"We have done terrible things," Black Tarn whispers, so quiet you can barely hear her. "We have many enemies now, and rightly so. But maybe we can find something out there to help us, even if it will not help in the end."
You follow her from the breezeway into the cluttered and filthy living area—old sofa, wood-paneled walls, the smell of wet animals—through Black Tarn's kitchen with its hanging dried herbs (sage, parsley, others that don't go in food and don't have names) and its overflowing trash can. You've been focused on that Bane and haven't cleaned all week, which means nothing has been cleaned. Black Tarn kicks some cardboard boxes out of the way and opens the cracked storm door that leads into the garden.
"Do not fucking leave!" Scarper shouts from the other room. "We have two crime scenes to clean up!" But Black Tarn yanks you outside.
Even under a blanket of snow, the garden is beautiful: stark blue-white under the starlight, as the moon set an hour ago, shaded by three old and gnarled apple trees. Low stone walls wind around the garden, also snow-covered, a gentle and natural counterpoint to the hard, ugly lines of the recycling-center-turned-lair. The air here even feels warmer, and though you're covered in blood, you feel pure here.
A crystal-clear stalactite spills from the gnarled limb of an apple tree all the way to the ground. When you catch your ghastly reflection in it, you know enough to fear what Black Tarn plans.
"Come, little cub," she says, "we must learn more. We must enter the Umbra, the world of spirits. And there is no time to delay."
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