you picking up anything, Poppy?”

  I shook my head. She was right. There was nothing. The blood sure looked ominous, but whatever had caused it wasn’t magical. And it was no longer here.

  Everyone left the room, thank goodness, and then Henner proceeded to lead us through the rest of the rooms in the house, so we could check them to make sure nothing else was amiss magically. Some of the rooms were luxuriously furnished while others were dead empty. No magical forces were at work in any of them, though.

  We left the third floor and worked our way down the second floor before finally retiring to the first. For a house that had belonged to a Blood Witch, the place was surprisingly devoid of any enchantments, charms, or other magical trickery. Every time we turned a corner, I expected to feel or at least detect some semblance of magical energy—just something that might hint at the Blood Witch who used to live here, but there was nothing. It was bizarre and then some. And it also meant there was no way to scry anything because there was nothing to go on.

  By the time we finished walking through each room on the ground floor, I was convinced this house was completely devoid of magic—there wasn’t even so much as a ghostly presence.

  Marty appeared relieved. Wanda appeared bored. Henner appeared defeated. And I understood why—for all our trouble, he was no closer to figuring out what had caused the disturbances, nor what had become of Mrs. Nicholson.

  We left the massive dining room with the frescoed walls and the largest table I’d ever seen in my life—the thing must have seated at least thirty people.—and started down another long corridor.

  “There’s just the kitchen left now,” Henner said. “Then I guess you guys can go on with the rest of your day.”

  “Sorry, Henner,” I replied. “I wish we could be more help.”

  “Oh, you helped,” he answered with a little smile. “At least now I know that whatever is going on here—it’s not something magical. That’s a step in the right direction—process of elimination.”

  I breathed out a frustrated sigh. “I guess so.”

  Henner shrugged. “It beats the pants off wondering if something is going to leap out of the beyond and attack me in the middle of the night.”

  “Well, I guess that’s true,” I said on a laugh.

  We walked into the kitchen and I was struck by how commonplace it appeared. Pots and pans hung from a wrought-iron rack suspended from the ceiling and, as with the other rooms, there was no sign of magic—no old potion bottles, no cauldrons, no implements of magic you’d expect to find in the home of a Blood Witch. A big wooden workbench took up most of the room with a gigantic cast-iron range sitting against one wall.

  We wouldn’t find anything here.

  “There’s nothing,” Wanda told Henner as she shook her head. “There’s no magical signature, not even the essence of a magical signature here—same with the rest of the house. In fact, I’d be surprised if Betanya ever set foot in this kitchen.”

  Henner nodded. “My grandmother hated cooking. Instead, she hired a full-time chef—well, when she was alive, anyway.”

  “So that’s all the rooms in the house?” I asked, as Henner nodded. “Are you sure we didn’t miss anything?”

  “There’s just the laundry room, but Betanya never set foot in there, either,” Henner responded. “If there’s no magical hanky-panky in the rest of the house, there won’t be any in there, either.”

  “You’re probably right,” I conceded, but then shrugged. “But, we should probably check just to make sure. I mean, it wouldn’t hurt, right?”

  “Some of us want to get on with our day,” Wanda grumbled, but followed Henner as he walked into a laundry area behind the kitchen. The room didn’t offer much—just a few giant sinks, an industrial washing machine and dryer, a second fridge, and a fold-down ironing board.

  I stepped across the threshold and, once I did, I froze in place. My scalp prickled and my hair started to stand on end as my heartrate began steadily increasing.

  “This is it!” I whispered as I turned to face Henner and then Wanda. “This is the place.”

  “I feel something in here too, Mom,” Finn said as he reached out and took my hand again, standing as close to me as he possibly could. Wanda stood on his other side and glanced around the room, nodding all the while.

  “It’s here!” she said, continuing to nod as an expression of shock overtook her face. “It’s right here!”

  “What is?” Henner asked, frowning at the three of us. “What’s here? I don’t see or feel anything.”

  I shivered. Energy radiated out of the walls. It felt a thousand times more menacing than the blood-smeared room upstairs. The power pummeled my face and body as though it was trying to stop me from entering the room.

  “What is it, Pops?” Marty asked. “What do you sense?”

  “I’m… I’m not sure, but there’s something here. Whatever it is we’re looking for, it’s in this room.”

  Wanda stepped forward and raised her hand, tracing the door jamb and then the wall nearest us with her fingers. Inching into the room, I could see the energy charging her hair—making a few of the strands stand on end. She walked the perimeter of the room, checking every inch of the walls as she passed the washing machine and the sinks, headed for the fridge.