She made a strangled sound. “You can read my thoughts?”

“Not precisely.”

“Then how . . . ?”

“I’ve spent hundreds of years observing humankind during my service to the Thorn family. I don’t wish to insult you, but you are not complicated beings.”

She shuddered, staring at her hands, at the too-perfect cup of tea, wondering what else he could tell about her simply by looking.

“Are you feeling unwell? Perhaps you should get more rest.”

She shook her head, not meeting his eyes. “I’ve rested enough.”

“In that case, I have news that may ease your mind.” He lifted a newspaper from the nightstand and passed it to her. She took it warily, glancing at his gloves, but she couldn’t see any evidence of his claws. “The attempt on your life has already reached the morning papers.”

Elisabeth almost did a double take. The headline on the front page read SUSPECT . . . OR HERO? and was accompanied by a sketch of Nathaniel and herself standing on top of the coach as fiends closed in around them. Nathaniel’s lightning slashed through the crosshatched sky, and the artist had taken the liberty of replacing her iron bar with a sword. Her eyes flicked back to the headline. “This is about me?”

Silas inclined his head.

Incredulous, she began skimming the article. The young woman, identified by an anonymous source as one Miss Elisabeth Scrivener, demonstrated uncommon courage and vigor in holding off her demonic attackers, going so far as to save the life of a helpless bystander. . . . She is believed to have arrived in Brassbridge as a suspect in the acts of sabotage on the Great Libraries, though we must question the Magisterium’s wisdom in naming her a suspect when this vicious attempt on her life suggests the precise opposite. It is clear that the true culprit hoped to silence her using any means possible. . . .

Elisabeth’s cheeks flamed as the article went on to speak glowingly of reports from our trusted sources that she had single-handedly defeated a rampaging Malefict before it imperiled the lives of innocents in the quaint village of Summershall. Then, annoyingly, it devoted a subsequent column to Magister Nathaniel Thorn, Austermeer’s Most Eligible Bachelor—When Will He Select a Bride?

Something nagged at her, and she went back to the beginning to reread the first several sentences. “Wait a moment,” she realized aloud. “This says acts of sabotage.”

Silas reached toward her. She tensed, but he only flicked to the second page. Scanning through the article’s continuation, her breath stopped.

“There was an attack on the Great Library of Knockfeld?” Her lips moved as she raced through the cramped text. “ ‘Another Class Eight Malefict . . . three wardens dead, including the Director . . . first labeled a tragic accident, now believed to be connected to the incident in Summershall.’ This happened two weeks before the Book of Eyes!” She looked up at Silas. “Why would any of this ease my mind?”

“Last night has altered your circumstances considerably. Your hearing has been called off in the midst of the public outcry incited by the press. Once you are well enough for a carriage ride, Master Thorn has been instructed to bring you directly to the Chancellor.”

She sat in disbelief, inhaling the paper’s scent of cheap ink and newsprint. Her head felt empty, ringing with Silas’s words. “Why does the Chancellor want to see me?” she asked.

“I was not told.” Something like pity shaded the demon’s alabaster features. “Perhaps you might consider getting dressed. I can assist you, if you wish. I have taken the liberty of altering today’s selection.”

Elisabeth frowned. Her best dress hung from a hook on the wardrobe, lengthened with fashionable panels of silk. Now, it looked like it would fit. Silas had done that himself? She touched her neatly brushed hair, recalling her earlier observation that someone had bathed her and changed her clothes. When realization struck, she recoiled. “Did you undress me?”

“Yes. I have decades of experience—” Reading her horror, he raised a placating hand. “I apologize. I have no interest in human bodies. Not in any carnal sense. I forget, at times . . . I should have said so earlier.”

Elisabeth was not to be taken for a fool. “I’ve read what demons do to people. You torture us, spill our blood, devour our entrails. The entrails of maidens, especially.”

Silas’s lips tightened. “Lesser demons eat human flesh. They are base creatures with vulgar appetites.”

“And you are so different?”

His lips thinned further. Against all odds, offense shone in his yellow eyes, and when he spoke, the edges of his courteous, whispered consonants were slightly clipped. “Highborn demons consume nothing but the life force of mortals, and even then, only once we have bargained for it. We care for nothing else.”

She sat back, her heart pounding. Slowly, she calmed. Silas seemed to be telling the truth. He wasn’t attempting to disguise the fact that he was evil, only clarifying the nature of his misdeeds. Strangely, that made her feel that she could trust him, in this matter at least.

She thought of the silver streak in Nathaniel’s hair, so unusual to see in a boy of eighteen. How much of his life have you taken? she wondered.

“Enough of it,” Silas said, almost too quietly for her to hear. “Now, if you are certain you don’t require assistance . . .”

“No thank you,” she said hurriedly. “I can get ready without any help.”

His raised eyebrows informed her that had his doubts, but he bowed politely out the door all the same, leaving Elisabeth alone with a thousand questions and a cooling cup of tea.

• • •

When she opened the door fifteen minutes later, Silas was nowhere in sight. She poked her head out of the room and peered down the hallway. While she had never spent much time in a real house, this one seemed enormous compared to the homes in Summershall. The hallway marched on for a considerable length, set with dark wood paneling and an astonishing number of doors. For some reason all the curtains were drawn, reducing the sunny day to a twilit gloom.

She crept outside and drifted down the hall. Though grand, the house possessed an air of abandonment. She didn’t see any servants, demonic or otherwise, and the air was so still that the methodical ticking of a grandfather clock somewhere deep within the manor seemed to reverberate through the soles of her boots like a heartbeat. Everything smelled faintly of aetherial combustion, as if magic had soaked into the building’s very foundations.

After several twists through the labyrinthine halls, the odor intensified. She turned this way and that, sniffing the air, and finally determined that the smell was seeping out from beneath one closed door in particular: a door whose panels were covered in soft snowdrifts of dust, the wood around the ornate knob scored with scratches, as though someone’s hand had slipped repeatedly while trying to unlock it.

Elisabeth wavered. She was not going to touch a sinister-looking door in a sorcerer’s home. But perhaps . . .

Holding her breath, she bent and brought her eye level with the keyhole. The room was dark inside. She leaned forward.

“Miss Scrivener,” said Silas’s soft voice, directly behind her.

She flung herself around, striking the wall with enough force to rattle her teeth. How did Silas move so silently? He had done the same thing to the man last night, right before he killed him.