Then I remembered the mouse. How could I have forgotten? Poor little guy. I thought quickly about just asking Suzanne to let him go in the backyard, but there were so many cats running loose in the neighborhood. Instead I asked her to hire a trustworthy kid to feed and water him and clean his cage. I told her I’d send her some money to cover it.

After she agreed, we said our goodbyes, and I hung up. I took a deep breath. That had been relatively easy.

Calling Dr. Nielsen was a lot harder. He was intensely worried about me and quite unwilling to let me “just disappear following a traumatic experience,” as he put it. I stuck to my guns but had the feeling he’d be calling the police when we hung up. Well, that would come to nothing — I was pretty sure the Dorf PD had written me off.

The next call was Ben. That conversation was awful. He was worried about me, yes, but he was even more worried about his family. How could I just disappear, right when he and the girls needed me most? Sticking to the party line didn’t do any good. It just infuriated him. It was horrible. In the end, he hung up on me in disgust.

After about fifteen minutes, the cell phone rang. The caller ID showed Ben’s number, but when I answered, it was my eldest niece, Tiffany. Jesus, it was really my day for punishment.

“Aunt Beth?”

She spoke in a low, muffled voice, as though she was crouching in a corner and whispering into the phone.

“Hi, sweetie. How’re you doing?”

She ignored my question. “Ghosteater said you could find Mom. Did you?”

You’d think, after the last two weeks, I’d have stopped getting caught by surprise. Unfortunately not. I sat there holding the phone, wondering what on earth to say. Just as I was about to answer, Graham’s and Kara’s warnings about the rules came back to me. I shut my mouth and thought some more.

“Beth?” Tiffany whispered, sounding desperate.

I decided I had to take a hard line. Tiff was twelve and had a good head. She could take it.

“Who else is going to find out what I tell you, Tiff?”

“I won’t tell anyone except Ghosteater.”

“Not Madisyn?”

Tiff paused. When she spoke, she sounded sad. “No. She’s not old enough to keep the secret. It’s started too young for her.”

That’s a good thing, I thought to myself. If I understood what I’d been told, it meant she had very little strength. If Cordus got a hold of her, she’d get one of those low-paid but safe household positions.

“Are Jazzy and Lia like you and Madisyn?”

“Not yet. It only started for me last year, though.”

She’d have been eleven. I wondered where that put her, strengthwise.