“What has gotten into them?” Wander mused. She was panting a little, and long strands of hair hung loose around her face. The gleaming motes around her danced in quick, jerky movements. Some of them had turned crimson, and without thinking Eleanor put her hand out curiously to touch one. It bounced off the tip of her middle finger. Eleanor yelped and snatched her hand back; a tiny drop of blood welled where it had touched her.

“They’re glass?” she said. What she’d taken for magical little stars, she saw, were fragments of shattered glass. Wander flicked her hand, and the cloud rose into the air above her.

“My apologies. I should have warned you not to touch them,” Wander said, getting her breath back. “Now. What were we talking about?”

“How about the talking dogs that tried to eat us?” Eleanor suggested.

“Umbral hounds,” Jack said, sounding troubled. “They’re crossroads guardians. They’re not normally aggressive unless you’ve done something to damage the paths between worlds.”

“They have a new mistress. They’ve been cranky,” Wander said dismissively. “They won’t bother us again tonight, I think.”

“I would still feel better if we were safely inside,” Jack said.

Wander arched an eyebrow. “The umbral hounds don’t stop for doors and locks, old friend.”

“Bartimaeus Ashford built this house. Even you couldn’t get through the protections he put on it without being invited,” Jack replied, and Wander eyed the house with new interest.

“Well, then. Shall we?” Wander said. She drifted inside, her glass motes following.

Eleanor started to follow, but Jack caught her arm.

“Are you all right?” he asked, his voice gruff with concern.

“Just some dirt and a bruise or two,” she assured him. She’d spent so much time fantasizing about having her dad in her life. Now she had him, and she didn’t know how to feel. Eleanor was cursed and probably doomed. He was just one more person she was inevitably going to lose.

She followed Wander’s faintly glowing footsteps through the house, into the Great Room, and up the stairs hidden at the back of the fireplace. At the top of the stairs was a seemingly solid wall that concealed a secret door. Eleanor pushed it open and entered, Jack right behind her.

The room beyond was long—far too long to have actually fit into the space between the fireplace and the rest of the house—and filled with shelves and display cases containing strange and magical objects collected by Bartimaeus Ashford, the man who’d built the house. Wander had bent over one of the display cases and was examining a deck of fortune-telling cards.

“Wander?” Eleanor said. Wander straightened up with a little distracted hmm and looked back at her, blinking.

“What is it, dear?” Wander asked.

“Wasn’t there something you wanted to tell me? I mean, before the hounds attacked us.”