“The moment it happened,” Matthew lied.

Anna bit her lip and looked down to keep herself from laughing. It was always amusing to meet mundanes who had fantastical notions of how magic worked. Leopolda, she noticed, was smiling indulgently at the entire group, like they were adorable but somewhat dim-witted children.

“Well,” the woman continued, “I was an Adept of the Isis-Urania temple, and I can assure you that I was adamant that—”

This was interrupted by a man standing in the middle of the room and raising a glass of something green.

“My friends!” he said. “I demand that we remember Oscar. You must raise your glasses!”

There was a general noise of agreement, and glasses were raised. The man began to recite Oscar Wilde’s “The Ballad of Reading Gaol.” Anna was struck by one of the stanzas:

Some love too little, some too long,

Some sell, and others buy;

Some do the deed with many tears,

And some without a sigh:

For each man kills the thing he loves,

Yet each man does not die.

She didn’t quite know what it meant, but the spirit of it haunted her. It seemed to have an even more pointed effect on Matthew, who slumped down.

“It is a rotten world that would allow a man like Wilde to die,” Matthew said. There was a hardness in his voice that was new and a bit alarming.

“You’re sounding a bit dire,” Anna said.

“It’s true,” he replied. “Our greatest poet, and he died in poverty and obscurity, not so long ago. They threw him in jail because he loved another man. I do not think love can be wrong.”

“No,” Anna said. She had always known that she loved women the way she was expected to love men. That she found women beautiful and desirable, while men were good friends, brothers-in-arms, but nothing more. She had never pretended otherwise, and her close friends all seemed to accept this about her as a known fact.

But it was true that though Matthew and the others often joked with her about slaying the hearts of pretty girls, it was not something she and her mother had ever talked about. She recalled her mother touching her hair fondly in the carriage. What did Cecily truly think of her odd daughter?

Not now, she told herself. She turned to the woman in the turban, who had been trying to get her attention. “Yes?”

“My dear,” the woman said. “You must be sure to be here in a week’s time. The faithful will be rewarded, I promise you. The ancient ones, so long hidden from us, shall be revealed.”

“Of course,” Anna said, blinking. “Yes. Wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

While she was simply making conversation, Anna found that she would like to return to this place. She had come here dressed as she was, and she had received only approbation. In fact, she was sure that one of the vampire girls was examining her with a look that was not entirely wholesome. And Leopolda, the beautiful warlock, had not taken her eyes from Anna. Had Anna’s mind and soul not been full of Ariadne …