I turned to find him standing at the opposite end of the room. A dark figure against a flower-dotted backdrop, he regarded me with an unreadable expression. For a long time, I just stared back, awed all over again by that face, which never stopped being arresting.

That night, after I’d gotten home from school, I’d taken care to try to keep my family together in the house. I’d done homework with Charlie in the parlor while Dad continued chipping at the wallpaper. When bedtime had rolled around, I’d sent Lucas a requested all’s-well text before curling up in my bed again with my little sister. This time, I hadn’t wanted to fight off the sleep that I likely wouldn’t have been able to anyway.

And this—he—was the reason why.

Still, I hadn’t been sure he would come. I’d started to worry that my encounter with Zedok meant something terrible had happened to Erik.

“You . . . you’re okay,” I said, breaking the silence. “After yesterday, I wasn’t sure what to think.” He didn’t say anything, which made me nervous. Because he hadn’t been this quiet in any of our previous meetings. And that expression he wore, like I was the ghost here, suddenly made me anxious that I’d misread him. “Are you okay?”

“In truth,” he replied at last, without a trace of any of the coldness he’d shown before, “I am not.”

I frowned and took a halting step toward him. I wasn’t 100 percent certain what to do, either. Especially now that there was so little room left to doubt that Erik wasn’t just a dream.

“Something’s wrong,” I guessed, my heart speeding up. “Besides the curse, I mean. Something happened.”

“Something has . . . happened,” he conceded.

I started toward him. His brows lifted slightly in surprise as I approached, but he didn’t continue. Not even when I stopped right in front of him. Instead, his eyes searched mine.

“Erik,” I prompted when his answer never came.

He started. Then his expression darkened. Immediately, though, he banished the scowl behind a mask of indifference, and with a halfhearted gesture to the walls surrounding us, he strode away, moving toward the pillow-piled wicker furniture that occupied the center of the spacious room.

“Do you like it?” he asked.

“Like what?”

“The conservatory,” he said. “I thought you might take pleasure in seeing it.”

“It’s . . . beautiful,” I admitted, though cautiously, still baffled by his words, not to mention this sudden and near-total shift in him.

“I could not help but notice how rarely in this house—large though it is—you manage to enjoy moments that are wholly your own,” he went on to say. “Though I possess time in abundance, as commodities go, it’s rather ill-suited for lending, wouldn’t you agree? It is true as well that I cannot bring you roses, but . . . as you can see, it is well within my means to transport you to them.”

I wanted to smile at this gesture—at his words, too. My concern wouldn’t let me, though. And now there arose a new concern. One that asked where all this was coming from.