The banshee’s howl had scattered the artists and staff. They were beginning to creep back up the stairs, though. Most were brandishing walking sticks or chunks of firewood, so I called out before we descended lest some nervous pre-War abstract impressionist decide to wax heroic.

Serris and Gertriss were quickly mobbed by artists, who cooed and wooed at the same time and generally embarrassed the poor girl to death.

“All right,” I shouted over the din. “The young lady is fine. The sound you heard came from outside. No, I don’t know what made it. No, we didn’t see anything. You, you, and you-” I pointed at random, picking out the three largest male painters who weren’t wobbling. “-get downstairs. See that the doors are locked. All the doors. Right now, son.”

I said the last in an Army bark perfected during my eight years in the War. Earnest young men darted for the stairs.

Gertriss chuckled despite herself.

“You’d make a fine pig-herder,” she said.

“Great. Let’s get out of here and buy a herd of swine.”

“Be a might safer.” Gertriss let Serris go into the hands of a trio of female artists, who covered Serris in a blanket and made what I assumed were the appropriate noises of commiseration and encouragement.

Marlo appeared at my side. His face was grim. “Need to get a few things. Meet you at the front door.”

And he lumbered away, bowling over artists as he went.

Lady Werewilk and Gertriss raised eyebrows. I suppose Lady Werewilk hadn’t heard Marlo and I plan our expedition.

Both began to question the wisdom of proceeding outdoors. I raised my own eyebrow at Lady Werewilk, who had not very long ago cast scorn on the very idea that banshees walked her woods.

“You’ve got the whole estate cooped up in here. Unless you want start assigning them bedrooms, we’ve got to make sure it’s safe for them to go home,” I said, resorting to practicality. “Marlo and I are going door-to-door before anyone leaves. Lock your doors behind us. We’ll need torches.”

Inspiration struck.

“I’ll be right back. Have the torches ready.”

I hit the stairs, huffing and puffing. Gertriss caught up to me easily, her face set in the same expression of unshakable pig-headedness Mama wore when she got her dander up.

“Don’t even bother, Mr. Markhat,” she said. “I promised Mama I’d keep an eye on you.”

“I promised Mama the same thing.” I couldn’t get all the words out in one breath. “Last thing I need out there is another body to watch.”

“And what you need most is somebody who can use Sight to see in the dark.”

“We’ll have torches.”

We finally reached the landing. I hustled into my room, Gertriss still on my heels, and yanked Toadsticker from his wrapping of old shirts.

“Torches won’t show what you need to be a seein’.”

“You slip back into country talk when you’re agitated, Miss.”

“And you change the subject when you know you’re wrong, mister.”

I shrugged. Gertriss went still, and I swear the room got cold.

She closed her eyes.

The hairs on the back of my neck tried to fall in formation and march.

“What are you doing?”

“Having a look,” she said, slurring her words.

She tensed.

“It’s back. Not close, but thinking about it.”

“Which direction?”

Gertriss lifted her right arm, pointed, then turned. I figured she was facing the barn we’d set as out last-resort meeting place.

“Has it seen you?”

“Not yet.” She opened her eyes, blinked, shivered.

And grinned.

“We’d better hurry. You can’t tie me up and leave me. You haven’t got time.”

I sighed, cussed.

“Stay behind me. Don’t use your Sight outside without warning me. Your word now, or I send you back to Mama, no second chances.”

She nodded. We made for the ground floor. I drew a frown from Gertriss by darting momentarily back into the kitchen. And then we trooped for the big red doors and the dark beyond them.

Marlo was there, an axe in his hand. The blade gleamed, and though it had never chopped anything but firewood that blade wasn’t anything I’d want swung at me.

A crowd had gathered. Those who could clustered at the three-bolt windows and peeped out, oohing and ahing at the dark like they could see anything at all.

No one stood anywhere near the doors though.

“I reckon you know your own business,” said Marlo, after a glance at Gertriss.

“And I reckon you should mind your own,” said Gertriss.

Marlo puffed up and went red, but before he could sputter out a response Lady Werewilk appeared.

She was dragging an umbrella stand that she’d stuffed with swords. “I thought you might need to be armed,” she began, trailing off when she saw Toadsticker and Marlo’s well-honed axe.

But Gertriss grinned like she’d just knocked over a bowl full of earrings.

“Oooh, I’ll take this one, if I may,” she said, yanking a short straight blade out of the jumble.

Lady Werewilk nodded, bemused.

“I believe it was actually used in the War.” She eyed the blades critically, selected one very similar, and damned if she didn’t spin it around in her left hand with as much skill as my old army sword master.

“I’ll be by the door with this, Mr. Markhat.”

I saluted her with Toadsticker, and she returned it-perfectly.

“I’m full of surprises.”

She threw back the bolts, and pulled the door open.

Marlo grunted, laid the axe on his shoulder and marched outside. I followed, Gertriss on my heels, and the three of us went half a dozen paces and stopped.

Gertriss laid her unlit torch onto the one burning by the door. It flared to life, trailing the stench of pitch. I grinned as Gertriss tried to figure out which hand to use for the torch and which to hold the sword.

“Torch in your right,” I offered. “Sword in your left, and then stick it point first in the dirt. You’re better off in a pinch with the torch anyway, unless you’re trained with a blade. Are you trained with a blade, Miss?”

The look she gave me would doubtlessly have sent an entire herd of pigs running for the stable or wherever it is that pigs are domiciled in quaint, scenic Pot Lockney.

Marlo helped by guffawing. Before Gertriss could turn on him, I motioned toward the barns.

“The woman with the big lungs is that way,” I said.

Marlo nodded. “So that’s where we head?”

“Nope. We go door to door like we don’t know where she is. That’ll take us that way anyway, but it won’t be quick. Gertriss, you keep an eye-a regular eye-out for women in the trees. Marlo, you watch the ground. If anybody’s been out here planting stakes while everyone was eating I want to know it.”

Marlo frowned. “We got banshees in the pines, and you’re worried about some damned surveyor’s sticks?”

“That’s what I was hired to worry about. And for all we know the banshee is the one leaving the stakes.”

“Banshees don’t give a damn ’bout land deals.”

“I’ll ask her when I meet her,” I said. My eyes were adjusted to the dark, helped by Gertriss’ flickering torch.

“Let’s get started.”

Gertriss managed to shove her shortsword through her sash. I put her at the back of the line so the light from the torch wouldn’t blind Marlo and I.

Eight outbuildings. It took us maybe twenty minutes to make a show of checking the windows and doors to see if they were all locked or shuttered-they were-and to light the door torches that flanked every opening. By the time we were nearing the barns, there was just enough stray torchlight flickering about to turn the Werewilk estate into something out of a nightmare.

Shadows danced. Huge old blood-oaks towered above us, spreading their boughs wide and blotting out the sky. The dancing red torchlight illuminated tossing leaves far above, giving the impression of furtive movement to join the dry, wooden whispers of the night.