“Doctor Perkins,” says Mavis, raising the lantern as the doctor jumps down from the buckboard. The housemaid’s chattering lips are as blue as her bare feet, and her braid swings so close I could reach out and yank it like a bell cord if she didn’t scare so easy.

The doctor signals for Uncle Henry to help him with another passenger.

Quinn. The name shatters through me.

Aunt Clara looks sharp in my direction. Had I spoken out loud? I must have. But I’m sure it’s Quinn. And as the figure emerges, I see that I’m right.

Quinn. Not Will.

He is grotesquely thin and hollowed out, his left eye wrapped in a belt of cloth that winds around his head. He is barely human.

“I’ll need hot water and clean bandaging.” Doctor Perkins is speaking as Mavis’s lantern pitches, throwing wild shadows. “A step at a time, Henry.”

On the sight of her favorite son, Aunt Clara whimpers. Her hands clasp together under a chin that wobbles like aspic. “Oh, my darling boy, safe at home at last.”

Quinn ignores her, an old and useful habit. He brushes past Aunt, the plank of one long arm hooked over Uncle Henry’s neck. But then he squares me in his eye, and in one look I know the worst.

Will is not coming back.

Blood rushes to my head; I might faint. I lean back against a pillar and take slow sips of air.

“A few more steps,” pants the doctor. “Where is the closest bed?”

Quinn’s bedroom is all the way up on the third floor, an inconvenient sickroom. He’d moved there last year, before he’d found a richer rebellion in joining the army and leaving home altogether.