Mom nodded and went back to her meal, but her brows remained furrowed and she only pushed her food around her plate.

“Lucille, didn’t you have a yarn-bombing project for Seth?” I asked to deflect attention elsewhere.

“Yes, I do.” Lucille turned to Seth. “Maybe we can do that after lunch?”

Seth nodded and continued slurping his soup.

I finished my soup and excused myself. I felt Mom watching me leave the dining room. I didn’t want to get the rest of them worried, but I felt edgy and unsettled; something was wrong.

Vi could easily get lost in her pendulum daze for hours. I assumed she was still up in the turret room interrogating her swinging crystal. Or maybe she had finally caught Duchess and was trying to pry some information out of the cat. Either way, I decided to go back to the last place I had seen her.

38

I was out of breath when I reached the top of the steps. I swung the door open and was disappointed to see the empty room. I stepped inside. Everything was essentially as we had left it—the shoes still littered the floor, the open curtains allowed a patch of sunlight to creep into the room. Duchess lay on her side, spread out in the sunshine. She sat up when I moved toward her. Those gold eyes held mine, and she began to purr.

“Have you seen Vi?” I asked the cat. I didn’t expect an answer but had to talk to someone.

The bathroom was also just as we had left it, and also no Vi.

I left the cat in her patch of sun and went back downstairs. I stopped at our room, but it was also unoccupied. Where could she be?

Then it came to me—maybe she had gone out to see the dogs. She sometimes liked to sit with Tuffy and Baxter when she was thinking. She said they helped her concentrate. I took the stairs two at a time and headed to the back hallway.

I grabbed Seth’s coat, which was by the back door. His coat was way better than mine for this kind of weather. My sister remembered winter here in Michigan, but she must have embellished it in her mind. She’d sent something that could probably keep a person warm at the North Pole—before global warming. I walked to the cottage, thinking about where I would look if Vi weren’t there.

I also had a decision to make now. Vi would not win our bet, focused as she was on the undercover cop. But she’d still want to open the detective agency together. I had begun to see it take shape. Maybe it would be the answer to my jobless situation. It felt like I’d be taking over a classroom full of preschoolers, but if Vi was going to do this anyway, I might as well get involved if only to keep her out of trouble. And, I had started to warm to the idea. Working to focus my “gift” over the last couple of months had honed my ability to locate things. At the very least I could be a psychic lost and found. I just hoped I could find Vi, and soon.

Baxter and Tuffy greeted me enthusiastically at the door and bounded out to meet me. Tuffy stopped in mid jump when he realized I wasn’t Seth. Before I had a chance to snap a leash on him, Baxter ran through the snow flinging the fluffy stuff over his head. Tuffy stayed much closer to me, did his business and returned to the doorway, where he sat shivering.

I clapped my hands and called to Baxter. I saw him dive into a snowbank, tail wagging.

“Come on, boy! Let’s have a treat!”

At the word “treat,” he pulled his head out of the snow and whirled in my direction. He had something in his mouth. He ran at me, full force, and I braced myself for impact. I didn’t want him racing through the cottage covered in snow, plus I had to get whatever he had found away from him. I just hoped it wasn’t anything dead.

Rather than run into me, he stopped just in front of the door and dropped his prize at my feet. I bent to pick it up, my brain not willing to believe what my eyes were telling me and not wanting to make the connections it was making.

Vi’s bright pink and purple striped mitten sat on the ground. Vi adored these mittens; they were the first pair she had managed to make that fit humans and not some alien life form and she had been wildly proud of them. She’d made others over the years that were much better than this pair, but she always returned to these. She’d used yarn that had belonged to my grandmother and said they reminded her of her mother’s love of bright colors and winter walks.

I knew I wouldn’t find Vi in the cottage. Alarm bells sounded in my brain. I had to find her, and fast. The snow fell in big heavy flakes and the temperature had been dropping throughout the afternoon. I had worried about Mac and Kirk venturing out in this new storm and now Vi was out in it as well.

Thinking about Vi’s love of these mittens had my brain spinning in other directions. Sometimes the things we work so hard to make or to preserve take on a life of their own. Protecting the past can become a mission, or an obsession. I wondered what a person would do to protect his or her heritage, even from one’s own family. I thought about the list we had found in the box.

I gave the dogs their promised treat and shut them back in the cottage. I followed Baxter’s paw prints to the place where he had found the mitten, dreading what I might find. But there was nothing. Just a trampled snowdrift.

I pulled the hood up against the wind and realized Seth had stuffed his ridiculous fur-lined deerstalker hat in the hood. I put it on and rethought my position on the hat. It was soft and warm and my ears thanked me. I put Vi’s glove on my left hand and stuffed my other hand in the coat pocket. I felt Seth’s penknife and a pack of gum.

I surveyed the landscape, looking for footprints, but the snow and the wind had smoothed everything except the area Baxter had just stepped on. Some slight depressions headed into the woods. Clutching the knife in my pocket, I followed the only lead I had.

I was fairly certain they were footprints and as I got to the edge of the trees, the prints became more clear. There was more than one set. They walked into the woods where the land sloped down and away from the castle. The shed where Clarissa’s body was stored sat at the top of the slope and the prints curved around behind it. I knew I was now lost to view from the hotel.

I called Vi’s name every few steps but there was no response. Finally, I heard a weak “help” off to my left. I turned and followed the sound. I spotted the mate to the mitten in another snowdrift, but this one moved when I approached.

39

I rushed to Vi’s side and brushed the snow off of her.

“Vi! Are you hurt?”

Her whole body was covered with snow like someone buried in sand on the beach.

She didn’t answer and I slid my arm under her head to try to get her to sit up. I heard a muffled snap behind me and turned just in time to see a large tree branch swing toward my head.

I ducked and the branch glanced off my left temple. If I hadn’t been wearing Seth’s hat and hood, I would certainly have been seeing stars. As it was, I fell on top of Vi.

I quickly got up and moved away from Vi. If there was a branch-wielding lunatic in the woods, I didn’t want Vi caught in the cross swings. I dodged to the left and turned just in time to see the branch swing again. I spun toward it and grabbed it as it whistled past. The person at the other end was thrown off balance and we both fell to the ground. The assailant was bundled up like a Michelin man and wore a ski mask.

I rolled onto the branch to keep my attacker from using it again, but before I could turn, he or she was on top of me, trying to bury my face in the snow. I tried to fight but I couldn’t get a grip on the slippery coat.