The road curved gently up to an opening in the high stone wall that surrounded Angel Hills Assisted Living. In case passersby were in any doubt of where they were, there was an elegant, if large, brass sign on the metal gates that were open to welcome them.

They drove through the impressive entry into a prosaic parking lot laid out before a large, graceful building that looked very much like a high-end private hospital or school. A very tall stone wall spread out from either side of the building and swept behind it, encasing something very securely. Anna gave a thoughtful look at the open gates.

“All but shouts ‘expensive place to store unwanted relatives,’ doesn’t it?” observed Tag.

“What do you do with grandma when she doesn’t remember who you are and starts trying to spend all of her money on QVC buying synthetic pearl brooches?” agreed Anna.

“That was oddly specific,” said Tag, sounding intrigued.

“My father represented just such a grandma after her intrepid teenaged grandchildren broke her out of a facility her son had locked her up in for her own good,” Anna said, her tone a bit grimmer than she had planned.

She’d been doing homework when the two boys and their grandmother, still wearing stained hospital clothing and the remnants of plastic restraints, had knocked on her dad’s door.

“From your face I gather that the son regretted his actions,” Charles murmured.

“In his own way,” Anna said, “my dad is kind of a wolf, too.”

Anna had been heading toward a place near the main building when Charles made a soft noise. She glanced up at him, but he was watching the building.

“You think we should be wary?” she asked.

He nodded, so she drove back toward the gates. “Should I park outside?”

He gave the wall a look and shook his head. “We can get over the wall if we need to.”

She took a parking place just inside the gates. They got out, and Charles took a slow, sweeping look around. Anna wondered what he saw. She knew that he didn’t usually see ghosts, but she got the feeling he saw something here.

“Tag,” he said slowly. “I think you should stay with the car.”

“Watching our escape route,” said Tag, sounding a bit more Celtic than normal. “Oh, aye.”

“Magic?” Anna asked.

Charles jerked his head toward a light post. “We’re being watched—and maybe listened to.” Which wasn’t a no, she noted.

She narrowed her eyes and finally saw what he had. An extra little bump on the bottom side of the post that arched over to hold the light—camera.

“Reasonable enough,” she observed, “at a place that might have Alzheimer’s patients, and—” Her breath caught. She had been so worried about her memory lapses and the grimoires that she hadn’t actually thought about what it meant that Daniel was a relative of Carrie’s the same way Dr. Sissy Connors was the daughter of Dr. Connors Senior. Witches tended to occur along family lines. “And maybe especially a patient related to Carrie Green,” she said slowly.