Stormy stood. “I’ll make the damn breakfast.” He looked around the table. “But we’re switching off. This is not my regular gig.”

“I’ll take dinner,” Laurie said.

“And we can each make our own lunch.” Daniel smiled. “I know the schedule.”

“You’d better like scrambled eggs,” Stormy said. “It’s all I can make.” He disappeared into the kitchen and emerged a moment later, looking perplexed, carrying a tray of bacon and a pitcher of orange juice.

“It’s ready,” he said.

“What?”

“Our breakfast is in there. It’s all cooked and ready.”

“It wasn’t there before,” Laurie said. “I checked.”

“Somebody want to come in here and give me a hand?”

They all stood, followed him into the kitchen, picked up assorted dishes. There were pancakes and bagels, muffins and fresh fruit. Neither the stove nor the oven appeared to have been used, and there were no dirty knives or cooking utensils on the counters or in the sink. It was as if the food had just… appeared.

Daniel picked up the coffeepot and a plate of sausage and headed back to the dining room. He couldn’t put his finger on it, but there seemed something different about the kitchen. It seemed larger than he remembered, the positioning of its elements changed slightly. He wondered if the room was a composite of all of their old kitchens and if a modification or remodeling on the part of one of the families had thrown it off a little bit. Until now, everything in the House looked exactly the same as it had in Matty Groves.

Maybe that was knowledge that could be used to their advantage.

They ate, for the most part, in silence, occasional miniconversations breaking out and then dying. He did find himself watching Mark, paying attention to what the young man did and the few things he said, and he was angry with Laurie for planting the seeds of doubt in his mind.

But he couldn’t be too angry with her. He really was flattered that she trusted him, that she respected his honesty and intelligence, and had chosen him to confide in. He smiled to himself. Anyone with perceptions that astute couldn’t be completely wrong.

But it was a bad precedent. They’d only been together for, what? Twelve hours, House time? What would it be like in a week? A month?

Hopefully, they wouldn’t be here by then. Hopefully, they would have found a way out by that time.

But if they hadn’t?

They’d probably be at each other’s throats, like that old Twilight Zone episode, “The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street,” where a group of aliens shut off water and power and watched the residents of a neighborhood scapegoat each other, blame each other, distrust each other, finally kill each other.

He glanced over at Laurie. She gave him a wan smile.

They had to get out of here.