She remembered the figure in the road, just before the shell came down, looked in that direction. There was nothing but a crater now. She blinked her eyes free of grit, crawling clear of the lorry. “Pim?” she called. Fear and incipient pneumonia gripped her lungs.

After a small, horrible pause, Pim’s voice answered. “I’m here.” Her skirt was soaked and filthy, her face absolutely colorless.

“Are you all right?” Laura asked. “Mary? Fouquet?” She couldn’t hear or see anyone but themselves, and wasn’t that strange? She knew the night teemed with people, with men, with armies. But it felt as if she and Pim were standing alone at the edge of the world. Perhaps it was shock.

“I’m all right.” Pim squinted, trying to make out Laura’s face in the darkness. “Except my ears are ringing. You?”

Laura felt a knifing pain when she breathed. She wasn’t all right, but she’d do for the moment. “Mary?”

“Still alive,” said Mary, her voice jagged with adrenaline as she emerged out of the wet darkness. “But the lorry’s never moving again.”

Laura could just make out the engine smoking against a patch of lighter sky. “Where’s Fouquet?” But then her eye fell on him, huddled in the shadow of the smashed lorry, only half underneath. Dead indeed, with a blown-off piece of the engine halfway through his body.

Pim made a little sound, her knuckles against her mouth. Laura, limping, went across, checked his pulse for form’s sake, and covered his face with his hat. Mary was looking from the road to the wreck to the eastern sky. Pim was standing shocked, her face a mess of mud and tears.

“We must walk,” Mary said. “It’s too cold to stand. Not too far to Couthove now. We’ll send men back for Fouquet’s body. Let’s get on, Iven. Shaw, pull yourself together.”

Laura coughed, shallow with pain.

“Mary, Laura won’t make it; she’s sick.”

“Where do you suggest, then—” began Mary, when Laura broke in.

“What’s that?”

Pim and Mary turned. Far across the field, a gleam, quickly gone. Something like a light in a window. Laura squinted. Thought she saw, if she concentrated, a deeper darkness against the sky. The vague shape of a building. A farmhouse, maybe? It had begun to rain again, the soft remorseless spring rain of Flanders. Laura could already feel it soaking through the seams of her clothes. “We could ask for shelter until morning,” said Laura, eyes on that distant light.

The road was still empty, and silent. Where is everyone? This is a war zone. Pim should have six men at least vying to carry her, literally, to safety. But there was no one. Just the three of them and the dead man lying alone.

Mary looked torn. She gazed eastward again, toward Couthove. Then she glanced at Laura, seemed to give herself a mental shake. “No point in us all getting pneumonia.” They set out stumbling across the wet fields, toward that elusive light. It was cold, the mud was sticky. Laura’s limp worsened.

“There,” said Mary. Laura forced herself to look beyond Mary’s straight back, blinking ice from her eyelashes. Her heart sank. She could make out the jagged line of a roof, nothing more. Had they come upon a ruin? Flanders was covered with ruins. A gleam from the changeable sky showed gold lettering on the front of the building—Hôtel du Roi, it said. A ruined hotel, Laura thought. Just like a hundred others. Abandoned in the early days of the war.

“Well,” Mary said grimly, “hopefully we can find a corner that’s out of the wet, at least. Or if not, we’ll leave you, Iven, and go for help.”

Laura made no reply. They struck a chipped cobbled drive, silvered by the rain and glancing moonlight, murder on Laura’s leg. And then, they came to a door. “Won’t it be locked?” said Pim between chattering teeth.

Without a word, Mary turned her shoulder and pushed.

Laura was expecting damp chill and the smell of mold. Instead she felt a rush of warmth. Thought it was a by-product of her fever. Realized it wasn’t. “Oh, lord,” said Pim. They’d walked out of the rain into warmth. Into not a ruin, but a foyer.

The room—no, a bar, smelling of wine—was lit entirely with firelight. At first glance, all Laura saw was gilt: on cornices and chandeliers, glimmering in the low light. Then she saw the men. Soldiers in drab and khaki and blue. They were sitting around tables, their heads close together, faces softened with the firelight, drinking. Not a single head had turned at their entrance. Everyone was watching a man standing at the far end of the room.

This man wore a shabby civilian suit. He’d a sharp jaw, arching bones. Bow-curves of dissipation gouged lines round his mouth. He was playing a violin, flawlessly. Silky, grave, strangely familiar, the music poured like water from between his fingers and seemed to banish everything outside itself. Even the rustle of Laura’s strained breathing was lost as the room filled like a cup with melody.

Laura, Pim, and Mary stood transfixed. When the last notes died away, there was nothing in the room for three heartbeats but stunned silence. Then a roar of acclamation. The player bowed. Sweat stood out on his face. “Please. I hope you enjoy yourselves tonight. Drinks, anyone?”

That got him another roar, as he put his violin in a cracked leather case. His amused gaze flickered over the crowd and paused at the three women, standing soaked and mystified by the door. For the briefest instant, he wore no expression at all. Then a smile lit his face. With a tilt of his head, he indicated an empty table and then went off in the direction of the bar. The room filled with murmuring talk, laughter, calls for more wine. Laura, Pim, and Mary drifted to the table, looking around in exhausted bemusement.

Illicit drinking was as old as armies; secret bars dotted the forbidden zone, although Laura had never heard of one so—grand. Surely she ought to have heard of this place? She’d never imagined anything like it. She wanted to be wary, but the air was too warm and too mellow with talk, the scent of good wine was too delightful. She felt like a storm-tossed boat that had slipped, unexpectedly, into harbor. “Christ, this is more like it,” said Mary.

Laura agreed silently. The music still echoed, somewhere, in the bones of her feverish face.

No one had called to them when they entered, and no one turned to look when they sat down. That was strange. Women were rare as hens’ teeth, and women who spoke English in constant demand. But the room was gripped with that easy, delightful kind of drunkenness that makes people idle and drowsy and contented. Perhaps that was what kept the men where they were, murmuring with their heads close together.

The musician crossed the room, paused to speak to another table, made a joke that set them all to laughing. Laura studied him. It was not an ugly face, although its bones were sharp under the skin, and he’d the mobile mouth of an actor. But his eyes were not the same color. One was dark, like a well dug deep. The other was green as peridot, and shone.

He caught her eye and came across. “Seldom do I have guests so lovely,” he said. Laura could not quite place his accent. “I’m called Faland. What brings you here tonight?”

“Accident,” said Mary. “A bomb fell on our road. Our lorry was disabled, and the driver killed. We should like something to eat, Monsieur. And a place for the night.”

A line, faint as thread, showed between Faland’s brows. “A fortunate coincidence.” Was there an odd note in his voice? “That led you straight to my door.” His strange gaze didn’t seem to look directly at you, but caught you sidelong, piercing. “Supper. Of course. Straightaway.” The eyes ghosted over Laura, returned. “Are you well, Mademoiselle?”

“Nothing a bite and a drink won’t fix,” said Laura. The musician was carrying glasses and a bottle. He smiled, laid out the glasses, and poured the wine. Laura had to sit on her hands so she wouldn’t seize it and drink it off like a savage.

Unexpectedly Pim said, “Monsieur Faland, why are all those men looking in that mirror?” Pim was staring across the room, at a dark mirror behind the bar. Several of the men were clustered around the glass, peering. Laura hoped there wasn’t a naked girl behind it; poor Pim would be shocked.

Faland’s eyes lit with unholy laughter, as though he’d caught her thought. But he answered Pim courteously. “Just a superstition, Madame. One of the attractions of my establishment.”

As Faland spoke, one of the men turned away from the tarnished mirror, the tracks of tears clear in the grime on his face. Laura frowned. Pim looked as she had before the Parkeys’ séance. Eager. Curious. “What superstition, Monsieur?”

“Why,” he replied, lightly, “that the mirror will show you your heart’s desire.” He bowed. “Enjoy your wine.”

“And supper,” called Mary, picking up her glass, as Faland slipped away.

“I would avoid that mirror, Pim,” said Laura. “It’s probably obscene.”

Pim said nothing. Mary lifted her glass and toasted Laura and Pim. They all drank. The wine was glorious. Like getting hit in the face by an ocean wave; it was a shock, then a pleasure, then a numbness. Laura’s headache receded.

One glass became two, and then Laura realized that she’d lost count. Dinner never appeared, but it didn’t seem to matter. Faland’s smile was delightful, his supple voice raised from every corner. Laura, head full of wine, thought vaguely, He doesn’t carry it the way the rest of us do. This place. These years. Why is that, I wonder?

A madman, perhaps.

She wasn’t sure how much time had passed before she found Faland sitting beside her. She was startled. She hadn’t seen him cross the room. But he was there, rolling an empty glass between long fingers. “It’s Laura, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” said Laura. When had she told him her name?

“Do you like the wine?”

“Yes,” she said. She was so warm, the knife-edges of the world all blunted.

He refilled her glass deftly. “And you were wounded?”

He’d noticed, of course. How could he not? “I was.”

“Brave heart,” said Faland. “But surely you would stay home after that, in the arms of your family. Or are you so wild for adventure?”

“No,” she said. A hairline crack ran now through Laura’s enjoyment. There was something in his face, almost too subtle to notice. Malice? His sidelong stare seemed to see everything. The ghosts that Agatha Parkey swore she trailed: her mother, her father, her brother. The hope and long-denied despair that had dragged her back across the ocean. He seemed to see it all, to catalogue it, even to be laughing at it, in some secret place.

Didn’t he have patrons to serve? Pim was nowhere to be seen. Mary had put her head down and gone to sleep. Trying to turn the force of his gaze, Laura said, “Have you ever considered leaving Flanders? A man with your talent—” She fell silent, staring past Faland’s shoulder.

Standing in the middle of the room was the figure she’d seen in the road, the figure that had prompted her, half-instinctively, to cry out. It was the watcher from the gangplank in Halifax. The face from her dreams. Her mother with glass in her eyes, glass jutting from her body.

The glow of the wine vanished. Laura stumbled to her feet, backing away. She was wet, hungry, tired, ill.

Faland shook his head, as though he’d understood something that vexed him. Then Laura blinked and the figure was gone. She stood panting, swaying on her feet. Lightly, Faland said, “You could stay here awhile. It would do you good, I think. You could stop being afraid.”

“I’m not afraid.”

He didn’t dignify that with a response. He’d seen her staring in horror at nothing. Laura set her jaw. Madness stalked the Western Front, but she would not, could never, succumb. She was the steady one when others lost their heads. She must concentrate on what she’d come for: to learn what had become of Freddie. “I can’t stay. I have things to do.”

“Do you?”

Did she? Why was she in Flanders, really? To torment herself with the—

Across the room, Pim screamed. She was staring into the mirror over the bar, her expression reflected in the glass raw with equal parts hunger and horror. Laura didn’t think even a great obscenity would put that look on her face. “Pim—”

Faland had turned as well, almost impatiently, but then his shoulders stiffened. Laura could see in profile his lips pursed in a soundless whistle. But there was nothing to see but a woman, her golden hair coming down, looking into a mirror. “What does she see?” demanded Laura, already making her stumbling way across the room.

He didn’t answer; she didn’t know if he followed. Mary didn’t stir, her head still pillowed on her folded arms. The mirror itself glimmered, black with tarnish in spots, spider-webbed with cracks in one corner. Laura squinted into the depths but could see nothing that would have prompted Pim to—

A face, reflected in the mirror, swam into focus as she walked closer. It wasn’t hers.

Then she thought her heart would stop, because it was Freddie.

Freddie with eyes hollow and blank. Freddie with white threaded through the russet of his hair. Freddie with his expression strangely dim, puzzled. A reflection that wavered, as though her brother were caught in the tarnished glass.

She knew it was just a figment. Some sort of hypnotic suggestion. Faland had said she’d see her heart’s desire, and he’d meant it literally. It was his voice working on her brain, along with the dimness, and the wine, and her fever. She knew. And still she turned to look behind her. No power on earth could have kept her from looking.

And of course he wasn’t there. Just a sea of men, drowsy, with—

No. There. For an instant she could have sworn she saw russet hair, straight shoulders, haunted eyes. His name came tearing from her throat. “Freddie!”

But he was already gone, vanished between tables, between men, between shadows. He’d never been there at all.

She tried to follow anyway. Came up instantly against people dazed and stupid with wine, came up against her own drunkenness and doubt, her cramping leg. Found herself pushing like a woman in a nightmare, not even sure what she was looking for. There were so many doors. The room was ringed with doors. Which door? Take the right door, she thought confusedly, and she’d find herself in a different world, she’d find herself back in Halifax, before the end of everything. She clawed her way out of the sodden crowd.

Fetched up against a person who caught her by the shoulders. “Gently, Mademoiselle,” said Faland. “You are hallucinating, feverish, you are not yourself.”

“My brother— I saw my brother.”

He didn’t let go. “That damned mirror. I’m sorry I said anything about it. You are very ill, you know.”

She pulled away, fighting for her balance. “No, I saw him. In the room. Not just in the mirror. I saw him.”

His face expressed nothing but puzzled concern. “Could your brother be here tonight? By coincidence? Forgive me, but why would you have to chase him? He’d come to you, surely.”

Of course he’d come to her. If he could. He wasn’t there. He was dead, and there was no such thing as ghosts. “No,” she whispered. The fight went out of her. “He couldn’t be here tonight.”

Faland’s face softened. “Then I am so sorry, Mademoiselle.” He offered her an arm. “I shall take you back to your companions. You should sleep. You should stay. You are in no condition to endanger—”

Endanger? His words reminded her of Pim, and she looked up. Pim was still standing in front of the tarnished mirror, utterly still, an expression of horrified longing on her face. “What’s wrong with my friend? What did she see?”

Faland’s green eye glittered with firelight, but the dark eye had no reflection. “It is often illuminating, to see your heart’s desire. But it is not always pleasant. You might have just discovered that yourself. Come, I will take you to her.”