The door to the sealed room had been closed for two days.
Isabella had chosen the smallest guest room in the Faust estate, which said something about her, and had been inside it with the curtains drawn and the door shut since the morning after the contract. No one had pushed. Mephistopheles had explained it to the group in a single sentence...the body needs time to recover from long-term possession, and forcing it back into activity before it's ready tends to end badly...and after that no one had knocked.
But Mephistopheles had visited. Twice.
The first time, two mornings in, she'd slipped through the door without knocking the way she did most things, and found Isabella sitting cross-legged on the bed with her eyes closed, breathing the slow measured rhythm of someone who had been taught formal meditation and was using it to keep themselves together.
Isabella heard her come in. Didn't open her eyes immediately.
"How is he," she asked.
