VOWS TO THE DEVIL

CHAPTER THREE:Rules Of The House

By morning — such as it was in Noirheim, a grey reluctant lightening that arrived at ten and felt immediately apologetic — Mara had made three decisions.

One: she was not going to panic.

Two: she was going to find out everything.

Three: she was going to be careful about what she touched.

That last one came from the mirrors.

She'd noticed it while washing her face in the bathroom connected to her room — a bathroom so large her entire previous apartment could have fit inside it, with black marble and old silver fixtures and a mirror that ran the length of the wall above the basin. She'd stood in front of it and splashed water on her face and then looked up, and what she'd seen had made her go very still.

The reflection was right. Hair, face, her worn blue cardigan, the stripe of morning light from the frosted window. All correct.

Except the reflection's eyes had moved first.

Just by half a second. Less. A delay so small she would have convinced herself she'd imagined it, except that she was good at this — at watching, at noticing, at trusting the small strange true things that other people explained away.

She stared at her reflection for a long time.

Her reflection stared back.

On time, after that. Perfectly synchronized. As if it, too, had made a decision.

Mara dried her face, put down the towel, and walked out of the bathroom without looking back.

Felix Voss found her in the hallway.

Or, more precisely, walked directly into her while coming around a corner at speed with a cup of coffee in each hand and nearly wore both of them.

"God—" He caught himself, and both cups, with a reflexive dexterity that suggested this was not the first time. He was younger than Caelum, she could see immediately — lighter, too, in every sense, with the same dark hair but a face that had clearly decided to let things show. He looked at her with open surprise and then something warmer. "You're awake. You're upright. You look—" He considered. "Better than I expected, honestly."

"Better than what you expected is a low bar in this house," she said.

He laughed. An actual laugh, quick and genuine, like it had surprised him too. "Felix Voss," he said, extending one of the coffees toward her. "I made this for Caelum but I think you need it more and frankly he can deal with it."

She took it. "Mara."

"I know." He said it without thinking, and then clearly thought about it, and had the grace to look slightly caught. "Solene briefed us. The whole household." A pause. "You're not what we expected."

"What did you expect?"

He studied her. Honestly, openly, in a way his brother did not. "I don't know," he said finally. "Not you." He said it like it meant something specific. Like you was different from whatever category she'd been filed under before she'd arrived.

She decided she liked Felix Voss.

She wasn't sure yet what to do about the other one.

He gave her a tour.

Not all of it — certain hallways he steered her gently away from, certain doors they passed quickly and without comment, and she noted each one with the part of her brain that catalogued and filed and asked questions later. But he showed her the library — immense, two stories, dark wood and leather and books so old they had no spines — and the eastern dining room, and the conservatory that held plants she didn't recognise, pale-leafed and strange, growing without apparent light.

"Ground rules," he said, leading her back through the main hall, which was cavernous and hung with portraits of people who all had some version of those dark eyes. "From Caelum. He'd deliver them himself but he's—" A slight pause. "Occupied."

"What are the rules?"

"Don't go below the ground floor after midnight. Don't touch the mirrors on the third floor. Don't open any door that you have to push rather than pull — the ones you push aren't doors that were meant to be found." He counted on his fingers. "Don't go near the Mere alone. Don't let anything in that knocks in sets of three." He said all of this in an even, conversational tone, like he was listing recycling guidelines. "If you feel like the house is breathing, it's fine, it does that. If you see something in your peripheral vision that's gone when you look directly at it, tell me or Caelum and don't follow it. And if the lights go out suddenly—"

"Stay still?"

He looked at her. "Stay still," he confirmed. "And be very, very quiet." He paused. "You don't seem frightened."

"I'm frightened," she said. "I'm also angry and curious and running about twelve different theories at once. The frightened is in there, it just has competition."

Felix looked at her for a long moment with an expression that she couldn't quite name. Something that was almost relieved. "Huh," he said quietly, more to himself than her.

"What?"

"Nothing." He turned to lead her back toward the dining room. "Just— maybe. Maybe this works." He seemed to remember she could hear him. "Breakfast. Solene does eggs. She will not make them any other way so I recommend accepting eggs."

"Felix." She stopped. He turned. "What is this place? Really. Not just the house — the city. What is Noirheim?"

He held her gaze for a long moment. And for just a second she saw it — the same thing she'd seen flicker through Caelum's expression the night before. Not evasion. Something older and heavier than evasion.

"A city that made a bargain," he said. "A long time ago. And has been paying for it ever since."

He turned and walked toward the dining room, and his footsteps echoed in the hall, and on the wall beside her, in a portrait she could have sworn had empty eyes a moment ago — a woman in black, dark-haired, with a mouth shaped like a question — was now, unmistakably, looking directly at her.

Mara looked back.

Then she followed Felix to breakfast.