PHRYNE HAD NOT GONE A DOZEN STEPS BEFORE she slowed, then stopped altogether. Suddenly she could not go on. Mistral’s cottage was a malignant shell, empty and dark and so forbidding that it seemed impossible that anything good could come from going inside. The feeling was so intense that for a moment the girl considered turning back. Mistral was gone, but something else might be waiting.

But then she tightened her resolve and kept walking. She had come this far, and if Isoeld had set a trap for her it was already too late to back away. If whatever minions her stepmother employed to kill a King and husband had come for her, as well, she would not give them the satisfaction of seeing her attempt to flee. She might be terrified, but she would not back down.

Head up, she started forward once more.

She stepped onto the porch, eyes searching the shadows, ears pricked for any sounds. What she saw was an impenetrable blackness that obscured everything. What she heard was a deep and pervasive silence. The wooden steps and floorboards of the porch creaked softly beneath her feet. When she reached the open entry, the door splintered and hanging crookedly off its hinges mute evidence of the violence that had taken place, she stopped again. She could smell traces of things that testified to the nature of the emptiness that had claimed the house in her grandmother’s absence. Dust, wilted flowers, and stale air mixed with the metallic scent of blood.

Turning sideways to avoid the edges of the collapsed door, she edged through the opening, taking each step carefully, trying not to make any noise. By now she was pretty sure that no one was lurking inside, waiting to strike her down. But while she felt certain the house was empty, bereft of its owner and her friends, there was something…

She stifled that line of thinking and moved into the darkness, letting it envelop her. She wasn’t a particularly brave person; she knew that about herself. But she was brash and reckless in situations where sometimes that was enough to get you through. She felt it might be so now. She let her eyes adjust, all the while searching the shadows, listening for what might be hidden within their silent covering.

Nothing.

She took another step and suddenly dozens of dark shapes flew out of the blackness, wings beating madly all around her, swerving and diving, cries wild and shrill, before flying out the door and into the night. Phryne gathered up the shattered remnants of her resolve, so badly startled she had almost turned and fled. Birds. Just birds, roosting in the abandoned house, seeking food and shelter.

She had just managed to take a fresh step forward when a disembodied voice from almost right behind her said, “Phryne? What was that? Are you all right?”