A Drop of Night (7 page)

Our dishes are removed again. Tiny finger bowls of lavender
water arrive, followed by perfect, rose-colored orbs of pomegranate sorbet in martini glasses.

I'm just finishing mine, slipping my spoon along the edge of the glass, when one of the waiters returns. He's carrying a tray of crystal water glasses on small pewter coasters. The coasters have pills on them, dark red and glimmering, like droplets of blood. The waiter sets one coaster down in front of each of us. Whispers out. I catch a glimpse of a tattoo on his neck, a black swirl disappearing under his collar.

“What's this?” I pick up one of the pills. Watch the air bubble in its center shift.

Dorf reaches for his coaster, puts his palm to his mouth, and throws back his head. Swallows. “The palace is one hundred feet below the earth's crust,” Dorf says, dabbing
his mouth with his napkin. “Uncirculated air can be very dangerous. These are to counteract possible microbes and toxins that can develop within a sealed environment.”

Except his coaster was empty. I know it was. The waiter brought six glasses. Six coasters. One of them had no pills on it. Dorf's.

My skin goes cold. “That's ridiculous,” I say. Try to keep the tremor out of my voice. “You can't immunize yourself against poisonous air with a couple of pills. Our bodies will start digesting these right away. The effects will wear off in our sleep.”

Dorf's gaze falls on me, and for the first time I see annoyance in those calm gray eyes
.
He doesn't say anything. Lilly's gaze darts between us.
Did she see what I saw?

But Hayden's already picking up his pills. “Bottoms up,” he says, and downs them. I stare at him, watch the straight-razor angle of his jaw work as he swallows. I kind of expect him to sprout claws, horns, maybe fall off his chair and start writhing on the floor. He doesn't. He pounds his chest twice and grins at me, as if he's somehow proving me stupid.

Is he?

Lilly and Jules both pick up their pills. Glance at each other. Jules swallows his and Lilly, not wanting to be left behind, follows suit. Dorf smiles at me again, that sickening
you're-a-joke
smirk. “See?” he says. “Nobody died.”

At the edge of my vision I see Will looking philosophically at his pills. Does
he
at least sense anything off?

Nope. He downs his pills, too.

I stare at the one resting in my palm.
Red-dark-red-dark.
And suddenly it looks like a puncture, blood blooming out of my skin.

I'm not overreacting. Something's wrong. I grab the other pill and shove my chair back. The legs screech against the floor
.

Hayden is starting to move weirdly, like he's underwater. His head lolls against his chest. He flops upright a second later with a weak laugh, but this isn't funny. Everyone stares at him. Everyone but Dorf.

His eyes are fixed on me.

“Anouk?” he says, and his voice is rock hard. “Sit down. Take the pills.”

We whirl down the stairs, deeper and deeper into the earth, and all I can see is Mama turning away from us, the blood soaking her gown.

They shot her. The bullet ripped through flesh and sinew, lodging amid the pearly snakes of her intestines like a speck of coal, a black seed sprouting death. In five minutes she will no longer be able to breathe. In ten she will be gone forever. . . .

“Aurélie,”
she screamed.
“Do not leave me behind.”

But I did.

Above, I can hear the roar of flames as they consume the château, becoming steadily quieter, as if we are leaving chaos and gunpowder behind us, descending into another world entirely.

Our only light is from the open lantern in the old guard's hand. The hot stench of it catches me in the face
as I descend—animal fat and dirty rags and kerosene. Bernadette hurries behind him, dragging at her skirts, her tongue clucking like a goose as she cries. Charlotte is close at her back, doing the same, always her sister's little shadow, even in distress. Delphine and I are next. The young guard brings up the rear, pushing us onward in a dogged panic.

I don't sit down. I tuck the pills behind my teeth. Taste the gel
casing, smooth, cold on my tongue. And run for the hall.

This was not part of the contract. Undisclosed drugs were
not part of the contract
. I'm going to get my phone and I'm going to call someone. I don't know who, but someone needs to know where we are.

“Is there a problem, Anouk?” Dorf's voice floats into the hall. “If there's a problem, just let me know—”

I see a glass door at the far end of the hall, facing the border of trees and the fields. I could make a run for it. I taste something bitter on my tongue. The pills are dissolving, trickling into my mouth.

Crap-crap-crap
,
get rid of them, get out of here—

I turn, see Miss Sei striding across the hall toward me. She's got Norse God and Red Spikes with her and they look freakish, dangerous, streaks of moonlight and
shadow from the windows slashing across their faces.

I cough and spit a thick red glob onto the stairs. Wipe my mouth and stagger up them.

I'm so slow. What is
happening
?
I can still taste the pill, can feel threads of numbness spreading into my cheeks. I reach the upper hallway, stumble down it, my hand on the wall.

“Anouk, what's the matter?” Dorf's voice reaches me, slowed down and warbling, from downstairs. “Why don't you get some rest, it's been a long day—”

I swear he sounds like he's grinning. I fumble with the door handle, burst into my room. I need my phone, I need to call Penny
—

I crash into the side table, almost knocking over the lamp. Swipe my hand over the marble top. The door is wide open. I hear them in the hallway.
Where's my PHONE?
I whirl, glance around the room, swaying.

I see the drapes. Chairs. Pillows. No wrinkled sheets. Lilly's monstrous hiking backpack is gone. The bed is made. There's a water ring on the mahogany.

I heave myself toward the bathroom door. Collapse against the frame. A dull, pulsing pain explodes inside my skull. The sink is polished, empty. No bottles of
mascara, no tissues, no toiletry bag. Everything's been cleaned. Wiped down.

The pulsing becomes a beat, drowning out my thoughts. I'm on the floor. I see shoes approaching, black and shimmering, like beetles, swarming toward me. My pupils must be dilating, my vision going blurry-clear-blurry.

Please, no, Mom-Dad-Penny, someone please help me—

And I'm gone.

I see Mama in my mind's eye, crawling down the gallery. Her beautiful gown is stained with blood and soot. She is coughing, weeping, and ash is whirling like a winter storm, filling the gallery. It coats her face and lashes, turns her to a statue of white and gray. In the distance the flames flare, red-hot and hellish.

We cannot leave her. We cannot leave her behind.

I stop. The young guard collides with my back. Delphine squeaks in surprise.

“We must go back,” I whisper. “We must go back for Mother.”

“Mademoiselle, we cannot—” The young guard tries to guide me onward, but I dig my fingers into the stone on either side and refuse to move. It is foolishness, I know it is, but she is my mother. In Versailles they murdered two guards, and they were not even noble. I hope to God they have not yet taken her head.

“Mademoiselle, if we return we will all be killed.” The young guard's face is strangely exquisite in the torchlight, his expression not unkind. His words slide off me like water.

“I will go alone if you will not help me, but I will not leave her to be burned.”

“Please, mademoiselle. Baptiste!” The young guard calls after his companion.
“La demoiselle, elle—”

I hear the old guard pounding back up the steps, shoving past my sisters, the rushing sound of his lantern as it flares. I do not move my gaze from the young soldier.

“Please help me,” I say to him, and my voice is a pitiful-thin thread. “We cannot leave her. If Father were to hear that we had abandoned her to the
révolutionnaires
, he would—”

The old guard grips my wrist, dragging me savagely about. “Your father will do
nothing
,” he spits. “The Marchioness Célestine was driven to hysteria by the sight of her burning home. She could not be reasoned with, ran back to fetch her jewels, and was killed. That is all your father will hear, do you understand?”

His teeth are like china, gleaming in his leather face. I recoil from him, try to twist away, but his fingers only tighten further, digging into my skin.

“I asked you, mademoiselle, if that was clear. I trust that even in my brutish, peasant French you understood the question.”

“I do not believe you are in a position to command me, monsieur. Do not come if you do not choose to, but—”

The old guard turns my wrist so that my elbow points into the air and I shriek with the pain. My eyes fly to my sisters, panicked, as if I can do something to stop them from seeing, from hearing. They stare back, Charlotte's mouth hanging open.

Somewhere high above, an echoing crash. The old guard lets me go and I stumble, gripping Delphine. “Move,” he says.
“Rapidement.”

And we are hurrying down the stairs once more. Tears spring against my eyelids, hot and shameful. Confusion and fear twist into a knot in the pit of my stomach. I focus on the jacket stretched across the old guard's back, the lantern fumes flowing in stinking swaths up the stairs, the soot dotting on my sisters' necks like fleas.
Mama, please, please be safe.

We pass under an archway. It is becoming difficult to breathe. The air is not warm, but my skin feels sticky beneath the layers of satin and lace. The stairs are becoming wider, the treads not so steep and narrow. Everything around us is rough, ugly stone.

We arrive at the bottom and move down a tunnel, round
and ribbed like the belly of a whale. Ahead I see a room: a small cube, mirrored on all four sides. Someone is standing in it. A man. My hand tightens around Delphine.

The guards hurry us forward.

The man's shoulders are so wide they seem to push at the seams of his black frock coat. His arms are like tree trunks. His back is toward us, but I recognize him now: Lord Havriel. The quiet giant at my father's side, the steward of his great wealth and the keeper of his secrets.

Lord Havriel turns toward us. He is strangely elegant despite his size, like a dancer. His face is square and serious, framed by a dark beard neatly trimmed. He is almost Father's age, but not half so decomposed.

“Mesdemoiselles,” he says, and he moves forward, his hand going to his waist in preparation for a bow.

He stops. His eyes skip over our bedraggled party: the old guard, Charlotte, Bernadette, Delphine. His eyes stop on me.

“Where is the Lady Célestine?” His voice is soft.

“She ran back to her rooms, monsieur,” the old guard says quickly. “There was nothing we could do, she—”

Havriel stiffens. “She is still in the château?”

The old guard shifts from boot to boot, but he does not answer. The younger one nods, once.

Havriel's eyes twitch, only the slightest bit, a blink and a focusing. And now he is growling, and I feel Delphine flinch against me.
“Non, espèce d'imbéciles. Qu'est-ce que vous avez fait?”

He begins to pace. There is hardly any space in the little mirror room, but he does, tight circles, his black-trousered legs cutting like scissors. “You must get her. Get her down here at
once
.”

“My lord, she would not come!” the old guard says desperately. “She was hysterical, she refused!”

Havriel stops and spins on the young guard. His eyes are dark, flashing like storm clouds. I have never seen him anything but calm—at dinner parties or during ceremonies of state, with King Louis and his Austrian wife, with everyone preened and brushed out, proud as peacocks, Havriel was the silent one, the austere figure in black, a vast quiet presence, sipping wine, whispering into Father's gnarled red ear. . . .

“You will return at once to the surface,” he says, and suddenly his voice is dangerous and low. “I have orders to seal the Palais du Papillon. If you come back alone, you will be locked out, and believe me, your role in the rescuing of our dear
noblesse
will not be appreciated by your kinsmen in Paris.”

The young guard clutches his musket. He swallows, staring at Havriel. The older guard stares, too, but there is something dreadful in his eyes, a mixture of fear and utter hatred.

“You are sending us to our death for a madwoman—” he begins, and Havriel whirls on him and bellows: “
Go
! And pray she is yet alive!”

They leave us, ducking back through the doorway, and now they are sprinting away, silhouetted in the tunnel.

As soon as the sound of their feet has faded, Havriel's shoulders slump. He turns to us, and the many deep grooves in his face soften. But there is worry in his eyes, and a question, too, as if he does not know exactly what to do with three weeping girls and one staring, sullen one. I do not know what to do with him, either. I take Delphine by the shoulders and turn her away. “All will be well,” I murmur, leaning down next to her ear. “They are going back for Mama. They will bring her safely down.”

I face Havriel, gathering the courage to speak. Havriel has pulled a bell from one of his pockets. He bows his head to me, as if in apology for what is to come. He rings the bell and a peal breaks forth, splitting the air in two, like a trembling silver thread. I hear footsteps almost at once, fast approaching. Not from the stairs. From somewhere
beyond the mirrors. From the Palais du Papillon.

“Children,” Havriel says. “Stand and face each other. Quickly.”

My insides twist. “What?”

“Do as I tell you,” he says, and he is moving swiftly, lighting a lamp, adjusting the flame.

I pull Bernadette next to me and position doe-eyed Charlotte across from her. On any other occasion Bernadette would hiss at me, tell me she is only two years younger and that I have no right to boss her, but even she knows better than to do that now. I place Delphine in front of me and try to smile at her, try to look as though I am not frightened out of my wits.

People are entering the room. I hear breathing, the crinkle of starched linens, the whisper of soft feet on stone. I want to scream with the closeness of them, the stifling weight of their bodies in this tiny space.

I see the mirrored wall behind Delphine. I see Mama, blurry in the glass.
The servants have such dreadful faces,
she whispers.

It is not Mama. It is Havriel, and someone else, and he is murmuring, “Quickly. Quickly!” and now I feel breath against the back of my neck and the scratch of cloth. Fabric slips down across my hair.

“What is this?” My voice is shaking. “I will not be blindfolded! I will not—”

It is not a blindfold. It is a sack. The black cloth slides down over my eyelids, blowing out the room like a candle. Hands spin me in circles. Delphine is no longer in my grasp.

“Delphine?”

I am forced to walk, bundled along.

“Delphine, where are you?” I reach out blindly, but I cannot find her.

What did you fear, Mama? What is down here?

Bernadette makes a small noise at my side. I try to reach out to her, but someone has me by the shoulder and is guiding me swiftly forward. We are passing through a door. I feel its shape around me, the change in the space.

“Keep your arms in,” Havriel says suddenly, from somewhere to my left.

I draw my arms in tightly against my body, and a whirring, trickling sound surrounds me, as though I have just stepped into a dripping grotto. We walk for many minutes. The space no longer feels close and claustrophobic, but vast and cold. I hear the click of doors opening. And now we are in a room, and I feel the deep warmth of a burning fire. I smell lamp oil and spiced wine and wood. I smell—

“Frédéric?” Havriel says, and my heart quails.

Father.

I can smell his perfume. I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of times I have spoken to him, but the smell of him, the threads of it hanging in the château after he has passed through its halls, the hint of it on Mother when she is sad and ghostlike: I would recognize it anywhere. It is the smell of roses, lilacs, the sweet, thick burr of lilies on the very edge of rotting. A heady, oily scent, dried and dried again until it is an atmosphere, oozing from his every pore.

“Frédéric,” Havriel says again, moving away from us. His voice is gentle, as if consoling a small child. “Frédéric, your children are here. Aurélie and Bernadette and the others. Your daughters.”

And now I hear him: “Children?” he whispers, his voice wet and weak, echoing behind his tin mask. “But where is Célestine? Where is my wife?”