In less than an hour, I had turned out pans of hot biscuits and honey-nut muffins. I sent Val into town for extra ingredients, and he came back, packing enough groceries to feed an army. My return to the kitchen, to my routine and my comfort zone, settled my haywire emotions. Seeing the Valkyries finding consolation in my food, when they hadn’t found it anywhere else, reminded me why I liked baking in the first place. Maybe some of the Valkyries were Helen’s agents, but surely most of them weren’t. Right then, they were merely a bunch of women suffering a horrible tragedy, and I knew something about how they felt. The food was my gesture, my attempt, to bring them comfort. And I thought the emergency responders might appreciate having a decent meal, too.

After breakfast, I cleaned the kitchen and started on pans of peanut-butter cookies, oatmeal bread for sandwiches, and sweet-potato biscuits waiting to be stuffed with ham and spicy mustard. Skyla and Val occasionally came in to check on me, but mostly they stayed occupied with cleaning and moving furniture. Keeping busy turned out to be a crucial coping mechanism for everyone.

Near sundown, Skyla joined me in the kitchen to talk while I prepared for dinner. Sweat and soot matted her hair, and dirt smudged her face. Her shoulders sagged. “I don’t think Tori went to Helen after she burned the Aerie,” she said, prefaced by nothing.

Crouched before the oven door, I turned and peered over my shoulder at Skyla. A shadow moved in the doorway, and Val stepped into the room. He was also dirty and disheveled, but he bore it gracefully. He took a seat across from Skyla and turned his chair to watch me. Clad in elbow-length mitts, I reached into the oven, towed out a huge, hot pan of lasagna, and plopped it onto the counter.

“Then where do you think Tori went?” I asked and leaned over to peel back the lasagna’s foil cover. Garlic-and-basil-infused steam rose up and enveloped my face. I inhaled and let the breath out in a satisfied sigh.

“She’s doing this on her own,” Skyla said. “I just have to prove it.”

Val’s brow furrowed as he studied Skyla. His gazed shifted to me, and he shrugged as if to say he didn’t know what Skyla meant.

“How are you going to do that?” I asked.

“I have an idea, but it’s a little crazy.” Skyla toyed with her placemat and gave me an uneasy look.

Her discomfort worried me. She never hesitated, never second-guessed herself.

“Crazier than everything else that’s happened?” I asked.

Skyla shrugged. You be the judge, her expression said. “You remember how I told you that the Valkyries chose which soldiers died in battle so they could bring them to join Odin’s army?”

“Yes?” I glanced at Val, but he shook his head.

“Right.” She nodded. “So, the Valkyries have the ability to commune with the spirits of the dead.”

I held up my hand. “Skyla, if you’re going to tell me you see dead people, I think my head might explode.”

Skyla bit her bottom lip and held it between her teeth, saying nothing.

“Do you see dead people?”

“One,” she said. “I saw one.”

“Who?” Val asked, accepting Skyla’s claim with alacrity.

“It was one of the women who had died in the fire. Her name was Ariel.” Skyla stopped. Her gaze dropped to the floor, and her chin wobbled under the effort of restraining her tears. “I found her body after we hacked our way into the dorm. Smoke inhalation, I guess, because she looked untouched.”

Val and I held ourselves rigid, waiting for her to finish her story. I wanted to put my arms around her and offer consolation, but the stiffness of her shoulders seemed to rebuff sympathy.

Skyla cleared her throat and continued. “Anyway, I had carried her outside and was on my way back in when this… this glow… this apparition appeared in front of me. It freaked me out at first, but it took form and spoke my name. Then she disappeared. I knew it was her, but how could it be?”

Skyla raised her eyes and looked into mine, pleading for me to believe her. I offered what I hoped looked like an encouraging smile.

She let out a breath and squared her shoulders. “I’m going to try to speak to her again. Ask her if she knows anything.”

“Why would she know anything the living don’t?” Val asked. “If Tori was behind this attack, then those who died must have been ignorant of her intentions, or else they would have been better prepared to defend themselves.”

“Maybe she saw who started the fire,” Skyla said. “Maybe she saw someone else or overheard something in her final moments. She would have been a lot closer to the action than the women who survived. Besides, I’ve talked to every sister here, and either they don’t know what happened, or they are refusing to talk to me because they think I’m an outsider.”

“Okay,” I said. “It’s no crazier than anything else that has happened lately. How does contacting the dead work?”

“I’m not sure,” Skyla said. “I want you to help me search the library. I’m hoping one of those books has something helpful.”

Val shook his head and shrugged. “Sorry, but why don’t you just ask one of the sisters?”

Skyla snorted. “I already told you they won’t talk to me, especially not about proprietary things like communing with the dead.”

A door slammed somewhere in the house, and the mutterings of distant voices carried into the kitchen. Moments later, the Valkyries filed in through the kitchen, filling the room with chatter and their plates with lasagna. Their sudden arrival interrupted our conversation, so Skyla, Val, and I used the distraction to slip away to the library, located in the basement of the main house. The stone foundation and ceiling had protected it from the fire, and a heavy wooden door with an old-fashioned lock protected it from intruders—like us.

“Damn.” Skyla worked the handle as if it might give in if she antagonized it enough.

“Val,” I said. “Can’t you blip in there and open it from the other side?”

“I’ve never seen inside the library before. I have to have seen a place, be able to hold a vision of it in my mind, or I have to follow someone else’s path. Why don’t you just go ask for the key?”

“Who even has it?” said Skyla.

“The librarian would be my guess,” I said.

“Well, duh. But who is the librarian?”

“Tori?” Val asked.

The mention of her name inspired a memory from my previous visit, when Tori had told me my lack of knowledge about my ancestry was appalling. “No. Tori mentioned her to me once. Her name is…” The weight of the name pressed on my tongue, but my brain didn’t want to cough it up. “Elaine… Emily… Emma?”

“Embla?” Skyla asked. “There’s a woman here named Embla.”

“Yes. I think that’s it.”

“How do we get the key from her?”

Val’s face screwed into a sardonic expression. “Uh, what if you just asked her for it?”

“What if she wants to know why?” Skyla asked.

“I could tell her I want to research Sol’s lineage,” I said. “Tori suggested I should do that last time I was here.”

“What if Embla insists on coming with us?” Skyla asked. “What if she wants to supervise your research and help you find things? We can’t have her looking over our shoulder. We can’t risk letting anyone find out what we’re up to until we know who we can trust.”

“I still don’t understand why you changed your mind about Tori being Helen’s agent,” Val said.

“First,” Skyla said, “we asked Inyoni, as she was dying, if Tori was the one she had been talking to. It was hard to tell, but it seemed she was trying to tell us it was someone else. Also, Tori could have easily had Solina killed here at the Aerie rather than having Skoll follow her out to some remote location on the other side of the country, but she didn’t. I think Tori ran for other reasons. Maybe she’s running from Helen’s spies inside the Aerie.” Skyla narrowed her eyes. “I’m trying to stay open to all possibilities.”

“So, we’re back to figuring out how we get the key,” I said. “If Embla even has it in the first place.”

“We need to search her room,” Skyla said.