Mrs. Erickson seemed surprised by this. “It’s our way to worry when we have some responsibility. I worry about my invisible family. I’m not getting younger, and they’ve...never aged. They can’t be seen. They can’t be heard. And it’s important for children to be seen and heard. I know that—I was one. I still remember the pain of not being believed. Their entire existence is something no one believes in.

“But even the children my age who were willing to believe weren’t accepted. Jamal drove them away.”

“Did he not understand what that did to you?”

“He’s a child.”

“So were you. His age does not excuse his behavior.”

“I don’t think ghosts age. They’re trapped, and these ones are trapped in the house. They can’t wander. They can’t watch other people, and even if they could, they can’t talk to them. They can’t be heard.”

Helen lowered her head, as if in respect. When she raised it, her expression was complicated. “What do they look like, for you?”

The question was not the one Mrs. Erickson was expecting. “The children? They look like children of about ten years of age—possibly younger, possibly older. So much depends on environment. I was small for my age until I hit my growth spurt.”

She was small now. Kaylin failed to say this, but Helen heard it anyway.

“No, I didn’t mean the children. I meant the ghosts still cradled in Kaylin’s hands.” She smiled as she said it.

Mrs. Erickson blinked. She looked at Teela, at Sanabalis, and then at Helen herself. Last, she turned to look at Kaylin’s hands, her eyes narrowed, some confusion in her expression.

“They look like children, to me.”

“Mortal children?”

“Children. Children of all races look like children to you, no? This isn’t different. They’re smaller than I am, their voices higher and weaker when raised. They remind me most of Jamal, not in physical appearance, but in feel. I think they’ve been trapped for a long time—longer than Jamal. Longer than Darreno and Amaldi—although the young corporal tells me she doesn’t think Darreno and Amaldi are actually dead.”

“We cannot see what you see,” Helen said, a note of mourning in her voice.

Helen could; she could read minds. She could read thoughts. Mrs. Erickson was not a Barrani Lord, nor an ancient Dragon. Kaylin highly doubted that she was shielding her thoughts against Helen; she probably didn’t know what Helen could do.

“No. But she is a shaman, and what she sees, as she sees it, I cannot translate, for want of a better word. I see as Terrano sees. And no, dear,” she added, to the aforementioned Terrano, “try as you might, you will not see what she sees.”

“If it keeps him occupied and out of trouble, the attempt itself is useful,” Teela told her.