“He heard that.” She winced, but a hint of smile was preserved; it melted away as she continued to speak. “I’ve told you my parents didn’t have a lot of money. They felt so lucky to be given the land for this house, but they had to build it, and that was costly. My mother ended up selling what little jewelry she had—she had a baby on the way, and they needed to have a roof over that child’s head. I think she must have sold whatever it was she was given; it would have been the most valuable piece she owned.

“Jamal thinks my mother was meant to wear whatever she’d been given during the pregnancy, and possibly beyond it. But...my parents were practical people, and not given to sentiment. If the gift received was too rich, too impressive, too ornate, my mother would have set it aside regardless—she wouldn’t have wanted to tempt thieves.”

Kaylin knew exactly what that was like. Wealth spoke of power if you were careless enough to flaunt it; it meant you weren’t concerned about thieves—or worse. She also knew that in Elantra, not the fiefs of her childhood, there was less fear of theft—but regardless, Kaylin didn’t wear valuables. She thought she would have liked Mrs. Erickson’s parents, had they ever been able to meet.

But she considered one thing as Jamal continued to speak—inaudibly—to Mrs. Erickson. Every single one of the children had not, according to the law, died. Their ghosts gave lie to that, but their bodies had been found, and their bodies had returned to their homes. Every one of them had been arrested for breaking and entering.

She wondered, as she considered, whether or not they had been searching for whatever it was Mrs. Erickson’s mother had sold. All had died, executed for murdering their own families or the people they were living with. What had possessed them? Azoria herself? But she’d inhabited the body of the painter without becoming psychotically insane.

But there had been no further ghosts, or at least no ghosts sent to watch and report on Mrs. Erickson. Had the last child finally found what Azoria had been seeking?

She shook her head. The neighbor.

The neighbor had accused Mrs. Erickson of theft; he wanted to push his way into her house to find...something. Jamal kept him out, and there was enough of his own thoughts, his own beliefs, in him that he was frightened of ghosts. He had never managed to enter.

But upon sighting Teela that one time, he had remained in his own house; he didn’t come out to the lawn to watch for Mrs. Erickson’s arrival. His reaction to Teela implied—heavily—that he had been in contact with a different Barrani woman. To mortals with very little experience with Barrani, all Barrani looked the same.