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weren’t
moving, so she ignored the packing proceedings and sat down on the
gravel path next to the spot where she’d found the body.
    She pushed aside the lavender plant and the
rosemary bush, finding pillbugs and releasing the lovely scents of
crushed herbs, but except for that, she found nothing. No tiny
footprints, no bloodstained garrotte, no incriminating letters.
Plenty of fey hung around, as they always did, but they were the
normal kind. Flamesprays (which looked like miniature hummingbird
harpies) clustered around the lantana flowers, prying the flowers
apart as though hunting for bugs. Bramblemaes chattered in the
trees and groomed one another, occasionally dropping down a tuft of
fur or a loose feather when their play turned to a fight. A
graebnor sulked under the aloe vera, looking like a stone until it
gaped toad-like at passing birds or thornwights and tried to snatch
them to eat. Gnosti were usually cute, and occasionally icky, but
they were almost always harmless and small. Once Zoë said she
wished she could see them too, but Susan didn’t think she was
missing much.
    Not that they weren’t useful. Ruby said that
the common garden fey were good in that they helped make earth
energy useable, like the way beans fixed nitrogen in the soil. Most
of the time Susan just drew her energy for spells directly from the
earth, but there were less skilled mages that needed to use a
shortcut. Also, hexelmoths could eat the remnants of curses and
spells you didn’t want, which meant you could catch them and put
them in a jar, keeping them going on nothing but the scraps of
spells that didn’t turn out right.
    Susan watched the garden fey for half an
hour, (trying to ignore the pointed glances Zoë gave her when she
walked past with yet another box to put in the storage shed), but
she didn’t see any fey that looked anything like the dead one. It
seemed logical that the way to find out about who murdered someone
was to start talking to their nearest and dearest, looking for a
motive. That’s what the detectives on TV always did. But what if
the nearest and dearest didn’t talk? Not just wouldn’t, but
couldn’t. Susan was stumped.
    Darius hopped the fence into the backyard.
Since the walls were as tall as him, and the gate unlocked, his
climb was as athletic as it was pointless. He was a few inches shy
of six feet, but he appeared much taller because he was still in
that adolescent growth phase where only his hands and feet had
reached their full size. He had medium-brown skin, wide African
features, and frizzy white hair which he unsuccessfully tried to
slick back against his head.
    Susan had moved out of Maggie’s trailer when
she was seventeen, and Zoë had offered to rent her a bedroom. Zoë,
unlike Maggie, was stable and predictable, and let Susan do her own
thing as long as she paid the rent on time. She’d also gently
prodded Susan into staying in high school rather than quitting to
get a full-time job, and she’d helped Susan polish up her résumé so
she could find work that didn’t involve deep fat fryers and
nametags. Susan had needed that environment like an aloe needs
shade, and she’d never forget that Zoë had been there for her when
she really needed someone.
    Darius, who’d had difficulties with both his
parents, had been kicked out that summer and needed a place to
stay. Darius was like Susan in that he’d been asked to care for his
mother for so long that he was losing the ability to care for
himself. He, too, seemed to be thriving under Zoë’s laissez faire
stability.
    Darius walked, loose limbed, across the yard,
leaping from one side of the flower bed to the other. Also athletic
and pointless, since he could have gone around. Susan grinned at
his energy.
    “You could have gone through the gate,” Susan
said.
    “Nah, I don’t want Zoë to know I’m here.
She’ll make me help pack.”
    “You don’t want to move?”
    Darius shrugged. “I’m cool with it.”
    The head of