She was wearing a flowing white dress, like a very fancy nightgown, and there were flecks of blood on it. Not as if she’d been hurt—more as if she’d been standing near someone else who had been. As Claire entered the room, Amelie’s eyes opened and focused on her, but the Founder didn’t move.

“We have a problem. Ada,” Amelie said. “You know, don’t you?”

“That she’s crazy? Yeah. I figured that.” Claire realized she was still holding the knife, and put it down. “Sorry.”

“A reasonable precaution in uncertain times,” Amelie said softly. Nothing else. Claire waited, but Amelie was as still as one of those marble angels on top of a tomb.

“What happened?” Claire finally asked.

“Nothing you would understand.” Amelie closed her eyes. “I’m tired, Claire.”

There was a simple kind of resignation to the way she said it that made Claire shiver. “Should I—is there somebody I should call, or—”

“I will rest here for now. Thank you.” It was a dismissal, one Claire was a little relieved to get. Amelie just seemed—absent. Empty.

“Okay. But—I guess if you need something—”

Amelie’s eyes snapped open, and Claire felt it at the same time: a surge of power—the portal reopening.

Amelie’s will slammed it closed.

“Someone’s looking for you,” Claire said. “Who is it?”

“None of your affair.”

“It is if they’re coming here! Is someone after you?”

“It’s my guards,” Amelie said. “They’ll find me, sooner or later, but for now, I want to be here. Here, where Sam—” She stopped again, and silvery tears pooled in her eyes and ran down into her unbound pale hair. “Where Sam told me he would never leave me. But he did leave me, Claire. I knew he would, and he did. Everyone leaves. Everyone.”

This time, when the portal flared, Amelie didn’t try to keep it shut. In seconds, the attic door flew open, and it wasn’t the guards after all, in their black Secret Service suits.

It was Oliver, still wearing his bowling shirt, graying hair pulled tight into a ponytail. For a second, as his gaze fell on Amelie, he looked like a different person.

No, that wasn’t possible. He couldn’t really feel something for her. Could he?

“You,” he said to Claire. “Leave us. Now.”

“Stay,” Amelie said. There was an unmistakable thread of command in her voice. “You don’t order my servants in my house, Oliver. Not yet.”

“You’re hiding behind children?”