I thought about taking the chair at the farthest end of the table—a good twelve feet away—but she indicated the one nearest to hers, on her left side, the side farthest from the fireplace. I walked around and lowered myself into the chair, my head pounding with every movement. Suhail hadn’t held back one bit on that last punch.

Nashira didn’t take her eyes off me. Green, like absinthe. I wondered whom she’d fed on tonight.

“You are bleeding.”

A serviette lay by the cutlery, clasped by a heavy gold ring. I dabbed my swollen lip with it, spotting the ivory linen with blood. I folded it, hiding the stain, and placed it on my lap.

“I suppose you must be frightened,” Nashira said.

“No.”

I should be. I was. This woman controlled everything. It was her name that was whispered in the shadows, her command that ended lives. Her fallen angels drifted nearby, never too far from her aura.

The silence grew. I didn’t know whether or not to look at her. In the corner of my eye, something caught the firelight—a bell jar. It stood in the very center of the table. Beneath the glass was a wilted flower, the petals brown and shriveled, propped up by a delicate wire stand. Whatever kind of flower it had been in life, it was unrecognizable in death. I couldn’t think why she would have a dead flower in the middle of her dinner table—but then, this was Nashira. She kept a lot of dead things hanging around.

She noticed my interest.

“Some things are better off dead,” she said. “Don’t you agree?”

I couldn’t take my eyes off the flower. And I wasn’t sure, but I thought my sixth sense trembled.

“Yes,” I said.

Nashira looked up. There were lines of plaster faces above the windows, at least fifty of them on each of the longest walls. I studied the nearest one a little closer, drawn to it. It was a relaxed, feminine face with a soft smile. The woman looked as peaceful as if she was asleep.

A heavy sickening swelled in my gut. It was L’Inconnue de la Seine, the famous French death mask. Jax had a replica in the den. He said the woman was beautiful, that she’d been a bohemian obsession in the late nineteenth century. Eliza had made him cover it with a sheet, much to his distaste. She said it gave her the creeps.

I looked slowly around the room. All of the faces—the people—they were death masks. I only just stopped myself gagging. Nashira didn’t just collect voyant spirits; she collected their faces, too.

Seb. What if Seb was up there? I forced myself to look down but my stomach roiled.

“You seem unwell,” Nashira said.

“I’m fine.”