Margaret Ellis was a slender woman with an old-fashioned grace, always dressed in modest, vintage clothing that seemed out of place in the modern world. Her dark hair was neatly pinned back, and her pale face carried a distant, melancholic expression. Her gray eyes, though kind, held an unsettling emptiness, and her polite smile never quite reached them. There was something strangely cold about her presence, as if she belonged to a different time—her soft, measured voice and delicate movements making the air around her feel unnaturally still.