Bare floorboards creaked underfoot as they made their way forward and up the stairs. On Charlotte’s guidance, they crossed a hall with polished red tiles and turned left and down six steps.

“Why are we going down straight after going up?” Roger asked.

“Because this is the quickest way to the kitchens,” Charlotte said.

“… I feel like one of us is missing some context.”

“This place was rebuilt and expanded on across more than two centuries,” Michelle said. “And my great-something-uncle many times removed was an idiot. More than one of my relatives were idiots, in fact.”

“Didn’t any of the ones who came after ever think to take both sets of steps out?” Jason asked.

“That’s one of those questions,” she said, “where if you think it through, you’ll realise contains its own answer.”

“… Touché,” he said.

Charlotte stopped, double-checked her map, looked up again, and turned. On her left was a tapestry of a mounted lancer squaring off against a rampant lion. She blinked, then brushed the tapestry aside, revealing a room behind. It was dominated by a heavy wooden table in the middle, covered in the signs of long use: scorch marks, chips, and cracks. Cupboards and cloth sacks of meal lined one wall; another had stoves, sinks, a grill, a giant skewer for large game, and an incongruous microwave oven. By the far corner was a doorway with no door, through which they could see a cluttered room washed in dusky light.

“I think I like this place,” Sue said. She walked in, shining her torch around. She found a free-dangling rope; when she pulled it, a gas lamp flared on overhead, casting flickering light around the room.

“Because it has badly-hidden secret passages, or because it has food?” Jason asked.

“You say that as though it has to be one or the other.” She checked inside a sack and pulled out a handful of its contents. “Hey, this has wasabi peas!”

Jason elbowed past the others to take some for himself. Michelle opened her mouth to ask why the Martins had stocked that but hadn’t bothered to take down the tapestry, before deciding that as long as her friends were happy, it didn’t matter.

Aaron stepped forward. Normally, he had a bit of a slouch and he tended to fade into the back of a group, content to do as others said, but here, in a kitchen, in his Domain, he straightened his back and shoulders, making him look half a head taller, standing as a king among paupers. Everyone instinctively moved to make way for him.

“Ingredients,” he said, and it came out as an order. “Lay out what we have on the table.” Michelle and Lucia hurried to gather their packs and empty the cupboards. “Cookware. On this end.” Charlotte and Roger scrambled to obey. “You two …” Sue and Jason stopped guiltily. “Wash your hands and boil water in this pot. Tonight, I will Cook.”

“What are you making?” Michelle asked.

He watched her and Lucia, fixating on specific items that looked particularly fresh or appealing, checking for signs of quality invisible to any of the others. “We will prepare a lamb and beef tenderloin stew with assorted Oriental vegetables, with a side of challah and French cheeses, followed by chocolate mousse with the finest cream you have ever tasted.”

They stared at him, awestruck.

“Everyone, wash your hands! Cutting boards, meat knives, here and here! Flour, eggs, sugar, honey, raisins, yeast, salt, olive oil, here. I’ll measure them out. Stirring fork. More boiling water!”

Something about him radiated pure inspiration, and they obeyed without question. He was like an orchestra’s conductor, coordinating everyone and giving instructions while simultaneously cracking eggs and measuring out exact weights without using a measuring cup. He was everywhere, somehow seeing over people’s shoulders a moment before they made mistakes and catching them, giving tips on correct slicing and heating techniques.

Once Sue and Jason had set several pots to boil, using all the oven’s burners on full to get it done quickly, Aaron shooed them out, directing them to find a dining table and set it. They nodded, bright-eyed, and hurried out on their mission.

The open doorway led to a child’s nursery, full of cribs, plushies, and assorted toys. Pentagram stars were painted on the walls and ceiling; a skylight showed the sky was turning dark purple, the full moon directly overhead. A music box on a dresser was playing Greensleeves, its quiet notes making their hair stand on end as they passed.

They pushed through the nursery into a banquet hall that looked like it had once been a mess hall built for a very large army. Three long dining tables filled the centre of the room, illuminated by a spotlight in one corner of the room.

“Should we find somewhere smaller?” Jason asked. “There are only seven of us; you could fit seven hundred in here.”

Sue shrugged. “I’m okay with it. Think of it as an indoor picnic.”

On the far wall was a row of cabinets. They went to investigate; inside were drawers full of screwdrivers, daggers, pinned butterflies, and finally cutlery and plates.

Jason kept glancing at the spotlight. “I can see why Michelle wants to sell this place,” he said. “I know I’m an Internet junkie, but imagine not having electricity. I hope there’s proper plumbing.”

“Yeah, sure,” Sue said absently. “Hey, Jason … when Michelle asked us to come here, I was thinking” she brushed against him “a step or two ahead of just having a sleepover. I’ve got something else on my mind, something fun I’d like to do with you later, in private?”

“Really?” he said. “Like what?”

She furrowed her eyebrows. “Seriously, Jason? A nubile young girl suggestively asks to go somewhere private with you, and you ask what she wants to do? I’m giving you two Heterosexuality Demerit points for that.”

“I know you pretty well,” he said. “If you wanted to mack on me, I’m pretty sure you’d just say it. Or, like, say it with body language.” He tried to flutter his eyelids, with limited success. “That was way too verbose. It sounded more like you wanted to make an elaborate double entendre and you’re really thinking of something completely unrelated.”

She poked out her tongue. “It’s not completely out of character,” she said. “But fine. You know how I’m into the occult?”

“I try not to encourage it,” he said.

She waved this aside. “I did my homework on this place. There’ve been paranormal events since it was founded. Various types of ghosts, mostly, but also less-substantiated rumours of zombies, skeletons, that sort of thing. Half the weird architecture is to make ley line resonance. This is a nexus for magic shenanigans.”

“Or as I like to call them, shen-shens,” he said, nodding. “You want to do a magic spell?”

“Something like that,” she said. “So, are you interested?”

“No,” he said honestly, “I don’t believe in ghosts, but if you need someone to help, I’ll do it.”

She pulled him into a hug and butted her head against his jawline. “Thanks, Jase.”

Back in the kitchen, Aaron had directed Roger and Charlotte to chop meat and vegetables. Charlotte looked at the two very sharp knives; seeing this, Roger deftly moved into her personal space in a way that made her instinctively step back, putting her in front of the bowl of batter, which Aaron had left unattended for the moment. Rather than admit she hadn’t meant to do that, she took the stirring fork and set to beating the batter. Aaron glanced back at them, shrugged, and took the other knife and began dicing the beef faster than Roger could slice it.

“We split cooking back at our place,” Roger said. “Mum’s got some funny ideas about nutrition. Where’d you learn all this, though? Older siblings?”

“No, I’m an only child,” Aaron said. Despite being so experienced, he paid close attention to the knife, mindful of the blade and careful to cut away from himself. “I learned how to cook from Aunt Beatrix. My parents hate her, they think she’s mad, so I used to go over after school all the time when I was in primary, and she’s obsessed with cooking. She spends about ten hours a day in the kitchen.”

“What’s wrong with your parents?” Charlotte asked. “That you’d avoid them like that?”

Aaron shrugged, his focus and his knife steady, picking his words carefully. “They are … overwhelming sometimes. They have Ideas about what their son should be like, and they get Upset when it doesn’t turn out that way. It’s not that big a deal, seriously. I think we’ll probably get along better after I move out for uni.”

She frowned. “That doesn’t sound healthy. Why don’t you try to get along better?”

He thought for a moment. “Because it’s a two-way street. What makes you think I’m the one being unreasonable about it?”

“I didn’t mean it like that,” she said, colouring. “It’s just, I really wouldn’t like being in that situation, and you sounded okay with it.”

“More resigned. Sometimes, things just suck, and you just have to put up with it.”

Over by the ovens, Michelle and Lucia were busy with the mousse. They’d assumed something like that would be very difficult to make, but the individual steps were actually quite simple once Aaron separated the egg whites and yolks for them. Lucia was whisking a bowl of batter, while Michelle was mixing gooey chocolate with butter, surreptitiously dipping her finger in and licking it clean from time to time. Michelle had tied her hair into a ponytail, but Lucia’s hair was frizzing out into a mane.

“I can’t tell you how much I needed this,” Michelle said.

“What, calories?” Lucia asked.

Michelle elbowed her. “Speak for yourself, snake hips. No, having someone else say what to do and what we’ll all eat.”

“I thought you liked giving orders,” Lucia said. “I’m not saying you’re bossy, but …”

“I like people to be coordinated,” Michelle said. “If nobody were running this show” she gestured around the room with her whisk “we’d be eating cookie dough and leathery sultanas right now. You have to have order, dear Lucy. But it’s exhausting having to be that person all the time.”

Lucia raised her eyebrows but said nothing.

“Hey, put those down. I’m not a tyrant. I let other people take charge or make their own decisions when they want. But sometimes, people need to work together, and sometimes they need some encouragement to do that. Don’t act like you’ve never walked into a group of fifteen people who all want to play soccer, but they just stand around in groups of five, kicking flat balls around, unless you come along and say we’re forming teams.”

“I said nothing,” Lucia said. “I’m not disagreeing or anything.”

“You’re doing it nonverbally.”

“Well,” Lucia said, “social situations call for roles, and they get filled, no matter who’s there. If two people walk into a room, whoever is taller is the tall one, and they’re in charge of getting things off high shelves, even if they’re both tall or both short. If there’s one girl in a room, all the boys will sniff after her, even if she’s” she cast around for a nicer word than ‘ugly’ “not the sort of girl any of them would normally be interested in. And if a leader is needed, whoever has the most initiative becomes the leader.”

“But not everyone is actually any good at being a leader,” Michelle insisted, stirring a little more forcefully than before. “If both of those people are short, even the taller one can’t get things off the top shelf. Besides, what if you are the one with the most initiative, and you don’t take charge, but one with the second-most initiative knows you have more? They just stand there, looking at you like a kicked puppy, wondering what you’re waiting for.”

“I think you’re not giving people enough credit,” Lucia said. “Maybe the short/tall thing was a bad example, because you can’t choose to be taller, but you can choose to be a leader, and you can grow into a role.”

“I can do that. You can do that. Anyone can do that. But do they?” Lucia said nothing. “Haven’t you ever been in class, and the teacher asks a question, and it’s about something they covered thirty seconds ago, it’s practically rhetorical, but nobody answers, and the entire room locks up? There are twenty or so kids in the room and at least half of them know the answer, but nobody says anything.”

“That’s a social thing. You don’t want to be the swot.”

“Put it down to whatever you want; it doesn’t change the fact that everyone’s time is wasted because nobody takes charge.”

“I guess,” Lucia conceded. “Is this why Aaron likes you so much? I don’t know him that well, but I get the impression he doesn’t like making his own decisions.” She paused and frowned. “But I also wouldn’t have thought he liked others making them for him.”

“Like I said, I’m not a tyrant. I don’t give orders, I give suggestions. I’m a catalyst. I don’t make him do anything he doesn’t want to do; I just help him decide on things faster than he would on his own. But it’s nice when someone else who knows what they’re doing takes point every so often.”

“And we’re a go,” Aaron said, bustling over to put ingredients into the stewpot. “One of you, keep stirring this. Mix this and these and put this on a low heat.”

“What should we do now?” Charlotte asked.

Aaron looked over at them with a critical eye at the stove, where various pots and pans were sizzling away. “We can handle this. Go check on the others, and we’ll finish up here. You can do extra washing up after.”

Charlotte and Roger nodded and set off through the opening into the nursery.

“Do you hear that?” he asked, slowing down to quiet his footfalls.

Charlotte tilted her head. “Them cooking?”

“A girl singing. I don’t know the song. It’s sad.”

They stood still, listening.

“Sorry,” Charlotte said, “I can only hear the wind.”

Roger frowned. It was definitely a person singing, and he couldn’t hear any wind. “Never mind. Let’s go.”