With a last scowl, she opened the door, flicked on the light, and headed down. I looked at David, and he gestured for me to go first. I shook my head, not liking the bare boards and ugly walls after the open whiteness of the rooms upstairs, and sighing, he went first.

Betty was yammering about something, and I took a breath to steady myself. I didn’t want to go down there, but that’s what I was here for. Frowning, I looked at Sampson. “Everything okay down there, sport?” I asked him, and he stood, his entire backside waving as he ate up the attention.

“Stupid dog,” I muttered as I started down. But maybe not so stupid, since he stayed at the top of the stairs in the sun while I followed Widow Betty into the electric-lit blackness underground. Two steps in, I opened my purse and checked the lethal-spell amulet. Nothing. But the heavy-magic charm was glowing brightly enough to read by.

“I don’t know how long the wall has been leaking.” Betty’s voice came echoing up as she reached the bottom and opened up a second door. It was unusual, but they might have had the vamp door for resale value. “I only come down here when I have to store something,” she said as she flicked on the lights and the scent of carpet cleaner came drifting up. “I noticed it was wet a few weeks ago, and I ran the extractor over the carpet and forgot about it, but earlier this week, the crack just sort of opened up, and it got a lot worse.”

David stepped into the basement, and after a quick amulet check, I halted at the base of the stair. I wasn’t ready yet to let that woman get between me and the door. It was really thick, and it had a conventional lock on the outside and a deadbolt on the inside. Nice. Bet it was soundproof. No one likes screams disturbing their Sunday dinner.

Seeing me there, David nodded almost imperceptibly and went to drop his briefcase on the long conference table set up in the middle of the large room. It smelled too clean for Betty to be coming down here only once in a while. Bleach, and maybe that spray that Ivy used on the blood circles this spring. The cinder-block wall under the front door had a crack I could put my pinky in running from floor to ceiling, thinner rays following the mortar lines.

Betty clustered close to David as the clicks of the locks on his briefcase made a tiny echo. He brought out some paperwork, and feeling safer, I meandered to the cracks. My skin crawled when the woman’s gaze sharpened on me, even as she started signing papers. If this was water damage, then I was an elf.