“I do. The loss is not entirely predictable, and I retained more than I feared I would, although I accepted the possibility of a greater loss. What I protected—what I tried to protect—were memories I made with those few who saw me as Helen. As you do.” She smiled then. “Necromancers were not like the Sorcerers of old. If your stories now speak of those who raised the dead—as shambling monsters, meant to terrify mortal armies—some of those stories have roots in the truth.

“But Necromancers were far more subtle in the stories I was told. As you suspect, I did not get out of the house much, and the information I retain came to me through visitors. But some of those visitors were my first lord’s servants and accomplices. And among them was one who could, as Mrs. Erickson does, see the lingering echoes of those who once lived.

“I do not understand what causes those echoes; nor do I understand how the dead persist, because most do not. But if my tenants were somehow trapped here as ghosts, it would grieve me. Ah, it starts.”

As Helen spoke, Kaylin could see the pool beneath her feet begin to shift, as if currents were struggling to rise to the surface. What she had thought of as liquid was more viscous than simple water—or blood, if it came to that; it was thick, more molasses than water.

No, not molasses; that didn’t rise the way this pool was now rising: in spikes, in columns, in strange shapes that seemed to echo the human form without ever truly cohering completely.

“What do you hope I can do here?” Kaylin asked her home.

“I’m uncertain. If it were safer, I would ask to invite Mrs. Erickson in. But perhaps it’s better this way. She woke them, somehow.”

Kaylin wanted to argue, but couldn’t. “But I could somehow carry...whatever they are...because of the marks.”

“Yes, I believe so. But I also believe they would not have come to you were it not for Mrs. Erickson’s presence.”

“So...Necromancers.”

“She can speak to the echoes that linger. I would have said mortal ghosts couldn’t exist,” Helen added. “But I am certain in the darker places and ancient recesses, ghosts of Immortals do. Sometimes words echo, and the words at the core of the first races are enough to support a life that would, without war or accident, continue for eternity.

“Those echoes have some hints of the power the living once possessed, but that power is irrelevant to any who cannot somehow bespeak it; who cannot hear the echoes. Mrs. Erickson could. I do not understand how,” she added. “If you could, it would not surprise me.”

“I can see the dead children trapped in her house.”