Glad no one could see me, I folded my hands over my heart and knelt there at the southern end of my garden, hidden by mist, and called up the tiniest shield of magic possible, just a spark of blue-and-silver light starting in the core of me. It expanded with every heartbeat, slow deliberate press outward, until my arms were spread and the magic kept thrumming to greater and greater dimensions. I didn’t know how long it took, encompassing the whole of my garden with that new shield, but in time I felt the new one touch the old. A thrill shot back from the melding shields, zapping into my fingertips and squirreling through my body with a joie de vivre of its own. I looked up and silver-blue shimmered overhead, shields melding like a sunset of negative colors. I thought—I hoped—nothing alien could have remained within me, not when I’d begun a new shield from something so small and close, and strengthened the old with it.

Still, it wouldn’t hurt to have Sonata and Billy check me out. I stepped back into the real world.

Patrick had knelt, Sonata still cradled in his arms. My hands were fisted, something I only noticed because my nails cut into my palms. I needed to trim them. My fingernails, not my palms. I put my hands together in front of my stomach and uncurled the left with the still-knotted right hand, then made myself unfold the right fingers with my left. “What happened?”

Patrick’s aura remained serene, but tempered itself toward gold, as if that was the color of his sorrow. “They’ve been destroyed completely. It’s the worst fate I can imagine for a human soul.”

“Worse than being angry ghosts for a hundred years?” My hands were cold. I was abruptly aware of how tired I was, though Patrick had done the heavy lifting in the last few minutes.

“Worse than that,” he agreed quietly. “They might have found redemption, at the end, and instead chose a darker path.”

“You think there’s such a thing as redemption?” I wasn’t sure I wanted an answer, though I didn’t know what I was afraid of if he gave one. I did want an answer to, “What are you, anyway?”

“I do.” Patrick was maybe the steadiest soul I’d ever laid eyes on. His voice didn’t hold the richness that made some actors compelling, but his calm conviction had the same effect on me. I could listen to him read a phone book, as long as he did so with the resolution that he spoke with now. “I believe the worlds beyond ours are complex, and that we have almost no idea how we mortals interact with them. But I also believe the soul continues on, and that where spirit remains, hope resides.”

Then he shrugged, becoming a little more ordinary again, and said, “I suppose I’m a theologian. I went to seminary, but I was never comfortable with some of the strictures, so I left and studied comparative religion at university instead. My mother and Sonata were great friends. I’ve been coming by for years when she does a séance, in case something goes wrong.”

“Has it ever gone wrong before?”

“This is the second time.” Patrick spread his fingers over Sonata’s hair, and I finally shook myself loose from my physical stupor and came to kneel next to her. “The second I’ve been present for, at least. She’s been doing this longer than I’ve been alive. Is she all right?”

Actually, aurawise, she looked fine. Tired: the yellows and reds weren’t as bright, but they didn’t look sickly, and Matilda’s ghostly green had faded entirely. “She’s just sleeping. Billy, am I clear to…?” I glanced his way, studying his aura for shadows and finding none.

“Sonny could tell you better than I can.” Billy frowned at the sleeping medium. “I think they’re gone.”

I nodded, turning back to Sonata. Light and warmth balled in my hand, healing magic at its most simple and comforting. It dropped into Sonata’s chest, and though her breathing hadn’t been strained, it eased a little. She turned her face against Patrick’s chest and settled in, like a child seeking protection. His aura flared, white going hard and bright. The Sight winked off, sparing me a headache. “She’ll be fine. Give her a few minutes and you can wake her up.”

“Thank you.” It was effectively a dismissal. I got to my feet and went back to Billy, whose frown had deepened.

“I thought you couldn’t see them.”

“I can’t. Usually. I think it’s the cauldron.” I pinched the bridge of my nose and wished I was wearing my glasses so I could take them off and clean them; anything that would give me something to do while I tried to sort my thoughts into language. “I think Matilda might have tried jumping into me. I didn’t see her go through the Dead Zone, and I cleaned my garden as best I could and can’t see her, but…”

Sonata inhaled a soft waking-up breath. Billy and I darted to Patrick’s side, so we were all sort of hovering above Sonny when she opened her eyes. She looked from face to face, eyebrows rising. “That bad, was it?”

“Yoda she’s become. In trouble we all are.” The Sight came back on, assuring me that her colors were steady and strong. “You’ll be okay.”

“And will you?” Sonata’s eyebrows rose and she gave me a curious glance that went on to become a careful study. “She leaped for you, didn’t she? But I don’t see any traces of her riding you. The exorcism may have worked. Did you learn anything from her?”

I exhaled, glad she’d given me an all-clear. “A little. We need to be looking for a murder or missing person in the year 2000. That’ll give us…”

The truth was, I wasn’t sure what it would give us, but I hoped it would be a tie to the cauldron. I’d feel like a prize fool if this wasn’t all somehow intertwined.

“The captain’s not going to be thrilled with us digging up cold cases when we’ve got a hot one on our hands.” Billy offered Sonata a hand, but it was Patrick who helped her to her feet. She leaned on him and he kissed her temple, earning a brief, weary smile from the older woman. I re-revised my estimation of Patrick’s position in Sonata’s life. Exorcist, yes, boytoy, no, but they had something most people didn’t manage to share with people of their own generation, much less with somebody three decades their senior or junior. The two of them made my nose all stuffy and my eyes sting, and reminded me I hadn’t talked to Gary in a couple of days.

I rubbed my nose surreptitiously and cast a shrug in Billy’s direction. “Maybe we’ll get lucky and they’ll have caught the guy. Maybe all we’ll need to do is a jailhouse interview.” Because the odds of having caught somebody who’d been murdering people every fifty years for at least the last two centuries were so high. I wondered what a two-hundred-year-old killer looked like. Maybe the murders were part of a fountain-of-youth ritual, but the idea of a wrinkly bag of bones slicing people up was both funnier and scarier.

Billy gave me a look that said more or less all those things, except maybe without the bag-of-bones part, then turned his attention back to the medium and her exorcist. “Are you going to be all right?”

“I’ll be fine after a stiff drink or two.” Sonata quirked a smile and stepped out of Patrick’s embrace to give Billy a hug, then to shake my hand. “I’m sorry I wasn’t more help. That doesn’t happen very often.”

“You not being helpful, or insane ghosts taking over your body?” Sometimes my mouth said things even my brain wished it didn’t. I pulled my tongue back under control and added, “You were helpful. We know more than we did before. Thank you.”

Sonata said, “You’re welcome,” with a hint of dryness that turned considering as she went on. “Neither happens often. Even angry spirits usually want resolution more than corporeal form, and offer all the information they can. This one…”

Her gaze went to Patrick, and he said, “Matilda,” with the ease of long understanding. Sonata mouthed the name, then turned back to me.

“When the sessions are over all I remember are impressions. Usually I feel drained, like I’ve spilled my soul, and I’m left with a sense of relief and sometimes gratitude.” She pressed a hand over her stomach, eyes closed, as if she reached for the memory of a dream. “I can feel fear and rage distantly now. From the exorcism, I think, but below that, further away…Matilda didn’t have a need to share her troubles as most restless spirits do. There was too much control in her, and that…” Her eyes opened again, gaze frank and direct on mine. “That’s not usual. That may well be something beyond her, controlling her. Be careful, Detective Walker.”