“I got a college fund started for him,” Remy said. “One of my great-aunts says she’s going to leave what she’s got to him since she doesn’t have any kids of her own. Hadley put me through hell, and she didn’t even care enough about Hunter to plan for him. I don’t want it.”

“In all fairness, she didn’t expect to die young. . . . In fact, she didn’t expect to die ever,” I said. “It’s my belief she didn’t put Hunter in her will because she didn’t want anyone to know about him and come looking for him to use him as a hostage for her good behavior.”

“I hope that’s the case,” Remy said. “I mean, I hope she thought about him. But taking her money, knowing how she turned out, how she earned it . . . that would make me feel sick.”

“All right,” I said. “If you think it over and change your mind, call me by tomorrow night! You never know when I might go on a spending spree or put that jewelry down on the table at one of the casinos.”

He smiled, just a little. “You’re a good woman,” he said, and returned to his girlfriend and his son.

I started the drive home with a clear conscience and a happier heart.

I’d worked half of the early shift that day (Holly had taken my half and her own shift), so I was free. I thought of brooding over Gran’s letter a little more. Mr. Cataliades’s visit to us when we were babies, the cluviel dor, the deceptions Gran’s lover had practiced on her . . . Because surely when Gran had thought she smelled Fintan when she was seeing her husband, she was seeing Fintan in disguise. It was hard to absorb.

Amelia and Bob were busy casting spells when I got back. They were walking around the perimeter of the house in opposite directions, chanting and swinging incense like the priests in the Catholic Church.

Some days I realized it was all to the good that I lived out in the country.

I didn’t want to break their concentration, so I wandered off into the woods. I wondered where the portal was, if I could recognize it. “A thin place,” Dermot had called it. Could I spot a thin place? At least I knew the general direction, and I started east.

It was a warm afternoon, and I began sweating the minute I started to make my way through the woods. The sun broke through the branches in a thousand patterns, and the birds and the bugs made the thousand noises that left the woods anything but silent. It wouldn’t be long until evening closed in and the light would fracture and slant, making the footing uncertain. The birds would fall silent, and the night creatures would make their own harmony.