“Salt and iron,” Willow sang. “Salt and iron.”

“What’s that?” Isaac asked.

“Yes! That’s great, Willow,” Leo said, brightening. “Both salt and iron repel evil spirits. Both would repel a dark fae. We need to surround ourselves with salt and iron.”

“The kitchen. That’s where we’ll find both,” Kat breathed. Then she straightened, becoming her officious self again. “Right. We’ll fortify ourselves in the kitchen. We’ll be safe there until we can figure out our strategy. But we have to find Colin. Leo. You go to the top two floors. I’ll take the middle two. Isaac, you take the ground floor. Amelie, you and Willow go to the kitchen and help Lark in gathering salt and iron. We’ll rendezvous in the kitchen in thirty minutes.”

“Do we just leave him here?” Leo asked, pointing at Baines.

Kat tapped Baines with her finger. Ping, ping. “He won’t be going anywhere, and since he’s made of gold, he’ll be impervious to almost anything.”

“Wish I could say the same about us,” Leo said, and Isaac silently agreed.

*   *   *

Rookskill had a mind of its own. Isaac even wondered whether it conspired to trick. He remembered what Kat had said about Rookskill and magic. That it was filled with old magic. That magic stuck to places, like lint.

Well, then. Magic—the confusing kind—was clinging to these walls, because Isaac was well and thoroughly lost in no time.

He twisted and turned down one strange corridor after another, up one set of stairs and then down another, getting more and more lost. The ancient men and women in the portraits glowered and then sneered and then seemed to be openly laughing.

He broke into a trot, turning this way and that, and then he stopped to catch his breath.

“Colin?”

Nothing. Not even an echo.

He turned and trotted back and was surprised when the corridor dead-ended. On his left was a door, with a narrow, twisting, winding flight of stairs behind it.

These stairs led him up to a part of the castle he hadn’t yet seen, and he entered a long, almost empty room with rough stone walls and no portraits, just a few tattered tapestries. The only light came from the far end, filtering down through a high opening. Isaac stood for a moment.

And then his head filled with an aching hum. A familiar hum, but painful, as someone stepped out of the shadows.

“Colin, thank goodness,” Isaac said, relieved. “You must come with me. We must stick together and protect the castle, and there’s a dragon you need to speak to . . .” Then he paused. “Um, Colin? What in heaven . . .”

Isaac took a step backward.