Isabelle looked thoughtful. For a moment Selene thought she’d misjudged, that Isabelle would indeed leave, seek out Hawthorn or Lazarus — but then she nodded. “Your House, your law. I don’t approve, but it’s only fair.”
Something in her tone was sharper than it should have been — as if, for a brief moment, she’d seriously considered challenging Selene for the leadership of the House. “Tell me what you know.”
“I don’t,” Isabelle said, serenely. “Madeleine knew they were the Furies. Philippe and Emmanuelle figured out it was Nightingale. I—” She shrugged. “I don’t know much, other than that Morningstar died.” The light around her flickered, throwing distorted shadows on the walls.
“About that—” Emmanuelle said, but she didn’t have time to finish, because, in that moment, Morningstar pulled away the curtain that separated Selene’s living quarters from her office. “I heard something about my death?”
Isabelle stared. So did Morningstar. Black gaze met blue; and remained stuck there, as if they recognized something in each other, a connection that went beyond anything Selene would have expected.
What — how could they even know each other? Morningstar had been dead for years before Isabelle was born. There was no way they could recognize each other, no way that Morningstar should be paying attention to a minor Fallen of the House.
Emmanuelle laid a hand on Selene’s shoulder, squeezed gently. “Do you know each other?” she asked.
Morningstar tore himself from his contemplation of Isabelle. “I don’t remember,” he said, thoughtfully. “Perhaps I did.”
Isabelle didn’t speak. At length, she shook her head. “I don’t think so. But all the same…” She was silent, for a while. “I saw your corpse.”
“Possibly.” Morningstar shook his head. “I don’t remember, you see.”
But he’d remembered Selene. He’d lost everything else; most of the memories that would have made him more than this blank slate; but he had still recognized her.
“That’s all very nice,” Selene said, “but it doesn’t help us.”
“I’m not sure what we need help against,” Isabelle said. “A ghost?”
“Ghosts can be exorcised.” Morningstar lay back against one of the walls, his gaze blank, making merely a timid suggestion, so far from the maelstrom of power she had once known. He hadn’t always been that way — back in a time when things had been simpler, easier, when the House had been prosperous; and when solutions had not required so much agonizing over what they could and couldn’t do. There was a vise in Selene’s chest, squeezing her heart to bloody shreds.
“Not so easily,” Emmanuelle said. “And neither will what she summoned vanish.”
“The Furies?” Isabelle asked.
“No, the Furies are dead,” Emmanuelle said. “I was speaking of the tree choking the magic of the House.”
“How do you stop a tree? Or a ghost?”
“You don’t,” Selene said. “Morningstar—”
“Yes?”
“You really don’t remember, do you? What you did to Nightingale?”
Only polite interest from him, a raised eyebrow. Perhaps it did mean nothing to him, after all. Or perhaps it did, and there was so little emotion attached to it that he could so easily lie.
“It was done,” Isabelle said. “Are we going to stand here debating the morality of it? At the time, you judged it right for the good of the House.”
Another raised eyebrow. “No doubt.”
The image of Asmodeus rose like a specter in Selene’s mind, his eyes and the horn rim of his glasses sparkling in some unseen light. Your master had many flaws, but he wasn’t squeamish.
I am not.
Then prove it to me.
They could stand all night discussing this, with no more progress — none of them, save perhaps Isabelle, would take the authority to make decisions. And it was the decision that mattered, not its rightness.
Selene took in a deep breath. “Emmanuelle, can you research exorcism? All the others, we’re going into the East Wing, to see if we can stop the roots. I don’t know what Nightingale’s game is, but I won’t let her swallow the House.”
* * *
MADELEINE had expected to be shut into one of the cells: they’d existed back in Uphir’s day; and she had no doubt Asmodeus would have kept them all. But Elphon merely showed her into a room on the first floor — one with a little private staircase leading into the depths of the House’s huge garden. “Someone will be by later. I wouldn’t try anything funny if I were you,” he said. “Lord Asmodeus isn’t known for his patience.”
“Wait,” Madeleine said.
Elphon turned, halfway to the door, politely waiting for her to speak. His face was blank, and there was no hint of recognition in his gaze. He didn’t remember her. He would never remember her.
“Nothing,” Madeleine said, slowly, carefully. “It’s nothing.” She’d have wept; but there were no more tears to be wrung out of her. Miracles didn’t happen, did they?
“As you wish,” Elphon said, bowing to her. “I’ll leave you to speak to Lord Asmodeus.”
And he was gone, leaving her alone in the room.
The House hadn’t changed; or perhaps she didn’t remember it well enough: it had been twenty years, after all, and she was no Fallen. The brain decayed; memories became as blurred as scenes seen through rain. The green wallpaper with its impressions of flowers was the same; the elegant Louis XV chairs were the same she’d once had in her rooms; and the covered bed with its elaborate curtains was, if not familiar, entirely in keeping with the rest of the room.
She was back.
There was no escaping that fact; or the memory of that car ride with Asmodeus, so close the stink of his perfume still clung to her clothes. Back, and powerless; and entirely at his mercy, a fact that no doubt amused him. Probably the only reason she was still alive.
A fit of coughing bent her double, left her gasping for breath; her lungs wrung out, emptied of everything except bitterness. She needed essence, needed its familiar warmth to keep away the memories, to smooth over the bare, inescapable fact that she was back in the last place in Paris she wanted to be; to keep her from imagining her future, which would be short and nasty and brutal.
Does it really matter? Your future was always short. You’ve always known that.
But there was the long, slow slide into an oblivion fueled by drugs — and — this. One of her choosing, the other one emphatically not.
Selene, no doubt, would have lectured her about the need to be strong, to keep her head. Madeleine wasn’t Selene, and saw little point in any of this. This was Asmodeus’s House; and there wasn’t a corner of it he didn’t master. He had hundreds of dependents, a hundred rooms like this one; and a vast reservoir of artifacts from his predecessors in addition to his own power.
She lay on the bed, and tried to sleep, to banish the smell of orange blossom and bergamot from her clothes; although she already knew both attempts were doomed to fail.
* * *
MAGIC didn’t harm the roots. Fire did, but they immediately grew again, more numerous, as if they’d cut off the hydra’s head. Emmanuelle suggested axes infused with angel breath: that worked better than fire, but with the same drawbacks.
And the tree fought back. Roots uncurled, far faster than anything vegetal had a right to — and strangled the unwary, or knocked them against the wall so hard their bones broke.
Selene lost two bodyguards, Solenne and Imadan; and Isabelle, reckless and heedless of the danger she put herself in, almost got herself killed.