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We moved around to the back of the building. A covered veranda ran its length, with two smallish square windows sitting either side of a wooden door. Monty jumped up onto the veranda, the wood under his feet bending alarmingly as he walked over and checked the door. The handle turned, but the door itself didn’t budge.

“According to our ghost,” Belle said, “there’s a metal bar jamming it from the inside.”

“Explains why it isn’t moving and why he can’t pass through it.” He walked over to the nearest window and cupped a hand against the glass to peer in. “There’s salt on the windowsill and along the base of the external walls.”

“No surprise, though it doesn’t explain why he can’t get in through the roof,” I commented.

“It’s probably corrugated iron.” Monty checked the other window, then turned and headed down the other end. “These days, it’s usually powder-coated steel.”

He checked the final two windows, then jumped off the patio and continued around the building. When we neared the end of the building, my senses burned to life and the faintest wave of agony rolled over me but just as quickly disappeared. I stopped. “Unless there’s someone else being pinned by ash stakes that we don’t know about, then he’s here.”

Monty swung around. “You can’t tell if it’s him or not? Isn’t that unusual given you’ve Maelle’s ring and have some sense of his—or at least—Maelle’s emotional and psychic energy?”

“I’m afraid I threw the ring back at her.”

“Why? I mean, I could understand throwing a pointy ash stake or holy water, but that ring?—”

“Was being used to track our movements.”

“Ah.”

“Yeah.” I motioned toward the house. “As for the wave, I didn’t have time to examine it—it simply hit and then disappeared.”

“Did you have a chance to pin a location at all?”

“It was close, but more under the house than in.” I squatted down, peering through the gaps between the boards screening the house’s stumps. Despite the brightness of the day, it was as dark as hades under the house. I tugged my phone from my pocket, flicked on the flashlight app, and shone it through. The light hit an impregnable wall of darkness three feet in. “Whatever—whoever’s—emotions I sensed, they’re lying behind those shadows.”

Monty squatted beside me and studied the shadow wall. “And they are definitely caused by magic. It’s just of a frequency so low it wouldn’t register along regular sensory lines unless you’re close. I suspect the threads are also dark, so wouldn’t stand out against the shadows.”

“All of which would no doubt take some serious magical nous,” Belle said.

Monty rose and walked around to the front of the original section of the house. It was smaller than the extension, with only one window on either side of the old wooden door. He stopped abruptly at the halfway point between the house’s end and the steps and squatted again. “There’s something here—a pin of some sort.”

“A pin?” I squatted beside him, my hand briefly brushing the ground to balance. In that instant, a thick wave of emotion rolled through me, singeing my senses and sucking the breath from my lungs. I jerked my fingers away, and instantly the wave stopped. I hesitated, then warily ran my fingers across the dirt. Emotion chased after the movement—and so too did power.

The wild magic.

It was here, in the ground, responding to my touch and somehow enhancing my ability to see and feel past that dark veil.

Or perhaps, Belle said,it’s the Fenna doing what they can to help you stop the stain of darkness pressing into the ground and subsequently them.

Maybe.I’d certainly formed a direct connection with the earth’s power before by being barefoot, but this was the first time it had happened by merely brushing my fingers across it. And it made me wonder if, perhaps, it was a more direct way to converse with the Fenna—notthat I was going to attempt that here, with all that emotion building up behind the shadow wall.

I ran my fingers across the ground a third time, this time asking what lay beyond the shadows ahead. The whispers rose, speaking of foulness pinned to the earth and blood staining.

“And just what might you and Belle be silently discussing?” Monty asked, breaking my concentration and making me jump.

“Sorry, I was just caught off guard by another surge of emotion.” I lightly touched his arm. “What is a pin?”

“Nice redirect, but I’ll play along. It’s generally a single spell stone that is used as an anchor point for minor spells like the shadow wall we’re seeing.”

I frowned. “Why would a shadow wall spell need an anchor point? Spells like that usually don’t.”

“Pins are generally used in enclosed spaces and tend to make the spells harder for passing witches to spot.” He waved a hand toward the house. “Case in point.”

“I wouldn’t call under the house an enclosed space, though,” Belle said, then cocked her head sideways, obviously listening to our ghost. “And I would be wrong. There’s an old root cellar positioned just behind that shadow wall.”

“Is a root cellar any different to a regular cellar?” I asked.