Charon had arranged for Murphy to be brought to his greenhouse, attached to the back of the south wing of the mansion. The journalist had likely received a few glimpses into some very grand rooms on the way to the back of the house, had he been astute enough to pay attention to the doorways they moved past. The doorman who greeted him had done so silently, and wasn't dressed as a servant would be, but more like an inhabitant. To Murphy's knowing eye, he would identify this figure as a vampire, though the fellow did not introduce himself and intimidated silence from those near him. The foyer was grand, the hallway almost as wide, the carpeted corridor dressed in creams, beige and lilac with golden highlights was as luxurious as the tidbits that Murphy would see through open double arch doorways - one that led to a ballroom, another to a very long, narrow dining room, impressions of rooms that could be offices or dens, more that had closed doors, and then through a plain but extra wide and tall door - the greenhouse itself.
Murphy was led to the large glass room, lit by fairy lights along the edged panes and very little else. The moon was near full tonight, which meant the low lighting wasn't a hindrance to the mortal's eyesight. He would see everything quite clearly, including Charon's sickly and squat-faced visage. Murphy's usher melted into shadows that weren't quite black enough to melt into, which was quite the feat. Charon merely turned his face slightly to acknowledge Murphy with a nod, but continued to groom his roses, shears in hand.
"I used to believe in many Gods and Goddesses," he began conversationally, his hushed and cracking voice sibilant yet clear in the very still night - shielded from the sounds of wildlife thanks to the panes of glass that surrounded them. "Then I believed in one God, when the new religions surfaced, but now I don't believe at all. Here," his right hand lowered the shears onto the table before him so he could gesture at his eyes - bright and intelligent and ill-suited to the rest of his emaciated face, "these have seen evolution in progress. I have watched plants breed across species between themselves with nobody to guide them, I have watched plants change in their array of colours in order to reward the most efficient to attract their insect varieties. I have watched human beings themselves grow to astounding heights, then shrink to diminutive statures, then grow again to what we have now, of average height and build." His wrist rotated so that his hand circled magnanomously to include Murphy in this pedestrian description of humankind. "Do you believe in the afterlife, Murphy? Do you think there is an eternity for everyone?"
His face seemed amused, though his eyes bore into Murphy's own with an intensity that belied the seriousness behind the question.
