FROM THE PANTRY, SOMERS PEERED across the kitchen, trying to see what Hazard meant.

“You found what?”

“The bullet.”

That was all. Somers felt a surge of concern and irritation. Concern for Batsy Ferrell who had, it seemed, been shot at. And irritation for Hazard’s perpetual resistance to talking.

Forging a path through rotted sacks of meal and near-to-toppling shelves of canned goods, Somers cleared the pantry and crossed to where Hazard stood. His partner had his index finger in his mouth and was sucking absently on his finger. It was, for Somers, distracting to say the least. With an effort of will, he shoved certain thoughts--certain very specific thoughts, thoughts about the two times emotion and desire had threatened to spill over in his relationship with Hazard--and focused on the cabinet door.

The bullet looked like a nine millimeter, and it was buried halfway through the wood. “Good thing it was particle board,” Somers said, swinging the door shut. “Would you stop that?”

Hazard, his dark brows knitted together, managed to say, “I’m bleeding,” with his finger still stuck in his mouth.

That was classic Hazard, Somers thought. The big, hulking brute was a study in conflicts: massively muscles, bigger and meaner than Somers, and brilliantly analytical, he was also aggressive, short-tempered, and quiet bordering on silent. Even Hazard’s hair showed the strange alloy of temperaments: cut and parted in a conservative style, the dark hair was long, almost too long for regulations. Hazard must have sensed Somers’s study because he popped his finger out of his mouth, his pale skin mottling with a blush, and his eyes--the color of autumn corn, scarecrow eyes--grew hard and brittle.

“What?”

“Nothing. Let’s get some pictures. And let’s get the first aid kit before you give me an aneurysm sucking on your finger.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Somers let a smirk stretch his face. “You know exactly what it means, big boy.”

Hazard’s blush deepened, and Somers fought a laugh as he trotted out to the Impala.

They worked well together; the Upchurch case had made sure of that. Somers still felt uncertain of how Hazard saw their relationship. It had shocked Somers to no end that Hazard had accepted his invitation to become roommates, and he still wasn’t sure what, exactly, had been Hazard’s reason. Beyond that, Somers wondered what his partner thought of him. In the last few weeks, as Somers had begun repairing his relationship with his estranged wife, he had managed to bring his drinking under control. That, Somers was sure, had helped him gain some of his partner’s trust. But part of Somers still wondered whether Hazard believed he was a good detective. After all, Renard Upchurch had been Somers’s partner, and Upchurch had almost managed to get away with murder right under Somers’s nose.

Whatever Hazard’s feelings about Somers, though, he never showed them--he rarely showed any feeling, for that matter, which tended to drive Somers into trying to bait an emotion out of his partner. Today was no different; as they worked through Mrs. Ferrell’s house, taking pictures and measurements, digging the bullet free from the cabinet, exploring the overgrown brush closest to the house in hopes of spotting signs of a trespasser, Hazard remained characteristically silent and Somers did his best to break that silence.

When they’d finished, they knew little more than when they’d started. “We didn’t see any signs that someone had come near the house,” Somers said, squeezing Mrs. Ferrell’s bristly hands. “It’s dark, though, so it’s hard to tell. It was probably an accident. A hunter, maybe.”

“No accident,” Mrs. Ferrell said. This close, it was hard not to notice the smell of pickled cabbage that clung to her, mixing with the mustiness of old wool and unwashed hair. “They shoot. A hundred times, they shoot. And I see.”

“One,” Hazard said, his voice carrying the same quiet menace it usually did. “There was one bullet. One broken window.”

“A hundred times,” Mrs. Ferrell cried, her watery eyes fixed on Somers. “A thousand. They shoot like mad men. They line me up and shoot me with all the bullets in the world. The men, they want me dead. You know these men. I cry to the police. I tell them these men, they want me dead. And what do the police do?” She wrestled her hands free from Somers and turned them palm-up, as though she had no words for the Wahredua PD’s lack of help.

Somers had been hoping it wouldn’t come to this, but he let out a breath, brought up his best smile, and nodded. “We’ll head right over, Mrs. Ferrell. Can you tell me who you saw?”

Mrs. Ferrell sniffed again and, wordlessly, bounced her upturned palms.

Somers was willing to take that as a no, so he said, “They don’t want to kill you, but I’ll talk to them, make sure they understand that they have to be careful. We’ll see what we can do about the window.”

“Window.” She sniffed. “Cardboard. Duct tape. But they shoot. You are my boy, so you must understand: they shoot me dead.”

In silence, Somers and Hazard trudged back to the Impala. As they pulled into the thick mud of the dirt road, Hazard turned his scarecrow eyes on Somers.

“What?” Somers said.

“You want to explain that?”

“You saw. Somebody shot out her window.”

“She kept calling you her boy.”

The Impala slogged through the muddy trenches, headlights swishing across the wall of brush and old-growth trees. As the vents began to pump warmth into the car, Somers cracked his knuckles and shoved the tips of his fingers towards the heat. Without his hands on the wheel, the Impala jerked and stuttered into the night.

“What the hell are you doing?” Hazard said. He grabbed the wheel, straightening them out and guiding them back towards the state highway.

“I don’t know why she calls me that.”

“Bullshit.”

“I don’t. She’s done it every time I’ve gone out there. I didn’t know her when I was growing up. She’s not a family friend. Can you imagine my mother letting her anywhere near the house?”

From the dark flicker of anger on Hazard’s face, Somers realized that Hazard knew all too well. As boys, they couldn’t have come from more different backgrounds: Emery Hazard from a working class family, John-Henry Somerset from privilege and prestige. Grace Elaine, Somers’s mother, had been a socialite, a philanthropically-minded homemaker--she had styled herself, perhaps not fully consciously, after the late Princess Di--and, most importantly, as poisonous as a copperhead and twice as nasty. More than once, Hazard’s mother had been on the receiving end of that poisonous sting, and Somers knew that much of it had been because Hazard had been the only openly gay boy in town.

“Will you take the wheel, please?”

“My hands are cold.”

“So who owns this shooting range?”

“Well, it used to be Manly Newton, about a hundred years ago.” Somers flexed his fingers, grateful for the warmth after the biting cold of Mrs. Ferrell’s house. “You heard of him?”

“Newton Park. And isn’t there a Newton settlement about twenty miles south of here? Kind of a failed railroad town, something like that.”

“Yeah, that’s him. He’s the one that had the big money. He’d made it on the railroad. Back before everything got consolidated into the Missouri Pacific lines, some of the rails were Newton’s. And he built that settlement, mostly trying to make himself a place for the trains to take on water and food without coming through Wahredua. It didn’t work, though, and the settlement boarded up pretty fast.” Somers hesitated. His fingers were plenty warm now, but he liked watching Hazard steer from the passenger seat. His partner did it with the same cool calculation that he did everything. And it didn’t hurt that Somers liked--just under the surface of his thoughts--watching the shift of muscle in Hazard’s hand and forearm.

“So he built the house, but he’s dead. Who lives there now?”

“He didn’t just build the house. We’re pretty far out of Wahredua, but this is all still part of the city limits because Manly Newton wanted his house to be inside Wahredua. It had something to do with how he wanted the electricity run out to his house, I don’t really know. So now Wahredua has this weird tail of land that runs out to the house.”

Hazard frowned; the only light was the glow from the dash, and it uncovered only pieces of his face, leaving the rest buried in darkness. Then lightning cracked along the sky, flaring purple-white, and the following darkness was accompanied by thunder. Over the rumble, Hazard said, “What about Mrs. Ferrell’s property?”

“What about it?”

“Is it inside city limits?”

“I don’t know. Never really thought about it. Anyway, the next Newton--I think his name was Roger--sold the house. That was back in the fifties. It traded hands a bunch of times until it sold for a fraction of its price a couple of years ago. This time, it went to a marketing group, and they’ve fixed it up pretty well. They use it for corporate retreats, training events, team-building exercises.”

“Shooting guns is a team-building exercise? And will you take the wheel, already?”

“Shooting guns did a hell of a lot for us, didn’t it?”

Hazard just grunted. After another moment, he said, “How do you know all this?”

“About Windsor?”

“What the hell is Windsor?”

“That’s the name of the house. My parents were pretty good friends with Roger’s kids.”

“The Newtons?” Hazard frowned. “Why does that sound familiar?”

“Newton Mortuary, where they’ve got the ME set up.”

Hazard grunted, but the furrow between his eyes didn’t disappear.

“And,” Somers said with a sigh, “because the current mayor of Wahredua is Sherman Newton. Roger’s oldest son. He and his family were over enough to tell plenty of stories about the place. Lots of ghost stories, you know. It’s one of those American-Victorian monstrosities, kind of something you’d imagine in a Lovecraft story.”

The silence was so long that Hazard’s voice, when he spoke, sparked a small shock at the base of Somers’s spine. “You’ve read Lovecraft?”

“Jesus Christ. I went to college, all right? Could you try to remember that?”

All Somers got, though, was a grunt and then, “Take the wheel.”

“Why? You’re doing a great job.”

“Take the damn wheel.”

“My hands are still a little chilly.”

“If you don’t grab the wheel right now, I’m going to break every one of your fingers, and then you’ll be wishing they were just cold.”

With a laugh, Somers grabbed Hazard’s hand. The flesh was slightly colder than his own, the fine black hairs on the back of the hand tickling Somers’s palm. He peeled Hazard’s fingers away from the wheel and held onto the other man’s hand, his thumb making small circles on the cool flesh, until Hazard, with a string of swears, jerked his hand free. Somers laughed again, taking hold of the wheel and guiding them down the bumpy road.

“You’re an asshole.”

“So we’re going to talk to whoever’s using the house.”

“You’re a real asshole.”

“And I’ll call up the marketing firm and let them know we’ve had some more problems.”

Hazard was shaking out his hand, as though Somers’s touch had physically hurt him, and seemed ready to remind Somers, again, about his quality of being an asshole. Instead, he asked, “Someone’s there over Thanksgiving?”

“Could be an executive’s retreat. Could be some marketing big whig just brought his family out here.” Another roll of thunder filled the car, and Somers glanced up at the darkness. If it rained, Hazard might very well kill him. If it snowed--well, Hazard would figure out something even worse than murder. “We’ll make it fast, see if anyone was near Mrs. Ferrell’s house, remind them about keeping all the firearms inside the range, and jet back to town. You’ll get back fast enough to eat tacos or spaghetti or grilled cheese, whatever Nico made you.”

“He’s not making grilled cheese, he’s making--” Hazard cut off.

“Come on.”

“Screw you.”

“You aren’t going to tell me anything? The only things I know about you two are what I see firsthand in the apartment. And,” Somers added, a suggestive smirk growing on his face, “what I hear firsthand in the apartment.”

It was hard to tell in the darkness, but Somers was pretty sure that Hazard was blushing. Furiously.

“Most guys talk about their girlfriends. They talk about their dates. They even talk about the ones that aren’t so serious.”

Hazard didn’t reply. He had turned his gaze to the darkened glass, as though studying something in the bluish reflection generated by the dash’s light.

“Nothing?”

When no response came, Somers shrugged and let it drop. There would be another time. And another. And eventually, no matter how many tries it took, Somers would gain Hazard’s confidence about something that didn’t have to do with a dead body.

Thunder boomed, rattling the windows in the car, but still no rain fell. The road began to even out, and Somers pressed lightly on the accelerator. As they hurried down a smoother stretch of gravel, the headlight cut cups of light out of the darkness. On both sides, the growth was thick; choked with shadows, the dense forest looked more like a jungle, alien and forbidding. This would not be a good place to get stranded, Somers thought, easing up slightly on the accelerator. Or, for that matter, to get lost.

Getting lost, though, was not much of a possibility so long as he remained on the road. There was only one turn before the reached the main highway, and that turn led to Windsor. The gravel turned to brick--honest-to-God red brick, although crumbling at the edges and choked with weeds in places--and a moment later, the Impala’s tires clattered over a bridge.

Hazard, who was glancing out the window, said, “Running high.”

Somers spared the river a quick glance. The Petty Philadelph, which in a hot summer might not be more than a foot deep, now ran so full and so fast that it brushed the bottom of the bridge. The structure vibrated under the force of the water, causing the Impala to shiver as they drove across. It was a short stretch of water, but it was bad enough that Somers was already dreading the return crossing.

The brick drive ran through fields of autumn grass on either side, high enough to block their sight, the long stalks hissing against the glass. After what felt like an eternity, the bricks split, heading in two directions. Somers kept to the right; he’d never been here before, and he ought to have told Hazard that, but Hazard had been a dick about the Lovecraft reference, and the sting hadn’t faded. It was one thing to accept that Hazard was quite a bit smarter than Somers--it was another thing entirely, Somers thought, to rub it every chance he got.

And then the Impala shot past an invisible line, and the fields of autumn grass dropped away to be replaced by a trimmed, dormant lawn. Windsor sprang into view, floating spotlight clouds: turrets and towers, sharply pitched roof with a row of dormers, skinny windows of leaded glass, all of it rising, clutching at the moon with black fingers like a castle built on a distant cliff.

“Holy shit,” Hazard muttered.

“Holy shit,” Somers agreed, forgetting his initial plan to pretend he had been here.

The brick drive curled to the front of the house, and Somers pulled to a stop. As the two men emerged from the Impala, thunder crackled again; Somers squinted up at the sky, blinded by Windsor’s lights. He couldn’t see a thing, but a moment later, a fat raindrop struck him right in the eye. Blinking it away, Somers took the lead, trotting up the steps towards Windsor’s double doors. If he didn’t hurry, if it started raining--well, he’d rather not die tonight.

Up close, Windsor’s details were even more stunning, although shadows cast by the spotlights still hid much of the work. The leaded windows were ornately detailed with flowers--Hazard would probably know what they were--and geometric designs. On the door, more of the big flowers were carved into the wood--delicately detailed carvings that must have cost a fortune. Somers hesitated, surprised to hear the hiss of gas, and realized that the lamps at the door were genuine gaslights.

“What are you waiting for?” Hazard said, pounding on the doors with one fist.

Somers leaned forward, studying the doors with greater attention. Around the flowers, in a cramped margin, men and women paraded: some wearing dresses, some wearing what Somers took for turn-of-the-century suits. Then the gaslights flickered, and the shadows changed, and then Somers had lost track, and it seemed like the men weren’t where they’d been before, and he couldn’t seem to tell where the dresses ended and the suits began.

Before he could study the carving further, the doors swung open. A stunning red-headed woman stood there, wearing a gown. Not a dress. Not a skirt. A gown, like something that had been meant to be worn at a ball or a gala or an opera box: lace and gold-thread embroidery and a square of stunning opal buttons that looked like rainbow fire in the gaslights.

The woman screamed, hands going to her cheeks. “He’s dead, he’s dead. He’s in the house and we’ll all be killed.”

Then, without further ado, she fainted.