Where was the girl? Where was Doneen? He looked anxiously around, expecting to see her jump out at any moment, to leap from behind one of the doors or come running up from the murk shrouding the far end of the hall. But there was no sign of her, and he dropped to one knee and picked up the butler’s cold right hand to feel for a pulse.

Nothing.

Had there ever been a pulse? Daniel didn’t know. Billings claimed to have been here as long as the House had, and all five of them had remembered him from their childhoods and he had not changed one bit. Perhaps he had never been alive. He was certainly not human.

What could kill him?

That was something he didn’t even want to think about, and with a last look at the puddled blood on the floor, Daniel stood. He was about to start walking back up the hall when something caught his eye. A dark spot in the blood by Billings’ left foot.

Daniel bent down, looked closely.

Hair and lint.

In the shape of a small footprint.

From somewhere in the House came an echo of high laughter.

He had to get out of here. Whether that meant finding a legitimate exit or exorcising Doneen or taking apart this fucking House board by board, he had to escape. He had to extricate himself from this situation and get his butt back to Margot and Tony.

There had to be an answer or a clue or a hint or something behind one of these doors, and he walked over to the closest one, grabbed the handle, and yanked it open.

A mirror stared back at him, reflecting his own anguished face.

He strode down to the next door, pulled it open.

A linen closet.

The next: a library.

He crossed the hall, pulled open a door on the opposite side.

And there was his mother’s Victorian bedroom.

She was lying in bed, next to his father, and they were both alive, both young, younger than he was right now. His father whispered something, and his mother laughed. He had not heard her laugh since he was in grammar school, and the sound brought back an entire world to him. Chills passed through his body, chills not of fear but of pure raw emotion: love, longing, recognition, remembrance, discovery.

“Hey, Daniel.” His father waved him over. “Come in. Shut the door.”

His mother smiled at him, and he smiled back.

He wanted to go in, wanted to jump on the bed the way he had as a child and snuggle between the two of them, but he was acutely aware of the fact that he was an adult, older than they were, and that they were probably naked under the heavy blankets.