Then they heard the footsteps: first Mary, standing as straight as a sword, but with eyes that had seen more than she was willing to show. Beside her was Fiona, calmer, yet no less changed; her hands were empty, as though she’d had to leave something behind in the dining room – something invisible. Behind them came the sound of Vittorio, Sun and Wolfgang, slower and heavier, like men hauling blocks of marble on wooden sledges in a quarry.
Mary was the first to enter.
“The dining room is laid for breakfast. And laid completely, as though a very capable hand had decided in the middle of the night to conjure up the next morning through perfect table settings. Places have been set for His Eminence and for the women of our family, and not a single place for the other guests, as though Mr Rodriguez, Mr Taylor, Mr Kinney, Mr Honeycutt, Mr Bogdanow and Miss Bak had never sat at this table.”
Lito rose slowly.

“That is either a very bad joke, a very good threat or a metaphysical declaration of war. I should like to point out that I’m usually happy to be invited to breakfast, especially on islands that smell of coffee and honey. But when a house erases me from the seating arrangement after it has drugged me, I take that almost personally.”
Fiona came in and didn’t stop by Mary. She went over to the armchair where her chestnut-coloured cushion had been lying, touching it as if it were a kitten to be stroked. But the cushion didn’t purr.
“The napkins are freshly folded, the cups are positioned precisely, the knives lie on the correct side, and nothing reminds us that just a few hours ago a ‘bombé surprisè’ was burning there and we were talking about a dead woman. There are small plates for bread, butter, honey, figs, cheese, boiled eggs and sliced oranges, and everything is so tidy that it seems almost obscene. If someone had wanted to confuse us, they would have left a mess behind; whoever set the table there wants to claim that the night never happened.”

Justine slid off the card table. Her gaze shifted from Mary to Fiona.
“Just for the Cardinal and us Cleary women? That doesn’t just mean the other guests are to be wiped out, but that the four of us and His Eminence are to be restored to an old order. Valeria vanishes from the story, the suspicious Sun vanishes, the lovely Lito and the thieving Wolfgang vanish, even the dynamic trio of Justin, Brian and Emmett vanish, and what remains is a family at breakfast who would have woken up in the library.”
Meghan stood up as well. The mark of the slap was still visible on her cheek.
“That sounds like Drogheda, not Greece. You set the table for those who matter, and anyone who doesn’t belong stands outside, even if they’ve been shearing sheep all night. But here there’s something sick about it, because the excluded aren’t just uninvited—it’s as if they’d never even arrived.”

At that very moment, Brian, Justin and Emmett appeared in the doorway.
Brian and Emmett were still naked; Emmett had at least draped his rug around himself. Brian looked round the room.
“Before anyone asks: no, I haven’t reinvented myself out of boredom, and no, I don’t know who’s hidden the clothes I’d left scattered about in the yellow room. There was nothing of us in the yellow room – no shirt, no sock, no evidence that two grown men had sprayed semen there whilst devising an even more perfect theory about Bak’s guilt. The bed had been freshly made, the pillows were perfectly arranged, and the room smelled of soap, not of men.”
Emmett stepped up beside him. His hands were clasped, but his fingers were twitching.
“That’s true, and I’d like to emphasise that I’ve never been so shaken by walking into a tidy room. No clothes, no creases, no traces, no crumpled sheets and no signs of human presence. We didn’t find our things where they should have been.”
Justin stayed a little behind the two of them. He looked at Justine, then at Meghan, then at the card table.
“The other rooms are exactly the same. Red, Green, Blue, Yellow: freshly made-up, tidy, with no glass, no pillows out of place, no clothes, none of the little messes people leave behind when they sleep, talk or break down. It’s as if the rooms have swallowed up their history from today.”

Sun now entered, behind Vittorio and Wolfgang.
She looked calmer than most, but this was no silence; rather, it was a form of vigilance that refused to reveal itself through any visible sign of distress. Wolfgang stayed close to her, still in his shirt; his gaze was narrow and matter-of-fact, as if he were examining a crime scene that had deliberately disinfected itself.
Vittorio paused in the doorway.
He did not speak straight away. Everyone looked at him. Even Mary waited.
“Valeria Sebastienne is no longer in the courtyard. The body has vanished, the blanket has vanished, the lanterns are gone, and the stone floor has been mopped or cleaned in some other way. There’s no blood, no drag marks, no lost hair clip, no fingerprints, nothing that would prove to a police officer that a dead body had been lying there just a few hours ago.”

The library fell so silent that you could hear the wind against the window outside.
Justine was the first to breathe, as if she had to remind her body to do so.
“That’s impossible! I know I hate that word, because people usually use it when they’re just too lazy to look for the possibility. But I saw her, we all saw her – Sun was kneeling beside her, Vittorio was checking her pulse, the housekeeper brought the lanterns – and now there’s supposed to be nothing left out there?”
Sun stepped into the centre of the room.
“I knelt beside her. I smelled stone, blood, skin, the sea and something bitter that I couldn’t quite place at the time. If the courtyard is empty now, that’s not proof that I was lying, but proof that someone knew exactly which clues could incriminate me and others.”
Wolfgang nodded slowly.
“The courtyard is too clean. That’s the mistake people make when they work well and work too hard. An accident leaves a mess; a panicked perpetrator leaves dirt, but there’s a cleanliness there that looks like a staged scene. It’s not meant to suggest that someone has tidied up; it’s meant to suggest that nothing happened.”
Mary sat down on the chaise longue. Her eyes narrowed.
“So we have a breakfast that wipes out the guests, rooms that wipe out conversations and bodies, and a courtyard that has wiped out a corpse. I’m prepared to accept a great deal of malice in people, but this level of consistency demands either a very experienced hand or a power that is not of this world.”
Lito glanced briefly at Sun. Sun didn’t return his gaze, but she was listening.
“Kala said it was most likely a barbiturate. That implies intent – no curse, no ghosts, no frescoes carrying us through the house in our sleep. But I admit that a physical crime feels very eerie when, afterwards, someone polishes every room back to a better past.”

Fiona raised her head.

“Then we must stick to what can’t be scrubbed away. We’ve got headaches, memory lapses, dry mouths, and several people remember the same body. We’ve got a dining room set for a particular company, not the actual one, and we’ve got rooms that insist on an order which seems to contradict our memories.”
Emmett looked at her.
“And we have a lynx. I know that doesn’t sound particularly professional in a summary of the evidence, but I insist that it was outside the window, that it was real, and that it didn’t behave like a ghost. It didn’t accuse us, didn’t serve us, and didn’t set the table again; it just looked and moved on, which lends it a demonic aloofness that night.”
A scratching sound rang out against the pane.
Everyone turned towards the window at once.

The lynx was back.

This time it wasn’t standing calmly on the windowsill like some strange heraldic figure. Its head was slightly bowed, its ears turned back, and its fur was moving in the wind. Its eyes were yellow and flat in the moonlight. Blood clung to its muzzle.

Meghan let out a sound that was half a prayer and half a scream.
Justin instinctively took a step forward. The painter in him saw too much: the dark red against the pale fur, the wet line along its whiskers, the tiny movement of the tongue as the animal licked its lips. Jilib had returned, black and salty, but this time the reef was not far away. It lay on the other side of the pane like a lynx-coloured reflection of the black coral.
Sun slowly raised a hand, as if to stop the others from getting any closer.
‘Don’t open it – it could be an animal or a house spirit that’s angry! The lynx isn’t tame, and blood on its muzzle doesn’t automatically mean it’s human blood. But it does mean that there’s something out there – or was something – that it’s reached, and that the garden isn’t empty.’
Mary leaned forward, but she stayed behind the glass.
“A lynx with blood on its muzzle outside a window, whilst a body has vanished, defies all reason. If this house is capable of a more malicious prank, I wouldn’t want to encounter it. If it’s a sign, it’s in poor taste; if it’s a coincidence, coincidence is being very ambitious tonight.”

Wolfgang stepped up beside Sun, without touching her.
“It came from the strip of garden at the back. There might be a passageway there that we haven’t seen yet, or a slope, a trapdoor, a grotto – something an animal uses and a person familiar with the area could also use. If it has blood on it, it may have been at the spot where the body was moved, or at a spot where someone disposed of traces.”
Vittorio looked at the lynx, and his face suddenly took on a very boyish cunning, as if he were once again the little boy who used to want to catch lizards in the garden.
“As a child, I was told that lynxes see what people hide, which is why I wasn’t allowed to sneak a bite of sweets either, because you never knew whether a lynx might be watching from a shelf. I always took that to be a hunting metaphor, not theology. Tonight I fear the animal less than the fact that it looks into our window more honestly than some of the people in this house.”

The lynx opened its mouth.

This time it wasn’t a yawn. A dark sound came from it, brief, harsh, not loud enough to be a roar, but strange enough that the library seemed to recoil. Then it turned away and leapt from the parapet. For a moment, its back could be seen between the bushes, then only the trembling of a twig.
The pane was left behind with a small, bloody smear.
Justine stared at it.
‘At least now we have a clue that hasn’t vanished yet. Perhaps in ten minutes it too will have been wiped away, and then this house will tell us that there were never any lynxes, never any blood, never any Valeria Sebastienne, never any yellow, never any red, never any blue, never any green, and never a daughter who listened to her mother. Perhaps that is the real threat: not death, but oblivion.’

Meghan looked at her.

“I won’t forget what I said. I can’t promise that tomorrow I’ll be brave enough to make amends, but I won’t forget it. If this house clears out our rooms and erases our traces, then perhaps we must at least hold on to our memories.”
Brian exhaled slowly. He looked at Justin defiantly.
“I’ll admit that the house is currently trying to write a version of tonight in which we were never here, and I’m fundamentally opposed to being cut out of an infomercial. Especially when I’ve already paid for it with the worst headache of the century.”
Justin returned his gaze. The yellow between them hadn’t disappeared. But it had grown smaller because the lynx had stepped up to the window.
“I was in the yellow room, Brian. I don’t know everything, and I don’t want to know everything in a library, but I know enough not to believe that a freshly made bed erases the night. Images don’t disappear just because someone changes the sheets.”

Emmett swallowed. Then he raised his hand, as if he were asking for permission in class, even though no one here was a teacher.
“I’d like to apologise to you, even though I’ll probably still look very unheroic doing so. The yellow room was real; the theory about Sun is real, although even I can’t explain how the Korean woman could have moved us all, cleaned the house and then lain down beside us after dissolving the body and the evidence with sulphuric acid. The motive of covering up the crime remains, but the opportunity is lacking. If someone here is staging a ‘loop of forgetfulness’, then they’ve underestimated just how unpredictable people are – they remember the most embarrassing things of all.”
Fiona looked towards the door.
“Then the question is no longer whether something happened, but why someone is so desperate to claim it didn’t. A body disappears so that a murder can no longer be proven; a breakfast is laid out so that a society can be invented; rooms are cleaned so that confessions become dreams. This isn’t a ghostly realm; it’s demonic administration with malicious intent.”

Mary turned to her.

“You and your administration. But yes, this time the word fits. Someone here is keeping a register of reality and striking out whatever doesn’t fit the desired order. It reminds me unpleasantly of families, churches and empires, and I’ve watched all three long enough to learn their style.”
Vittorio now stepped fully into the library. Behind him lay the corridor, dark, open, waiting.
“We can’t stay in the house any longer, waiting for it to present us with a new version of the night. The police won’t arrive until daylight, or later if the sea is kind, and until then someone here will be erasing traces, arranging tables, tidying rooms and moving the dead. We need a place that this house doesn’t completely control.”
Sun looked at him.

“The chapel.”

Vittorio nodded.
“The chapel. It belongs to the villa, but it’s a separate building, and it belongs to my family, but is actually the property of the church. Candles are lit there for the dead, not for breakfast arrangements, and there we can pray for Dane before this night uses him too as a revenant’s tool against us.”
Meghan closed her eyes.
The name Dane wasn’t a knife this time, more like a weight she lifted of her own accord.
“I want to pray for him because he’s the only one this whole night who shouldn’t have to die again, just because we keep dragging his name into our guilt.”
Justine looked at her. Not reconciled. But alert.
“Then let’s go. I’m not going because the chapel is safe; in this house, safety seems to be nothing more than a curtain concealing dimly lit abysses. I’m going because Dane must not remain Valeria’s hostage, nor Mary’s legacy, nor your forbidden son, nor my lost brother.”
Mary drew her shoulders back. She looked towards the window, where the bloodstain on the pane had vanished.
“It’s pitch-black, the wind is howling, a predator is prowling outside the house, and someone has brought more order to things tonight than I’d care for. Under normal circumstances, I wouldn’t advise anyone to go into a chapel on a cliff right now. But since this night seems to be making a mockery of all normal caution, I’m not going to sit here like an old woman in a library, waiting for a breakfast that’s bound to turn me into a pillar of salt made of dried tears.”
Wolfgang walked to the door.

“We’ll go together – no one staying behind, no one going ahead, no one alone. I’ll keep an eye on the path, Sun will watch the flanks, and everyone else, please, act as if, for once, pride is less important than survival. If the lynx returns, we’ll make way for it; animals are more honest than humans, but their honesty has teeth.”
Brian looked down at himself, as if checking whether his nakedness was suitable for a chapel. Fiona handed him the chestnut-coloured cushion.
“I’ve always wanted to attend a night-time service after an anaesthetic, a vanished body, a cleaned-out sex room and a bloody lynx. Pittsburgh has given me a lot, but in this particular liturgical category it’s been a let-down. Justin, you’ll stay by my side, and Emmett will stay where I can see him for the time being, because this night apparently wipes out anyone standing around on their own looking too decorative.”
Emmett nodded with a dignity that was all the more touching precisely because he was wrapped in a rug.
“I won’t be standing around looking decorative or on my own, and I promise not to come up with any new theories about lesbian self-defence, barbiturates or predator-fur coats on the way to the chapel. I’d just like to point out that a prayer for Dane might be the first thing tonight that won’t immediately serve as a weapon for someone. If we manage that, God would surely answer it.”

Lito set his glass down.

“Then let us walk through this house, where the past is being rewritten, as people who are not yet ready to be defeated by it. And when I pray in the chapel, I shall also pray for the living, because tonight they are far more difficult to deal with than the living dead.”
Vittorio opened the door wide.
The corridor beyond was dark, and somewhere in the house the wind was banging against a shutter. From the dining room came the scent of freshly starched napkins, so peaceful that it was almost tainted. At the library window, the clean pane revealed nothing but blackness.

One by one, they stepped forward to leave the library in a solemn procession.
Mary and Fiona first, because in this family, old women always took the first step. Then Meghan and Justine, not hand in hand, but close enough that the darkness between them grew narrower. Lito followed them, alert, thirsty, warm-hearted and cautious. Brian, Justin and Emmett came behind them. Sun and Wolfgang flanked the group like two different kinds of vigilance. Vittorio brought up the rear.
They walked through the library door out into the corridor. Outside, beyond the window—now clean once more—darkness, wind and the chapel awaited them.