The third floor, in which Nebekah had woken up, had been barely furnished; the second floor, one layer down, had been moderately furnished. The ground floor, Nebekah soon discovered, was cluttered with not only the ordinary number of chairs and tables, but as many again—as if whoever had decorated had bought every item that caught their eye regardless of whether they had needed it or, indeed, had room for it. Pictures swarmed the upper walls: murky landscapes and dreary portraits, brown and spotted and smeared. The slime of dank water slicked every surface and slurped at the rug.

  Nebekah skipped the first public room—a sitting room or enter-taining room of some variety, based on the multitude of sofas and poufs—and moved on to the more promising dining room with its built-in silver cabi-nets. Like everything in this house, those cupboards had suffered their years. Their edges were worn, their hinges rusted, their wood rotting. At some point, one had been struck by a heavy object and splintered. Above the wooden doors were display shelves, their glass caked with mud, their contents vague shapes.

  Aside from the hall door, this room had two other entrances: a door to the right, leading to the sitting room; a door to the left, leading to the front kitchen. The windows on the far wall were heavily shuttered, though Nebekah didn’t suppose they’d have let in the moonlight, even if they had been open.

  Far down the hall, the Mimic hummed. Around Nebekah, nothing moved. Even the air waited.

  Nebekah tossed her pencil into the room. It skipped onto the soggy rug and rolled to a halt. Nothing changed. She catfooted into the room, picked up the pencil, and rolled it. It traveled innocently over the rug and came to a rest under a silver cabinet. Nebekah stepped onto the rug, and the chan-delier flared to life.

  The glow of gas flames sent ripples down the plaster like blood, and curved designs writhed to life. Nebekah blinked, and the seats around the table were occupied by children. She didn’t recognize them; their heads had been covered in burlap sacks tied around the neck with rope. A red penta-gram had been painted on each sack, over the face. She blinked again, and the children’s small hands held silver forks and knives, cutting over empty plates with elegant posture. Every once in a while, a knife was put down and a crystal goblet lifted, only to be replaced again without being sipped.

  She had been right: the house used real silverware. Those knives weren’t butter knives, either; they were steak knives. Not the sharpest, but much better than nothing. Besides, it was lovely, the way that knife gleamed under the brilliant gaslight. She had never owned anything really beautiful, not like that. She’d never been one to let the temptations of a dead man’s treasure snare her. That’s why they’d never caught her, why it’d taken them so long to get a hint of her iden-tity. But that was in the past. Just this once, she could claim one as her very own.

  She took a step closer, and it seemed to her the ground tilted downward, and those burlap faces turned to watch her from oh, so far away. But the silver knife loomed close. Another step, and she put her hand on it. She tried to lift it, but it was much heavier than she had expected. How weary she was! She glanced back to the hallway door. It was an ordinary door of engraved wood. No prob-lem, if she wanted to open it and leave. No prob-lem.

  . . . There was, she thought, something wrong. She blinked, but her thoughts stuck glueily, and the knife was so beautiful. Except it was better than a knife, and that was why it was so heavy. It was a sword, a proper zakaya. How many months it’d been since she’d wielded one of these! It felt right against her palm, as she turned her attention to the burlap faces. She adjusted the sword, to hold it with both hands. Its polished silver side flashed.

  Nebekah steadied her breathing and squeezed her eyes shut. The hairs on her neck crawled, and the warm damp of the house slicked her hands and seeped into her armpits. The carpet underfoot oozed. With her eyes closed, she felt as if she teetered on the edge of an abyss, and no light filtered through her eyelids. Nothing breathed with her, but it was here all the same. They were all here, waiting for her to join them. They were here, but not at the table. They were behind her, leaning close. The sword in her hands was only the pencil, eraserless and blunt.

  She should not have come into this room.

  She must not look at them.

  Nebekah hummed under her breath: seven innocuous notes that might have been part of a nursery rhyme or a commercial jingle. The pressing atten-tion recoiled momentarily, and she ran with her eyes closed. Not back, to where they waited, but to the left—to the front kitchen. She hit the wall and felt her way to the open door, only parting her eyelids when she had stepped through. Then she turned and looked behind her.

  The dining room held its peace: dingy, broken, cluttered with too many empty chairs. Its window was heavily shuttered, and the gaslights burned low. Only the door to the hallway moved, swinging open.

  The pencil had broken in her clenching hand. She put it in her pocket and flexed her fingers. She still needed a weapon, but she no longer had any desire to wander into room after room, springing traps for the slight chance of advantage. She needed a clearer bet—even if it was also one guaranteed to house a dangerous spirit. Which meant the kitchens.

  More specifically, it meant the back kitchen. The front kitchen, where she stood, was dark. Unlike the back kitchen, it connected to the hallway on her left.

  Any number of cupboards had been shoved in here, along with two tables and a potbellied stove that was cold iron but far too heavy to lift. Next to it was a counter coated with insect droppings and the occasional discarded carapace.

  That interested Nebekah; it was her first sign that anything living inhab-ited the house. She eased open a drawer, and a beetle reared up at her, hiss-ing. It was nearly two inches long, armored in black and maroon. Beetle droppings dotted the worn-out wood. Otherwise, the drawer was empty. Nebekah closed it and tried the cupboard beneath. More beetles. More in the next and the next.

  Chop-crunch went the denizen of the back kitchen. It had been noisy this whole time. She continued to ignore it for now. Scrape.

  Nebekah opened the next cupboard, and dozens of beetles raised their antennae at her, hissing. They stank of must and garbage, and Nebekah’s eyes stung. She shut the cupboard and tried the next, working her way toward the back kitchen and finding nothing of use before she got there.

  The entrance to the back kitchen wasn’t a door but only an archway. Exploring with Vivienne, she had found the room beyond to be L-shaped and attached only to the front kitchen. It led narrowly straight back and then turned ninety degrees to the right before continuing twice as far. That meant that two thirds of it was invisible from the front kitchen—and that Nebekah in the front kitchen was currently invisible to the source of the chop-crunch.

  The back kitchen had been dark when they’d explored on the first layer; now, every-thing beyond the threshold was lit up with a vivid, hellish orange-red that prickled her eyes. The light didn’t seem to have any particular source, but it lit the back kitchen well enough for her to see its details: the side of the refrigerator imme-di-ately right of the entrance; a line of cupboards and coun-ter on the left, leading straight back and then continuing along the spine of the L and out of view.

  Nebekah sidled closer until she pressed against the arch frame, not quite touching the hellish light. More beetle droppings decorated the counters and cupboards and the side of the refrigerator, thick as pox; but she couldn’t see any actual beetles.

  The chopping paused, and Nebekah heard metal scraping metal, the slosh of water, the flare of a gas burner, the clank of a metal lid being placed onto a metal pot. She shrank back as the Chef itself floated into view.

  It was hard to see at first: mostly shimmering refractions from a collec-tion of red droplets in the air. Probably blood drops, highly diluted. The Chef reached for a drawer, and droplets solidified into a bony red arm with clawed fingers. Hooked nails pulled open the drawer and plucked out a rusty ladle. The muscles of the Chef’s back briefly solidified into black sigils tattooed on red skin. Then the flesh dissolved again, a deformed red foot took a step, and the Chef floated out of view.

  Nebekah stepped further back into the front kitchen and opened the nearest drawer. The beetle inside scuttled away from her reaching hand. Two fingers caught it by its shell, and she tossed it through the archway and onto the far coun-ter. It landed, rocked upright, and scuttered for the wall. The Chef was on it an instant later, a flash of blood and twisted limb. A swing of its cleaver—chop, crunch, and then the Chef scraped up the remains and looked around for more.

  Nebekah considered as she waited. Once the Chef had floated out of view once more, she tossed another beetle. This time, she aimed low, so that the insect landed out of the Chef’s view, an arm’s length beyond the thresh-old. The beetle immediately dashed under the refrigerator, and the Chef did not come for it.

  Chop, crunch. Nebekah stuck a finger past the threshold, then her whole arm. The light tingled like pinpricks of rain. She eased open the nearest cupboard on the left and found a collection of long-unused wooden salad bowls and platters. A few beetles fled the influx of light as she rearranged the bowls, shoving as many as she could into other cup-boards or off to the sides, and sliding the platters under the refrigerator. She wasn’t able to make as much space as she would have liked, but it would have to be enough; she didn’t dare leave anything out where it might be spotted.

  Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation.

  Scrape. Nebekah returned to the front kitchen and stripped off her socks, then replaced her boots. Pulling open a cupboard, she shoved as many beetles as she could into each sock and twisted the openings closed. The beetles wriggled and fought and pinched at her fingers.

  She couldn’t hear the Mimic. Either it was being quiet, or it had wan-dered off. But she was sure it hadn’t gone too far, and that its hearing was very good indeed. Making sure the Chef was still far back in the kitchen, Nebekah hurled one sock into the hall, so that it hit the far wall with a thunk and spilled onto the floor. The other sock, she tossed into the kitchen, over the refrigerator to land by the Chef. While it was distracted, she crammed herself into the cupboard. There really wasn’t enough room for her, but she shoved herself in anyway, and pulled the cupboard door closed with a fingernail.

  The ordinary chopping started up again. A beetle crawled over her leg, and another squirmed behind her back. Her neck was already hurting from bending at this angle, but she didn’t have to wait long. Vivienne’s voice cried out in delight as the Mimic found her sock. It would be picking it up . . . discovering the traces of beetle . . .

  The Mimic’s soft footsteps hesitated at the back kitchen, but temptation overcame it. It shuffled in, stopped at the threshold. Hummed, “Nebekah? Come out.” It paused, listening, and then passed her cupboard as it stepped into the back kitchen.

  It must have seen the sock then, wherever the Chef had discarded it, because it screamed, “That was mine!”

  Nebekah saw nothing of what happened next, but she heard it: the Chef’s hissing, the thunk of a blade into dense wood, the Mimic’s shrieks of possessive rage, the crashing slosh of a stockpot onto the tiled floor. The Chef defending, the Mimic enraged.

  Then there was silence.

  Seconds passed, and Nebekah’s muscles ached. Minutes passed, and they sobbed with cramp. An eternity passed, and the Mimic moved again—the faint, faint shuffle of footsteps out of the room. Nebekah’s breaths were as nothing. Another eternity, and the footsteps returned. The refrigerator door opened, shut. A door at the back—the pantry. An angry huff. Footsteps out of the room . . . down the hall . . . beyond hearing.

  Nebekah eased her position. When the footsteps did not return at the faint noise, she pressed open the cupboard door and slithered out.

  The kitchen light was dimmer and duller than before. Blood splatter deco-rated the walls and pooled on the floor, pulsing and glimmering like rubies. As Nebekah watched, the droplets seeped downward, traveling together toward a communal puddle under the stove. Beetle remains steamed and hissed where the droplets touched them.

  Skipping around the puddle, Nebekah pulled open drawers and cup-boards until she found it: a cast-iron pan, ten inches in diameter and long handled. Heavy and unwieldly, but unlikely to break. Probably better than a silver steak knife, although nowhere near as good as her own sword.

  The Chef had half reformed. Nebekah skimmed past it, through the front kitchen and into the hall. The Mimic was nowhere in sight as she rounded the final corner and darted onto the ground-floor landing of the back stairs.

  As she had seen them before, the stairs between ground floor and second floor were perfectly bright, as if a spotlight shone upon them. The banister gleamed, and the carpet blushed a fresh new crimson. The plaster on the walls swirled perfectly. The wood beneath it was as smooth and undamaged as the day it had been installed.

  Nebekah stayed close to the wall, as far from the upward steps as she could get, and headed for the basement.

  Hot air hit her, wet as if she’d just emerged from the shower. Water swirled in rivulets down the disintegrating plaster and pooled along the wainscot cap before dripping down. It crept over the toes of her boots, warm and thick.

  The stairs paused at a concrete landing, next to the garbage can she’d seen from above: a blue pail up to her chest, lined with black plastic and piled high with crushed soda cans. To its right, the stairs continued down four more steps to the furnace room: a broad concrete space packed full of unfamiliar machin-ery and massive round ducts painted white with asbestos. This was the source of the heat, for all the machinery ran at full blast, shoot-ing gas and warmth throughout the house. It was also the primary source of damp: the entire floor was covered in water. Around the near edge, the water was barely deep enough to wet the bottom step, but it darkened and deep-ened as it went, obscur-ing the concrete beneath. The water shimmered and swirled in gentle patterns, steam twining from its surface.

  The vein in Nebekah’s chest pulled left, into a rat’s warren of shelves and desks, doors, and thin carpet. Everything about that path was sickly yellow, from the carpet to the wallpaper to the quality of light. At the entrance, Nebekah could stretch out her arms; but that ended when the shelving units began and the space devolved into a hoarder’s fevered dream.

  Bags of puzzles with half their pieces missing, cracked tea sets, broken picture frames, kitsch signs in violent colors, fraying wicker baskets, depetaled fake flowers, bottles of sequins and beads.

  What unimaginable wealth, Nebekah thought, to be able to purchase a base-ment full of supplies—and what unimaginable waste, to have spent the wealth like this. To cram this space full of so many possessions that neither space nor possessions could possibly be used. So that possessions became merely junk. Yet individually, on the streets—could not everything here be sold? Could not each item be exchanged for a bowl of soup, a slice of bread, a sliver of meat?

  Horrors were often revolting; Nebekah didn’t let disgust slow her. She moved swiftly and precisely between the stacks, disturbing nothing. She’d have preferred to touch nothing, but the passages were so tight that her sleeves and hips sometimes brushed the shelves. Once, a precariously balanced nutcracker tumbled off a storage unit behind her, teeth clattering. Another time, a lamp lit on its own, its tail snaking her way. A low droning filled her ears, and a distant clock chimed the hour.

  The shelving units crowded closer and higher, each at least seven feet tall and two feet wide. The cluttered contents of the steel shelves blinked blearily, awakening. Nebekah ran, flung herself around a corner—and hit a dead end.

  Urgency pricked her neck and grew in her stomach, and the vein over her heart dug inward even as it pulled her onward. Nebekah shoved a mass of jars from a lower shelf and crawled through to the passageway beyond. One of the jars burst with a whiff of acid and burnt leaves, and a scaly limb began pulling itself out. Nebekah smashed it with the frying pan and ran on.

  Somewhere behind her, at the edge of hearing—

  “Nebekah?”

  Nebekah clutched the pan to her chest and sped up. By now, she had run far enough to traverse the house ten times over, yet the basement continued. Figu-rines jabbered around her and sparkles coalesced. The over-head lights flick-ered sickeningly, and the space grew darker and darker. And then, abruptly, the shelves stopped short.

  Nebekah stopped also. In front of her dangled a completely black rectan-gle. Not shadowed, but like a curtain of darkness bisecting the room.

  Nebekah glanced around. To the left, through various gaps, she could just make out a distant door. If she pushed through the shelves or scrambled over them, she could reach it. The light was better in that direction. It would be a circuitous route to the Heart, but complete darkness was nearly as bad a sign as beaming light. Anything could be waiting in there, including the darkness itself.

  Could she make it safely to the other door? The stacks weren’t fully awake, but they would be soon. That chittering—that droning—those seven repeated notes hummed in that familiar voice. The Mimic would dog her heels, and she would lose what precious little head start she’d managed. She would probably make it, but if the door proved locked—or if it moved—or if it didn’t lead to the Heart—

  She wouldn’t be able to get back. Which meant there was really no choice.

  Nebekah turned and stepped into the dark.

  Black air enveloped her, neither warm nor cold, wet nor dry, and she was inside. She could hear the clinking and rustling and droning of the stacks behind her, but they were weirdly muted. She could smell the damp; she could feel the burdensome gravidity of air and the faint relief of circulation; she could see . . .

  Lights. Faint as afterimages floating before her eyes, but lights never-the-less. Faintly blue lights, limned with white. There were voices too, barely audible, whispery and indistinct. High and juvenile. Frightened, but not of her. Insub-stantial fingers brushed her legs and arms and clung to her but could not obstruct her.

  Nebekah trailed her left hand on the wallpaper, following it around the room. Her steps were slow, and she tested each stretch of floor before com-mitting her weight. Fingertips dragged at her and voices warned her, and she continued unhesitatingly forward.

  In the dark, unable to see the vein over her heart, Nebekah realized for the first time that she could feel it. Not feel what it was doing beyond her chest, or which way it pulled or how thickly it pulsed—only that it was there. A foreign presence no more substantial than the youthful fingertips caress-ing her clothes.

  The noise of the stacks hushed in expectation, and a casual foot stepped inside the dark room. Nebekah held her breath, glancing back, but she could see only blackness and floating, insubstantial forms.

  “There you are,” said the Mimic.

  Could it see her? Nebekah’s right hand tightened on the frying pan. But even as she shifted to defend, a great cry of rage rose among the many ghostly voices. Their forms flowed away from her—all but one, which slid between her left hand and the wall. It wrapped its fingers around hers and tugged out across the room.

  She let it, following obediently not because she trusted it, but because behind her, the Mimic had begun screaming.

  Her toes hit wood, and the ghostly hand vanished. She groped ahead of her and touched a doorknob. It turned easily.

  “Get off!” the Mimic screamed, and the wail of ghostly voices turned from anger to pain.

  Nebekah pulled the door open and slipped through.

  With its wood-and-plaster walls, the room beyond might have belonged to the third floor, now fully furnished. A fireplace in the corner burned with flames as red and white as blood in snow. The armchair before it had long molded into the shape of its usual occupant. Two other doors led off the room—to the left, beyond the fireplace, and across from Nebekah. Both were firmly shut.

  This was all she could see of the room itself, for it was otherwise every bit as cluttered as the stacks, except it contained only pile upon pile of reli-gious paraphernalia. Not of any religion in particular, but with the same indiscrim-inate hoarding as she had seen elsewhere. The owner might have raided every church, temple, and synagogue within fifty miles. There were goblets, tomes, prayer boxes, idols, crosses, bells, and a thousand other things, all arranged in obsessively precise patterns.

  Inevitably, the collection centered around a candle-encircled pentagram painted in blood.

  Nebekah looked long enough to ensure the Heart wasn’t currently present—it wasn’t—and then positioned herself behind the door she’d come through, where she could see the door opening before the opener could see her. She gripped the iron pan in both hands and drew it back over one shoul-der.

  The doorknob turned and pushed outward. Nebekah stepped close, already swinging as Vivienne’s head poked out. The iron pan slammed into the face, crushing bone. The Mimic stumbled back against the doorframe, and Nebekah swung over the other shoulder. The edge of the pan tore through copied flesh. Vivienne’s brown eyes looked up at her, and her pink lips moved, and Nebekah hit the Mimic again. Its skin split and peeled back, and dank water flowed out like blood. The Mimic raised its arms in defense, and Nebekah’s next swing shattered it fingers.

  “Neb—” it began, shrinking back fearfully.

  Nebekah swung again, but the Mimic ducked away. She stepped after it, swinging as it disappeared into the darkness, and caught a flash of movement from the side. She whirled, swinging upward, but she wasn’t fast enough. The cane smashed into her skull, and she crumpled.