Cows mooed and dogs barked and chickens clucked, but Lady Werewilk’s command that all should dine in the House was obviously being obeyed by one and all.

“Remember where things are in relation to each other,” I said to Gertriss. “And let’s make it a rule now. If we should get separated, never mind the reason, let’s try to meet back at the far barn. Yes, that one, with the bad roof.”

“Good place to hide.”

I looked around. Huge old blood oaks surrounded us, their boughs tangled overhead, all but blotting out the sky.

A shiver ran right the Hell up and down my spine.

Gertriss saw.

The dinner bell clanged.

“I don’t like it either, Mr. Markhat. I tell you plain, someone is watching us, right now.”

I’d left Toadsticker upstairs. I wasn’t even wearing my armored dinner jacket. The tiny hairs on my arms and the back of my neck began a desperate attempt to crawl to safety.

Way up above the blood-oak limbs, a cloud raced across the late afternoon sun. Midnight’s ghost swallowed us suddenly up.

“I need to know, Gertriss. How good is your Sight?”

“It’s good, Mr. Markhat. Very good.”

“As good as Mama’s?”

“Better.” She crossed her arms, but that didn’t stop me from seeing her shiver.

“So we’re really being watched. By someone with eyes.”

She nodded, took a deep breath, closed her eyes.

I’ve seen Mama do the same thing over and over. But when Gertriss did it, the wind suddenly bore whispers, and the shadows around us began to dart and scurry.

The huldra. Back again, risen from its hiding place.

“There,” said Gertriss, pointing, but my eyes were already fixed on the spot.

Ahead of us. Two hundred feet, maybe. Call it thirty feet off the ground. My eyes told me there was nothing there but the same shadows that enveloped us, but the remnant of the huldra saw something else.

“What is it?”

“It watches,” replied Gertriss. Her eyes were still shut. Her hands were outstretched, moving, as though performing some intricate unraveling of the empty air before her.

I shook my head, willing the huldra’s dry crackling voice to be silent.

“Does it have a crossbow?”

Gertriss opened one eye.

“You are not going to just go stomping up to it, are you?”

“Not if it has a crossbow. Is it an it or a he or a she? Or a them?”

Gertriss started moaning.

I whirled. Her eyes had rolled up, so that only the whites showed. Her hands twitched and groped. She took a step forward, and I caught her by her elbows.

She tried to keep walking. Her moaning rose and rose, becoming a shriek.

A shriek to match the one now sounding through the blood-oaks.

I felt it too, now. Eyes, eyes upon me. The huldra’s ghost gibbered and screamed, telling me words I didn’t know, urging me to hurl magics I no longer commanded.

“Sorry,” I said.

And then I grabbed the back of Gertriss’ hair and yanked.

She erupted into a whirlwind of claws and knees, but her howl died and her eyes rolled back down, wide and angry and hurt.

The shriek in the trees died with hers, choked off just as suddenly.

Gertriss stopped struggling, grabbed my hand and charged for the House, dragging me along after.

I didn’t resist. Much. One-man charges against unknown foes may be the stuff of legend, but then so are gruesome deaths and shallow graves.

We hoofed it back to our side door and didn’t stop until it was securely closed behind us.

We leaned on the walls and panted. Gertriss wrapped her arms tight around her chest and fought back a serious case of the shivers. I patted her shoulder in a fatherly there, there fashion and tried not to shake myself.

“I begin to see why the staff doesn’t line up to patrol the grounds.”

Gertriss nodded.

“Any idea at all what that was?”

She shook her head.

I gave up trying to coax words out of her just yet. But of course there was only one word on both our minds anyway.

Banshee.

What else lurks about, ready to issue its trademarked plaintive howl upon being spotted? The howl, together with Gertriss’ earlier sighting of a near-naked woman, certainly suggested it.

But even Mama had scorned the idea of a real banshee. Mama, who routinely trafficked with everything from haints to clover-fairies.

But something had been in the trees. Something had howled. Something had nearly drawn Gertriss into a trance that would have sent her stumbling blindly into the woods.

A Banshee. Or some sort of sorcery.

“Take your pick,” I muttered.

“Pick of what?”

“Bad or worse. You all right? What happened out there?”

“I saw something, Mr. Markhat. So I looked closer, and then it saw me.”

She shivered again. I urged her down the hall, away from the door. Just in case.

“Male or female? Armed, unarmed?”

“It was the same woman I saw on the way here,” said Gertriss. She set a brisk pace and impressed me by lowering her arms to her sides and forcing a deep breath. “Unarmed. Watching. No, more than just watching. I think…I think she’s looking for something.”

We were back in the painting room. There was no sound from the hall, so I hoped our arboreal howling witch had decided to remain outdoors.

“Any idea what?”

Gertriss shook her head in an emphatic no. “As soon as she knew I saw her, she just…took over.” The second dinner bell rang out, and I heard footfalls and voices throughout the House.

I stopped, faced Gertriss.

“All right. We’ve got something in the forest. Something strange, something that may be dangerous. Neither of us goes out there alone. Got it?”

“Got it.”

“Now it’s time for dinner. And questions. So I need you to forget about what just happened, until we have time to think about it later. Can you do that?”

She nodded, managed a weak grin.

“Good girl.”

We followed the hall and the noise. The dining room wasn’t hard to find.

The big oak double-doors, which were worked with carved dragons, were open. The aromas of fresh hot bread and roasting beef poured from between them, along with a blast of noon-day heat.

The dining room at Werewilk probably seated sixty with room to spare. As it was, maybe a dozen seats were empty, and they were the ones closest to the monstrous fire roaring in the cavernous fireplace that dominated the north end of the room.

I was mopping sweat before I’d taken a dozen steps.

“Welcome to House Werewilk, Mr. Markhat, Miss Gertriss,” said Lady Werewilk. She was again wearing black-black trousers, black waistcoat, black gloves-but tonight’s ensemble was more mannish than provocative. At her words, the entire assemblage stood, and a more miserable lot of sweaty-faced dinner guests I have never seen.

I recognized a few faces, of course. Marlo and Gefner, Scatter and Lank. Emma and Ella, looking wilted from the heat. I assumed the grizzled, stooped old man next to Lady Werewilk was Singh, and the vacant-eyed man who had to be prodded into standing by a poke in his ribs was Milton, Lady Werewilk’s War-broken brother.

“We thank you for your hospitality,” I said. Lady Werewilk made a small nod, and the gathered sank into their seats. I watched Singh lower Milton into his chair with gentle pressure on both his shoulders. Only when he was seated did Lady Werewilk take her own seat.

The enormous table was laden with a feast. Meats sizzled and smoked. Bowls of fresh-cooked vegetables simmered and steamed. Flagons of lovely golden beer sparkled in the candlelight. Markhats sweated profusely and sought out empty chairs.

We’d been placed at the head of the table opposite Lady Werewilk. That put the raging inferno close at her back, though she remained miraculously unfazed by the heat it poured forth. Napkins started mopping at faces, though, as we lesser beings began to slowly succumb to the heat. I had to bite back the helpful observation that food was customarily cooked in various ovens before the meal was served, not atop the table as people ate.