Chapter 9: A Lantern on the Stairs

Chapter 9: A Lantern on the Stairs

Lantern light spilled across the cellar steps, yellow and trembling.

Rhys moved before Elara could breathe. He stepped in front of her, one arm half raised, every line of his body gone hard.

The footsteps stopped on the last stair.

"Put it down, Rhys," said a dry, familiar voice. "Whatever you're holding. You'll hurt yourself."

Aunt Marguerite stood in the doorway in a gray silk robe, her silver hair pinned flat, a lantern in her hand. She was sixty and razor-thin, with the posture of a woman who had never once slouched in her life. Her eyes went to the open iron door. Then to the lit atelier. Then to the cup on the bench, where the steam still curled.

Her face lost every drop of color.

"He told me this day would come," she said, very softly. "I didn't believe him."

"Who told you?" Rhys said.

"Your grandfather." Her fingers tightened on the lantern. "The night he made me swear never to open that door. Never to come down here. Never to speak of it."

"You swore."

"For twenty-five years."

Rhys took one step forward. "Then who made the tea?"

"I have no idea." Marguerite's voice cracked. "I have never been inside that room."

Elara had said nothing. She was standing very still, because her nose had just done what it always did, whether she wanted it to or not.

Lavender soap. Starch. Cold, sharp fear, thin as a wire.

And beneath all of it, faint but unmistakable, clinging to the silk of the old woman's cuff like a ghost: bergamot, black iris, and amber.

Last Light.

Not a trace carried through a door. A wearing. A scent laid on skin and slept in.

Elara's stomach turned over.

"Rhys," she said quietly. "May I speak to your aunt?"

He glanced back at her. Whatever he saw in her face made him nod once and step aside.

Elara walked toward Marguerite slowly, the way she might approach a skittish horse. She stopped an arm's length away.

"You said you've never been in this room."

"That's right."

"That's strange," Elara said. "Because your sleeve smells exactly like it."

The lantern flame shivered.

Marguerite looked at her, and for a long moment the cold, proper mask of House Calloway did not move at all. Then, very slowly, something else slid beneath it. It was not guilt. It was something closer to relief.

"Rhys told me you were gifted," she murmured. "I didn't believe that either."

"Aunt Marguerite," Rhys said. His voice had dropped. "What is she saying?"

"Your grandfather—" Marguerite stopped. Swallowed. "Augustin was not what you think. The man we buried last spring—"

She stopped again.

"What about him?" Rhys's hand closed on the edge of the workbench.

"I never saw his face," Marguerite whispered. "The coffin was sealed. On his own written instruction. And the funeral director disappeared the week after."

The words dropped into the vaulted room like stones into still water.

Rhys did not move. Elara could not smell him, could not read the thunderstorm that must have been gathering behind his eyes. But she watched a single muscle jump in his jaw, and she knew.

"Why," he said slowly, "are you telling me this now?"

Marguerite smiled.

It was a soft, sad, terrible smile. She slipped her free hand into the pocket of her robe.

"Because I owe you the truth," she said, "before I do what I'm about to do."

Elara's phone buzzed in her coat.

She pulled it out with numb fingers. The screen lit with a message from an unknown number.

Don't trust her. Get out. Now.

"Rhys," Elara breathed.

Marguerite's hand came out of her pocket. It held a small black remote.

"I'm sorry, my dear," she said, and pressed the button.

Behind them, the iron door slammed shut.