movements.
A soft click meant the bolt was drawn, and I turned the knob and pulled gently. The door opened. Frakir returned to bracelet-hood and invisibility.
We entered, closing the door quietly behind us. We were not present in the wavery mirror. I led Flora up the stairs.
There were soft voices from one of the rooms on the second floor. That was all. No wind. No excited dogs. And the voices grew still before we reached the third floor.
I saw that the entire door to Julia’s apartment had been replaced. It was slightly darker than the other and it sported a bright new lock. I tapped upon it gently and we waited. There was no response, but I knocked again after perhaps half a minute and we waited again.
No one came. So I tried it. It was locked, but Frakir repeated her trick and I hesitated. My hand shook as I recalled my last visit. I knew her mutilated corpse was no longer lying there. I knew no killer beast was waiting to attack me. Yet the memory held me for several seconds.
“What’s the matter?” Flora whispered.
“Nothing,” I said, and I pushed the door open.
The place had been partly furnished, as I recalled. The part that had come with it remained-the sofa and end tables, several chairs, a larger table-but all Julia’s own stuff was gone. There was a new rug on the floor, and the floor itself had been buffed recently. It did not appear that the place had been re-let, as there were no personal items of any sort about.
We entered and I closed the door, dropping the spell that had cloaked us as I began my circuit through the rooms. The place brightened perceptibly as our magic veils faded.
“I don’t think you’re going to find anything,” Flora said. “I can smell wax and disinfectant and paint...”
I nodded.
“The more mundane possibilities seem to be excluded,” I said. “But there is something else I want to try.”
I calmed my mind and called up the Logrus-seeing. If there were any remaining traces of a magical working, I hoped I could spot them in this fashion. I wandered slowly then, through the living room, regarding everything from every possible angle. Flora moved off, conducting her own investigation, which consisted mainly in looking under everything. The room flickered slightly for me as I scanned at those wavelengths where such a manifestation was most likely to be apparent-at least, that was the best way to describe the process in this shadow.
Nothing, large or small, escaped my scrutiny. But nothing was revealed to it. After long minutes I moved into the bedroom.
Flora must have heard my sudden intake of breath, because she was into the room and at my side in seconds, and staring at the chest of drawers before which I stood.
“Something in it?” she inquired, reaching forward, then withdrawing her hand.
“No. Behind it,” I said.
The chest of drawers had been moved in the course of purging the apartment. It used to occupy a space several feet farther to the right. That which I now saw was visible to its left and above it, with more of it obviously blocked to my sight. I took hold of the thing and pushed it back to the right, to the position it had formerly occupied.
“I still don’t see anything,” Flora said.
I reached out and caught hold of her hand, extending the Logrus force so that she, too, saw what I saw.
“Why”-she raised her other hand and traced the faint rectangular outline on the wall-“it looks like a..., doorway,” she said.
I studied it-a dim line of faded fire. The thing was obviously sealed and had been for some time. Eventually it would fade completely and be gone.
“It is a doorway,” I answered.
She pulled me back into the other room to regard the opposite side of the wall.
“Nothing here,” she observed. “It doesn’t go through.”
“Now you’ve got the idea,” I said. “It goes somewhere