She gave him a lingering, curious look but went where he indicated, her delicate boots clicking on the parquet floors as she walked.

James locked the drawing room door behind them. He hadn’t been in here since the argument with Elias. He could still see a small porcelain figurine tipped sideways on one of the shelves, where Elias had knocked it over.

He turned to Grace. “We had an agreement.”

She had shrugged off her heavy cape; under it she wore a cream wool dress embroidered with blue. It was tight around the waist and hips, narrowing to a swirl of lace panels below the knee. “You told me how things were going to be,” she said, “but I don’t recall agreeing.”

He leaned back against the side of the piano. “I don’t mean to be unkind,” he said. “But this is not fair on either of us. Nor is it fair on Daisy. I made her a promise, and I intend to keep it.”

“Daisy,” she echoed, laying her gloved hand on the back of a chair. “Such a pretty nickname. I don’t think you have one for me.”

“Cordelia is a much longer name than Grace,” he said shortly. “You said you had something important to tell me.”

“I have a question, really. About Lucie.”

James didn’t bother to hide his surprise. “You’ve never shown much interest in Lucie.” Every summer in Idris, he had offered to introduce her to his sister, but Grace had refused, saying sometimes that she could not bear to part with a moment of her time alone with James, saying other times that she wished to meet Lucie when she was free of her mother and could speak of her love for James openly. James happened to think that the last thing Lucie wanted to hear about was a strange girl’s passion for her older brother, but Grace would not be moved.

“It is about her power,” Grace said. “I know Lucie, like you, can see the dead—but you can also travel in shadows. Can Lucie do the same?”

“Why do you want to know?” James asked. “And why now?”

“The murders, I suppose,” Grace said, looking away. “They’ve been so awful—and I know of your shadow power, but few others do, and I suppose I wondered if you and Lucie had any way of—of perhaps seeing the ghosts of those who had been murdered? Of knowing who might have done this?”

This was rather awkwardly close to the truth, James thought, though he could not share that thought with Grace. Certainly nothing he knew currently would comfort her. He couldn’t help but feel sympathy; she had always been so sheltered in Idris—from demons, from the ordinary violence of a mundane city.