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horrible feeling those are going
to be famous last words,” I told Pixie as the SUV bearing the
perpetually cheerful Savannah made its way down the winding
drive.
    “Yeah, and I can guess who they’ll apply
to,” she said with a dark implication before stalking off to the
verandah.
    I had a nasty feeling she was right.

 
4
    “This house is…” I paused, not for dramatic
effect, but to try to put into the words the sensation that
skittered down my back.
    “Clean?” Pixie asked, drifting past me to a
bow-front window that looked over a short bit of scraggly lawn.
    “Hardly that.”
    “Yuck. Flowers. That’s probably where the
bees were.”
    A mouse dashed out in front of me, froze
when it spotted me, nose and tail twitching.
    “It looks like Spider will need to contact
the real sort of exterminators. What I was going to say was that
the house is… different.”
    The mouse ran off to hide behind a love seat
when I stamped on the floor.
    “Different as in deadly ? Filled with
toxic fumes, do you mean? Carcinogens leaching into the air, the
kind that seep deep into your healthy pink lung tissue, corrupting and destroying every healthy cell in their
path?”
    “You are the strangest child!” I said,
giving her a look that should have scared her silly.
    She shrugged. “Strange is what I do
best.”
    “Evidently.”
    “And I’m not a child. I’m almost sixteen .”
    “What I meant was different as in… well, different . Or not, given the present company. Take that
picture, for example.”
    Pixie stalked over to the wall opposite me
and stood with two hands on her hips, the other two arms crossed
over her chest, an obstinate look on her face.
    We were in what must have been the house’s
parlor, a sunny room that overlooked a small garden that had been
allowed to run wild. Faded heavy maroon curtains dated it to at
least a hundred years in the past, and the thick, dark mahogany
furniture couldn’t have been much newer. Several uninspired, muddy
watercolors hung on the dusty yellow and cream wallpaper,
occasional squares of brighter color indicating where pictures had
been removed.
    But there was nary a spirit to be seen.
    “What? What’s wrong with it? It’s just a
picture of some boring old people,” Pixie said, her eyes lighting
up at the sight of a sharp letter opener that had been thrust into
a small bud vase.
    “Take a closer look at it.”
    She sighed the sigh of the put-upon and gave
the picture another glimpse. “It’s just some Victorian people. A
family. OK? Can we go now?”
    “Not just yet. How many people are in the
picture?”
    Pixie glanced back at it, frowning slightly
as she noticed what I’d seen straightaway. “Four. Oh, I see. So
now, what, you’re a bigot or something?”
    “Don’t be ridiculous,” I said, moving closer
to the picture. It was indeed a standard Victorian family portrait,
with two men standing behind a seated woman, a small girl leaning
on her knee… Except the woman clearly had four arms. “I wonder how
a picture of a polter’s family found its way into this house? And
are they all polters, or just the one?”
    “No way to tell,” she said, dismissing the
picture and wandering around the room.
    “Not unless one of them hadn’t lost her
extra limbs yet,” I said, squinting at the child in the picture.
“Interesting. I might be able to tell in person if someone was a
polter, although my Otherworld radar isn’t the best. My father’s is
much better. Does the child have an extra arm hidden in her
pinafore, do you think?”
    “Who cares? They don’t live here, do
they?”
    “I doubt it. Some mortal families knew about
the polters who lived with them, but I doubt if they’d include them
in family photos unless there was a blood tie.” I straightened up
and glanced at the other pictures. No other family portraits were
displayed. “Just out of curiosity—how old were your parents when
they died?”
    She spun around and glared at me. “You are a