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As her father had once said, the first step to defeating an enemy was to know him. It was time to reconnoiter.
    She walked through the flowers to the stone path, and followed it the length of the garden to the new iron gate at the end. The only thing she could thank Briggs for was having the garden replanted and cleaned up. She had grown used to it being wild, and had not known how lovely cultivated flowers could be. There were many growing here now that she had never seen before, their hues brilliant, their blossoms huge and exotic to her eyes.
    She walked through the iron gate, wincing as it shivered through her. The folktales about iron holding in a spirit were not true, but the metal was unpleasant to encounter nonetheless.
    The courtyard she stepped into was filled with wagons and people moving about, unloading furniture and supplies and shouting orders at one another. The noise they made had her cringing back, the voices a vibrating, ringing assault on her head.
    She had forgotten how loud they were, living people. The six-month respite since Briggs had left had allowed her to forget, and she had luxuriated in the quiet of a vacant building.
    She clenched her teeth and wove her way through themilling servants, careful to avoid being stepped through. No one turned to look, no one commented that she was dressed oddly, and no one made way for her, for no one could see her. She paused to drag her fingers across the nape of a man’s neck, and was rewarded by his startled jump. He turned around, but, seeing no one, could only rub at his neck and wonder.
    She could have floated above the servants had she wished, like thistledown on the wind. She could have gone from the garden straight through the castle walls, and avoided them altogether. Thomas would have said it was stubbornness that had her walking among them, stubbornness and her own peculiar form of defiance against the obvious truth that she was no longer completely human.
    In part he would have been right.
    The rectangular courtyard formed the center for the long, U-shaped castle that surrounded it, the open end leading to a drive that, through a modern, ingenious bit of engineering, wound down like a tunneling spiral staircase before opening out below at the gatehouse on the side of the steep hill. That dark passage had made an excellent place in which to spook horses and terrorize Briggs and his coach and footmen.
    Serena climbed the stairs to a pair of the castle’s doors, held open by wooden wedges. She paused to the side, waiting for workers to pass through with their crated burden. She felt something brush against her leg.
    “Beezely!”
    The orange cat meowed, staring up at her unconcerned as a workman put a boot through him.
    “Beezely, silly kitty, you’re in the way.” Serena squatted down and picked up the phantom cat. She pressed her nose to the space between Beezely’s ragged ears, hugging the animal close, protective even though she knew the cat was past all harm. The feline, her first and only pet, had been her onetrue companion through the centuries. Twenty years into her ghosthood, the cat had dragged himself into her garden, wounded from battle with some unknown animal. He had died a few hours later, but his spirit had stayed with her. “I don’t know how you can be so unconcerned, with all this disturbance all around us,” she said to him.
    Beezely purred and kneaded her sleeve, his sharp claws pricking her skin. Being a ghost like her, the cat always seemed solid to her touch—more so than “real” things, which she could pass through at will. It usually took an intentional effort on her part to touch or move solid objects, or to make herself visible or heard.
    The doorway now empty, Serena went through and into the ancestral hall. It was an empty room with a big fireplace, but on the walls were painted the twining, twisted branches of a family tree, with spaces for portraits and names among the leaves. Men were on the north wall, women