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most. Not only were children difficult to summon but they were notoriously hard to bind long enough for conversation. And they were such delicate fluttery bright little things. She always felt as if she’d captured a firefly in a jar, its tiny body flinging itself against the glass, desperate to escape. Little Joe Hopewell had been no exception, barely offering his bereft parents a spark of comfort before he slid from her grip, to be lost within the tangle of roads leading to deeper reaches where she dared not trespass.
    But it had been enough. She’d seen that as soon as she passed back through the door and into her body to find Mrs. Hopewell snuffling into her handkerchief, Mr. Hopewell’s eyes suspiciously bright.
    “You shouldn’t be here,” she said, picking up the first and largest of the three bells to polish it. Key had an ebony handle engraved with the sword and cauldron of Arawn. Its deep, solemn tone paired with her tracing of the proper symbols freed her powers to unlock the door between the realms of the living and thedead. Allowed her to pass through into the vast frozen tangle of paths where cold sapped the strength from her body and deadened her aching limbs. Mother had warned her never to stop moving once she entered death and never to tarry lest the demons and dark spirits find her and take advantage of her weakened state.
    Unfortunately, she’d never told Callista how to avoid the monsters within her own house.
    Corey came up behind her and put his hands upon her shoulders, fingers digging into her skin. “I like to watch you do your hocus-pocus act.” He leaned down to whisper in her ear, his breath hot against her cheek. “Better than a night at Vauxhall. You’ve the gift of the actress. A real showman, you are. Had them eating out of your hands.”
    “Well, the show’s over.”
    Doing her best to ignore him, she placed the bell in its case and picked up Summoner, the next in size and the one whose higher strident ring called and bound the spirits to her so that she might speak with them. With the pad of her thumb, she caressed the four faces carved into the ash wood handle: the maiden, the warrior, the innocent, and the priest. Ran the cloth over the aged sheen of the silver before placing it, too, in the case.
    Lastly, she wiped clean Blade, the smallest of the bells but the most deadly, and her only weapon against those creatures that made the underworld their home. Its hawthorn handle was always warm to the touch, its call sharp as a soldier’s sword. If only its power to banish and disrupt worked on the living.
    “You’ll find my brother in his office counting hiscoins,” she said. “Why don’t you go gloat over the misery of others with him and leave me alone?”
    Corey spun her around to face him, leaning in close. She could smell a mix of cloves and brandy on his breath. “You think you’re better than me, don’t you? I have news for you, you’re nothing but a sideshow freak. The same as that chap locked upstairs.”
    The man upstairs. David.
    The name suited him. Strong yet with a touch of upper-class panache.
    Unfortunately, knowing the prisoner’s name only made her feel worse about knocking him over the head and dragging him into this mess. Not to mention that had she accepted his help as it was meant, she might have made her escape. She might even be aboard a northbound coach by now. Free and clear. On her way to Scotland and Aunt Deirdre.
    Safe.
    “All of our kind are afflicted with powers that make us strange and different. Make us more than human.” Corey looked past her and muttered a few words of household magic, causing the candles upon a side table to burst into flame and the fire in the hearth to roar to life. “It’s what we do with them that’s the key.”
    “Just because you use your powers to swindle and scam doesn’t mean I should do the same.”
    She winced as he turned the same intensity of expression on her that he’d used to kindle the candles.