“It wasn’t really there,” Sisi said. “It wasn’t there and I wish I hadn’t seen it.” There were fat-bodied tears on her lower eyelids. Gwenda reached out, lifted one away on her thumb.

“Had you been drinking?” Sullivan said.

“No,” Sisi said.

“But we haven’t stopped drinking since,” Aune said. She tossed back another bulb. “Maureen sobers us up and we just climb that mountain again. Cheers.”

Mei said, “I’m just glad it wasn’t me who saw it. And I don’t want to talk about it anymore. We haven’t all been awake like this for so long. Let’s not fight.”

“No fighting,” Gwenda said. “No more gloom. For my birthday present, please.”

Sisi nodded.

“Now that that’s settled,” Portia said, “bring up the lights again, Maureen, please? Take us somewhere new. I want something fancy. Something with history. An old English country house, roaring fireplace, suits of armor, tapestries, bluebells, sheep, moors, detectives in deerstalkers, Cathy scratching at the windows. You know.”

“It isn’t your birthday,” Sullivan said.

“I don’t care,” Gwenda said, and Portia blew her a kiss.

That breeze ran up and down the room again. The table sank back into the floor. The curved walls receded, extruding furnishings, two panting greyhounds. They were in a Great Hall instead of the Great Room. Tapestries hung on plaster walls, threadbare and musty. There were flagstones, blackened beams. A roaring fire. Through the mullioned windows a gardener and his boy were cutting roses.

You could smell the cold rising off stones, a yew log upon the fire, the roses and the dust of centuries.

“Halfmark House,” Maureen said. “Built in 1508. Queen Elizabeth came here on a progress in 1575 that nearly bankrupted the Halfmark family. Churchill spent a weekend in December of 1942. There are many photos. It was once said to be the second-most haunted manor in England. There are three monks and a Grey Lady, a White Lady, a yellow fog, and a stag.”

“Exactly what I wanted,” Portia said. “To float around like a ghost in an old English manor. Turn the gravity off, Maureen.”

“I like you, my girl,” Aune said. “But you are a strange one.”

“Of course I am,” Portia said. “We all are.” She made a wheel of herself and rolled around the room. Hair seethed around her face in the way that Gwenda hated.

“Let’s each pick one of Gwenda’s tattoos,” Sisi said. “And make up a story about it.”

“Dibs on the phoenix,” Sullivan said. “You can never go wrong with a phoenix.”

“No,” Portia said. “Let’s tell ghost stories. Aune, you start. Maureen can provide the special effects.”

“I don’t know any ghost stories,” Aune said slowly. “I know stories about trolls. No. Wait. I have one ghost story. It was a story that my great-grandmother told about the farm in Pirkanmaa where she grew up.”