Lia got out of bed. Nobody saw her. Nobody was looking in her direction. She was still fully dressed, except for her shoes. She suspected her hair was mussed and she smoothed it self-consciously, probably not doing it any good.
“Dexter?” Hannah said, breaking the silence that filled the guest room at Casa de Rojo. She still hadn’t folded up Lia’s phone, although its screen had gone black. “What are you gonna do?”
“You’re gonna tell me how you can possibly know Ingrid Redstone, for starters,” Lia said, from behind them.
There was a mass turn. Hannah, Dexter, Riley and Black Tom all wheeled around. Hannah ran over and hugged her, hard. “Lia, honey!” she exclaimed. “How are you? You fainted dead away, we were so scared-”
“I did not faint, don’t you say that,” Lia admonished her. Hannah let her go and she slipped back into her shoes. “I never faint. I don’t want to be a girl who faints.” She turned to Graves. “Dexter?”
“What, how did I know Ingrid?” he said. “I met her back in the ’40s, before I… well, you know. She was a singer in a bar I spent kind of a lot of time in back then. She’s gotta be into her nineties by now.”
“If she is, she’s got a great plastic surgeon,” Lia said. “I saw her yesterday morning, and there’s no way she’s more than thirty years old.”
Dexter looked confused. “But that’s not possible,” he said.
“Says the Crypt Keeper,” Riley piped up.
Dex glared at him like he meant to rejoin with something snotty, but then relented. “Yeah, good point,” he admitted. Then: “Lia, she said there’s things we need to know. She said I’m here, somehow, because of you.”
“Not to the best of my knowledge,” Lia said. “And I do think I’d notice. What am I, reanimating in my sleep?” She frowned. “But I guess I did find your lighter in a place she sent me to…”
“Can you undo it?” Dexter asked. “Whatever it is she did to me that’s hurting you?”
Lia shrugged. “I don’t even know what it is. This’s beyond me.”
“That Ingrid woman didn’t seem to think so,” Hannah said.
“No,” Lia agreed reluctantly. “No, I guess she didn’t.” She looked up at Dexter. “So, Dex. We gonna go talk to her, or what?”
“Hell no, we’re not gonna go talk to her!” Dexter said. “You know how to spell ‘trap,’ sister? That’d be I-N-G, uh,” — he thought about it- “R-I-D.”
“But what about all those ‘things we need to know?’” Lia asked.
“That’s a bluff,” Dex said. “She’s bluffing. It’s bullshit.”
“What if it’s not, Dexter?” Hannah asked quietly.
Hannah and Dexter exchanged a private glance, and Lia knew they were both thinking of her. She must still have looked pretty worn out. She hadn’t really expected that three hours of sleep would erase those dark, haunted circles from underneath her eyes.
“If that’s the case,” Dexter reassured Hannah, “then we’ll find out what she knows some other way. But playing by Ingrid’s rules is not gonna be the smart move, here, I’m tellin’ you. I’m getting a notion she’s a better tactician than I ever knew.”
“You guys are welcome here for as long as you need,” Riley said. “We’re defended. Let ’em come.”
“Thank you, Riley,” Lia said, touching his arm affectionately. “But I don’t think that’s really gonna work.”
“Why not?” Dexter and Hannah said together.
“It’s nice here,” Dex elaborated. “Swanky.”
“And safe,” Hannah supplied.
“You’ll see, if we hang around long enough,” Lia told them. “Riley, can I have a drink of water? Maybe a sandwich or something, before Steb wakes up? I don’t know if I can handle him today.”
“Of course you can,” Riley said. “You can have roast duck and chilled caviar, if you like.”
“PB amp;J’ll be fine.”
Hannah meekly raised her hand. “I might try the duck and caviar.”
“Come on,” Riley said. “We just restocked the kitchen.”
They all filed out into the hall, except for Black Tom. Lia noticed, but she figured he’d be along directly. He wasn’t her shadow, after all.