Chapter 11

Celeste was already in the dining room when I came down at seven-thirty.

She had coffee and a newspaper — actual newsprint, which felt like a statement in a house with screens on every surface — and she looked up when I came in with the specific unhurried ease of someone who'd been waiting and wanted me to know it without saying so.

"You look like you slept badly," she said.

"I slept fine." I poured coffee. It smelled of dark roast and something slightly sweet, cardamom maybe, the kind of detail that cost money without advertising it. "Where's Diana?"

"She mentioned an early walk." Celeste turned a page. "She's been mapping the grounds since she arrived. I imagine she'll have a comprehensive survey by Thursday."

I looked at her. "You noticed that too."

"I notice most things." She folded the newspaper. Set it aside with the deliberateness of someone clearing a table to have a proper conversation. "Miss Voss. Can I ask you something directly?"

"You can ask."

"What are you actually doing here?"

I sat down across from her. The coffee was very hot. I held it in both hands and let the heat climb my palms. "The same thing you are. Presumably."

"I doubt that." Her voice was pleasant. Her eyes were not — they were doing something careful and assessing that the pleasantness was designed to draw attention away from. "I'm here because my family has financial interests that would benefit from a favorable relationship with Ashford Group. That's a crass thing to say but it's honest and I'd rather be honest than pretend we're all here because we care deeply about a man we've never met."

I said nothing.

"You're here because Adrian requested you specifically," she continued. "Before the selection opened. Before any of us were contacted." She tilted her head slightly. "That's not the same thing as what I'm doing here."

"No," I agreed. "It isn't."

"So what are you doing here?"

I looked at her. At the careful eyes behind the pleasant face. At the woman who'd walked in yesterday like she owned the entrance hall and had apparently spent the intervening hours being considerably more observant than that performance suggested.

"My mother worked here," I said. Not all of it. Enough. "A long time ago. I'm trying to understand why."

Celeste was quiet for a moment. Then: "Margaret Voss."

My coffee stopped halfway to my mouth.

"You know the name," I said.

"My father mentioned it once. Years ago, in the context of the Ashford Medical Research Initiative." She kept her voice even. "He said a researcher had been removed from the initiative under circumstances that were never properly explained. He said her name. I was young — I filed it away because my father spoke about it carefully, which meant it was the kind of thing worth filing." She paused. "When your name came up in the selection pool, I made the connection."

"Why didn't you say something?"

"Because I don't know you." Simply. "And because the people who run this selection process are not the kind of people you want to signal too early."

I put the coffee down. "What else did your father say about her?"

"That she'd found something she shouldn't have." Celeste looked at me steadily. "And that the family had made a significant effort to ensure it stayed found."

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Diana came back from her walk at eight with mud on her heels that she hadn't bothered to clean off, which told me the walk had been functional rather than recreational. She came into the dining room and poured coffee and looked between Celeste and me with the systematic gaze I'd first noticed at the entrance hall.

"Lovely morning," she said.

"You went past the east wing," Celeste said.

Diana looked at her. "The garden path runs along it."

"The garden path runs along the west wing. The east side is service access." Celeste picked up her newspaper again. "Lovely morning, yes."

Something shifted in Diana's face — quickly controlled, but not quickly enough. She sat down. Poured sugar into her coffee with the precision of someone giving their hands something to do.

"Has anyone seen the third candidate this morning?" she asked. Casual. Testing whether Mara's absence had been noticed and by whom.

"She left last night," I said.

"Left?"

"Her room was empty this morning."

Diana processed this without visible reaction, which was itself a reaction. A person genuinely surprised by unexpected news does something involuntary with their face. Diana did nothing, which meant she'd either known already or had suspected.

"Shame," she said. "She seemed nervous."

"She was," I said. "I wonder why."

The dining room held the three of us in a silence that had different textures depending on which direction you measured it from.

Harlan appeared in the doorway at eight-fifteen. He looked at the table — at Celeste, at Diana, at me — with an expression that gave nothing away and filed everything.

"Mr. Ashford will see each of you this morning," he said. "Individually. Miss Hargrove at nine. Miss Holt at ten." He paused. "Miss Voss, Mr. Ashford asks that you join him this afternoon. He has something he'd like to show you."

Diana's cup went down a fraction harder than necessary.

Celeste didn't react at all, which meant she'd already anticipated it.

I nodded.

After Harlan left, Diana looked at me across the table with a smile that was doing a great deal of work.

"You have an advantage over us," she said. "Having been here first."

"I suppose."

"Does it feel like an advantage?"

I thought about the voices through the floor vent. About Mara's made bed and bare hangers. About a refrigerated unit in a basement lab with Eleanor Ashford's name on the authorization label.

"Not particularly," I said.

Diana held my gaze for a moment. Then she looked down at her coffee.

But before she did, something crossed her face.

Not calculation. Not the systematic survey gaze.

Fear.

Real fear, quickly covered, the kind that arrives when a person realizes the thing they've walked into is larger than the thing they were briefed on.

She knew something. She'd been sent here knowing something. And whatever it was, it hadn't prepared her for what she was actually finding.

I filed that away in the part of my mind where I kept things I didn't yet know what to do with.

It was getting crowded in there.