On the way to Shiela’s store, Dara distracted herself from Millie’s driving by fiddling with the phone. The symbols were pretty straightforward, more like the pictographs of the Alanti people than more common writing. Dara frowned and touched one.

Map utility it’s… She blinked. There was a dot along a road, and it was moving…

“Millie?”

“Yeah?”

“This is the 57 Freeway, right?”

“Uh-huh.”

“This map app, it’s tracking us?”

“Yep.”

Dara paused. “How? I mean, mages can do that, for individuals, but there must be millions of phones out there. How can it do that?”

“GPS,” Millie said. “It’s looking at a constellation of satellites in orbit.”

“In orbit.” Dara shook her head. “I know you told me, but it’s hard to believe. I mean, I can’t think of a spell that would get a mage above the atmosphere—I don’t know if any have ever tried and it’s just incredible.” Tracking people, minute by minute. What we could do with this…

Then Dara shivered. What could the Empire of Blood have done with this?

She took a deep breath, remembering the words of the dean.

“Knowledge is neither good nor evil. That power is accorded solely to us.”

“Right. Well, let’s get to Sheila’s.” Dara glanced back at the packed figurines. “I wonder if she’ll like these.”

“Oh, I think so, Kid. Trust me, Sheila’s got a good eye for value.”

Millie was right. Sheila lifted a figurine of a leaping cat, blue and gold strands running through the transparent glass and shook her head.

“This is beautiful. As is everything else. Millie, Dara, I’m feeling sort of bad about being the only one to sell this. Have you considered opening your own shop?”

Millie shook her head. “Wouldn’t know where to begin, and Dara’s—”

“Getting ready to go to school!” Dara said. “So I couldn’t possibly actually start a business!” Because even back home, I’d need a license to sell, especially since I was using magic. She bet this place had even more licenses. And that would mean that they would look more closely at Dara and Millie.

“Oh, what school are you going to?” Millie asked.

“Ah…” Dara frantically tried to remember.

“CSUF!” Millie broke in. “It was a contest between them and UCI, but she’s closer to Fullerton so, you know how it goes.”

Sheila glanced at Dara, raising one eyebrow. “I do indeed. I can pay you three hundred for all of this. More if you wait and put it on consignment.”

“Three hundred is good.” Millie nodded.

Sheila frowned. “I also think you should consider at least working with me for an online storefront. I’m popular, but it’s not like people come from all over the world to get here, and sooner or later we’re going to saturate the local market. I think that’s important for you, isn’t it, Millie.”

“Why would you say that?”

“John’s wife shops here now and then and she gossips.” Sheila glanced at Dara. “She was mentioning how John was hoping he wouldn’t have to get draconian at the end of the year, and well, she didn’t say any names, but it was you.”

“It was me,” Millie said, deflating.

“Good. I might have mentioned your new and profitable line of glassware. But I think it would be wiser if it at some point we set up a more dependable revenue stream for you.”

“Gotcha, I—“

Suddenly Dara’s pocket screamed. The hideous sound echoed through the store, and Dara jumped in shock, nearly falling over as she fumbled for her phone. It screamed at her again as she pulled it out.

“Dara, what in heaven’s name is that!” Sheila asked.

“I don’t know!” Dara said as she got the phone out and stared at the screen… “Why is a goat screaming at me!”

“That’s ah, Mike’s joke,” Millie said.

The goat screamed again, and Dara winced. “How do I turn it off!”

“You have to log in! Use your finger!”

Dara put her finger on the screen and then moments later, the goat was staring and screaming at her, but there was an arrow. What do I do? Right move my finger… up. Then the screen changed and there was a goat staring at her, chewing on some grass.

“Your friend has an odd sense of humor.” Sheila shook her head.

“I can change it now,” Millie told the other two. “But Mike likes his jokes.”

“Right.” Dara’s heart was hammering in her chest as she stared at the phone. “Let me see…” She touched the app button and then suddenly there was a map, where they were, but when it whipped away to another place, a blazing yellow icon on it.

Yellow. Right. She touched it and suddenly a screen appeared. Missing children. Claim of a haunted house. There were other glowing lines under it. Links. But on the other hand, Sheila was here.

“Go on,” Sheila said. “I can see that you’ve got an important call… But I would change the ringtone.”

“Right,” Dara said, glaring at the phone. “I’ll just go out and talk to the phone um, app, while Millie finishes up.” With that she headed outside. Walking. Not scuttling. Definitely not scuttling and her face wasn’t burning with embarrassment.

When she got out onto the sidewalk, Dara stared at the phone, reaching down and touching some of the links.

Someone whistled, and Dara looked up, to see a teen, a little bit younger than her, she bet, grin.

“Great hair, girl!”

Dara blushed even deeper. “Thank you.” Then she buried herself back in the phone. Fortunately, the admirer just kept walking.

“Two junior high school students vanished when trespassing on a supposed haunted house. Their friends have been detained…” Dara kept reading the story. The authorities thought that the children had been engaged in some crime and that the ones who had been arrested were actually hiding the fact that the others had been injured or killed. There were searches going on and…

“What is it, Kid?” Millie asked.

“This.” Dara said. She held the phone up to Millie. “But I don’t understand. With so many children why does the ‘app’ think this is special? Just because they claim it was a haunted house?”

“Let me see. Two kids vanishing, especially if they’re middle class, is a kinda big deal around here…” Millie took the phone from her hand, and flipped through it, moving far more certainly than Dara had. “It has a record of the haunted house…okay, Clark Apartments. Little building that burned down in the 1970s, supposedly due to a satanic cult.”

“Satanic?”

“Um, devil?”

Dara shook her head. “A spirit of some kind?”

“Sort of… you know I’ll give you a book on it. But anyway, supposedly satanic cult, but according to this, it may just have been some teens getting high and freaking the neighbors out. So someone dropped a candle, place goes up and…” Millie stared. “Huh. That’s weird. Don’t haunted houses require dead people?”

“What do you mean?” Dara said, leaning over to look at her phone. Millie was flipping the pages that Mike’s app had put together so quickly she could barely read them.

“Nobody died. I mean, according to the stuff Mike pulled, there’s a lot of urban legends about sacrificing puppies and babies, but the cops just found some drug paraphernalia, and the kids were arrested for that—not even arson because it was accidental.”

Dara frowned. “Why is it still there?”

“Eh, legal stuff. Evidently, the owner got hit for tax evasion and when they… bulldozed it.” Millie turned the screen so Dara could see it clearly. “Okay. This is why it flagged for us.”

“What?”

“Here’s the map picture.” The image showed a street winding up into the hills, scattered houses by it. At the end, there was a… white square.

“That just the foundation, right?” Dara said. “How could there be a haunted house there.”

“Exactly what the cops said,” Millie muttered. “But look at this, and we really need to thank Mike.”

Dara stared at the window, as a boy and a girl, younger than her were grinning at the camera.

“I’m Tim!”

“And I’m Shelly!”

“And we’re about to go into a haunted house!” And then they turned the camera behind them, to show…

A deserted building, sitting where there should only be a foundation.

“Cops are claiming it’s CGI.”

“SeeGeeI?”

“Computer stuff, like an illusion.”

“Oh, okay.”

“But then the kids vanished and their geolocation says they were there, before the phones both went off. What does that say to you?” Millie stared at Dara. “Sound magical?”

Dara frowned and turned to walk to a bench in front of Sheila’s store. Some people went by, a few kids giggling with their parents. One was wearing black mouse ears on her head.

I wonder… no. Focus. The house had been destroyed. And yet it was intact, long enough for the children to see it and make their film. But if there had been no death, no murder then why…

Oh. No.

“Millie?” Dara asked.

“Yeah?”

“You’re faster than I am. How widespread is that legend?”

“All over the place. According to this, Ghost Slayers did a little special on it. They camped out around the old house to see if any ghosts showed up. Why?”

“It’s a genius loci.” Dara shook her head. “A belief doesn’t have to be real to conjure a spirit and this one is feeding off the belief of… how many people saw those shows?”

“A couple of million?”

Dara stared at Millie. “That’s not good.”

“Hey no ghosts, so it’s not bad, right?”

“No, it’s worse.” Dara shook her head. “Look, most genius loci are formed out of belief, or sometimes the spiritual imprint of the nature of an area. It’s one way we get spirits like dryads. But they’re rare, because unless you’re a powerful mage, or you have a lot of people, you can’t just make one form. There’s also ah, the way the manacurrents work and the fact that you normally need a spike—“

“Dara!” Millie snapped. “Short version, please.”

“Fine, I think when I came through with everything, there was a mana spike. Can that phone check to see when the last special about the building ran on the TV?”

“Sure, it was…” Millie paused, staring at the phone, her fingers flying over the touch screen. “Last week.”

Last week… Dara ran her fingers through her hair in a distracted gesture. Could it be a mana spike interacting with the story? Spikes can sometimes last for weeks or months. And the picture showed a building where there was none.

And a genius loci could do that.

“Millie?”

“Yah?”

“If this… satanic cult had been real and was waiting in the building for the kids, how bad would it be?”

“You mean a cult like the special was talking about?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, that’d be bad.”

“Let’s go.” Dara headed for the car. “Now. Maybe we can save them.”

If they’re not already dead.