Cutting through the unfenced yards, the hags and I made our way to the house the arrow had pointed to. The house where we would finally get some answers. I shivered with a thrill of excitement and fear. I knew, from personal experience, how hard it would be for someone to spot us. It still seemed bold and perhaps slightly insane to be striding through people’s yards, by back windows and weaving around raised flower beds to get to the killer’s house.

When we got near the house, we stopped. “I’m going to check the perimeter for spells and snares. If I don’t come back in ten, come fucking find me. And maybe call the wolves,” said the now old woman.

“Um, okay. I can do that,” I told her.

She nodded and started to move along the edge of his property. I couldn’t tell if it was the exact edge of the property line. She moved slowly. Every few steps, she paused to throw little handfuls of dust in front of her. The gray dust caught the sunlight and made little poofs. At the corner of the property, she stopped and threw a few more handfuls of dust. I couldn’t tell what she was looking at, but the hag standing next to me must have been able to see something because she shifted around and stood on her toes. “He’s prepared for us.”

“Why? What did she find?” I asked.

“Some sort of tripwire. I can’t tell from here if it’s armed or if it just alerts, but he’s prepared for the possibility that someone will come looking for him,” she said

“Do you think he has any alerts out that will show that he’s using magic to sense our magic?” I asked. Somewhere in the distance, someone was leaf blowing their yard.

“I doubt it. He may, but this kind of testing is pretty passive. It’s not so much magic as alchemy. We had to get it off a wizard. It’s not really the kind of thing we do,” she explained.

We watched as the other hag turned the corner and vanished from our view. “Should we move so that we can keep an eye on her?” I asked. Clearly, this killer had ways of dealing with magic and had been anticipating that someone would come looking for him at some point.

“Nope. Terrible idea—that. You’ll get us all killed, and then who will tell the dogs where this guy lives so they can take their vengeance?” she said.

I didn’t know what else to say, so I didn’t say anything and instead stared at the sky. It was a lovely faded denim winter blue. The air smelled cold, and the slight breeze on my cheeks was chilly. I hugged myself and zipped up my jacket. Was this where those women had died? Was there someone trapped inside? If there was, were they suffering horribly? Was the killer watching us? Was he hunting us as we hunted him?

I looked around. There weren’t many trees close by and those that were wouldn’t come close to hiding an adult man. There was a deck on the house catty-corner from him, and I tried to check if there was anyone under there, but I couldn’t see more than a few feet in. Was he in the house? The blinds in the house were down, and slats shut tight against each other. I searched them for any sign of movement. I tried to strain my ears as much as I could to see if I could hear him in the house. But there was just no way for me to know if he was in there or not. I wanted the house to have a miasma of evil, knowing who lived there and what had probably gone on there. But it just seemed normal.

The hag next to me looked at her watch. “How long has it been?” I asked. It felt like it had been a really long time. Probably not ten minutes, though I wondered if ten minutes was really a reasonable goal or if we would end having to go look for her. Would we call the wolves first or not.

“Six minutes. She’s got plenty of time. And she’s not making a good time. There may be more tripwires in the front that she’s got to work around,” she said.

“Wouldn’t most of the trip wires be back here?” I asked.

“Depends on what kind of company he’s expecting. If it’s just warning alarms to alert him when people are coming, then most of them are probably out front, but if they’re bombs to kill people sneaking on his lawn, then they’ll be mostly back here and on the sides. We will have to wait and see.” She shrugged and stopped talking. Something about her tone kept me from asking more questions, although I had plenty of them to ask. I wanted to distract myself by looking at my phone, but that seemed frivolous—like I wouldn’t be taking my guard duties seriously. Not that I was sure what the duties were. But there was a woman out there risking her life. The least I could do was stay off my phone for five minutes.

The next four minutes or so crawled by. I found myself feeling increasingly awkward and exposed, standing in the middle of all those backyards. And slightly bored. The longer we stood there with nothing happening, the more I believed that nothing would. I didn’t think that it was possible for the hag, who searched along the perimeter, to go missing without making a sound. Half the time I spent wondering if we had the wrong house, and the other half of the time, I wondered if we were all about to be blown up by some crazy lone wolf vigilante. Well, not wolf- lone human vigilante.

In the end, nothing happened, and the other hag came back into view, throwing powder, walking in a straight line. Again as she approached the corner of the property, she stopped and threw several handfuls of dust and negotiated around something I couldn’t see. When she came back to us, she asked, “See anything?”

“Nope. You?” said the other hag.

“There are several tripwires. I don’t believe they lead to explosives or guns; rather, they are all of the alarm type. I don’t have any reason to believe I set any of them off. But I would think the whole house is going to be trapped. Especially if he is keeping someone here,” she said.

I agreed with her. “Do you think any of the trip wires sense magic?” I asked.

“No, but the way they are laid out made me think that he’s very familiar with magic. If they were something other than tripwires, he could have created a powerful ward over the whole place,” she said.

“Do you think it’s possible that it’s some kind of magic that you’re not familiar with?” I asked. Trying to run through every possible combination of magic in my head. I couldn’t think of any weird military magic, but I was hardly an expert.

“I’d guess that it’s more superstitious than magic. Or maybe it’s some kind of warning? But without getting inside this guy’s house, we just don’t know enough about him to guess,” she said.

“So we’re going into the house?” I was scared again. By going into his house, we would be crossing into his territory. We were a long way from the protection of the café.

“I’m almost positive that he’s not in there, and I don’t see any other way to learn about him,” said the other hag.

“Can I call the wolves? They have a right to be here. I would feel better if they went in with us,” I said.

“Do you think we have time? What if he comes back?” the old hag asked.

“Then we’ll have extra help taking him?” I said. There was no way I wanted to take this guy on with only the hags at my back.

“But what if his next victim is in there? We could spring her right now and save her from suffering?” said the young hag.

“All right, let’s do this. But first, I’m texting the wolves.” I pulled out my phone and hoped the hags wouldn’t notice my hands were shaking.

“Get on with it then,” said the young hag.

I texted the wolves the address and put my phone away. The two hags took point, and we headed over the property line, with them throwing little puffs of dust out ahead of us. Each puff made a little gray cloud at our knees. I wondered what it was. Wizards didn’t have the best reputation. There was a good chance it was graveyard dust or even ground-up mummified bits of someone’s granny.

The hags both stopped suddenly, and I tensed, looking around. But they just pointed at a spot on the ground that looked to me like every other spot on the ground and told me there was a tripwire there. Even knowing it was there, I still couldn’t see it, so they led me carefully around it.

“I think,” said the old hag, “that one may have been an explosive. But I’m not sure. Guerrilla warfare isn’t really my thing.”

“It’s not mine either. Obviously,” I said and forced a sort of wan smile. A minefield. We were walking through a minefield to the home of a killer, alone in broad daylight. As stupid as we were, we got lucky and didn’t trip any of the wires. When we got near the house, the hags stopped.

“I think we should go around and check the windows,” said one.

“Agreed,” said the other.

“You don’t think that’s too risky?” I asked. It was so strange to me to be wandering around like this. On one level, I knew that we couldn’t be seen. But it didn’t really mean anything to me. I still felt like we were just standing there. Three giant targets on a more or less open field.

“You think going in and discovering he’s there after we are in the house is a better plan?” asked the young hag, and I was forced to agree that, of course, that was a terrible idea.

“Okay, you’re right. Let’s go then,” I said. With that, we began moving around the house as a careful group peering in the windows. It was impossible to see anything. The Venetian blinds were down over each window, and there was not so much as a crack to be found. Since it was still daylight, we couldn’t even tell if any lights were on. We listened closely at each of the windows but didn’t see anything. At first, it had just looked like the basement light was off; it was only when we got close that it was clear that the windows were, in fact, covered over. It looked like they were covered with trash bags.

“Can you do some sort of spell to check and see if there is anyone inside the house,” I asked.

“We could, but what if he has some sort of magic detection spell in place? Right now, we’ve only used the look-away charm, which had already run when we got here, and the powder, which hardly counts as magic at all. Doing a magic scan of the house would be like sending up a giant signal flare and letting everyone around us know that we’re here and we’re doing magic. Aiming at a house that we think may be alarmed for magic is just stupid. I think our best bet in this situation is to use as little magic as possible,” the old hag explained.

“Do you think the door is alarmed?” I asked.

“I’m sure it is. And probably booby-trapped with something nasty. We’re just as likely to get a face full of buckshot as we are to have a bucket of acid fall on us or the doorknob to be electrocuted. This guy is clearly not messing around,” said the old hag.

“So, how are we going to get in?” I asked, staring warily at the door.

“I vote we break a window. It’s the most efficient way of making damn sure if the guy is here or not, and it gets us inside. We can even use a rock to break the window and maybe catch a few of his booby-traps with that instead of ourselves,” the old hag suggested.

“I agree,” said the young one. They had to hop all over the yard, avoiding the tripwires before they found a suitable rock. The young hag took the rock in both hands and threw it at the window. It bounced off.

“That’s a bit disappointing,” said the old hag.

“What? I throw like a girl in this form,” said the young hag with a shrug.

“If you want something done right—” said the old hag, leaving the rest of the phrase unspoken. She picked up the rock and hurled it through the window. It broke with a terrific crash, and we all ducked. Just in time, too, since there was some sort of explosion inside the house. It wasn’t a very big explosion, but it made enough of a noise to make me think that there must have been some sort of flash bomb in there. For a moment, I wondered if the neighbors were calling the cops. But I didn’t feel like I was being watched, and no one came out of their houses.

We didn’t hear anything from inside the house. No alarm blared. We looked at the gaping hole where the window had been. The blind was intact and was flapping softly in the breeze. I kept waiting for the blinds to be lifted and for the face of the killer to look out at us. But nothing happened. The blind just kept flapping every time the wind blew.

“Come on, chicks, this case isn’t going to solve itself. Hoist me up,” said the old hag. It wasn’t that high up to the window, just the first floor, but it was probably a foot over our heads.

The young hag and I knelt together, and the old hag put her hands on our shoulders and lifted herself up. She moved her knees onto our shoulders, and the weight became so uncomfortable that I thought I would cry out. Just when I thought I would slip, she wiggled off our shoulders and into the room.

There was a crash when she fell to the other side and some cursing. Then the ugly, old woman popped her head out and said, “The door is a death trap. Literally. I’m going to have to pull you in this way.” She reached out her hand, and the young hag took it. With a great heave, the young hag disappeared into the house. There was some crashing and cursing from inside the house. Then the old hag stuck her head out. “Your turn.” And she reached out her hands. I took them and sort of hopped. My feet lost contact with the ground, and the two hags hauled me into the house. One giant leap closer to whatever grim discoveries waited for us inside.