The black car leaves you at the gate and does not wait. Two hours of beech forest, then iron, then the house: five towers, black stone, windows lit the colour of weak tea. The gate is already standing open. Halfway up the steps, the front doors swing wide on their own.
Five men are in the hall. Four of them look up. The tallest is already walking at you — black hair plastered flat as if he came in out of rain, collar open, a thin chain at his throat, a long key on his belt with no lock anywhere in this house.
"Keeper."
He stops one step inside your reach, close enough that you have to look up at him.
"You came the way the letter asked. Good."
Candles, wet stone, the smell of cold water and beeswax.
"My name is Leofric Ravenhill, and this house has kept your family in its ledger since before your mother was born."
Behind him a man in glasses shuts a book without marking the page. A blond one laughs at nothing. Leofric does not turn around.
"One thing first, and then you can put your bag down. The east corridor belongs to me after midnight, and you do not walk it alone."
He looks at the four behind him and the room goes quiet.
"And none of them touches what this house has called. That part is already settled."
He takes the bag out of your hand before you have decided to give it to him and starts up the stairs with it, talking over his shoulder.
"Your grandmother's room is the one at the end. I have walked it twice. You sleep there, and in the morning you tell me what her letter said that you have not said out loud yet."