Since my day out to unwind and be normal had gone so very badly, I resolved the next morning to have a day in. Ken, bringing me breakfast in bed, graciously chose not to say "I told you so," but I could see it on his face.

Still, if nothing else at all good came of the previous day, I had at least gained actual appreciation for why I needed to learn to protect myself. And, of course, the catharsis that had followed was undoubtedly healthy for me. Even if I still had a lot of feelings to sort through before I'd really be able to forgive my father for what I now consciously viewed as a series of dreadful mistakes.

I could still be wrong, after all. Who knew how things would turn out. I mean…if someone had asked me six months ago if I believed in magic, I would've laughed at them.

After a positively sinful breakfast and a long hot soak in the tub, I got dressed and went for a walk inside the Hall. After a scare like the one I'd had, it seemed like a good time to remind myself of why I'd decided to put down roots here.

When I asked Ken if he wanted to go with me, he gave me a rueful smile. "I believe I'm going to put this time to good use by revising my lesson plans for your magical education, and move them further away from your father's. Go explore. You can't come to any harm in the Hall, especially with Sparkle by your side."

So, after orienting myself - as much as one ever could within Oakwood Hall - by going to the foyer, I plunged headlong into the Hall, with Sparkle on my shoulder.

I quickly found myself confronted by the old Greek amphora I'd seen once before, sitting in its nook between two doors, highlighted by a recessed spotlight. Perhaps I'd been curious to see it again…it was fascinating to look at an artifact that had to be nearly as old as recorded Greek history…and that was why the Hall had brought me to it first.

Or perhaps, I thought, it was a gentle warning from the Hall, not to be too curious about some of the secrets hidden within its walls. The amphora was, after all, decorated with the story of Pandora's Box.

Well…Pandora's amphora, anyway, since that's what she was depicted as opening. Which, honestly, made a lot of sense from a purely historical perspective.

As before, the thing seemed to radiate a sense of oily cold, and I couldn't quite bring myself to go up and touch it. But at the same time, as I got closer to it, it seemed to gently pull at my senses. From where she was perched on my shoulder, I felt Sparkle shift as she murmured, "I don't think we should get any closer to that."

"You feel it too?" I asked curiously.

"Yeah," she said softly. "It's…it's not bad, but it's not good either. And I think it wants to be opened."

I nodded a little. "But if it's dangerous, why is it out here in the open?"

She giggled. "You mean inside the magical house which can change its floor plan at will, and has the strongest magical defenses I've ever seen? It's not like anyone will ever see it except us."

I snorted a little laugh. Somehow, that hadn't occurred to me. "You make a good point," I said. "Still, I'd feel better if that was somewhere much safer." I touched the wall and, using just emotions, expressed my concern about the visibility of such an unsettling and valuable artifact, and my desire to have it someplace safer.

Before my eyes, the low platform that the amphora sat on slid back and melted into the wall, taking the ancient artifact with it. A few moments later, the platform returned, this time bearing a marble statue of the goddess Athena. She appeared as she did in many classical depictions of her, in flowing robes, with a spear in her right hand and a shield on her left arm, a tall helmet atop her head, and an owl perched on her shoulder.

As it arrived, the statue was looking directly at me, and I could've sworn that its expression was approving. I shook my head and started down the hall away from it…but not before I thought I saw it wink at me. I shook my head a little and ignored that…I'd seen much stranger things already, and it was probably just the Hall expressing its approval of my decision.

We paid a brief visit to the aquarium, and after spending a few minutes watching the tropical fish, I said, "Shall we come back here for lunch?"

"Yeah!" Sparkle said from where she was plastered up against the curved glass wall. "This'd be a great place to have lunch!"

Decision made, we moved on, walking the halls for a few minutes before going up a flight of stairs at random and turning a corner. There, I found myself confronted not by another hallway, but by a pair of frosted glass doors. The one on the right had the word "Pool" stenciled on the glass in blocky black lettering.

"Seriously?" I asked. "I have a swimming pool?"

"Why not?" Sparkle asked with a giggle.

Curious, I gave the right-hand door a push and went through into a much warmer, considerably more humid room. The floor was non-slip ceramic tile in a seemingly random pattern of sea blues and greens. And, lo and behold, it held not only an Olympic-size swimming pool, but also a hot tub that looked big enough for five or six people, a half-dozen shower stalls along one wall, and the same number of lockers.

But what really drew my attention was the far wall. The room was about two stories tall, and the entire far wall was made of huge glass panels, with a normal sized door directly across from where we now stood in the middle of the room.

Outside was rocky, mountainous country, covered in a thick layer of absolutely undisturbed, pristine snow, dotted here and there with steaming pools of water.

Hot springs.

"Wow," Sparkle and I said together. Then we both giggled.

I skirted the pool, making a mental note to pick up some swimsuits somewhere, and walked up to the glass. Pressing my hand against it, I found it only cool to the touch, as if heavily insulated against the cold. "Huh. This isn't actually glass, is it."

Sparkle fluttered up to it and touched it, then shrugged. "Dunno. Is it important?"

I smiled. "Probably not. Doesn't look like there's anybody out there to see in anyway."

"They wouldn't be able to," Sparkle said with certainty. "Not without knowing it was here in the first place. The Hall protects itself that way."

"Just like the windows in my bedroom," I said.

"Exactly!" Sparkle fluttered back and forth.

"Is there any way to tell where that is?" I asked.

Sparkle frowned in concentration, her hands pressed against the glass now. "It's…not in the mortal world. It's Faerie out there. Specifically, Winter. I can just barely feel it through the glass."

"So this is like my clearing, but in Unseelie territory?"

Sparkle nodded. "It's probably perfectly safe, but I wouldn't go out there without knowing if it's our territory, like the clearing outside your room, or not."

"Would I be trespassing?" I asked.

"No," Sparkle said, "but you wouldn't have any protections either. The clearing outside your room is yours, even though it's in Summer. You're completely safe there, and nothing that means you harm can enter. We don't know that about this area."

"What about the fairies?" I asked curiously.

She beamed at me. "We come and go where we please. But even we wouldn't be able to enter your clearing if we meant you harm."

That was good to know. It amazed me how much useful information never came up until I tripped over it like this. "How would we go about finding out about this area?" I asked, gesturing to the hot springs outside. I'd always wanted to try soaking in one.

Sparkle looked thoughtful. "There might be a record of it somewhere in Master James's files. Or Ken might know. Or you could walk out there and wait for someone to notice you."

"That sounds like a dreadful idea," I said, knowing full well she wasn't serious about the last one.

She giggled. "Yeah, it'd probably end pretty badly."

"Well, I'll start by asking Ken," I said, turning away from the view and walking back towards the interior door. "I'd love to have a soak in one of those hot springs."

Sparkle fluttered along beside me. "That does sound pretty nice."

"That hot tub looks pretty nice too," I added, thinking that we didn't need to go outside to enjoy a soak. It'd just be cooler.

"Yup!" Sparkle agreed, zooming once around the steaming water of said tub before catching up with me.

I jumped in surprise when one of the lockers popped open as we walked past them. Its door swung wide, revealing a half-dozen racing-style one-piece swimsuits in various patterns of black, green, and purple.

One hand to my chest - it had startled me badly - I found myself laughing breathlessly. "I…I guess the Hall is willing to provide swimwear!"

Sparkle giggled. "I guess so!"

We moved on, heading out and back down the stairs, and went down a different hallway than the one we'd arrived from. No surprises there.

I stopped to admire an exquisite reproduction of Van Gogh's "Starry Night," and felt it to be almost too perfect a reproduction. Quietly, I asked Sparkle, "This is just a reproduction, right?"

Sparkle, flitting back and forth in front of it, shrugged. "Dunno. It could be the original, I guess. It's so beautiful, isn't it?"

I smiled. "It really is."

A dozen doors further on, we found a door - dark, varnished wood with the Hall's oak and ivy motif carved around its edges - with a sign hanging on it that said "Lounge."

"I remember this room!" Sparkle said. "Let's go in!"

"All right," I said, already pulling the Master Key out on its chain to unlock the door.

Inside, I found a room that - at first glance - looked like it might have escaped from an old-fashioned gentleman's club. There was a bar along one wall, with several high-backed chairs spaced out along its length, and a fireplace at the far end of the room with a couple of leather armchairs in front of it with a small round table between them. The center of the room was taken up with a well-used, but obviously well cared-for, pool table.

The effect was somewhat ruined by the far wall, which was dominated by a row of old stand-up arcade game cabinets and a couple of pinball machines, none of which were turned on. But still, I could see the appeal of the room. It was cozy, and had a relaxed atmosphere to it that I quite liked.

"Mistress Chessie and Master James came to this room sometimes," Sparkle said as she landed on my shoulder. "Just to spend a quiet evening in front of the fire, or to play a game of pool, or just to get away from their usual spots."

"I can see why," I said. "I don't know how to play, but it'd be fun to learn."

"I bet Ken knows how," Sparkle said. "He knows everything."

Not everything, maybe…but certainly a lot. In this instance, she was probably right. "We'll ask him later," I said. "And we'll come back here once in a while, I think. There's a…a restfulness to this room."

Sparkle just made a soft sound of agreement, and we moved on again.

Further down the hall, I found a set of stairs that down from where we were, and followed them curiously. We went down five flights of stairs - past three hallways - before the stairs ended in a basement, something I had begun to think Oakwood Hall didn't have.

There was some storage along the wall that the stairs arrived through, which I checked out curiously. Nearest the stairs there were piles of unlabeled cardboard boxes and some empty suitcases that looked like they'd been made in the 1980's. Beyond them, older luggage and a pile of steamer trunks, one of which had a tag hanging off of it that read "Grandma Rose's wardrobe."

I wondered when they'd been packed and put here, and how many generations back 'Grandma Rose' actually was.

Past the steamer trunks, there were some very old wooden crates, and even a couple of strongboxes made of iron-banded wood with heavy iron padlocks on them. One was marked with runes that I wasn't familiar with, and which had a faint red glow to them. I gave that one a wide berth.

Turning from the wall of storage - which I resolved to return and examine carefully at some future date - I took in the rest of the basement, which appeared to be filled with rows of free-standing wine racks. I had never seen so many bottles of wine in one place in my life before.

"Holy cow," Sparkle said quietly.

"You've never been down here before?" I asked, feeling surprised.

"Nope," she fluttered off my shoulder and hovered beside me. "I didn't think the Hall even had a basement."

"Let alone a wine cellar, huh?" I smiled. "I don't suppose you know anything about wine?"

"I know that if it's sweet, I like it," she giggled.

I chuckled softly. Why had I even bothered asking, when I'd already been pretty sure of that answer. "Can fairies even get drunk?" I asked curiously.

"Oh, sure," she said, bobbing in place once. "But it takes Elf-made wine, or really really strong distilled spirits."

My brain, having grown used to associating the word 'spirit' with Ken, produced a truly bizarre mental image, then adjusted appropriately. I shook my head a little and started down one of the rows. "So Elves are real?"

"Sure," Sparkle said, fluttering along beside me. "There's Huldra, who come from Faerie and are slightly smaller than mortals - like teenager-sized, I think - but look just like humans, except for slightly pointed ears. And there's High Elves, who came from somewhere outside Faerie in Otherworld and are tall and beautiful. They're really rare, but usually friendly." She paused, fluttering up and down in front of a rack of incredibly ornate cut-crystal bottles. "Hey! These are Elf-made wines!"

"Are they safe for me to drink?" I asked. I might not be much of a drinker, but who could pass up the opportunity to try an Elf-made wine?

"Sure! Just not a lot, they're really, really strong." Sparkle pointed to one of the bottles. "I recognize that one…it should be sweet and light if you want to try one."

I carefully pulled the bottle from the rack - there turned out to be two more behind it that gently slid into place as it was removed - and examined it curiously. It wasn't labeled, and the liquid within was a rich amber color with silvery flecks floating in it. "What're those?"

She peered into the bottle. "Dunno. I think they're just part of the wine."

Interesting. "Okay." I tucked the bottle under my arm, completely certain that whoever had laid in this supply of wine would have made sure that nothing here would ever turn to vinegar, and started down the row again as Sparkle settled back on my shoulder.

The lights seemed to grow a bit dimmer as we continued, changing from modern overhead tube lights, to incandescent bulbs, to hanging gas lamps as we went. But finally we reached the end of the row, and found ourselves confronted by a solid stone wall…it actually looked like the back wall of the basement had been carved out of solid granite and then smoothed out.

Set into the wall, offset a few feet to the left of where we'd emerged, was a door.

That didn't surprise me much…I'd grown used to seeing doors in odd places all over the Hall. But the construction of the door was a shock. It looked like something you would've seen in an old-fashioned bank vault, made of solid steel, with a big wheel in the middle of it and a keyhole on the right side. It was set flush into the wall, and either opened inward, or perhaps its hinges were embedded within the granite wall itself, as there was no sign of them on the outside.

Instead, the stone around the door was engraved with three layers of more unfamiliar runes that glowed blue-white in the dim, flickering light from the gas lamps. The layers of runes even continued onto the floor, running across it in front of the door.

"Wow," I said.

"Seconded," Sparkle said, sounding as awed as I felt.

"I feel like I shouldn't try to open that." I added, aware that it was a massive understatement.

"Yeah," Sparkle said in a hushed voice, "don't try to do that."

I shivered a little. If Sparkle was unnerved by it, I'd better stay well away from it. Still…

"Ken," I called.

He materialized beside me a moment later. "Yes, Caley?" Then he looked around in confusion, blinking. "Wait, where are we? I mean, we must be in the Hall, because I'm here, but…"

"Wine cellar," I said, holding up the bottle I'd taken. "Some storage back that way," I pointed, "and this thing," I pointed to the door.

He stared at it. "That," he said after a moment, "is one serious door."

I snorted a little laugh in spite of myself, and Sparkle giggled a little.

"No, really," Ken said, moving closer to examine it. "The door is heavily warded, and not just by the runes running around it. They're…I don't know what they are. I've never seen their like before."

Which was really saying something.

"I mean," he continued, "there's another layer of magical wards inside the door itself. I have no idea how, but I can feel them."

I stepped forward and started to lift my left hand, curious to try sensing them as well, but Ken held up a hand and shook his head. "No, don't. There's a lot of power there. It's old, and far too complex for you to try to get a read on at this point. I think we should all stay well away from this door."

"Is it the nexus of realities that my great-great-great-whatever-grandmother opened by accident?" I asked.

Ken shook his head. "No, that's long-since been absorbed into the structure and magic of the Hall itself. I honestly don't know what this door is."

I took a little step back, feeling a bit chilled by that. I quickly tamped that down, and asked, "Don't know, or don't remember?"

Ken turned to look at me, a bemused expression on his face. "Good question. One moment." He closed his eyes, turning his attention inward, and after a moment winced a little and opened his eyes again. "You are correct, Caley…this appears to be one of the things your father made me forget. I can feel the empty place in my memories."

I nodded a little. "Probably nothing to worry about, then," I said, turning away from it. "Just something else I'm not equipped to deal with yet, and which you'll remember when I'm ready."

"Indeed," Ken said…but as we walked back toward the stairs, I thought he'd sounded just a little bit too uncertain of that.

Still…after months of exploration, I'd seen nothing at all within the Hall that could hurt me, as long as I left the things I didn't understand yet alone. Surely, this was just another of those things.

I glanced over my shoulder to find the door already out of sight, and shivered again.

Nothing at all to worry about. Sure.