“Don’t you think Louis needs time to freshen up?” Ambrose asks. “Maybe eat a meal? Get in some training?”

I look between Ambrose and Gaspard and shrug. “I’m actually good.”

Gaspard raises an eyebrow at Ambrose. “Apparently, he is good.”

Ambrose mumbles something about just trying to be hospitable and heads toward the kitchen.

Charlotte takes my arm. “We all know it’s Ambrose who wants the meal and the workout. But we should go ahead and discuss what you’ll be doing here. After the meeting, you’ll have plenty of time to get settled.”

She leads me up the stairs toward the library, and I try not to gawk at everything. The crystal chandelier the size of a Volkswagen Beetle hanging over the foyer. The upstairs hallway lined with antique carpets. The marble pedestal holding a vase of fresh flowers that smell like Bran’s garden after the rain.

Kate brought me to La Maison, located in a super-posh tree-lined neighborhood in Paris’s sixth district, for a few hours before the Final Battle. But I was too shell-shocked from having deserted the group of evil undead who had resurrected me to have the bandwidth to appreciate the decor. Plus, I spent most of that time in a dark room giving intel—filling the bardia in on everything I had witnessed during my months with Violette and the numa.

Now that I know I’m going to stay, I’m hyper-aware of my surroundings, and realize how impressive the house is. It’s a hotel particulier, a palace inside the city, complete with a garden and hidden behind a high stone enclosure. But it doesn’t feel cold and historic, like Violette’s castle, where bleakness practically oozed from the cold grey walls. No, this place is warm. It feels alive.

If I’m honest, it seems way too good for me. I know I shouldn’t get hung up on it, but I can’t help it. However unwillingly, I worked with their enemies. And I haven’t even proved myself by saving a human life. So, I don’t feel like I deserve to be embraced so warmly. But I want to. Desperately. I’m determined to earn the trust they’re investing in me.

In the library, Gaspard and Bran are deep in conversation, seated at a large round oak table surrounded by a dozen chairs. Stacked in the middle are piles of books and a laptop that sticks out like a sore thumb since it’s the only electric item in the room besides the lamps.

Although I’m not a big reader, libraries impress me. They have that hushed, holy feeling of churches. This one feels more like a cathedral. Its ceiling towers twenty feet overhead, and there are wooden ladders to access shelves that are too high to reach. The smell of furniture polish hangs in the air, mixed with the odors of old paper and candlewax.