Elisabeth gritted her teeth. “But—”

Another woman, Lady Childress, had been watching Elisabeth keenly for some time now. “You call him by his first name, dear,” she interrupted. “That’s quite familiar.” At once, every head turned in Elisabeth’s direction.

She had never felt self-conscious about her height before, but now she wished she were shorter, so that she wasn’t within view of every guest seated up and down the table. She didn’t know what she was supposed to say. She had not been aware that there was a rule against referring to a person one’s own age by their first name. Truthfully, she’d thought Nathaniel called her “Scrivener” because he didn’t like her. She had the curdling realization that if she aired any of those realizations out loud, they’d all think she was an idiot.

“Does he possess an interest in young ladies, then, Miss Scrivener?” Lady Childress prompted.

“I do not know,” Elisabeth replied, bristling. “He hasn’t told me. I suppose that means it isn’t any of my business.”

The arrival of the desserts allowed everyone to pretend that they hadn’t heard Elisabeth’s remark. She frowned as she accepted a heaping plateful of plum dumplings. Nathaniel’s cynical air was beginning to make more sense. She didn’t like to imagine how it must feel to have the private details of one’s life under constant scrutiny, knowing every facet of your existence was gossiped about at dinner parties across Austermeer.

She was grateful when Ashcroft steered the conversation away to a discussion about steam power, which she didn’t understand but found deeply fascinating. As her good mood returned, she polished off a custard and a pair of plum dumplings. Before she knew it everyone was leaving, tottering a bit and smelling strongly of liquor while the servants helped them back into their coats. Elisabeth had had two glasses of champagne herself, and the manor wore a glittery sheen, as if tinsel had been draped around the windows and chandeliers.

She followed the guests to the foyer, but no one was paying attention to her any longer. Ashcroft stood outside, trying to extricate his digits from Lord Kicklighter’s enthusiastic handshake, and Victoria was deep in conversation with Lady Childress. Hannah was supposed to come collect her, yet the servant was nowhere in sight. A nearby clock indicated that it was almost one thirty in the morning. After a few minutes of waiting, Elisabeth caught a glimpse of Hannah’s wispy bonnet bobbing down a hallway. She hurried after it, certain she would get lost in the manor if left to her own devices.

Hannah had a considerable head start, and Elisabeth soon discovered that she couldn’t run on the slick floors while wearing satin slippers. After a few turns, she lost sight of her quarry and found herself stranded in an unfamiliar hallway. The manor’s grandeur enfolded her in a shimmering world of marble, gold, and mirror-glass. With the champagne glowing inside her stomach like a newborn star, she felt as though she had wandered into a dream.

She paused to examine a filigreed sconce dripping with candle wax, then to trail her fingers over the features of a marble bust. The statue’s subject had been young and handsome, and she found herself wondering what Nathaniel was doing at that very moment. Was he alone in his cheerless mausoleum of a house, unable to sleep, with only a demon for company? Perhaps she would see him again one day when she was a warden. But if she did, they wouldn’t be able to talk about the time they’d fought off the fiends or watched the moss spirit in the Blackwald. They would exchange a handful of perfunctory words as she escorted him to a reading room, no better than strangers.

A strain of music reached her ears, and she snatched her hand from the bust. Somewhere nearby, someone had begun to sing. The sound unspooled through the halls like a silver thread, achingly beautiful, its melody wordless and strange. It lodged a hook in Elisabeth’s heart, somehow seeming to express precisely the emotion of inarticulate longing that filled her. Helpless to resist its pull, she set off in search of the source, drifting past parlors, a ballroom, a conservatory brimming with palms and orchids.

Finally, she stepped into a music room. An elegant woman stood beside a pianoforte, her face shadowed, turning a lily between her slender, lace-gloved fingers. Elisabeth hadn’t seen her at the dinner. She would have remembered. The woman had a fall of gleaming black hair that reached her waist, and she was dressed in an exquisite black gown against which her pale, perfect skin looked as white as candle wax. She stopped singing when Elisabeth entered; her fingers stilled, and the lily dropped to the carpet, forgotten.

“Hello, darling,” she said in a musical voice, stepping into the light. “I wondered how long it would take you to find me.”

Elisabeth’s response died upon her lips as the woman’s scarlet, smiling mouth gave way to scarlet, unsmiling eyes.

She wasn’t a woman. She was a demon.

THIRTEEN

“HOW CHARMING YOU look.” The demon came forward and draped her wrists over Elisabeth’s shoulders, her eyes shimmering crimson in the candlelight. Her inhuman beauty was at once alluring and uninviting, like a sculpture made of ice. “Then again,” she went on, “it isn’t difficult for mortals to look charming. You are all so delicate, so endearingly soft and fragile, like kittens. Won’t you come with me?”

A familiar sensation of woozy calm descended over Elisabeth. Her eyes drooped, suddenly heavy, and she fell into the demon’s cold arms. But though she no longer had control over her body, her thoughts remained clear. The desire to give in and trust didn’t overpower her as it had before. For some reason, the demon’s influence wasn’t working as it should.

What was it Silas had said? She had resisted him. Perhaps she was resisting now.

The demon didn’t seem to notice anything amiss. She smiled and brushed a lock of hair away from Elisabeth’s cheek as if she were a doll. Then she took Elisabeth’s hand in hers, frigid as death beneath the glove’s rough lace. “What a sweet girl you are,” she said, and led her out of the music room, back into the hall.

Elisabeth caught glimpses of herself in the mirrors they passed: ripples of sapphire silk and chestnut waves, her own face as blank as a mannequin as she walked at the demon’s side. Her panic was muffled and far away, an intruder pounding on the door in some hidden recess of her mind. Oddly, she was grateful for it, because the lack of fear allowed her to think. She guessed this was Ashcroft’s servant, Lorelei. The color of her eyes was identical to the Chancellor’s mismatched red one. But what did she want? Where were they going?

They traveled deeper into the manor, hand in hand. Lorelei took her through a salon, where Hannah stood polishing the silver with a dreamy expression, humming to herself—snatches of the same song Lorelei had been singing moments ago, slightly out of tune. She didn’t so much as glance in their direction.

Several turns later, they reached a polished oak door. Firelight flickered on the parquet underneath. Lorelei entered without knocking, revealing the same study that Ashcroft had stepped out from earlier that day, when he’d appeared from thin air in front of everyone.

A fire crackled in the hearth on one side of the room. On the other, a great arched window looked out over a black ocean of trees, beyond which lay the glittering lights of the city. Ashcroft sat at a desk opposite the door. Not merely sitting, but staring down at a grimoire, his hands braced on either side of it, gripping the desk’s edges. His gaze was unfocused, and his arms shook with tension. An ominous pressure filled the air. The grimoire floated above the desk, its pages drifting weightlessly, as though it hung suspended in water. The other grimoires in the shelves along the walls whispered and rustled uneasily.