“Mr. Marak brought us home,” Emily said from Aunt Celia’s arms. “He’s so nice, he let me ride his horse, and it was such a beauty, too! We should invite him over to say thank you.”

Aunt Prim knelt before the fire, heating water for tea. Never mind that it had been steamy all day; with the thunderstorms around, the air at the Lodge had turned gusty and chill. Besides, Aunt Prim believed in treating any case of accidental contact with inclement weather as if the victim had just been dragged out of a snowbank.

“Who’s Mr. Marak, dear?” asked Aunt Celia, yawning and smoothing back Emily’s tumbled hair. It was one o’clock in the morning, and both aunts had been too frantic to sleep.

“Oh, you know, Mr. Roberts’s cousin. He knows all about you. He said you were a pretty young thing, Aunt Celia, when you first came here.”

“How nice of him to say that, dear,” she answered, “but I can’t place who he would be.”

Just as Emily opened her mouth to explain, the door slammed loudly. They looked up, startled, to see Kate standing against it, a Kate they had never seen before. It wasn’t just that her clothes were damp, filthy, and torn. It wasn’t even that her hair straggled wildly about her dirt-smudged face. It was the ghastly color of that face and the glittering eyes full of unshed tears. She stared back at them for afew seconds, her chest heaving as she struggled for breath. Then she burst into loud sobs and collapsed onto the floor.

“Draw the curtains! Draw the curtains!” was the first thing she managed to say. Emily ran to comply. They hustled her to the couch, pulled off her shoes and stockings, and piled blankets on her, but when Aunt Prim brought her a cup of tea, she could barely hold it, her hands shook so much. She gasped and shivered and alarmed her aunts extremely.