The house was absurdly huge. Unused rooms included a couple of superfluous sitting rooms, an empty wine cellar, a game room with a pool table, a media room with a wet bar (no alcohol), a library lined with acres of empty shelves. To his surprise, the envoy had chosen reasonably well when he’d picked the peacock room for Ángel: the others were even worse. Ángel tried to decide which one he would give Marissa, if she were to visit: the hot-pink and zebra-stripe one? Or the red-and-orange Navajo-themed one, with lamps made out of antlers and a taxidermied mountain goat head over the bed? Whoever decorated this house had never heard the phrase “too much.”

He wondered how Oberon’s room was decorated. But he neither went there, nor looked at it on the monitors.

Exploring the house kept him busy until lunchtime, when he dutifully took a tray of sandwiches and fruit salad from Lily and made his way to the music room. He hesitated outside the door to the office for a long minute, before setting his jaw and rapping on the door.

“Come in.”

The room, which had been closed all morning, smelled like Oberon—not unpleasant, but not human. A toasty sort of smell. A white rosebud, tightly furled, had been cut from the plant by the window and stood in a vase on the desk. Oberon was at the desk, listening to piano music. Oberon’s hair fell over his forehead in silky wisps, pale ash streaked with mint. His gaze, when he looked up, was remote.

The mansion’s very tackiness made it easy to forget that he was in the home of a magical being. But here in this room, with the baked-bread smell in the air and the Otherworldly rose on the desk, the strange green eyes of the elf-lord regarding him dispassionately, Ángel felt frightened again. Far from home, at the mercy of something he didn’t understand.

“Hi,” said Ángel, falling back on casual politeness as he put the tray on the desk. “Lily says you forget to eat lunch.”

“I do, sometimes.” Though Oberon’s face was as aloof and expressionless as Mount Rushmore, his voice was warm. He pressed a button on his desk, and the music’s volume lowered. “Thank you for bringing me food. Will you stay to eat with me?”

“I think that’s Lily’s plan. All these sandwiches can’t be just for you.” Ángel managed to keep his voice light, though his stomach was in knots from being in the elf’s presence. He took a plate and sat on one of the wingback chairs—its tufted leather upholstery was smooth and hard as polished wood, surely deliberately uncomfortable. “Did I get any emails today?” He forced himself to take a bite of his sandwich.

“No. I will send them immediately to your tablet, if you do.”

After reading them, presumably.