Alice was oblivious to her sister's mental wanderings and chattered blithely about her blog, and her new boyfriend. "He's taking me out to lunch today," she said. "Can you work the register from twelve-thirty?"
"Do I have a choice?" asked Elizabeth. She uncrossed her eyes before they could stick that way.
"Well, no," Alice said. "I'm just trying to be polite."
At work, Elizabeth was back to data entry, where the greatest challenge was staying awake, and even the radio conspired against her. She finally turned it off after the least bad station in town played "Brass in Pocket" twice in the space of an hour. What she really wanted was to call Penrose and ask how his research was going, but she didn't think he'd pick up the phone. Besides, the telephone lines, being limited to conventional audio signals, might not even carry the sound of his voice.
A pentagram hung in the window in front of her table and glowed a bright, cat's eye green. Miss Price's spell of protection was altogether stronger here, perhaps because it was cast over a much smaller space than the house. The enormous energy wrapped up the spell hummed at a pitch that set her teeth on edge. When half past twelve rolled around and Alice left to meet Joe for lunch, Elizabeth bounced joyfully down to the shop. Downstairs, the rich panoply of human behavior, as displayed by the American book-shopper, would distract her from the spell and from her own thoughts.
Not all distractions were welcome. The bitchy lady who wanted the self-help book dropped by and complained again when she was told that it was out of print and impossible to locate. She finally left, but not without nasty backward glances and usual litany of threats to go through the big chain bookstores in the future.
The bell over the door was still jangling behind her when Titania Shevrell, in a raw silk dress and luxurious camel overcoat, its cut making its designer label redundant, walked up to the counter with a travel book of Shenandoah getaways.
She favored Elizabeth with a smile that said volumes about her opinion of people who had to work retail, but she spoke in civil tones. "Isn't this a nice book? I just love the pictures. I found the cutest B&B in here. I think that Trip needs to get out of town for awhile, and take a little 'trip' to the mountains." She giggled. She even made cute little air quotes.
Oh, you wit. Elizabeth smiled back sweetly as she rang up the book and said, "I'm sure he'd like that. The mountains are probably beautiful right now. Isn't this weekend the peak for the fall colors?"
Titania attempted to draw her out into some expression of jealousy, but Elizabeth, not being jealous, frustrated her efforts easily. Even so, after Titania walked out with her purchase, Elizabeth felt her shoulders unclench with an audible pop. She must have looked as though her sweater had 1980s shoulder pads.
By the end of the day, Elizabeth was more than ready to head back to the house, even with the pentagrams and mysterious presence if Penrose hadn't managed to banish it. All she could think about was a quiet night in front of the fireplace, or maybe poking through the library. The idea was so compelling that she was completely unprepared for the broken windows and the irate cat.
Alice pulled open the front door, but before the sisters could enter the house, a yowling Rififi came flying down the hall and into Elizabeth's arms. Eighteen claws extended and dug into her coat. He clung to her so fiercely that she didn't even need to put her arms around him to support his weight. She did anyway, in an attempt to protect her coat.
"What's on his feet?" Alice exclaimed. "It's like, brown stuff. He's never had poopy foot like that before."
Elizabeth twisted her head to get a better luck at to the cat's paws. She detected a brown, moist substance squeezing up between his toes. She took a tentative sniff. "It doesn't smell like poop, I think he was running around in your pumpkin pie."
"Oh, no!" Alice ran back toward the kitchen. "That was the last of those good pumpkins from the bookstore."
Elizabeth followed more slowly. She sped up when Alice reached the dining room and let out a yowl that echoed Rififi's earlier cry. "What is it?"
"Somebody broke in! There's glass everywhere." Alice stood in the center of the dining room pointing at the windows. The pentagrams that Elizabeth had serviced that morning were nowhere in evidence. The sashes were empty of all things magical and most of the glass. A few shards glittered around the edges of the window frames, but the rest of the glass was scattered across the floor. A brick lay under each window.
As Elizabeth and Alice stood stunned with shock, a final shard of glass in the top of a frame loosened and dropped to the floor with a tinkle.
"And my pie!" Alice cried.
A series of brown paw prints led from the kitchen, through the dining room into the front hall, across the wooden floors and antique rugs alike. A smashed pie plate complete with smashed pie lay in the kitchen doorway.
"Let's call the police," Elizabeth said. "And let's get out of here, they might still be in the house."
Alice cocked her head to the side and listened. The only sounds they could hear were their own breathing and normal street noises. Car doors slammed as people arrived home from work. A dog barked. A train whistle hooted from the trestle down by the river.
"We'd better not touch anything," said Alice. "I'll call 911." She ran back to the front of the house and the hall phone. Elizabeth took a few steps toward the kitchen to investigate. Rififi stiffened in her arms. She scratched his neck and whispered, "Don't be afraid. Nobody can hurt you now."
Rififi shivered and emitted a low rumbling noise. Not a purr, but Elizabeth settled for it.
The kitchen was a complete disaster. The pie was not the only object of the intruder's malice. The refrigerator stood open and its contents had been emptied onto the floor. A reek of milk mixed with ketchup and mustard pervaded the air. The breakfast dishes that they had stacked neatly in the drying rack were smashed upon the floor. The salt and pepper shakers and the sugar dish that sat upon the kitchen table had been swept to the floor and the sugar dish rested upside down over a pile of sugar, its lid cracked in half and lying under the table. In this room too, the pentagrams were gone.
A creaking, as of leather on leather, came from behind her. Elizabeth spun quickly around and Rififi protested by growling and digging his claws in deeper.
As usual, she saw no sign of what might have made the sound. Elizabeth dashed out of the kitchen and ran to the front of the house. Belatedly remembering Penrose's warning, she took the hallway so that she would not have to pass through the dining room.
Alice gabbled the details, her name, and their address into the telephone. After she finished and hung up the phone, the sisters exchanged an uneasy glance and wordlessly stepped into the slate-floored space between the inner and outer front doors. Elizabeth thought she would have felt more exposed waiting inside and breathing the malevolent air that pervaded the house. The smells wafting from the ravaged kitchen weren't very good either.
"It's too cold to wait out on the porch. And we shouldn't disturb the crime scene," said Alice with the wisdom of an avid cop show fan.
The girls shuffled back and forth as they waited and wondered out loud who could have wreaked such havoc in the house.
"Do think it's your spirit being nasty?" asked Alice.
"Absolutely not." Elizabeth stoutly defended Penrose, although she wondered at his absence. She would have expected him to be hanging around and making unhelpful remarks at a time like this. "And he's not my spirit."
Rififi squirmed in her arms and mewed plaintively. His paws left smudges all over the front of her coat.
"Do you have a tissue? Maybe we could clean some of this pumpkin pie off of the cat while we're waiting. And off my coat too." Elizabeth wrestled slightly with the cat and held him so that all four paws waved beneath Alice's nose. This indignity on top of his earlier fear left Rififi trembling with outrage. He purred jerkily and tried to hide his face under her arm.
Alice rummaged around in her handbag. She said, "All I have are these makeup removal wipes. I guess they would work on pumpkin and fur." She grasped Rififi's paw firmly in her hand and wiped at the sticky fur protruding from between the pads of his foot.
Alice moved on to the next paw and kept a wary eye on the other three as she worked. Elizabeth's arms grew tired and she listened vainly for the sounds of a siren.
"How long is it going to take them?" she asked after a half hour had dragged by. The cat was finally clean and huddled by their feet as they attempted to wipe some of the pumpkin off Elizabeth's coat.
"Oh, they'll take their time. They don't want to actually deal with the burglar themselves, so they'll make sure that he's gotten as far away as possible before they get here." Alice rubbed angrily at a stain.
Elizabeth was aghast. "You can't be serious. What if the burglar had a gun or something?"
Alice shrugged. "That doesn't make any difference. They don't come at all if nobody gets hurt. That has happened before, like I told you. Someone was shooting off a gun in the park one night and we called it in, but the police never came, probably because the bullets never hit anyone. Not that they could've done anything, but still"
More time passed. Rififi fell asleep on Elizabeth's left foot. Alice growled under her breath and went back into the hall to phone Joe, the one police officer she was certain would show up if told to.
Eventually, Elizabeth's stomach gurgled with a ferocity that would not be denied and she made up her mind to go disturb the crime scene in the kitchen. As she picked up Rififi from where he slept fitfully with the claws of one paw firmly engaged in her shoe leather, a cruiser rolled up and stopped in front of the house.
The policemen looked with interest at the damage to the house and took the girls' statements.
"Is there anything missing?" the older officer asked.
"It doesn't look like it, but we haven't really looked around yet," said Elizabeth. She had noticed that all of the pentagrams had faded from the windows, but she didn't think the police needed to be told that.
"Well, why don't you look around then? Did you call the owner of the property yet?"
"He's around, I mean, he should be here any minute now," Elizabeth said.
She left the officer and made a quick tour through the upstairs. Apparently the intruder had stayed on the first floor. Her bedroom was untouched and Alice's looked like it normally did, so it was impossible to tell if anyone had been in there. Dirk and Bob's rooms were both painfully tidy. She scampered downstairs to report to the police.
As she swung around the newel post, Trip appeared at the front door, brows knit with concern.
She opened the door. He stepped in and clasped her in his arms.
"Are you all right? What happened?" he asked, releasing her, but keeping a hand on her shoulder.
"Somebody broke in and messed up the dining room and kitchen," she said. "We're all fine, there was nobody here when the break-in happened."
Elizabeth heard a rustling down the hall behind her. Trip transferred his intent blue gaze to the policeman who was wandering through the house and making marks on a form.
"Are you one of the neighbors? Did you see anything?" he asked Trip briskly.
Trip dropped his hands to his sides. "No," he said hesitantly.
The policeman advanced. "Where do you live? Did you just get home from work?"
Trip blinked with surprise at the onslaught of questions but answered calmly. He was discomfited to learn that the break-in had happened right outside his window, and once the policeman finished questioning him, was permitted to see the damage. He let out a low whistle when he saw the smashed windows in the dining room and grimaced at the mess in the kitchen.
Elizabeth was hoping, but not really expecting, that he would offer to help clean up. She tried to steer his thoughts in that direction, but was defeated by the ringing of his cell phone.
He smiled at the sound of the voice from the handset. "So it's you? Where are you? Really? Sure, I'll be right out. No, I'm not doing anything." He was still talking as he moved back to the front of the house.
Elizabeth followed him. From the living room windows, she saw Titania, cell phone to her head, alight from a white SUV illegally stopped in the lane that wound through the park, and wave at Trip as he stepped on to the porch. He bid Elizabeth a distracted farewell and headed down the steps and into the park. He greeted Titania with an enthusiastic kiss before she whisked him off in her oversized vehicle. The SUV pulled away to reveal Dirk standing in the park and staring, puzzled, at both the truck and the police car.