“I’m glad someplace does,” he adds. “No one can run forever.” His eyes have gone distant. I can tell who he’s thinking of by the pinch between his brows.

“I haven’t tried to contact Arthur again, to find Nick,” I say. “Maybe I—”

“No. If you reach out to Arthur, do it for you, not Nick.” He hums, jerking a chin to Lu a few yards away and the house beyond. “Go on. We’ll be here.” He waits until I reach the stairs, then follows the others to one of the brick houses up the drive.

“You ever been in a spirit’s home before?” Lu asks when I catch up to her at the front door. I see the family resemblance between her and Valec a little more clearly. The expression that sees more than you want to share.

“No.” I reach my hand out instinctively, and a barrier around the house sends a zing of energy zips down my fingertips and up my neck.

“Another root barrier?” I look back at the one still overhead. “Why did they want a second one around the house?”

Lu crosses her arms. “I asked my grandaddy the same thing when I was your age. He said that the foundation of root is protection, and it’s up to the ancestors to decide how much of that they want to offer and how much of that we need.” She looks back over her shoulder to see the others enter the low guest house. “Didn’t want to alarm anyone, but if any of your friends try to get in, the house won’t let them.”

“I can’t ask, like at the driveway?” I ask.

“The house is nonnegotiable.” She shakes her head. “Volition is both a gravesite and a refuge. A site of mourning and a site of hope. If there’s any place in the country where the spirits of the dead can reclaim a place for themselves and their own people, it’s a house like this, don’t you think?”

I nod slowly, thinking of Vera’s escape from her plantation, the origin of her Line of power. Even as I have prepared myself to confront the Regents and force them—and the Order—to face the truth, I have run. I have hid. I have had to escape, time and time again. I have survived, but I have scars to show for it—inside and out.

“A place of our own,” I say. “To rest.”

Lu links an arm with mine. “Where we get to decide what to preserve, and how.”

47