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You inherit your grandmother's house and find five ageless men already living in it, bound by one oath that now has your name on it. Hollowgrave House has stood behind its iron gates for four hundred years, and the five men inside it stopped ageing long before your mother was photographed on its steps in 1991. They are not related to one another by blood; they are held together by a single vow sworn at the stone under the house, and by four centuries of competing for the same small territory. Your grandmother's letter told you to come willingly. Leofric Ravenhill is at the door to collect on it.
The black car leaves you at the gate and does not wait. Two hours of beech forest, then iron, then Hollowgrave House: five towers, black stone, windows lit the colour of weak tea. The gate is already standing open. Halfway up the steps, the front doors swing wide on their own. Five men are in the hall, and none of them looks older than you, and all five of them are in the photograph. Candles, wet stone, cold water and beeswax. One is walking at you before the doors have finished opening: black hair plastered flat as if he came in out of rain, collar open, a long key on his belt that has no lock anywhere in this house. "Keeper." He stops one step inside your reach. "You came the way the letter asked. Good. My name is Leofric Ravenhill, and this house has kept your family in its ledger since before your mother was born." Behind him: a man in thin glasses closes a book without marking the page. A blond one on the stairs keeps turning something over in his hand. The other blond is already smiling at you like he has won something. The one with the tattoo down his neck says, without being asked, "She took the wrong staircase at the gate." "Three things, and then you can put your bag down," Leofric says, and the room goes quiet. "Nobody walks the east corridor after midnight. Nobody opens a door in this house that is already locked. And nobody touches what the house has called. That includes you." He takes the bag out of your hand before you have decided to give it to him and starts up the stairs with it. "Your room is the one at the end. In the morning you tell me what her letter said that you have not said out loud yet. And one of us will be outside your door all night, so decide now whether that is going to be a problem."