“Is it cold in here?”

He nods. “Must be a draft coming from somewhere.”

I grab an old throw with unraveling threads to pull around my shoulders as I stand, and we go off through the first level of the house to find where the cold is coming from. It’s a bit like a scavenger hunt—is the door open? No, not that. How about a window? No, windows are shut and latched. Is the heater working? Yes, it is pumping out that stale, dry heat that smells faintly of gas.

“Where in holy hell are we?” Donovan mutters angrily after walking into a chair in the dark. “This place is a goddamned rat’s maze. Who built this house?”

“Mad Catherine,” I reply.

“Mad Catherine?”

“Circa 1800. Catherine’s husband, Arthur Wakefield, had become remarkably prosperous from lumber trade based out of the Great Dismal Swamp, and—” I pause and eyeball him. “You want the whole story?”

Don pulls back a curtain, checking to make sure the windows are shut. “Sure, why not.”

“Well, she begged him to build her a grand mansion. Now, Arthur was more than a little prudent with his wealth, so he bought this marshy land on the edge of the swamp for dirt cheap. It wasn’t the ideal place to build, however, and they had a good deal of trouble framing the house on the soft soil. It took a while to get the building under way, but they did, eventually. Arthur was too stubborn to sell and move elsewhere. Anyway, he was only halfheartedly overseeing the construction, since he was otherwise preoccupied with his booming business. Not much was getting done.”

Don’s yelp interrupts me.

He’s barked his shin on the edge of the coffee table in the drawing room. I turn on the light so we can get our bearings, and when his eyes catch the offending furniture, he delivers a swift kick to its splintered leg, juddering the table across the hardwood floor with a squeal. It slides, stops crooked. I glare at him.

“Can you fix that?”

He blinks around at the room, ignoring me. Oil paintings hang in brass frames around the walls, most of them portraits of unsmiling ancestors. “So which one of these is them?”

“Catherine isn’t in here. They destroyed her portrait after all the trouble.” I slide the coffee table back into place, fix the bunched-up rug it ran into at the corner, and turn for the doorway yawning into the black hall. “Come on. The draft isn’t coming from in here.”

He passes me into the hall, then seems to realize he doesn’t know where he’s going and slows, letting me guide us along.

“Trouble?”

“That came later, after Catherine decided to step up and take charge. Supposedly she was a bit of a taskmaster. She worked the men round the clock. They built and they built, and even when the house was finished, she decided to keep on building. Maybe she liked the power and she didn’t want to relinquish that position and go back to being a housewife, caring for her three small children. She kept coming up with new additions, adding on layers like an onion, and so the construction stretched on for years, the house built piecemeal. That’s why the layout is so confusing. Once you start adding things, the original plans don’t make sense anymore.”