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on the south. Briggs hadn’t had time to finish, so it was just his own red face peering out from the leaves on the men’s wall. Mrs. Briggs, opposite, looked wan and frightened. Spineless wench.
    The next room was the king’s hall, with a marble diamond-patterned floor and a gilded, royal blue groined ceiling that made the display of ancient, blackened weapons on one wall look as out of place as a dead rat on a banquet table. Briggs and his wife had taste that even she could recognize as showy.
    Serena could hear voices coming from the library at the other end of the king’s hall: the enemy. She went toward the sound.
    Beezely tensed in her arms. An enormous hound had appeared in the doorway to the library, head raised, eyes staring straight at them. Beezely hissed and clawed his way loose from Serena’s arms, dropping to the floor with his back arched, hair on end.
    The hound’s ears lowered uncertainly as he looked at Serena, the beginning of a whine starting in his throat, but then Beezely trotted away from her. The hound gave a tremendous bark, and the animals were off, Beezely an orange streak heading for the door. The hound’s claws scrabbled for purchase as he gave chase on the polished floor, nails clicking and clattering as he galloped after the cat.
    Serena had seen it before: dogs had a natural fear of ghosts, but their instinct to chase and kill animals smaller than themselves often overrode it. Especially where Beezely was concerned. Either that, or the cat somehow taunted the beasts into going after him. Serena had thought that was the case more than once over the years.
    “Otto! What in God’s name—” The speaker came into the hall in time to see the rear end of his dog disappear through the door to the ancestral hall. The man halted, staring straight through Serena for a long moment, then gave a facial shrug, as if to say the mind of a hound could not be fathomed.
    He was a tall man, perhaps even an inch taller than Serena herself, with broad shoulders and a sturdy frame. He was neither thin nor fat, having instead that solidness of form that bespoke a man past the first gangly flush of youth. He had dark hair with a white streak, dark blue eyes, and a shadowed jaw that spoke of a heavy beard if left unshaven. He was dressed in a jacket of dark forest green, the collar of his white shirt coming only halfway up his neck, his cravat tied without flamboyance.
    She had often spied on Briggs as he dressed with the help of his valet, and had grown familiar with this modern mode of dress. Briggs’s clothes had been much brighter, however, and his collar points had reached halfway up his cheeks. She’d marveled that he didn’t put an eye out on one of them.
    This man looked much more competent than had the castle’s last intruder. There was intelligence in his eyes, anda relaxed confidence. He was a great deal better-looking, too.
    A faint sense of familiarity floated through her, coupled with a distant, long-suppressed yearning. The confusing, unexpected combination brought a sudden panic welling up inside her.
    He had to be gotten rid of, as quickly as possible.
    A female voice with all the melody of a crow’s suddenly rang out at him from behind, and Serena watched him close his eyes briefly, lips tightening as he summoned patience.
    “It’s foolish, Alex. Foolish and irresponsible,” the woman said, coming into the hall. She looked older than him by a handful of years, and there were deep lines from the sides of her sharp nose to the corners of her sour mouth. “How can you trust others to run the mills for you? We shall be robbed blind, while you sit up here and play at being an astronomer. Do you think you will discover a planet, like your hero, Mr. Herschel?” She had her hands on her hips, looking at the man as though he were a recalcitrant child. “This is just another of your childish fantasies, like the time you tried to run away and join the navy.”
    “I am no longer twelve years