and pushed. The door was locked. “Hello?”
She held her breath, listening, and thought she heard something.
“Hal-loo?”
She climbed down from the stoop and repeated her hello. A faint response came from somewhere in the back. Sassy grew alarmed. What if an elderly person lived here? Sassy volunteered twice a week at the senior rehab center in Fairhope, and she knew from experience how fragile old bones could be. One of her favorite patients, Miss Tessie Lou Hilton, had broken her foot stepping off a curb.
What if the owner of the little house had ventured out to feed the cat or water the flowers and turned an ankle? He or she could have been lying back there, helpless and in pain, for hours or days.
Sassy hurried to the back of the house and found a cobblestone patio partially shaded by dogwood trees and redbuds, but no sign of the owner. Drifts of lantana nestled against the foundation. Flower boxes hung from window sills, blooms leeched of color in the moonlight. At the back door, a copper turret provided shelter from wind and rain. Bird feeders hung from tree branches. The wind chime that had startled her moments before jangled in the slight breeze. She inhaled the light scent of Confederate jasmine and located the source, a mass of white blossoms tumbling over a low, broken stone wall. On the other side of the rock fence was a single towering tree with pale bark. An elaborately carved staircase with a vine railing wound around the massive trunk and disappeared into the high, spreading branches.
Sassy half expected a troop of elves to plop out of the tree like overripe apples, singing tra-la-la-lolly.
The back lot was large, several acres surrounded by the bristling hedge. Industrial lights, one in each corner and another in the middle, cast a milky glow over the property. Two commercial-grade greenhouses made of galvanized steel and glass sat beside a large vegetable garden. Sassy readjusted her earlier opinion of the owner. Not a casual gardener and, more than likely, not a senior citizen. Gardening was more than a passion for whoever lived here. It was a business, a flourishing business, judging from the size and quality of the garden centers.
A slight sound drew her attention to a large storage building underneath the tree. The windowless hut was quaint, fashioned in the same style as the house, and equipped with a sturdy door and crowned by a thatched roof. The wooden bar on the door was latched. Could the owner have accidentally gotten locked in the shed?
Sassy scurried across the damp lawn. “Hello? Is someone in there? Hello?”
The breeze shifted and she caught the sickly odor of decay. “Pee-yew, what is that smell?”
She neared the hut and recoiled. Someone had piled a rotting heap of animal carcasses around the perimeter of the outbuilding. At her feet, a dead raccoon grinned up at her from the jumble of bones, hollow eyes unseeing. The bodies were stacked on top of one another in a moldering ring, as though pushing against some unseen boundary. Ugh.
Holding her breath, Sassy tried to step over the grisly barricade and slammed, nose first, into an invisible barrier. Sparks shot up with a loud, crackling sound, and Sassy flew through the air. She landed on her back. Stunned, she blinked up at the starry sky. She must have walked into a hidden power line. It was a miracle she hadn’t been killed. Righteous indignation surged through her. Those poor little animals hadn’t been so lucky. They’d wandered into the same trap and been electrocuted. She’d report this to Alabama Power. It was her civic duty.
High up in the tree, a Chinese lantern swayed in the breeze, glowing with a soft, misty light. The lantern flared pink and faded again.
Sassy sat up, her shocked gaze on the flickering lamp. Not a lantern; a metal cage. Beneath the hutch, a length of coiled copper pipe emptied into a curved glass container. Inside the pen, a dozen shining moths fluttered in alarm.
Sassy’s brain processed what it was seeing, and rebelled. Moths didn’t glow and sparkle like they’d been dipped in diamond dust and moonlight. Why, from a distance, they almost looked like . . .
Her heart thudded unevenly. No.
No. Way.
Inside the cage, a tiny winged creature wilted with a sharp trill and dropped to the floor. With a metallic grinding of gears, the metal container sprang to life. The copper piping shook, and a blob of colored liquid dropped from the tip of