“Old ladies come in two flavors: sweet or mean. She was the mean kind. But my momma always tried to include her, until she flat-out refused to come about three years ago.”

The inside of the house was dark. Thick curtains blocked the light. I pulled them aside, letting the day in through the glass patio door. No bars on the frame. Odd. Apparently Jene wasn’t afraid of whatever the magic-fueled night could spawn.

A layer of dust coated the old furniture. Derek tried it with his fingers. “Sticky.”

Not dust, grime. The kind of grime that accumulated after years of willful neglect.

“When did she go weird?” Ascanio asked.

“She was always an odd bird,” Holland said. “She had a real glare on her. I checked the log. We’d been called out before about a year ago. Some kids were playing on the street and being loud. They said she came out of the house and clicked her teeth at them. Scared them half to death. Parents filed a complaint. There were probably incidents before that, but most folks here live and let live, so it’s hard to say.”

Great. Kate Daniels, tracker of old ladies with a biting fetish. And me without my armor.

Derek pulled the glass door open and stepped out into the yard.

No pictures on the walls. No dishes in the sink. Dust on the sink’s edges. Not cleaning is one thing, but when you ran water, inevitably some splashed on the counter. No splash marks disturbed the dust. Ascanio opened the fridge.

“Empty.”

I didn’t have a good feeling about this.

“Kate?” Derek called.

I stepped outside. The yard looked perfectly ordinary. Green grass, shrubs, and bird feeders. Many, many bird feeders in every shape and size. I could see at least two baited cage traps under the bushes.

Derek stepped closer to me.

“I smell one of Roland’s people.”

Great. “Which one?”

“I don’t know. But this scent was at his base when we went to talk to him. Now it’s here.”

I went back inside and moved to the first bedroom. Dark stains marked the round doorknob. I reached into my pocket, drew a length of gauze, wrapped it around the handle, and swung it open.

The stench hit me then, like a slap to the face. Bones tumbled toward me, and I jumped back as they rolled onto the filthy carpet.

“Holy crap,” Holland said.

If the bedroom had carpet at one point, there was no way to tell what color it was. At least six or seven inches’ worth of small animal bones covered the floor. A lot of bird carcasses. A few raccoon skeletons, some cat bones. They probably had a problem with missing pets in this neighborhood. All the bones were clean and smooth. I reached down with my gauze and picked up a small dog’s femur. The marrow had been sucked out.

“Picked clean,” Ascanio said.