It took Vivienne several blinks to understand where she was. It was a ballroom, gaudy and overlarge, the bifurcated corners trimmed in ornate panels of gold. Here and there, rising from the floor in garish pillars, were stacks of dimpled cherubs. They leered up at her through flat patina stares, their mouths peeled back in permanent smiles.
In the mirrors stood a thousand variations of the same man, tall and thin in a neat black suit.
But there was only one of her.
Small. Pale. Reflectionless. She stared every which way and saw nothing at all.
Hello, she called out internally, searching for the squatter in her bones.Where did you go?
There was no answer.
Quieter, she thought,What if I need you?
“Does it frighten you?” asked the man. He studied her with fascination, his hands clasped behind his back. “The lack of a reflection, that is. It must make you wonder if you’re even there at all.”
She didn’t tell him that she normally had a perfectly lovely reflection, or that it was vicious enough to strike him dead where he stood. Shecouldn’ttell him. She was on her knees, her wrists bound in the small of her back, her muzzle tugging so forcefully at the corners of her mouth that her eyes watered.
She stared up at the man in a suit. He stared back. She recognized him, though only just. It took her several seconds of rooting through her memory to recall where she’d seen him—outside the church, locked in an argument with Philip. The dark brown of his eyes were unsettlingly familiar.
It was an uncanny sort of awareness. She didn’t like it one bit.
“How inconsiderate of me,” said the man, shrugging out of his jacket so that he was in only a fitted vest and a pristine white dress shirt. Draping the garment over the contorted face of a cherub, he set to cuffing his shirtsleeves. “You can’t speak in this condition. Adrian!”
A door opened, hingeless in the mirror glass. For a moment, Vivienne was granted a glimpse of the outer hall, all dark, tilting hardwood—exacting as a nightmare. The door shut as quickly as it opened, and Vivienne became steadily aware of Adrian Faber standing there, looking sullen and twitchy. The pledge didn’t look at her as he approached, though she tried desperately to catch his gaze.
“Unbind her, if you please,” instructed the man.
Adrian did as he was told. The ropes loosened, and Vivienne’s arms fell slack. She tugged her hands to her chest, nearly crying out at the rush of blood to her wrists. With the job done, Adrian began to leave.
“Stay,” ordered the man, and Adrian froze. “I may need you to translate.”
“But—” Adrian’s eyes cut toward Vivienne. “I don’t sign.”
“Well,” said the man, “then she’ll just have to whisper in your ear, won’t she?”
The blood drained out of Adrian’s face. “Yes, Mr. Price,” he whispered.
Price. So that was his name.
“I want to tell you a story,” said Price, casting his gaze in her direction. “It might sound like mine at the start, but it isn’t. It’s yours. And it begins right here in the Hamptons, with my family. We used to drive through here each summer on our way through New York. My mother liked to look at the mansions and my father liked to indulge her. Some years, we’d park the car and get out. Waste an entire afternoon walking along the beach in neighborhoods we’d never live in, looking at houses we could never afford.”
With his jacket gone, Vivienne could see the leather holster at his waist, a handgun tucked neatly inside. Her stomach turned to ice.
“That was when I first I stumbled upon the House,” he said. He sounded wistful. “It was an eyesore, hidden behind the hedgerows. Left to rot. But I heard it speaking. It beckoned to me. It offered me an opportunity like no other—a way out of the ordinary life I’d been born into. All I had to do was feed it.”
Vivienne balked, startled by his choice of words.
“Does that alarm you?” he asked, examining her. “It should. The House has a voracious appetite. I was happy to give it what it wanted, and the House showed its thanks in myriad ways. It paid my debts. It opened doors that had been previously closed. It allowed me to drink deep from the well of success. For a time, that was fine.
“But what man could resist the promise of more? The longer I fed the House, the bigger its offers became. It dangled rewards in front of me like a carrot. Knowledge. Understanding. Wisdom spanning the known universe. Eventually, a few drops of blood weren’t enough. I wished to ascend. For that, the House required a much larger sacrifice.”
Vivienne stared, not understanding. Off to the side, Adrian looked slightly green.
“I was only a young man,” Price went on, as though he were imploring her to see things from his point of view. “Unmarried and childless. I didn’t know the weight of the promises I’d made. Like a fool, I offered up my firstborn son. It wasn’t until he arrived and I held him in my arms that I realized I’d made a terrible mistake. I sought to undo it. I begged. I pleaded. But the House doesn’t take kindly to broken promises. When the time came to collect, instead of taking one child, it took them all.”
He looked lost in a memory, his smile thin. Her unease deepened.
“I was granted nearly a decade with my sons before the House claimed them,” said Price, examining his own reflection in the glass. “It was March when they drowned. I’m told it was slow. Agonizing. Was it that way for you, too?”
