Epilogue
The room was bright with sunshine, the curtains moving in the gentle autumn breeze from the valley below. A black marble clock ticked on the mantelpiece, quietly punctuating the sound of insects and birds that floated in from outside.
Alex lay, half-asleep, in the big Victorian bed. He remembered that it had been his and Xander’s bed for years, and Homer Bencliffe’s before then; but that was a long time ago. He took a slow, deep breath. The room smelled different from their bedroom in the carriage house; older, deeper; all that wood and wool and silk after 180 years. Without opening his eyes, Alex knew that everything in the room was the same, the way it had been when he and Xander first explored it, pulling off the dust covers and poking into drawers. He smiled, or perhaps simp
