They spent the day exploring the House: the basement to the attic, and the three floors in between. He would have thought that sealing off the windows, removing all trace of the world—or worlds—outside the House would make it seem more claustrophobic, smaller, but that was not the case. Instead, it seemed even bigger, its corridors more labyrinthine, the number of rooms greater.

Except he knew that wasn’t true. He knew where all of the room doors were, knew what was behind most of them, and there were no more than there had been when he’d lived here as a child.

So why did the interior of the House seem to be expanding?

He did not know and he did not want to know, and after the maddening frustration of their fruitless day, he was grateful when he was finally able to retire to his room.

He took off his clothes. Were they really going to be trapped inside this damn House for the rest of their lives?

Margot and Tony had never been far from his mind, but seeing Laurie in his room this morning had reminded him even more acutely how much he missed his wife and how desperately he needed to get back to her. The thought that he might never see her again stabbed at his heart.

He folded his pants and shirt, hanging them over a chair, thinking that he was going to have to wash them soon, that if he did not do so they’d be so encrusted with filth he wouldn’t be able to fold them at all.

But his mind returned to Margot as he slipped under the covers, and he thought of how she looked while she was sleeping, the cute sound of her little half snore, the comforting feel of her warm body snuggling next to his in the middle of the cold night. He missed her, he wanted her, he needed her, and for the first time since he’d been a child in the House, he cried himself to sleep.

EIGHT

Mark

Mark lay on his bed staring up at the ceiling. He was exhausted and drenched with sweat, having tried in vain for the past half hour to once again access The Power, to focus his mind and concentrate completely on reviving the abilities he’d possessed and, until recently, taken for granted.

He wiped the perspiration from his forehead, felt a small rivulet trickle down the side of his face into his ear. What was he doing here? What did he have in common with these residents of other Houses? He felt closer to Billings than he did to Norton or Laurie—and the servant scared the living shit out of him.