Invisibility. Speed. Silence. We needed to be magic-enhanced ninjas. I picked out a few more titles, then looked over my books for healing magic. Possession couldn’t be cured, not once it had gone this far. There was nothing I could do to save whatever remained of Charles Hubert.

Lena rapped on the window. I yelled and dropped the books I had been studying. Okay, I needed some ninja magic. Lena seemed to be doing fine on her own.

“It’s abandoned,” Lena said as I climbed out of the car. “Looks like he left a while ago.”

“Dammit.” I lifted Smudge to my shoulder. He was hot to the touch. “Are you sure? This is not a happy spider.”

“The place is a wreck, Isaac. Nothing lives there now except maybe the raccoons.”

I gathered my books and followed her down the road. A short distance on, it branched to the left into an overgrown clearing beside a plain-looking wooden cabin. What was left of it, at any rate.

“Automatons?” asked Lena.

“Maybe.” Something had smashed its way into the cabin. Only two of the four walls remained. Half of the roof had splintered and fallen in, and the rest sagged dangerously. A wooden staircase on the far side led downhill toward a small stream.

The interior walls that remained were unfinished, and the floorboards were bare plywood. A flannel jacket hung from a peg on the wall. A set of shelves had collapsed, spilling canned food beside a rust-dotted refrigerator that looked to be at least forty years old. Torn, moldy books were strewn through the wreckage, along with something metallic.

I stepped closer, testing the floor. An ominous cracking made me back away. “Could I borrow a sword?”

Lena handed me one of her bokken. I used it to poke at the books, searching for the glint I had spied. After a few attempts, I uncovered a gold coin slightly larger than a quarter. I slid it close enough to pick up and brushed it off on my sleeve. Though worn, I could make out the image of a stern-looking woman and the words “Dei Gratina.”

“What is it?”

“A two-guinea coin.” I flipped it to Lena. “A piece of treasure from Treasure Island. It’s a training exercise. Ray had me create and dissolve that same coin time and again in our first year working together.” I stared at the ruined books. “Hubert was practicing.”

“You think the Porters noticed?”

“And sent an automaton to deal with him? Maybe.” I turned in a slow circle. A clear, grassy area the width of a two-lane road led down to the stream. On the other side of the clearing, a pair of pine trees had toppled over, the trunks splintered like matchsticks. Most of the needles had fallen off, forming a brown carpet on the ground.

“Hubert walked away from this,” said Lena. “So what happened to whoever or whatever attacked him?”