Magic Nation Thing Read Free

involved. She might have flown down to see her dad that weekend, but he was visiting a client in New York, and as for Dorcas, there was no telling where she was. She’d made a quick trip to Portland the day before. And that day, who knew where? But Tree was supposed to be in the office that morning when Abby went in to look for a pen because all of hers had run out of ink.
    Abby’s pens frequently ran out of ink because of her notebook, a special loose-leaf binder that was partly a diary but also contained a large collection of lists, as well as maps and floor plans. The maps she’d drawn of her favorite places, such as the Marina and Pacific Heights and Squaw Valley, and the floor plans were of houses she’d lived in or visited. As for the diary, she’d been keeping one since she was about seven years old, and she’d started making lists even before that. Long lists of everything she did and wore and ate, of all the books she read and whether she liked them, as well as all the other things and people she especially liked or disliked. She wasn’t sure why, but there was something satisfying about list keeping—even though it did use up a lot of ink.
    The office of the O’Malley Agency consisted of two rooms, one of which had once been a fairly large Victorian parlor complete with high ceilings and a nice marble fireplace. But now, instead of comfortable chairs and sofas like you’d find in most people’s living rooms, it held a couple of big beat-up desks, several cluttered tables, three computers, and a couple of armless chairs where clients were supposed to sit. And beyond the parlor, in what had once been a dining room, there were more cabinets and office equipment, such as copiers and fax machines. Because neither Tree nor Dorcas had much interest in unexciting housekeeping activities, the whole area also had a lot of dusty surfaces and overflowing wastebaskets.
    That morning the office was, as usual, full of dust, but unusually empty of people. No Tree, that is. But the BACK IN A MOMENT sign was on the front door, which probably meant that Tree had run down to the corner grocery store to buy something for lunch.
    Abby managed to find a pen on Dorcas’s messy desk and was about to borrow it when she noticed a fat envelope with Moorehead written across the top. She didn’t pick it up right away because—well, just because she wouldn’t want to give anyone who happened to come in the idea that she was all that interested in one of her mother’s investigations. Instead she went to the front window, where she could see if anyone was about to arrive on the scene.
    It was a typical autumn day in San Francisco, clear and sunny but with a lot of wind. No dark blue Honda in the driveway, so no Dorcas. Also there was a big clue that Tree wasn’t approaching at the moment: a man washing the windshield of his car right in front of the office was paying strict attention to what he was doing, which was something men hardly ever managed to do when Tree Torrelli was anywhere in the vicinity.
    So the coast was clear. Abby scooted back to the desk and as she picked up the envelope some photographs fell out, and along with them a pink heart-shaped locket on a gold chain. Picking up the locket, Abby released the catch. The picture in the heart-shaped frame was obviously of Miranda herself; a larger version of the same picture had been in the Chronicle a day or two before. But why was the locket in the envelope? Of course Dorcas needed to know what the kid looked like, but the picture in the paper was a lot bigger and clearer.
    Abby frowned as she began to understand why a locket that had belonged to Miranda was in Dorcas’s file. She was remembering the Great-aunt Fianna story that had always bothered her the most: the one about how some of the strange ancestors could hold objects in their hands and get information about the people the objects belonged to. Like a message about where the owner was at that moment, or what was