Aunt Annabelle Joy’s house was tucked up at the end of a winding street in the sprawling semi-suburban area around Traverse City. Some trees grew in the area, but compared to the thick forests of the Sleeping Bear area, this flatter open area made the sky press relentlessly upon Riordan like a sun-eyed cyclops. Children played volleyball in a minimal park down the street, but otherwise, a summer lethargy lay over the neighborhood.

Aunt Annie’s house pushed back the sky with vibrant lilac bushes and trellises of twining vines. In fact, her whole yard was a riot of color. A pergola sat to one side of the house, in front of a large viewing window, hung with potted plants and bird feeders over a small patio and garden. Wind chimes tingled in the slight breeze, mixing with the sound of falling water from several fountains.

In short, the gardens around the house shielded it from the conformity and lack of privacy usually inherent to suburbia.

No one sat outside enjoying the gardens despite the excellent weather. Once again, Riordan wondered if she’d even be home. He’d lost all sense of time relative to human work cycles long ago. Did she even work at all? Daniel wasn’t that old, but that didn’t mean his parents, much less his aunt, couldn’t be older.

Ugh, people were hard. Only one way to figure it out at this point and Riordan could sense he was stalling.

Squaring his shoulders, Riordan marched up the short sidewalk to the bright blue front door. He felt huge and clumsy and out of place against this delicate backdrop. Riordan was going to fuck this up, smashing through the task with grace or dignity. A knot of anxiety, barely acknowledged, sat just below his sternum and he rubbed at it absently.

Then Riordan raised his hand, knocked on the door, and waited.

And waited.

Fuck. She really wasn’t home, was she. Embarrassment bubbled up to join the anxiety. Riordan glanced over at Mark. “What now?” he asked.

“Knock again,” Mark advised, “She could–”

He cut off as the door abruptly swung open.

A thin woman glared up at Riordan on the other side. She was actually fairly tall for a woman, approaching six feet, but still shorter than Riordan by several inches. Flowing colorfully patterned clothing accentuated her movements. The slight wrinkles and looseness of skin placed her at the upper end of middle aged in Riordan’s opinion, especially with her short-cut hair mostly gone to an ash gray color.

Aunt Annie–for Riordan really doubted this was anyone else–arched one brow over hazel eyes that bore a striking similarity to Daniel’s. Was that earthy color what Daniel’s eyes had possessed before death and ghosthood had literally stolen the color from him?

Her sudden appearance mixed with Riordan’s anxiety and for a long moment, Riordan found himself at an utter loss of words. Every option for how to start this awkward engagement that he’d pondered on the drive over just flew out of his brain.

“Yes?” she asked shortly, “What do you want? This isn’t the best time for me.”

Annie swept her eyes from Mark to Riordan. Her body language hovered between sharp and welcoming, masking a tremble that a normal human may have missed. Grief, Riordan realized. She was masking grief with strained kindness and the sharpness was the edges of her self control slipping.

Beside Riordan, Daniel pressed his hands over his mouth, a strangled whimper escaping him anyway as his aunt’s eyes slid over him without ever seeing. Riordan glanced at the ghost and grimaced at the unmasked pain there, the mirror of Annie’s masked version. These two loved each other very much in their way and stood divided.

Right. He’d come here to do something about that.

Bracing himself with a deep breath, Riordan met her eyes and nodded. “I’m sorry to bother you, ma’am, and I’ll try this again later if you really need, but Daniel asked me to come.”

Whatever she had been expecting Riordan to say, that had clearly not been it.

“Daniel?” Annie breathed, surprise relieving the weight of her grief for a brief moment. Her gaze on them sharpened. “Who are you?”

“Have the police talked with you yet?” Riordan asked in turn, not sure where to begin with answering her question yet.

The pain of grief flashed through her again. “Yes.”

“Then you know that Daniel is dead.”

Her mask cracked heavily and her eyes glistened. Fuck. Riordan might get tears after all. Still, Annie nodded resolutely. “Yes.”

Riordan reached up, slipping Daniel’s necklace over his head and holding it out to her. “He gave me this, said it was a gift from you, and a message for you.”

Her eyes were locked on the necklace now, her expression frozen as a flurry of emotions flickered through her like tiny jolts of electricity. Riordan gave her time to recover from the shocks he was delivering.

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Annie pulled herself together admirably, breathing in deep rhythmic patterns before taking a step backwards. She gestured into the shadowed coolness of her house.

“Why don’t you boys come on inside? We can have some tea and talk,” she said, her voice rough but steady.

“Thank you, ma’am,” Mark replied with one of his boyish smiles. “We appreciate this.”

“No need for thanks,” she said as the pair and their invisible outrider all filtered inside and she shut the door behind them. “I expect this will be a rough conversation for all of us.”

“Very much so,” Riordan agreed. He ran a hand through his wavy black hair, already feeling the thick locks curling as they got longer than he liked. His other hand clenched convulsively around the necklace he held, unsure if he should tuck it away or offer it again. “I’m–”

Annie held up a hand to stop him. “Tea first.”

Riordan nodded, relieved for the reprieve. He slipped Daniel’s necklace back around his neck for now.

The inside of Annie’s house was as busy and crowded as her gardens and just as full of color and wonder. More chimes and plants dangled from the ceiling, along with glass and crystal art that caught the light and spread rainbows about the room. Tapestries hung on the walls and the comfortable furniture was graced with equally comfortable cushions and throw blankets.

Annie led them into a living area with a low table surrounded by armchairs and couches. A puzzle, half finished, dominated the clear areas of the table, with papers and bits of knitting and other crafts that Riordan couldn’t begin to identify taking up the rest. Annie gestured at the seats before entering a kitchen separated from the room by a low half-wall and putting on a kettle of water.

Riordan gingerly settled himself on the edge of one of the armchairs. Mark flopped onto the couch, looking almost ready to resume his nap despite his interest in the current happenings. Daniel… Daniel followed his aunt into the kitchen, looking both wistful and lost.

“So, you knew Daniel?” Annie began as she pulled several mismatched but cheerful mugs from a cabinet and tossed in tea bags. She hadn’t offered them options on the tea, but Riordan knew he’d drink whatever that woman served him. It was the least he could do.

“Yes,” Riordan said, struggling to encompass how insufficient that answer felt. “I… I’m sorry–”

“Don’t you dare,” Annie snapped, her hazel eyes flashing narrowly. “Whatever you feel you have to apologize for, don’t. It either doesn’t matter or is too great for forgiveness and I don’t care which at the moment.”

“Aunt Annie…,” Daniel breathed, reaching out for her but stopping just short of touching. If the woman heard him, she gave no sign of it.

Riordan studied the woman. He certainly wasn’t meeting her at her best. She’d lost a loved one recently and to unexpected violence. And here he was, rubbing salt in those raw wounds. He nodded slowly, trying to convey some measure of respectful acknowledgment of her dictum.

It must have been enough because Annie went back to making tea for them. She fussed with the tea cups, stealing glances towards her strange guests as if she both couldn’t stand to look at them and couldn’t bear to look away.

Riordan let the silence grow again. He reached out to the puzzle, fiddling with one of the spare pieces. The half-formed picture was one of a woman surrounded by fairies in a garden, full of plants and color and wonder like so much else that Annie chose to have in her life.

Hands reached out, grabbing the stacks of papers and mixed crafting goods. Annie cleared the table by the simple expedient of tossing the pile into one of the chairs. She left the puzzle in place, though Riordan saw her hands twitch towards it as if she was suppressing the urge to strike the fragile picture off the table, scattering it back to its pieces in some box.

“I gave her this puzzle,” Daniel said.

Riordan jumped. The ghost moved with the inherent silence of one who didn’t walk or breathe or make any ambient noises and he’d snuck up beside Riordan without him really noticing.

“You did?” Riordan asked, looking from Daniel to the puzzle and back. “Yeah, I could see that.”

“What’s that mean?” Daniel said.

Riordan suppressed an irreverent joke about fairies and instead answered honestly. “You view the world this way. I can see–”

Riordan cut off, realizing that Annie was staring at him like he’d gone mad. Which, given he’d been talking to empty air, however quietly, was a valid assumption.

“So, um…,” Riordan started eloquently, shooting a desperate glance at Mark for help. “We–”

It was Annie’s turn to cut him off as she sank into the seat across from him, eyeing him like a hawk might watch a particularly tasty mouse. “How do you know Daniel?”

What did Riordan say to that? The truth was layered and complex and large portions of it weren’t acceptable for normal human consumption. He didn’t know Annie.

But he did owe her truth.

“I met him on the road. We were both hitchhiking north. He asked to travel together,” Riordan started from the beginning. “We were together when we got jumped. I… I was there when he died.”

He swallowed down another apology. His guilt at not saving Daniel, at not being enough to have stopped those two humans from getting the jump on them just because he’d gotten sloppy in his self-imposed punishment for crimes past. It ate at him still.

And yet… If Riordan had stopped those two from kidnapping them, had beaten them or killed them or turned them into the police, would that have stopped the death mages? If the human police came knocking first, the death toll would have been higher. The shifters would only have gotten involved after the cult stopped hiding its magic. Possibly after the killing tree ritual was completed.

Someone once told him that time magic couldn’t see the future very well because the future was a shifting mass of possibilities and probabilities tied around people and events that approached inevitability.

The path Riordan had taken to reach this moment had cost Daniel his life, but not his existence. It had failed to save all the earlier victims, but prevented future ones. It had dismantled the leadership of the cult in one fell swoop. For all his regrets, other paths would have cost as much or more to reach the same ends.

“You were there?” Annie sounded surprised, but her expression quickly morphed to a hungry desperation, weird talking to air momentarily forgotten. “What happened?”

Riordan winced. He’d forgotten that he’d not checked what the official story was before he’d come there. Cautiously he asked, “What did the police tell you? This is still an open investigation and I don’t know what…”

What they had said. What he should say. What all the answers even were.

Why was this so complicated?