A Girl, a Murder, and Twelve Dreadful Children

Chapter XX: Unwanted Visitors

That, my dear, is what makes a character interesting, their secrets. -- Kate Morton, The Forgotten Garden

Extraordinary pronouncements don't always produce the sort of reaction their teller hopes to elicit. Beatrice only looked unimpressed, in spite of Claire's dramatic claim.

"Grave robbing is more common than you might think. If she was healthy when she died, there will be no shortage of people who would want parts of her body for some reason or other."

Claire couldn't suppress a shudder. Undead or not, she didn't like the idea of bodies being cut up like that. Some mortal scruples lasted longer than mortality itself did. "But the grave was empty. There wasn't even a coffin."

Beatrice still refused to be excited. "Of course there wasn't. No one will go to the trouble of digging up a grave, climbing down into it, opening a coffin, and dragging a body out. Nor would anyone pull up the coffin, take the body out, then bury the coffin again. That would be going to too much trouble. Now, what about that suitcase?"

If she hoped to distract the other vampire, she was disappointed. Claire utterly ignored her question. Something else had just occurred to her.

"She's been dead for months. Her body would be too decomposed to be of any use to grave robbers."

Beatrice's patience ran out. "For goodness's sake, just drop the subject! I won't let you lead us on a wild goose chase again! Have you forgotten that time you were convinced the mayor of Belfast was a werewolf?"

Would they never let her forget that? It was an honest mistake. Still, Claire could see she wouldn't get anywhere with this conversation. Very well. Perhaps Dani would listen to her.

~~~~

"That's that, miss," the repairman said. "Should work fine now."

Not if another shadow with sticky fingers comes along, Dani thought angrily. Do I have to stand watch over the van now?

Aloud, she said, "Thank you."

When the repairman was gone Dani went out to the garage. She examined the windows and the walls, searching for anywhere an intruder could get in. The door was always locked at night. But so were the doors of her house, and the shadow had managed to get in anyway.

Damn you, whoever you are, she thought.

She needed some way to guard against this sort of thing happening again. Something like... A thought struck her. Dani stopped in the middle of pulling the garage door closed. Now there was an idea! It probably wouldn't work, but there was a chance...

She locked the garage door behind her. Ignoring the children's curious faces and more curious questions she went straight upstairs. Hidden in various places all over her house was a decent-sized collection of magical or supernatural objects. Some were weapons. Some had been made to protect or bring good luck. Some were so strange Dani hadn't a clue what they'd been made for. And then there were books of spells. No one knew better than Dani that most of them were complete rubbish, not worth the paper they were written on. Yet there were some that might possibly work.

A small cupboard in the bathroom was where Dani hid most of them. The children thought it contained only cleaning supplies, and so they never bothered to look in it. She opened it, pushed the cleaning supplies aside, and looked over the small library hidden behind them. As soon as she bought, found or otherwise acquired a magic book she wrapped it up in brown paper until it looked more like a shapeless mass of clutter than a book. This tactic kept nosy people from noticing it. But it also posed a problem for when she wanted to look at one of the books.