“I don’t think you need my permission for that,” Mrs. Erickson said. “This is such a lovely home.” But if it was, the home itself was not where her gaze went. She paused once, and spoke to whatever Kaylin now cupped in her palms. “She won’t hurt you.” Her voice was soft. “She won’t use you. All she hopes to offer you for the moment is someplace to rest.”

Helen nodded. She then led them down the new hall; it was unadorned by anything as common as doors, except at the far end. The doors there were similar to the doors that terminated the hallway in which Kaylin’s room—and everyone else’s—was situated.

She then opened the doors, gesturing rather than touching them, which was unusual for Helen. The doors rolled to left and right, and as they did, a gray light filled the hall, brighter than it should have been, given its color.

Kaylin frowned. “Helen—that’s...”

“Yes, dear?”

“It looks like the outlands. Almost.”

Sanabalis’s eyes were narrowed, as if he, too, were forced to squint. But his eyes had lost their orange tinge at some point between the foyer and this hall; they were gold, but flecked with a color the light made impossible to catch.

“Does it? It has been long indeed since I have seen the many paths between us. Ah, I forget myself. It does not look like that to my eye, but I understand the confusion. All of the rooms the cohort call home begin here. All of the rooms I have offered my many guests over the centuries begin here. And when those rooms are no longer wanted or necessary, they return.”

Kaylin didn’t understand the difference between this place and the words at the heart of Helen.

“It is the difference between brain and heart. You might ask Red in your morgue about them, if this is a bad analogy.”

Kaylin shook her head. She understood the point.

“Come,” she said. “The only reason you are seeing hospitality—my hospitality—in its nascent form is that I cannot see your guests, cannot read them or hear them. I do not know what they want or need. But if they rose in the presence of Mrs. Erickson, if they somehow inhabited Lord Sanabalis, they are clearly looking for something.”

“I’m sorry,” Mrs. Erickson said. “It’s hard to hear their voices, and they seem to be talking over each other. Mostly, they’re anxious. Excited, but anxious. I really do think they’re like Jamal, at heart.”

Jamal was mostly anxiety; if he’d been excited—ever—Kaylin had missed it beneath anger and possessive resentment.

Terrano, on the other hand, was excited. Teela grabbed him by the shoulder, as if to keep him pinned in one place. Not that that would work if he was determined.