Automatically, Harrow takes the tea when it's held out, the cardboard sleeve rough against her fingertips, the paper of it and the cup still shocking to her in its flagrant waste. That she can still feel offense for something so small is an almost childish relief; in the light of everything else, it's even close to painfully normal. Pal's question lands hard, but the directness is better than the stilted dance she and her cavalier have been performing for the last few days.

"I was not expecting to find anything at all," she says. "A glimpse, at best, of the mad face of your ghost, if I were lucky. Some evidence to share with your cavalier to end her...to end what I thought was an insane devotion." Slowly, she lowers herself to sit on one of the chairs in the living room. "Instead, I descended into the River and found myself in your remembrance of Canaan House."