An eternity later, Elisabeth had been groomed within an inch of her life. Her skin felt tender from Hannah’s scrubbing, and the long, hot bath in the claw-foot tub had left her fingertips as wrinkled as dried apricots. Her scalp alternately stung and throbbed from the torture Hannah had inflicted upon it with a comb. She smelled faintly, and unsettlingly, of gardenias.
Piles of sapphire silk rustled around her body as Hannah fastened the gown in place. It was beautiful, but it had a great deal of extra fabric; Elisabeth felt as though she were swimming in her own miniature sea. Then Hannah began to lace the corset up the back, and Elisabeth’s breath hitched.
“I cannot breathe,” she said, scrabbling at her chest.
Hannah firmly took her hands and set them aside. “It’s the fashion, miss.”
Elisabeth was deeply alarmed by the idea that not breathing was fashionable. “What if I have to run,” she said, “or fight something?”
“In the master’s house?” Hannah sounded shocked. “I know you’ve had some dreadful experiences lately, dear, but it’s best if you keep such thoughts to yourself. That kind of talk is quite irregular for a young lady. Why, just look at you.”
She wheeled Elisabeth around to face the mirror. Elisabeth stared at the girl reflected there, barely recognizing herself. Her hair cascaded over her shoulders in smooth, glossy chestnut waves, and she was cleaner than she had ever been before in her life. Her blue eyes contrasted vividly against her pink, scrubbed cheeks. While she had never possessed much in the way of curves, the sapphire gown made her figure look proud and statuesque. Just like the Director, she thought, with a tightness in her throat. Even the gown’s color reminded her of a warden’s uniform. She didn’t understand why it was irregular to talk about fighting—not when she looked the way she did.
“How lovely,” Hannah sighed. “The blue brings out your eyes, doesn’t it?”
Elisabeth smoothed her hands wonderingly over the dress’s silky fabric.
“I daresay it’s time to bring you down for dinner. Don’t worry, I’ll take you there. It’s awfully easy to get lost in this house—oh, dear, don’t trip! Just lift the gown up a bit if you have to. . . .”
Twilight now painted the grounds in shades of indigo and violet, but inside the manor remained as bright as day. Perfume wafted through the halls, mingling with the fragrance of lilies arranged in vases on every table. When Hannah ushered Elisabeth into the dining room, its dazzle made spots bloom across her vision. Light shone from everything: the silver utensils, the jewels shivering like giant raindrops on the ladies’ ears, the rims of champagne glasses as guests turned to see who had just entered.
Ashcroft was deep in conversation on the other side of the room, but a beautiful, frail-looking woman rushed over to Elisabeth and introduced herself as Ashcroft’s wife, Victoria. Her auburn curls were piled atop her head in an intricate sweep, and she had a habit of self-consciously touching the string of pearls around her neck, as if to reassure herself that it was still there. With her light, nervous movements and glistening silver gown, she reminded Elisabeth of the dove that had nested in the stonework outside her and Katrien’s room one spring, warbling anxiously whenever one of them stuck their head outside.
“I’m afraid Oberon can’t get away from Lord and Lady Ingram,” she said, smiling warmly. “Why don’t I take you around and introduce you to some people before we take a seat? Everyone’s so excited to have a look at you. They’ve read all about you in the papers.”
Elisabeth spent the next several minutes being paraded around the room, learning the names of various important-looking people and attempting to curtsy at them, with mixed results. Eventually she gave up and explained that curtsying had not been included in her lectures at the Great Library, a statement that was, for some reason, met with peals of laughter. She smiled along, realizing they thought she’d made a joke.
Soon Ashcroft rang a fork against his glass. Silence fell as he stepped to the head of the table, and a servant pressed a champagne flute into Elisabeth’s hand. She listened raptly as the Chancellor proceeded to give a speech on progress, comparing the new advances in coal, steam power, and natural gas to sorcery. “Like magic,” he said, “technology frightens those to whom its inner workings remain a mystery, but for the sake of advancement, humanity must embrace change with open arms. I have always believed that sorcerers only hinder ourselves by living apart from commoners and conducting our affairs in secrecy. I consider it my goal as Chancellor to bring sorcery out of darkness, and into the light.”
Gasps rang out as a golden radiance filled the room, far brighter than the candles. The sprays of lilies arranged across the tables had begun to glow, each delicate stamen blazing incandescently, bathing the guests’ faces in a twinkling, ethereal light.
Ashcroft spoke over the applause. “To progress,” he said, raising his glass.
Elisabeth copied the other guests and took a tentative sip of the champagne. It tasted sourer than she expected, but its bubbles fizzed down her throat and fanned embers in her stomach. She smiled and clapped, swept along on a bright tide of happiness that lasted through the dinner. Servants came in with trays of a fragrant green soup and white fish floating in an herb sauce, followed by platters of glazed pheasant and venison on beds of asparagus. She had never eaten anything so sublime. She polished off her seconds and was working her way through thirds—“I suppose you are very tall, dear,” said Lady Ingram charitably—when someone mentioned Nathaniel’s name near the head of the table. Elisabeth stopped chewing to listen.
“He must consider marriage promptly, of course, for the sake of Austermeer,” one of the politicians was booming emphatically, slurred with drink. “Yes, yes, he is only eighteen—but Her Majesty the Queen is growing apprehensive. What if we were to have another war, and no Thorn to strike fear into the hearts of our enemies?” He banged his fist on the table, making the silverware rattle.
“Lord Kicklighter, we are hardly in danger of a war,” someone else put in.
Lord Kicklighter’s mustache quivered indignantly. “A nation is always in danger of a war! If not now, then in fifty years! And if Magister Thorn fails to produce an heir, what then? We haven’t the population to defend ourselves against Founderland.”
Elisabeth frowned and turned to Lady Ingram. “That man is speaking of Nathaniel as though he’s livestock.”
Lady Ingram sniffed. “Men like Magister Thorn have a responsibility to marry, especially now that he has no surviving relatives,” she replied. “Baltasar Thorn’s grimoire of necromancy will only open for those of his line, which means that Nathaniel is presently the only sorcerer who can read it. His complete disinterest in courtship has put everyone in government on edge.”
“Unsavory, in my opinion,” another man was muttering. “To resort to undead hordes in place of good Austermeerish men—”
“—yet it is a last resort, you understand, and it has kept the peace since the War of Bones—”
“But what about what happened to poor Alistair? Surely his fate is a sign that necromancy is a relic of the middle ages, not a weapon for the modern era.” A flurry of scandalized murmuring followed this pronouncement.
“Such a tragedy, the loss of the younger brother,” a woman sighed from the other end of the table. “We do not even know if Magister Thorn possesses an interest in ladies. He has never danced with a girl at the Royal Ball. If only Maximilian were still alive, there would be less of a fuss about carrying on the family name.”
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.
Lorelei lowered Elisabeth onto a divan. As soon as she touched the cushions, she went boneless. One of her legs slid off to hang at an awkward angle, but she was powerless to move it. She felt like a puppet whose strings had been cut.
“Master,” Lorelei said.
Ashcroft sucked in a harsh breath, surfacing from his trance. He stared in their direction uncomprehendingly, his brow creased. Then he blinked, coming back to himself. He unfastened his cloak and swept it over the grimoire, hiding it from view. Elisabeth’s ears popped as the pressure in the room returned to normal.
“What is this? Has something happened to Miss Scrivener?” He crossed the room in a few quick strides and took Elisabeth’s wrist, pressing his thumb to her pulse. Then he frowned at Lorelei, perplexed. “You’ve glamoured her. My orders . . .”
“Were not to harm her. I thought we should have a talk, master.”
“Don’t be upset,” Ashcroft sai
d. “Everything has worked out quite perfectly.”
“You could have told me what you were planning!” Her voice lowered to a hiss. “You invited all those humans to come watch! Those reporters!”
“My dear, you know how I prefer to conduct my affairs. The more publicly I go about my business, the less room there is for speculation.”
Lorelei paced over to the window and drew the curtains. “It isn’t just the reporters. You’ve involved that sorcerer, Thorn. I don’t like it. His servant has a reputation.”
“Don’t we all?”
“You don’t understand. I grew up hearing stories about Silas in the Otherworld. Can you imagine what it takes for a being to become notorious in our realm?” She wrapped her arms around herself and smoothed her hands over her bare skin. She stood staring at the curtains, as though she could still see out into the night, far across the city. “You shouldn’t court the attention of one such as him.”
“He might be fearsome, but he isn’t omniscient. I made sure our helpers remained out of sight.”
Lorelei didn’t reply. Ashcroft crossed to the study’s cabinet and poured himself a drink from a crystal decanter. He sat down on an armchair across from Elisabeth and thoughtfully swirled his glass. He studied her face for a moment, then took a sip.
Elisabeth knew she wasn’t supposed to be hearing any of this as she lay glassy-eyed and compliant on the divan. They spoke as though she weren’t even in the room. And something, she was beginning to realize, was terribly wrong.
Ashcroft leaned back and crossed one ankle over the opposite knee, his glass loose in one hand. “Better Nathaniel than someone else from the Magisterium,” he went on finally. “If the girl saw something she shouldn’t, don’t you imagine that a different sorcerer might have spelled the evidence from her long before she reached Brassbridge? But Nathaniel—I knew he wouldn’t harm her. I must say, I was quite relieved when he stepped forward with a solution to that particular challenge.” He took a sip. “Otherwise, I would have had to resort to more drastic measures. And you know how much I hate getting my hands dirty.”
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