“Yes, yes you did. Please try not to do it again—I’m old enough that I don’t have much work, and I won’t be able to afford to replace the window that often.” The words had the feel of rote to them.

Jamal’s nod, while genuine, had the same feel.

Kaylin cleared her throat. “I know it’s upsetting, but I need to talk to you guys.”

Jamal was instantly suspicious. The other three, the two girls and the boy, who seemed paler and more silent than his friends, were not. They exchanged looks.

“Mrs. Erickson?”

“Maybe we should talk in the dining room. It’s not large, but there’s no front-facing window.”

Interrogating children in the midst of an investigation was never an easy task. Kaylin was better at it than the Barrani Hawks, and she’d spent much of her early days as Hawk mascot under the figurative wings of Teela and Tain. She’d started to intervene on the rare occasions children were considered witnesses, because some of the children were scared enough she could practically see them try to calculate what Teela wanted to hear, that being the smartest choice if one wanted to survive.

But she’d never tried to talk to children about their own murders. Or half murders, given their official dates of death—and the reasons for it.

“What do you want to ask us?” Jamal demanded, taking point. He stepped in front of Mrs. Erickson, keeping her behind him.

Esme wasn’t as suspicious as Jamal, but she didn’t seem to be as possessive, either. Or maybe she had, over the decades, come to accept that there wasn’t very much she could do. Katie and Callis were the quiet two, but they watched Kaylin with caution, not fear.

“You’re aware that you’ve been in this house for all of Mrs. Erickson’s life.”

Esme smiled brightly. “She was such a cute baby. And when she started to walk? It reminded me so much of my own baby brother!”

The baby brother she had murdered as an adult.

“Do you have memories of this house before Mrs. Erickson was born?”

“What do you mean?”

“Did you see her mother and father? Did you enter the house—somehow—when they bought this house?”

Jamal blinked. These weren’t the questions he’d been expecting. He glanced at Esme, who shrugged. “I don’t remember how we got here,” she finally said. “I... When I think about it, I’ve always been here, you know?”

Callis looked at his feet. Katie looked at Callis. She nudged him, and Kaylin noted that her hand passed through him, just as it would through a living person.

“Callis?”

He then turned to Jamal. “You tell her.”

“Does it matter who tells her?”

“If it doesn’t matter,” Katie snapped, “why can’t it be you?”

“Because it’s not my story.”