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“I’m sorry,” I said.

I don’t know what he thought I was apologizing for. “Does Her Highness have need of me?” he said.

“Yes,” I said, trying to put myself back together. I don’t know why I’d thought of this creature first. There were others who could help me.

No—I knew why. He made me think of Wendell.

“You know all the rooms in the castle,” I said. “You know where the nobility dwell.”

He nodded with the faintest of frowns, knitting his many-jointed fingers together in front of him.

“I wish to speak with the Lady in the Crimson Cloak,” I said. “Will you take me to her?”

—

The housekeeper not only knew the way to the Lady’s room, which was located at the other end of the castle and down a staircase, then up another staircase, but he knew that it had a back door. We went through a storage room crammed with silken cloaks and gowns that seemed to be in varying states of decay, some only a little musty, others furred with layers of dust, then through a vast and echoing bathing room that seemed designed for communal washing, off of which was a narrow door to the Lady’s bedchamber.

This was empty, shadowed, and spare, with only a wardrobe, dressing table, and bed clothed in blacks and whites. Naturally, the floorboards were covered in many dark stains.

“She does not like us to clean those,” the oíche sidhe said, and for once I could read the emotion in his face—pure disapproval.

“Hmm,” I said. I had taken the Lady’s theatrically gruesome appearance for glamour, but now I wondered if this was entirely the truth. She has at times put me in mind of the gallows-goblins; I wonder if she counts one or more of the creatures among her ancestors.[*] Wendell’s kingdom is not known as a realm of monsters for nothing, and why would his stepmother have cared if one of her courtiers had a morbid hobby, so long as it did not affect her own interests?

Stepping gingerly over the stains, I sat in the chair at the dressing table. “Thank you,” I said to the housekeeper. “You may go.”

“May,” he repeated, a faint question in his voice. “I may also remain, but in such a way that she will not notice me.”

“Do as you wish,” I said. Perhaps I should have responded better to his kindness, but I had no capacity to think of anything but the revelation contained within my grandfather’s journal, and the desperate hope now lodged in my throat like a splinter of bone that might twist and choke me at any moment. The oíche sidhe went to stand against the wall, and when I looked back, I could barely see him. If I focused, it was just possible to make out his greyish outline against the darkness; if I did not, my gaze slid across the wall as if he were nothing but a stray hook or nail.

I waited. After perhaps half an hour, the Lady entered the room.

She stilled at the sight of me sitting there in the shadows, but she did not flee, as I’d half feared she would. Instead she removed her cloak in one smooth gesture and hung it from a hook, where it began to drip on the floor.

“Well,” she said, brushing her bloody hands over her black gown. “You’ve worked it out, then.”

“I have.”

“What do you wish to know?” As she spoke, she moved towards a tea trolley beside the main entrance that must have been set out for her by a servant; it held a pot, its spout lightly steaming, and a single cup. Into this she poured the tea, adding sugar and cream, her movements unhurried.

“You wish to know why I was exiled?” she went on. “That is a long story—or perhaps you only care about why I came here, to this court? There was once a door that connected my realm with this one—ah, but I can see from your face that you knew that already. I destroyed the door after I came through, so that my enemies could not follow me.”

She handed me the cup. The handle was bloody now, and the tea smelled of smoke. I held it without drinking. Curiously, my hand did not tremble at all, and I realized that I was not afraid of her. I felt—nothing. Or nothing where she was concerned, at any rate. All my focus had attenuated upon one thing, and surrounding this was a vast, wintry stillness that was not quite the same as calm, but which I could put to the same purpose.

“I have not come to speak of the past,” I said. “My grandfather’s journal said you communed with ghosts and had seen the door to Death. Is that true? Take me to it.”

She settled herself upon the edge of the bed and folded her hands in her lap. Her lips were very red, and she watched me in a way that was distinctly predatory. Yet still I felt nothing under her regard.

“You do not wish to speak of Edgar?” she said. “Why I left him?” Her eyes were too large for her face, and without her cloak I saw she was slim—unnaturally slim; I felt she might turn sideways and slip from my sight.

“No,” I said. “Only tell me if what he wrote was correct. Have you truly seen so much of Death that you have learned how to travel there without dying yourself? Or was this empty poetry?”

“He bored me,” she said.

At this, my hand clenched slightly on my knee. “Is there a door?”

“Will you have me killed?” she said. “Have you already ordered it? If I flee now, shall I be hunted for the rest of my days?”

“Yes,” I said, “if you do not help me.”