And there was only one way I could think of to open them that would not simply drive him further into her arms: I could not tell him what she was.

I had to arrange for him to see it himself, in a room where she believed no one who mattered was watching.

So I gave Sabine one unguarded afternoon.

Chapter 7 — The Service Door

Gabriel, without knowing what he was helping me do, told her that a temporary housekeeper would be filling in for a few hours while the staff attended a safety seminar.

It was a small, ordinary lie, the kind that raises no suspicion at all, and it created exactly the conditions I needed: an afternoon in which Sabine would be alone in the house with a woman she believed to be powerless, disposable, and beneath her notice.

I did the rest myself.

I covered my silver hair with a dark wig that itched against my scalp.

I put on a pair of thick, cheap glasses that turned the whole house slightly soft and strange.

I worked garden soil into the creases of my hands and under my nails until they looked like hands that had done real labor for a long time, because I have learned that people read hands before they read faces.