Burrito had just driven past acres of dried, unharvested cornfields to arrive at a house old enough to have a name on a brick pillar by the drive: Barnhill. The cornfields went right up to a neat little yard, and then there was the square white house, and beyond that was dried marsh grass, and then, presumably, were marshes, and eventually the sea. The entire property had a haunted, lonely loveliness. One would not find it by accident.

Ronan agreed with Hennessy. It did seem like a really nice place. It reminded him of the Barns, and he did not want to destroy it.

Bryde didn’t answer, just gazed at the house as they pulled the invisible car up to the separate garage. He had not been quite the same since the server farm, although Ronan couldn’t put his finger on what had changed. He wanted to say that it was something like an additional gravity, an investment in the task, but no one had ever been as invested in this as Bryde. He seemed withdrawn from them. Introspective. It was, Ronan thought, as if he were angry or disappointed with Ronan or Hennessy, although he couldn’t think of what they might have done to vex him.

“Get your things,” he said finally, already opening his door. “No, not just your sword. Your bags.”

“We’re staying here?” Ronan asked in surprise. The lights were on inside the house and it had a decidedly lived-in look to it. Not Bryde’s style. Not his style at all.

“If we’re murdering people and taking their house,” Hennessy said, “can I eat first? Actually, I guess I could eat them. I’m hungry enough to eat a baby. Are there going to be babies?”

But Bryde was already off and nearly to the porch of the house, even more disinterested in her banter than he had been at the beginning of all this. With a growl, Ronan shouldered his bag and the scabbard with vexed to nightmare and followed after. By the time Hennessy climbed the two steps to the front door to join them, they could already hear footsteps from inside the house, lots of them.

Ronan and Hennessy exchanged a look behind Bryde’s back. She looked as bemused as he did.

Then the door opened and a short woman with light brown skin and dark brown hair clipped back from her face stood there. Even though her appearance had little in common with Hennessy’s, she nonetheless reminded Ronan of what Hennessy had looked like when he first met her: exhausted and frightened. Just like Hennessy, she hid the exhaustion and fright away beneath a very different expression, but it still leaked out around the eyes, the tight smile. When she saw them, a little bit of the exhaustion and fright went away, replaced with curiosity and wariness.