As she shook her head, her gaze fell on the paperback on the floor by the couch. A chill ran along the back of her neck again. “That’s what the thump was,” she said. “The book.”

“What do you mean?”

She walked over to the couch, picked up the paperback, and set it firmly in the middle of the seat cushion on the couch. “This is where I left it when I went to answer the door. I remember I set it down deliberately on the seat cushion, because sometimes things can slip off the arm and I wanted to keep it quiet because Niall was napping. This paperback is far too heavy for the ceiling fan to have blown it onto the floor, and it didn’t leap off the couch on its own.” She lifted her gaze to meet Dragos’s. “Something was in this house. I felt it go past me. And it knocked the book onto the floor.”

Chapter Six

Carefully Dragos took the paperback from Pia. Grasping it by one corner, he held it up to his nose. Pia’s scent clung to the pages, and, more faintly, he caught Jocasta’s scent. Jocasta and Ramone were the ones who had unpacked and arranged everything in the house.

He could sense no lingering magic, and no other information of any kind. It was simply a paperback book.

He handed it to Graydon, who inspected it as carefully as he had. Then both males went over every inch of the room. They didn’t find anything, but by that point Dragos had expected nothing else. It was still important that they check. No information was still data to be used for analysis.

While they inspected the area, Pia sat in one of the chairs, leaning forward to rest her elbows on her knees and burying her face in her hands. Graydon gave Dragos a troubled look, then he signaled his intention to step out by tilting his head in the direction toward the deck and left.

Dragos squatted in front of Pia and contemplated the dejected slump of her shoulders.

She peered over her fingers at him. “I have PTSD.”

Cupping one of her elbows, he nodded. “At this point, I would expect nothing else.”

“Did I overreact? Of all the things we’ve faced since we’ve gotten together, we’ve never had something invade our living space. It completely freaked me out.”

She was entitled to feel everything she felt and behave in any way she wanted. He didn’t care if she had overreacted, but he knew she did. She liked to behave in a fair and balanced manner. After giving it some thought, he replied, “I don’t think so. Something unknown and not understood came into our home uninvited. And Paul was out of line.”

“Who is he, anyway?”