“Of course.” Celeste felt numb, as if all the life had been drained from her limbs. She mouthed the words she knew Zeke expected her to say, but she didn’t know whether she meant them or not.

“Hypatia knows what she’s doing,” he said. “Give her time to work.”

She nodded, ready to be away from him. Not that he’d done anything wrong, but if one more person told her to sit and wait, Celeste thought she might scream.

She looked up at him, his brown eyes so sincere. The telltale gold ring around his irises glistened, and to her surprise, tears rimmed his water line.

“We’ll save her,” he said. “I know we will.”

“You’re a good friend, Zeke.” She touched his shoulder briefly and then retreated through the front door.

The Elysium Street boardinghouse had once been the home of a wealthy Goetia mining family, but the husband had died and the wife had gone mad, murdering her children in one of the bedrooms on the fourth floor and then leaping to her own demise from the widow’s walk above. Her paternal niece had inherited the house, declared it a home for single women, and promptly returned back East.

Insanity was one of the less-discussed side effects of mining divinity. Fallen were immune to it, but the Elect fell prey to the madness they called Abaddon’s Revenge. Not often enough to dissuade those seeking to make their fortunes but common enough that it had a name and various tonics dedicated to its treatment.

Most Elect wouldn’t set foot inside the boardinghouse due to its tragic past, which meant the women there were Fallen or the kind of women whom the polite society of the Elect had no use for—spinsters, sapphics, soiled doves. Celeste found their company a bonus rather than a burden. It was no exaggeration to say she preferred to spend her time with the damned, no matter what her blood might let her pass for.

Much of the house had run to just this side of shabby, but the parlor was still a grand affair. Brocaded wallpaper, leaded glass, and heavy mahogany wainscoting remained, befitting the grand place it once had been. The decor became noticeably worn as one moved farther into the house, and by the time one reached the rooms on the third floor where Mariel and Celeste lived, ornamentation was at a minimum. Plainly painted walls stripped of any wood or fabric that might have been resold for a profit were all that greeted her here.

She slid her key into a lock on a door that was hollow enough she could hear her neighbors coming and going whether she wished to or not. Once inside, she shut the door and secured the bolt. She was too anxious to make tea on the portable stove they kept for the kettle, so she simply sat at the table and waited.