As I pondered ways to dig further, the quiet buzz in the Wizzers’ corner rose to a distraction. I glanced up to see them thronging urgently around one screen.

“What’s up, guys?” I called.

Multiple hands waved me over.

The screen was dark but undulating, like the tide at night when there’s rubble just beneath the surface. The camera was in motion, jerky and fast, picking up indistinct forms racing by in blackness broken by sudden flares of fire that lit up an arm here, a face there, but nothing you could read or recognize. A chaos of bright and dark. No audio. Flames and people? I thought of the Storm Worshippers.

“She movin’ fast,” one of the boys murmured.

“On the run.”

“Think she followin’.”

She? Then I noticed the time readout in the right-hand corner.

“Is it Aitch?” I asked.

A chorus of preoccupied nods.

“What are we looking at?” I still couldn’t make sense of it.

“Think we wake Jenn?” a girl asked.

“Nah. Too late. Record it.”

“See that? Timer’s off.” A boy pointed at the screen. “This an hour ago.”

“What’s that?” The oldest boy turned abruptly away from the screen. “Hear that?”

The others were too gripped by the video, but I heard it, in real time.

Shrill whistles, faint with distance but nearing, like a relay.

The eldest backslapped his nearest neighbors. “Listen up, dudes!”

“Outside,” I said. “Sentry signals.”

The den’s front entry was guarded but never locked, in case some night picker came home early. We heard feet pounding across the mudroom, then slapping up the stairs.

“Goin’ up to Rousseau,” noted the eldest.

“Or the medics,” I said. “Something’s up.”

Voices in the mudroom, shouts and cries, brimming into the main hall. Aitch forgotten, Eldest and I ran to the balcony railing. A shadowy tsunami spilled across the dim-lit floor. Men, women, children. I was sure we were under attack by a bloodthirsty mob, until someone flicked on the emergency lights to reveal them staggering and bloodied, half of them holding up the other half. The cries were the wails of children or howls of pain. More sprinting upstairs, and soon, our groggy medics hurrying down, kits in hand.

Rousseau appeared like a ghost beside me, a wrinkled white shirt hauled hastily over his dark chest. He stared down at the milling, moaning mass. “Jesu! It’s Ladysmith’s.”

His hand fell heavy on my shoulder. “Go rouse Jake. And Spunk, if you can find him. After that, everyone with a strong stomach and a steady touch. This’ll be all hands on deck.”

“Yessir.” I lunged for the tiers. Nearly slammed into Grace as she sped by, headed upstairs. “Hey! What’s happened?”

“Sonsabitches!” Tough-girl Grace looked like the roof had fallen in. Her unbraided hair flowed like an angry cloud around her shoulders.

“Who? What?”

“Ladysmith’s got raided! Big firefight, least a dozen dead, the den on fire!”

“Was it . . . ?”