“Yes. Well, no. I don’t remember her name—but I do remember her. She was tall and slender, had hair that reached all the way down her back. Her eyes were an odd shade of green and she had perfect skin. But it was her voice that I liked best; it was almost musical, although she never sang.

“We met her in the market—she was sketching people for donations, having just arrived in Elantra. My mother was friendly; she struck up a conversation with the young woman, and in the end, the woman offered to do a family portrait. She came to our house with her paints and easels; Father helped her, and Mother teased him about it. The painter was a very beautiful woman.

“Then we sat for her. She did my hair. I remember that—it was such a strange hairstyle, but she said it was common where she grew up.”

Teela said nothing.

“And then she had us sit.”

“The flower in your hair,” Teela began.

“I’d almost forgotten about that,” Mrs. Erickson said, with instant and genuine delight. “It was a flower from her home; she had it in a very strangely shaped pot. I told her not to pick it, but she said that it was meant for a very special occasion—and what could be more special than this? She said she had seldom seen such a content, happy family—that she envied us and she wanted to capture the mood of our family perfectly, because time touches all things, but moments can be captured and preserved.

“She picked the flower carefully, and she braided it into my hair. Then she asked us to sit in the chair—my grandfather’s chair. I was a child, so I fidgeted a bit. The children disappeared during the painting.”

“Disappeared?”

“Well, they went to play somewhere else.”

Kaylin turned to Jamal, behind whom the other children had gathered. For the first time, they looked like the ghosts that occupied some of the more terrifying children’s stories; there was something about their eyes, unblinking and slightly too large, that threatened to overwhelm the proportions of the rest of their faces.

“Jamal, do you remember this?”

He didn’t answer. He didn’t appear to hear her. Kaylin frowned and took a step toward him; she could see her marks begin to glow because the light was reflected in all of the children’s unblinking eyes. “Jamal?”

Unsettled, Kaylin crouched to bring her face closer to his. He continued to stare through her—they all did.

“They didn’t see her,” Mrs. Erickson said, coming around the table, the brief delight of reminiscence broken. “But they won’t talk about that room or anything in it. Oh, dear.” Her expression became one of pure concern. “It’s very hard to reach them when they become like this.”

“Do they do it often?”

“Not often, no. Perhaps a dozen times in my entire life.”