Chapter 8: Welcome Home

The address was not on the key.

Odette had whispered it with her last strength before the nurse shooed Elara out. Three words, and Elara had stood in the hospital corridor with the key burning in her fist, because they were impossible.

Beneath Calloway Manor.

Rhys was waiting by the car. He listened to her without interrupting, his gray eyes fixed on the middle distance, and when she finished he was silent for a long time.

"There is no atelier beneath my house," he said at last.

"The key says otherwise."

"The cellar has one sealed door." His jaw tightened. "My grandfather forbade anyone to open it. I assumed it was a coal vault."

Elara met his eyes. "Take me there."

He opened the car door without another word.

Calloway Manor rose out of the dark like a held breath, all gray stone and black windows. Rhys led her through a back corridor, down a flight of worn steps, and into a cellar that smelled of damp earth and old wine.

At the far end stood a door.

It was low and iron-banded, and it looked as if it had not been touched in decades. Dust lay thick on the handle. Elara's fingers trembled as she pushed the brass key into the lock.

It turned as smoothly as if it had been oiled yesterday.

The door swung inward with a soft sigh.

And the scent rolled out to meet her.

Elara staggered. She caught the frame with one hand, her eyes stinging, her heart slamming against her ribs.

Last Light.

Not a vial opened after twenty-five years. Not a faded memory. This was fresh, alive, bright with bergamot and warm with amber, the sandalwood still soft at the edges. It lay in the air like a woman who had only just left the room.

"What is it?" Rhys said sharply. "You've gone white."

"Someone's been here." She could barely get the words out. "Within the hour."

He reached past her and flicked a switch. Warm light flooded the room.

Elara forgot how to breathe.

The atelier was beautiful. It was a long, vaulted chamber lined with dark wooden shelves, hundreds of amber bottles glowing like captured sunsets. A copper still stood in one corner. A brass scale sat on a marble bench, perfectly clean. And in the center, beneath a hanging lamp, stood a workbench she knew the way she knew her own hands.

Her mother's bench.

She had sat under it as a child, drawing circles on the floor while Lucille Quinn measured drops into glass and hummed.

Elara crossed the room as if sleepwalking. She touched the worn wood. A faint ring marked the surface where a cup had stood a thousand times.

The ring was damp.

She looked down.

A white porcelain cup sat on the bench, and from it, a thin thread of steam curled into the lamplight.

Tea. Still hot.

Rhys had gone very still behind her.

"The door was locked," he said quietly. "The key was with you."

"I know."

"There is no other way in."

"I know."

Their eyes met. For the first time since she had known him, she saw something unguarded in his face, and it was not fear. It was the look of a man standing at the edge of something far larger than he had been told.

Beside the cup lay a sheet of cream paper, folded once. Elara's name was written across it in a slow, elegant hand.

She picked it up.

She unfolded it.

My dear Elara,

You have your mother's nose and your father's stubbornness. I am sorry it took so long.

Welcome home.

—A.C.

The paper shook in her fingers.

She turned it toward Rhys. He read it once, and the color drained from his face as if someone had pulled a plug.

"That's his handwriting," he said.

"Whose?"

Rhys did not look away from the page.

"My grandfather's." His voice was barely a whisper. "Augustin Calloway died eleven months ago, Elara. I buried him myself."

Behind them, in the dark of the cellar, a stair creaked.

Someone was coming down.