“We can,” Margaret said, “but not right now.”
Neve blinked at her.
“Have you forgotten?” Margaret gave her a pointed look.
“We came in from the study.
Last time, we only drank a few handfuls, and we both spent half an hour locked in the bathroom.
If we drink more this time and something happens, I’d rather not be stuck in my study with no bathroom in sight.” She dusted off her skirt.
“Let’s go to your room first.
It has its own bathroom.”
Neve’s cheeks went pink.
“Oh.
Right.
I forgot about that part.” She laughed.
“Okay, let’s go out first.”
She turned in a slow circle before they left, looking out over the endless land.
The mountain was a hazy shape on the horizon.
The river wound away into the distance.
It had taken them what felt like an hour just to walk from where they’d entered to the spring, and her legs were still trembling.
“Nana, this place is way too big now.
We need some kind of vehicle in here.
A golf cart, or bikes, or something.
There’s no way we can cover all this on foot.”
“Mm.”
Margaret was already thinking along the same lines, but her mind had jumped a step further.
A golf cart was easy enough.
But how did you bring a golf cart, or chickens, or crates of jade, into a secret world without anyone noticing things going missing?
Every purchase left a trail.
Every delivery had a driver.
Every item that vanished from a room would be noticed by someone eventually.
They would have to be very careful about how they did this.
When they left the space, Neve focused as hard as she could on her bedroom.
She pictured the canopy bed and the window seat and the door to the bathroom.
They reappeared in the study.
Neve frowned at the bookshelves.
“Huh.”
She tried to work it out.
The first time, she’d gone in from her bedroom and come out in her bedroom.
The second time, she’d gone in from the study and come out in the study.
Today, the same.
“I think,” she said slowly, “we come out wherever we went in.
At least in the outside world.”
“Then we’ll have to be careful where we go in,” Margaret said.
“If you’re ever in danger and need to hide, you’ll come right back out in the same danger.”
That was a sobering thought.
Neve tucked it away.
They had barely stepped into the hallway when Margaret’s phone rang.
It was Declan.
“What is it?”
“Madam, things on my end are almost ready.
We can start promoting the auction soon.
Could you send me photos of the pieces first?”
Margaret’s eyebrows rose.
“Already?”
“There was an auction that just wrapped up at the Crestwood Galleries, so I rented their venue while it was still set up.
It saves a lot of time, and honestly, it’s one of the best rooms in Solmere.
The lighting alone is worth it.”
A faint, approving smile touched Margaret’s mouth.
Declan had always been quick.
“Good.
I’ll send the photos to your phone tonight.
Tomorrow, bring someone over to authenticate everything.
Someone reputable, and someone discreet.”
“Understood, madam.”
She hung up and headed down toward the living room.
Neve followed close behind.
“Madam.”
Helen Hughes was crossing the front hall with a clipboard tucked under her arm.
She was Walter’s wife, small and brisk, with iron-gray hair pinned into a neat bun.
She had run the Sinclair household for as long as Neve could remember, and nothing in it escaped her notice.
“Helen, I need you to arrange for someone to buy some live chickens and ducks.
A dozen of each, to start.
I’ll need them tomorrow.”
Helen didn’t even blink.
If Madam wanted poultry delivered to a mansion in the middle of Solmere, then poultry would be delivered.
“And have dinner sent up to Neve’s room tonight,” Margaret added.
“We’ll eat up there.”
“Of course, madam.”
Helen was already turning away, pulling out her phone.
Back in Neve’s room, the two of them went into the space just long enough to bring out the antiques that had survived intact.
There were the rolled scrolls, the porcelain vases, and a few paintings in heavy gilded frames.
They laid everything out across Neve’s bed and floor, and Margaret photographed each piece carefully from several angles.
Anything that wasn’t jade, they had no real use for.
The space didn’t seem to want porcelain or paintings.
It had left them untouched.
So they would sell every piece and turn it into money.
Money could buy more jade, and more supplies, and more of everything they would need.
When the last photo was sent to Declan, Neve returned the pieces to the space.
Then she took her grandmother’s hand again.
“Ready?”
“Ready.”
This time, when the bedroom dissolved around them, they arrived just a short walk from the spirit spring.
The steam curled up from its surface only a few dozen yards away.
Margaret looked around, surprised.
“Neve, why do we come in at a different place every time?”
She had noticed it.
The first time, they had landed a hundred yards from the river.
The second time, they had been close to where Neve stored the vault.
And this afternoon, they’d been so far from the spring that they had nearly collapsed getting there.
“I think I can control it,” Neve said slowly, testing the idea as she spoke.
“Where we come in, I mean.
I didn’t know that the first few times, so I wasn’t thinking about anything in particular.
But just now, I was picturing the spring the whole time.
And here we are.”
She had focused on the spring on purpose, and the space had listened.
“Oh, that’s wonderful.” Margaret’s face brightened.
“Then we won’t have to hike halfway across the world every time we come in.”
That alone would save them hours.
And if Neve could learn to control it precisely, she could set down supplies in one place, animals in another, and fields somewhere else, and reach any of them in an instant.
Neve was about to start toward the spring when something at the edge of her vision made her stop.
“Eh?” She turned her head.
“Why is there a house over there?”
Some distance away, on a gentle rise beyond the spring, stood a small wooden house.
It was simple and weathered, with a peaked roof and a narrow porch, the kind of cabin you might find tucked into a forest in an old storybook.
Its planks were dark with age.
Its single window was shuttered.
Neve stared at it.
It hadn’t been there the first time they came in.
She was sure of it.
And the second time, they had been so focused on the spring and the vault and the missing jade that neither of them had looked this way.
“Could someone be living in there?” Margaret’s voice dropped.
She moved half a step closer to her granddaughter without seeming to realize it.
Neve closed her eyes for a moment and reached out with that new sense she was still learning.
It was the quiet awareness at the edge of her mind that told her what was in the space and where.
She felt the gold, the spring, the boxes, and her grandmother warm and solid beside her.
Nothing else.
No one else.
“I don’t think so,” she said.
“I can’t sense anyone.
Come on, let’s go look.”
She was already walking.
Whatever was in that house, she had to know.
This was her space.
It lived inside her own body, fused to her chest.
There could not be anything in here that she didn’t understand, anything hidden, or anything she couldn’t explain.
Not after last time.
Not ever again.