The ice comes in sideways. I can barely see the gate from the taxi window, just iron and stone and the shape of something enormous beyond it — Caldwell House, rising out of the storm like it was always there and always will be. The driver doesn't get out to help with my bag. I don't blame him. I drag my single suitcase through six inches of slush and tell myself this is fine. This is a job. Jobs save you. Three months of unpaid rent. That's what's riding on this. My name is Sera Voss. I'm twenty-seven, I have a teaching degree I can't use and a reference letter from a family in Bristol who moved to Singapore, and I am about to become the live-in nanny for a man I've never met, in a house that took forty minutes to reach from the nearest town. The agency called it a "private estate position." The agency called a lot of things a lot of things. Mrs. Prout opens the door before I knock. She's compact and dry-faced, somewhere in her sixties, wearing a cardigan the color of old mustard. She looks at my suitcase like she's assessing a security risk. "You're late," she says. "The storm was forecast." "The roads were—" "I'll show you to your room." She gives me the rules while we walk. Seventeen of them, printed on laminated card, which she hands to me with the same energy a customs officer hands back a passport. No guests. No personal calls after nine. Meals for the child at seven, twelve, and six. Mr. Ashford's schedule is not my concern. The east wing is locked; deliveries go to the service door; the dog is not mine to feed. Then she stops at the top of the stairs and turns to face me. "Rule seventeen," she says. "Mr. Ashford does not enter the east wing. You do not ask why." She holds my gaze for exactly one second too long, then walks away. My room is at the end of the corridor. It's clean, cold, and shares a wall with the east wing. I can see the sealed door from my window — heavy oak, iron-banded, a symbol stamped into the frame I don't have a name for. An architectural mark, like a compass or a keystone, worn smooth with age. I unpack my three sweaters. I lie down. Outside, the ice storm presses against the glass like something trying to get in, and I tell myself the cold is why I can't sleep. Then, at 2 a.m., I hear it — a child crying, on the other side of the wall. ---