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this head teacher and child routine. As she led me toward Niall’s, about the only reason I cooperated was that it seemed so out of character for Rebecca.
    Ultimately, though, at the last moment, just when I thought we were about to walk up and knock on Niall’s door, she headed across the street. Her fingers dug deep into my flesh, propelling me. This house wasn’t quite as large or impressive as Niall’s, but it must still have cost a small fortune. An estate agent would have called it the cheapest house on the block, and stressed the exclusivity of the location.
    They would have been sensible to do it, too. Although the property was still in the Georgian style, it had the look of a property that had been empty for a while. The front garden, such as it was in a city as crowded as Edinburgh, was overgrown with weeds and old newspapers were piled up like drunken gnomes. A real estate sign that said, “Fix Up” lay ignored by the front steps. There was even a broken window with a spider making a grand web in the missing-glass space between the outdoors and indoors.
    “Hello, eensy weensy spider,” I said as we passed the creature. She looked at me with all of her eyes and blinked.
    “Greetings. I’m moving in with my egg sac,” came a thin, high-pitched voice. I should have expected that. Magic spiders. Obviously. This was Scotland. Where else did the story of Robert the Bruce and the spider come from?
    “Congratulations,” I said to the spider. “I hope it’s a girl, and a boy, and a girl, and a—”
    “Don’t talk to the help,” Rebecca admonished me. She breezed up the stairs and pulled me to the door, which was huge and looked halfway to a gothic style, like something out of an old horror movie. It didn’t really fit with the architectural tone of the area.
    “Nice,” I said when I saw the bronze gargoyle door knocker. I lifted the knocker and let it go. An impressive boom sounded, one that reverberated throughout the neighborhood and shook under the soles of my shoes.
    “Great special effect,” I said. “Did you do that or is the knocker actually designed like that?”
    Rebecca didn’t answer. Without waiting for someone to come to the door, Rebecca opened it and we went right in as if she owned the place. Maybe she did. Maybe the coven did, at least.
    Although if it did, it could have done a better job of furnishing it. I immediately surmised that this place was not really lived in, not in the traditional sense. Although it was probably cheaper to rent it unfurnished, inside, it was almost bare, down to floorboards under my feet, with no sign of any home comforts. No pictures on the walls, no furniture, no lamps, no television. No guy in a mask and a cape playing a huge pipe organ. Nothing but what was built into the house was in evidence.
    “Oh, goody. Are we going camping?” I teased Rebecca and nodded at the dark, cold fireplace and the giant hearth in the living room as we trotted past it. “If this is where the coven has you staying now, they should have given you a decorating budget, or at least a sleeping bag, a flashlight and a S’mores kit,” I said, trying to defuse some of the tension. “I’ll bring the marshmallows and the graham crackers if you bring the chocolate candy bars.”
    She grunted a reply that I couldn’t make out because it sounded like a strangled sob.
    “Rebecca, please. None of this makes any sense to me. And you have your shields up so high, I don’t know which end of you is up.”
    I thought about maybe using my emotion talents to make Rebecca calm down enough to stop holding my arm as if she would pull it off if I ran, but the first flicker of power I sent without thinking ran into her shields.
    Rebecca looked round at me sharply. “Don’t even think about doing that. You’ve caused enough problems as it is.”
    “Me? What problems have I caused?” I was getting a little sick of her attitude. Especially when earlier today she’d congratulated me on a