A Drop of Night (21 page)

We're out of the rose bedroom, moving in single file into the
heart of the palace. No one's talking. We've said all we needed to say. Our plan's in motion.

We start to run, our feet thumping softly against the marble. We keep our lights pointed downward, the beams skimming the floor.

Ten minutes later we reach a wide, low staircase. At the top is a pair of mirrored doors. We jog up the steps. I open one of the doors, just a crack, as quietly as I can.

“Guys?” I look back over my shoulder.

“What?”

“I think we're here.”

The others peek in. Nod.

This hall of mirrors is not at all like the one in Versailles. I saw the original on a humid day in August, jammed in along with all the other fourth graders whose
parents felt Paris would be more enriching than the binge-watching nanny all summer long. I remember thinking the hall of mirrors didn't really have that many mirrors in it. It was mostly gold. Huge windows, parquet floor, a bunch of chandeliers hanging from the ceiling. On the other wall were some big mirrors, but overall it seemed like a misnomer.

The Palais du Papillon has an
actual
hall of mirrors. It's like a huge version of the glass corridor through which we entered the palace. A kaleidoscope, a fractured prism, high and narrow, glittering faintly blue. Only ten feet wide. Maybe a hundred feet long. Everything—floor, ceiling, walls—is made up of massive panels of reflective glass.

At the far end, another doorway stands open. Golden light shines out of it, radiating in sharp lines down the hallway.

Slowly, I ease the door closed again.

“Ready?” We're all staring at each other, wide-eyed. I feel like I should say something, give a stirring speech and send us off to death or glory, but my heart's thudding, deafening. My mouth feels dry suddenly. I can't think of anything.

“Ready,” Will says.

I nod. I feel someone's hand on my arm and I realize we're grabbing at one another, gripping hands, sweaty and dirty and alive. And now Lilly pulls away from us and steps through the doors, into the hall of mirrors.

Here goes.

She starts down the hall, feet tapping quietly. She looks like a little lost deer. She's not. She's got a gun tucked under the bulky sweatshirt Will lent her. She's got a small bomb and two knives. About halfway down the hall, she slows.

Don
'
t turn around, Lilly.

Adrenaline burns through me. She doesn't stop. Doesn't turn.

I feel every muscle in my body, every tendon and ligament straining, as if I'm keeping Lilly alive by sheer force of will—

“Hello?” Lilly calls out. Her voice echoes down the glassy expanse. “Dorf? Is anyone here?”

Bam
. A tracker shoots out of the doors at the other end of the hall, sprinting straight for Lilly, the red light thrumming along its jaw. Lilly doesn't make a sound. She lifts the gun and fires, and the tracker goes flipping
backward, its body squeaking over the mirrored floor.

Jules throws me a panicked look. I don't move, don't look anywhere but down the hall of mirrors.

Lilly keeps walking.

And now the ambush starts.

Halfway between us and Lilly, one of the mirrors flips open soundlessly. Two more trackers step out and move toward her. She doesn't see them. She doesn't need to.

The trackers whirl, but Will and I are already on them. I zap one with the Taser. The second hits the floor, Will's knife protruding from its leg. A second later it's knocked out, too, twitching against the glass.

Lilly's reached the end. She waves, once, the signal that she's coming back.

Jules steps into the hall.

There's no way this is it. I draw out my own gun.
Come out, come out, whatever you are.

Lilly reaches us. She's soaked, her hair sticking to her forehead. We start back toward Jules.

Hayden has stepped into the hall. Maybe it's the light, but he looks sick. He's moving over the mirrored floor like it's thin ice. He passes Jules and heads toward the open panel and the trackers on the floor. Kneels next to
one. Grabs it by the neck and rips open its visor. Slimy skin glimmers in the blue light.

“Tell us the way out,” he says through his teeth. “Tell us!”

The tracker gurgles, its eyes rolling back in its head. Hayden goes for the knife already in its leg, and he twists, slowly.

That was not part of the plan. I run for him. Will's half a step behind me. “Hayden, stop—”

He slides out the knife and thrusts it in again. I grab his shoulder. He whirls, inhumanly fast, and smacks me so hard my ears ring. I stumble back. Lilly catches me. My vision blurs, but through the neon flashes inside my skull, I see Hayden stand.

He's shuddering. His whole body is jerking, twitching back and forth like a bad frame of celluloid film. He pauses, motionless, slouched between the mirrors, head lowered, eyes turned up. His reflections extend away behind him, into infinity. They grin and he grins, lips stretching, eyes dull and fevered.

He drops the tracker. It's dead now. Will charges toward him. Hayden's faster. One second he's standing, hands empty, and the next he has a gun, and the barrel
is jammed against Will's head. Jules makes a cracked, frightened sound, tries to do something, maybe run. Hayden flicks a long steel blade to Jules's throat, stopping him in his tracks.

“Hayden?” I whisper.

Will dives, tries to slash at Hayden's stomach. Hayden twitches again. His arm sails down, up, so fast I can barely see it, and the grip of the handgun connects with the back of Will's head.

“Hayden!”

“Give the Bessancourts my warmest regards,” Hayden says, and his voice is dead in his throat, thin and metallic. He's holding Will up by his neck now, one arm snaked around him. “Tell them I win this round.”

A rattling echoes through the hall. The mirrors begin to move, sliding around.

I get one last glimpse of Jules and Hayden and Will, frozen in a horrible triptych. Now the mirrors slam into place, and it's just Lilly and me, and rank upon rank of trackers.

“What have you done?” I breathe. “Father, what have you
done
?”

He stands behind me, one hand resting awkwardly on the back of a chair as if he is proud, as if he waits to be carved into monuments and painted on a great canvas. Little tears glisten in the corners of his eyes. He does not answer me.

I step toward Mother. It is some trickery—strings and mirrors. It must be. I saw her die. I heard the bullet and saw the blood, and Jacques carried down her lifeless body.

But it is Mama. These are her eyes, blue as cornflowers, with the little scar under one of them like a scratch of moonlight. This is her smile, shy and beautiful, as though she never saw any ill in the world, as though Father and the palace and her brief, sad life were all some strange play, and if she pretended diligently enough the curtain would fall, and the actors would vanish, the lavish sets, too, and she
could leave the stage behind her and wander into the fields and the sun. “Aurélie,” she says again. I cannot stop myself: I hurry to her and kneel by her chair. “Mama?”

She gazes down at me, her face full of tenderness.

“Mama, how—?”

“How what, my darling?” She laughs. “Why are you making these silly faces?”

I am close to laughing, myself, close to leaping up and embracing her and smothering her in kisses. I feel her hand on my cheek. It is cold, colder than ice and marble. I look back at Father.

“Do my sisters know? Delphine and Bernadette and Charlotte, have they seen her?”

“No,” Father says, licking his lips. “You are my eldest. I wanted you to be the first to see. Is she not sublime?”

“They must know! She is their mother and they think she is dead; can you not understand how they must have wept—”

I look back at Mama. She reaches out to touch my cheek again, but this time she misses and her hand drops to the armrest, a deadweight. She does not attempt to raise it again. She continues to sit, slumped in the chair, smiling.

“Mama?” I say, and now to Father: “What did you do to
her? Father, she is not the same.” Panic is gripping me. I blink away the tears, but they are forming too quickly, flooding their dams. “Father, she died, I saw it, she was
dead
.”

Father looks on, his mouth twitching into a smile, his gaze crawling over my face.

I crouch next to Mama and grip her arm. “Mama,” I say. “Do you remember the château, Mama? The tree we used to eat under in the arbor, what sort of tree was it? Mama, what was it?”

She continues to smile. “Aurélie,” she says, and her voice is low, a thread of wind in the shrubs, in the rosebushes. “My beautiful, beautiful daughter . . .”

It is as if she is asleep. She sees me, but it is as if I am a dream to her, a wisp of thought somewhere deep in the vaults of her mind. I clench her poor, cold arm. “Mama, do you remember the tree? Please remember!”

And all at once, she twitches, like an animal with its back broken.

“Mama, what's the matter?”

Havriel takes a step toward us.

“Mama?”

Her eyes begin to change. I see veins in them, strands of black, spreading through the blue. She seems to realize
something is wrong, and it is as if she is surfacing, her head coming up out of a deep inky pool. It is my real mother, Mama, awake. Alive. She looks directly at me, and she sees me.

“Aurélie?” she says. Her voice is panicked. I smell smoke and flames, see her pale hand coated in her own blood, wearing it like a gory ornament. “Aurélie, my daughter,
do not leave me behind.”

Now the veins spread like a wild thicket, unstoppable, and her eyes flood black.

I jerk to my feet, backing away. Mama writhes, contorting in her chair. “Father, what did you do?
What did you do to her?”
I scream.

Father is shaking, crying. “We brought her back,” he says. “We found the key, hidden in the branches, and we gave her life. . . .” He stops shaking. His gaze drifts far away. “We made her eternal.”

A cold hand clamps my wrist, and I spin to face the thing that was my mother. It is staring at me. It is still smiling, but there is no kindness left there. Only hunger.

Its head tilts oddly. It opens its mouth. A long tongue slides out, purple and mottled. “Aurélie,” it whispers.
“Aurélieeeeeee.”

Havriel pushes past me. He grips Mama, and she shrieks, slashing at him with hands that are suddenly clawlike, white skin stretched tight over bone. She struggles. Havriel is stronger. He is strapping her to the chair, and the chair has wheels, and he is leaning it back, pushing it away, and she is thrashing, her head whipping like a snake, smiling eyes, smiling lips, and that great purple tongue.

The doors slam behind her, and I still hear her screams, echoing through the palace.

“It was an apple tree,” I whisper, when she is gone and it is only Father and I, standing in the red glow and the shadows. “We used to eat under the apple tree.”

Click
.
The lights in their helmets ignite. Another
click.
The trackers
start toward us, fast.

I bring up my gun in an arc, my finger on the trigger. A split second before I shoot, the mirrors swing around. The whole space rearranges itself, revealing the trackers, obscuring them. The spindly gilt poles aren't supports. They're hinges, and what used to be one long hallway is now dozens of tiny blocks—passages, corners, dead ends.

A maze.

“Move, Lilly,” I whisper. “Anywhere, just move.”

We start for the nearest opening, my hand scrabbling across the glass. I glance over, see my reflection hurrying next to me, a whole row of
me
s. I hear the trackers, I think, on the other side. Pounding boots and the soft creak of bodysuits. I can't hear Jules or Hayden or Will. No voices.

We turn a corner and almost collide with a pair of trackers. Before I can even react, one of them lashes out, tarry fingers pinching into my throat. I try to bring my gun up. The tracker catches my wrist with its other arm. I kick out desperately. My foot connects with its shin. Pain explodes in my jaw, fear and shock—
it
'
s trying to lift me by my head—
and I hear a gunshot, so close it's like a punch to the ear. The hand around my neck loosens. I drop, start crawling over the floor. A second gunshot.

“Lilly?”

She's next to me, staring at her gun like it's some kind of disgusting metal slug. I stagger to my feet, and we're running again, dodging around the mirrors. Footsteps seem to be approaching from all directions. Everywhere I turn I see helmets, red lights, slicing black legs, and I don't know if they're reflections or if they're right there, inches away from me.

Another three trackers burst out diagonally in front of us. They spot us. Whirl. We skid to the right, dart down a short passage, left, left again, deeper into the maze. And now we're at a dead end, hemmed in on three sides by mirrors.

I spin, feeling for an opening. I see something skim
past. I run for it. And slam against solid glass. I reel back, hot blood trickling from my nose and into my mouth.

“Whoa,” I say shakily, turning to Lilly. “Whoa, that was—”

Lilly gasps.

“I'm fine,” I say. “I'm fine, we—”

Three trackers are standing at the entrance to the dead end. Another one approaches. Four, five-six-seven, silent and glittering.

What are they waiting for?

My eyes flick to the left. We're trapped. I see Lilly and myself in the glass, desperate, frozen.

Wait.

One of the reflections isn't Lilly.

About four reflections in is a shape. It's matching its pose to Lilly's, head down, arms limp at its sides. But it's not Lilly. It's the woman in the dripping red dress. And suddenly she skips a mirror as easily as stepping through a doorway and starts toward us.

Oh please no
. I reach out to touch the glass. It isn't glass. It's air. The woman picks up speed, coils into a crouch, and launches herself upward. The trackers leap toward us.

I grab the first thing I can get out of my pocket: the steel globe with a button at the top. I jam the button and hurl it. The globe cracks against the first tracker's helmet. Rolls away.
Seriously?

The woman rams into the trackers, and she's like a tiny vicious hurricane. She swings through them, sinuous and savage, a whirl of red, her arms wrapping necks and legs, breaking them. I catch a glimpse of teeth, long and spiny.

Lilly and I dive through the opening between the mirrors and feel our way down a passageway. I glance back over my shoulder. I can still see her. She's corpse white and hunched, and her dress is in tatters, whirling around her like a cloud. She hurls a tracker into a mirror and turns, looking toward us. She's not breathing hard. She's not breathing at all. Her eyes are dead black.

A tracker strikes her aside and heads our way. It never gets a chance to run. The woman catches it by the neck. I spin forward again, but I hear the sound it makes, the bite.

That thing is not human.

None of them are.

Slam, slam.

The mirrors keep shifting. Something's coming after us.

We're in another compartment, three walls of glass. Another dead end. I hear something running. I hear someone muttering close by, right next to me, then veering away.

Lilly,
I mouth. Gesture toward a gap in the mirrors. We're going to have to backtrack.

Snick—
soft as a fingernail paring. And there's the woman, her head emerging between the mirrors.

I freeze. White skin, glossy and hard like stone. No hair. Not even eyelashes. Her wig's gone. She blinks once, translucent lids over black. She slides into the compartment, lithe as a cat.

“Stay back,” I hiss, pulling a knife out of my belt. “Stop, do
not
come any closer!”

She lets out an ear-shattering shriek.

I lash out, and she dodges. Skitters to the side. Now she leaps forward, catching me behind the knees. My legs fold. I fall and my head slams into glass.

She vaults onto my stomach. Liquid like dirty water is flowing from her dark eyes. She's sniffling, crying.

“Aurélie?”
she says. One of her hands flies up, and
the hand has claws, spiny thin like a cat's—

Over her left shoulder, a harsh zapping sound.

The thing falls in a heap on my chest.

Lilly's standing behind her, an expression of sheer horror on her face. She's holding my Taser. We stare at each other. I push the woman off and scramble to my feet. The woman has a smile on her face even though she's stunned, convulsing on the floor. Her eyes are open, flipping back and forth between us, and there's a little scar under one of them, like a scratch of moonlight.