Dance of the Red Death (Masque of the Red Death) (10 page)

“Sorry,” I mumble, and shuffle for another flyer.

“Might as well give me one of Elliott’s also,” he says.

“Why did you agree to work for him?” I slide one of Elliott’s papers into his hand, careful not to touch him again.

“I’d rather be useful than not.” Will attaches it to a wooden door with a thin nail. “As long as Elliott is keeping his side of the bargain and keeping you safe.” He sets a small stack of papers on a stoop outside an apartment building. “Though if you’re outside alone in that crowd, then maybe he’s not.”

“His men are loyal. They won’t hurt me. The way they . . . looked at me didn’t hurt me.” My voice shakes a little at the end of the sentence, negating everything I just said.

Will reaches for another paper, and once again I am very careful not to let our hands touch. Careful not to look up into his eyes. I don’t want to see the concern there. Can’t let the quaver in my voice turn into full-blown weakness.

“It’s difficult to be hated after being loved,” I say quickly. “For Father to become a villain overnight. I’ll get used to it.”

“I hope you don’t have to.”

“If I stay with Elliott—”

Will freezes. Is he upset because I suggested my relationship with Elliott might be permanent, or was his stillness in response to the word “if,” suggesting that it might not?

I study the flyer in my hand, unwilling to look at Will. I don’t want to see his surprise, his hope, whatever emotion he is struggling with.

“This building is just a shell,” he says. “Let’s get out of this alley.”

The air is fresher out of the shadow of half-burned buildings with their charred timbers exposed. We’re now several streets away from Elliott and the tavern.

These must be the oldest buildings in the city. The masonry on the ornate doorways and around the arched windows is crumbling. Does anyone even live here anymore? Could Father be in one of these desolate homes? We pause in the shadow of a cathedral.

“If I remember correctly, there are steam-powered bathhouses on this street,” Will says. “Kent used to drag me here to look at the mechanisms. And I just wanted to hang out in the Debauchery District. Now I see how important it is to learn about the world around us. Now, and the world before the plague.”

I nod, enjoying the sound of his voice.

“I could have learned so many things from my father.”

He knew more than anyone in the city, and I never even questioned him. All I experienced was what I could see from April’s fancy steam carriage. Will knows this, but he has the decency not to say anything.

We walk along together, stopping occasionally to hang more flyers. The shadows are lengthening, and as always, the city looks increasingly sinister as darkness falls.

“We should get back,” I say. “We’ve come a long way.”

“That we have.” Will stares out across the street for a moment, and then he turns to me, his eyes crinkled in a smile above the white of his mask. He hangs one more flyer. His hands are as deft as they ever were in the Debauchery Club, taking my blood. “I’ll get these up as widely as possible,” he offers. “I know a lot of places, and I can operate on very little sleep. You never know where your father might be hiding. He could be someplace you would never expect.”

I used to think that Father was predictable, with his thoughtful but fumbling way of speaking, his vagueness. “Parents are supposed to be boring,” I say bitterly, hating myself for a burst of anger that feels childish. Useless.

“He’s smart enough to find a hiding place where the mob won’t find him.” Will’s voice is neutral.

But I don’t respond, because something brushes against my ankle. I look down at a hand thrust through rotten wood at the base of the building. It grips my ankle and pulls hard, knocking me sideways into Will. The flyers scatter around us.

I scream once, and then the hidden assailant pulls my feet completely out from under me. I try to scramble backward through the dirt, but the hands don’t let go, and now a whole arm is exposed. A man’s arm, marred with weeping sores, reaching from some unseen cellar. The wood splinters at the base of the building.

Papers fly everywhere in the wind.

As the man pulls me forward, my left leg twists under my body. I claw at the knife in that boot, feeling a brief chill as the blade slides against my hand, a flash of pain. Then, finally, it’s free. I thrust it forward, aiming for the area between his thumb and forefinger, the fattest part of the man’s grimy, infected hand.

Will’s shadow falls over me. He stomps down hard, and his boot crushes the man’s grubby wrist. Then he lunges forward, grabbing the diseased man by both of his arms and pulling him up. He dashes the attacker’s head violently against the building wall. When he lets go, the man falls away from us, into the cellar, as if he has no bones to support himself.

I’m sprawled in the street, and Will is half over me. We don’t move for several breaths.

A bloody stain drips down the wall. I lean forward and peer into the cellar. It’s full of low tables and bodies. I gasp and almost scramble away. But . . . there is no sudden stench. No sickly sweet smell of rotting corpses. No sign of movement. Perhaps the black shapes aren’t victims, but simply heaps of dark cloaks.

Is this some sort of hideout or storehouse for Malcontent’s men? How many of them are down there?

A crash from inside the cellar makes me jump, and Will wraps his arms around me, yanking me away from the opening.

“Come on,” he says. “If someone is down there . . . we need to run.”

My first step lands on a flyer and I slip, but Will catches me. Then we are running, my hand in his, threading through streets and alleys to the tavern where Elliott’s men come to attention as they see us wildly dashing toward them.

We burst through the front doors, gasping for breath. Will explains quickly, and Elliott takes off in the direction we came from. His men follow, pouring around me as if I am some sort of blockade in their path.

But I won’t be left behind.

Will tries to hold me back, but I pull away, so he follows. By the time we return, Elliott and his men have pushed through the wooden door. Others are involved in knocking away the rotten wood at the base between the foundation stones and the upper part of the building.

A soldier carries out a heap of ragged homespun robes.

“Don’t touch anything if you don’t have a mask.” Elliott’s voice is not exactly afraid, but concerned. I see him jump from the top of the cellar stairs, all movement and excitement. He’s at his best, commanding his men. “We’ll burn everything except the weapons.” But then his demeanor changes. “Out,” he yells, just as I cross the threshold, his voice higher than usual. “Everyone out. This man died of the Red Death.”

The soldiers flee the building. But Elliott won’t join them. He won’t risk his men, but he isn’t afraid of risking himself.

And he has no protection from the Red Death. I offered him whatever was in that tiny vial that Father gave me, but he put the glass to my lips and made me drink it instead. If anyone is protected from the Red Death, it’s me.

Slowly, ignoring the twinge in my ankle, I enter.

The last sunlight has faded outside, and it is fully dark inside. In his deliberate way, Elliott strikes a match against the wall, watches it for half an instant, and then drops it onto the pile of robes. “This will provide a little light,” he says as they ignite. “But also smoke. We only have a few moments to discover what this place was.”

It seems to be something of a storeroom. Several bottles of liquor stand on a table, as well as a loaf of bread and some dark lumps that must be rotting vegetables.

“Look for a door,” Elliott says.

I spot it before he does and move forward across the uneven floor. The body of the man Will killed is close enough that I could touch it if I wanted to. But I try not to look at it. The door is small, like the one we saw in the clockmaker’s basement workshop. Elliott pushes against it, but it won’t budge.

“Sir?” One of the soldiers asks from outside.

Elliott throws his weight against the door, but still nothing happens.

“It’s locked from the other side,” he says. The cellar is filling with smoke. We’re out of time—my eyes are watering and my throat is closing. I start back, but I trip over the body, and even in the inferno I see it clearly. Two blood tears stain the cheeks.

“Come.” Elliott guides me back to the street, and then turns to help the men. Will pulls me around the bend in the alley, where none of the soldiers or bystanders can see us.

His face is set. Calm.

“You killed him, before the Red Death did,” I say softly.

He shrugs. “If he wanted to live, he shouldn’t have grabbed you.”

The light of the moon is faint, but it shines on a tiny jagged scar just above his eyebrow. There’s disgust on his face, but no remorse.

Without meaning to, I reach up and touch the scar. “How did you get that?”

“That one is from a girl in the Debauchery Club. I was trying to get her to the door. She lashed out. Her fingernail caught me there.”

He’s calm about the memory, and about what he just did, but I know how he loathes violence.

“I’m sure you saw many . . . interesting things at the club.”

He laughs. “I’m not sure ‘interesting’ is the right word. But yes, I saw things.” Before I can ask him to elaborate, Elliott is there with us.

CHAPTER TEN

E
LLIOTT OFFERS ME HIS COAT, BUT
I
DON’T NEED IT
.

The crack in my mask seems to have gotten worse, probably in the fight, and it’s sharp against my lips.

“Are we going to the Debauchery Club?” I ask as one of Elliott’s men quietly hands him our packs. He must have sent him back to retrieve them.

“That’s what I told everyone,” Elliott says. He looks to Will. “Did you prepare for our arrival?”

“Yes.”

“Good. We’ll arrive early tomorrow. Tonight, I’d rather no one know where we are sleeping.” He gives the smoldering cellar a last look, as if the man’s attack is tied to his caution.

Behind us, the entire building that housed Malcontent’s supply cellar is burning. A few families from the upper floors stumble down the stairs and to the street.

“Make sure they find someplace safe to stay,” Elliott tells one of his soldiers, and then he’s leading us away, though my legs feel rubbery and weak.

“I’ll want to continue our search for my father tomorrow,” I tell Elliott.

“Of course.” He nods but shifts from one foot to the other. Today he got a taste of leadership, and while I’m happy for him and I support his quest to take over the city, I won’t let him forget his sister.

I walk by Elliott’s side through the frightful streets and alleys, always aware of Will two steps behind us. Shadows creep in around us, full of the threat of Malcontent’s malice. We killed one of his men today, but how many hundreds does he have? Do we have any chance fighting both them and the plagues?

Elliott stops before a wrought-iron gate. The building it guards is set back from the street. Elliott leads us through the gate to a shadowed stairway that winds around the side of the house and then down beneath.

The entrance isn’t like the one that led to the cellar where I lived with my father and Finn. This house is much nicer, the neighborhood grander. But something, the angle of the stairs, the brick on the side of the building, takes me back. All of a sudden I am ten years old, staring down the cellar stairs that led to years of exile. Years in the dark with Finn. Mother slinking away, out of the corner of my eye. I know now that she didn’t choose to leave us, didn’t want to go, but the memory still stings. And Finn died in that cellar.

“We’ll be safe here,” Elliott claims. But I feel anything but safe. “We shouldn’t be where we are expected to be, not yet. Not with so much riding on me. On us.”

It makes sense, but I shake my head. My nightmares, the ones that forced Father to sedate me, always occurred in a cellar.

I look away from the entrance, and I focus on the empty street. The leaves rasp against the sidewalk. The moon is unnaturally bright. Footsteps echo from the street beyond. Heavy footsteps.

Both Will and Elliott are waiting for me to continue, to descend into this new cellar, but I don’t move.

“We need to get inside, Araby.” Elliott’s voice is cool, calm.

“No,” I say.

But he ignores me, walking carefully down the stairs and opening the door into darkness. I tremble.

I feel Will come up behind me. He’s standing very close but doesn’t touch me. “You can do this.” Then he takes my hand.

He eases forward, waiting for me to take the first step. I draw a deep breath—I’ve done things that were harder than this—and follow Will into the darkness, through a door and into a dimly lit room. Luckily this cellar didn’t get any overflow from the flooded tunnels, so it’s not wet, just stuffy. I imagine spiders in the corners and other insects under the faded rug.

A bed is pushed against a far wall of the room, and a chest sits beside it. There are also several low tables and oil lamps. Elliott has already lit some, and Will lets go of my hand to take care of the rest.

A large wardrobe stands against the back wall.

“Is anyone thirsty?” Elliott pulls a bottle of wine from his pack and pours it into a few short glasses. He passes one to me, and I drink deeply, trying to force myself to be calm. This cellar is safe, secret, and nothing like the one where Finn died.

“You take the bed, Araby,” Elliott says. He wraps himself in his own blankets and settles in a corner.

I set one of the lamps on the chest beside the bed. The quilt thrown over the mattress has a dark stain—not unlike the blanket we wrapped my brother in. But I will the panic away, taking a blanket from my pack and spreading it on the floor. Neither of the boys says anything or moves to claim the bed. Will sits at the table. Both he and Elliott seem lost in their own thoughts.

I carefully position myself near the center of the room, away from corners where spiders might nest. I wrap myself tightly in the blanket so that nothing can crawl in and touch me. Sleep doesn’t come easily, but eventually, lying very still, I nod off.

My dreams are dark. Men descend the stairs with knives. A familiar armchair sits where Finn and I used to read. In my dream, the men carry bloody knives. They have killed Finn. April is next. Someone grabs me. I throw myself to the side . . . and that’s when I wake, my throat tight, my shoulder throbbing. And I can’t move. I thrash for a moment until I realize that I’m wrapped in Will’s arms and I’m holding on to him as if he will save me from my memories.

It’s like the first time I woke beside him, the night he took me home from the club. I shift carefully, propping myself on one arm just enough so that I can see him. Two buttons are undone on his shirt. Were they like that earlier, or did it happen as we moved together and intertwined? His hair is so dark against his collar.

As if he feels me looking, he opens his eyes. I start to pull away, embarrassed to be caught like this, looking down at him.

But then he reaches up to touch my cheek.

“Araby, go back to sleep. Otherwise you’ll hate yourself in the morning.”

“I already hate myself.” I should pull away, but instead I settle back against him and pretend that this isn’t a cellar. That Elliott isn’t sleeping only a few feet away.

In the darkness, my eyes find the single lamp that the boys left lit. The floorboards are hard and unforgiving. I think I hear something from behind the wardrobe, a soft tapping that reminds me of a frightening story that Finn used to tell me when Father worked late in the laboratory and the two of us were alone in the dark. If I got too afraid, he would hold me, like Will is now.

And just like it used to, it keeps the nightmares at bay.

The next morning I wake lying alone, and the three of us walk across the city to the Debauchery Club. It takes hours, so by the time we approach the club it’s afternoon.

The day we fled the city, Malcontent’s soldiers were climbing up from the sewers, swarming through the district. They chased us up three flights of stairs at the Morgue, and the Debauchery Club was not left unharmed either. The door leans against the frame, the hinges twisted and broken.

Elliott lifts it from the entrance and props it far enough aside that we can enter. Once we do, Will puts it back into place as well as he can.

“Who’s there?” a voice calls. We all jump, and a serving boy peers around the corner. “Oh, it’s you,” he says to Will, relief in his voice. “And you, sir.” He gives Elliott a long, unfriendly look. “I prepared rooms,” he tells Will. “We expected you last night.”

The paneling in the hallway is slightly charred from fire, but otherwise this area seems fine. The lights in the floor are still glowing. I run my foot over them, relieved at the familiarity.

“My old rooms?” Elliott asks.

The boy nods. “They weren’t damaged, much. The young lady’s room is across the hall.”

Elliott’s eyebrows shoot up. Will smiles to himself.

“Excellent,” I say to the boy. Regardless of Will and Elliott’s power plays, I’ll enjoy having a room to myself tonight.

“I’ll check everything,” Will says. And then he’s gone, following the boy to the servant’s quarters.

When he’s gone, I immediately feel less secure. Even though that’s preposterous. I’m safe with Elliott.

“I’m going to go examine my steam carriage,” Elliott says. “You can go upstairs if you’d like.”

But it’s worthwhile to see where his carriage is housed, so I follow him to the stables. A few saddles hang from hooks on the walls, as well as strips of metal that I think were used for guiding horses, but the stalls have been removed.

Elliott’s steam carriage is in the center of the stable. Even in the dingy surroundings, it gleams. He runs his hands over the metalwork.

“No more walking,” he murmurs.

“They say your uncle is requisitioning carriages,” I remind him. “We have to be cautious.”

“He can only take it if he can catch us. With the modifications I’ve made to this one, it can outrun any other carriage in the city.”

That won’t help if someone ambushes us, like Malcontent tried to do before, stretching ropes across the street to stop us. But Elliott won’t be careless with one of the last steam carriages in the city. Will he?

In the doorway to the stable, we look up at the mishmash of buildings that form the Debauchery Club. Three buildings interconnected around a courtyard.

“What is our plan for the rest of the day?” I ask. I haven’t prompted him to look for Father today, but yesterday passed too quickly. I know we need a permanent place to stay, where Father can find me if he gets my messages. Still, I’m ready to begin the search again.

“I asked Will to compose a rough map of the building and all of its entrances.” Elliott says. “He already compiled a list of the current residents. Servants. Aristocrats who never went home after the last attacks. Anyone who could be lurking around the building.”

“And when will we search for Father?”

“Soon,” he says. “And don’t worry. I have people searching.”

Yes. I heard him say that he wanted Father taken alive.

We enter through a side door that is still on its hinges, the very door that Will led me through when we fled the club for the one next door, the Morgue.

“Are his men on the third floor still here?” I ask, meaning Prospero’s old henchmen who used to watch us from the shadows of the club.

“They’re still here,” Elliott says darkly. “As always, avoid them.”

In this quiet passage of the Debauchery Club, it feels like the outside world can’t touch us, and yet we have enemies, even here.

As we pass the door that leads to the kitchens, Elliott says, “If you are ever in the cellars, watch for trapdoors. Secret rooms. I want to know where that printing press is located.”

“Why don’t you ask Will?”

“Because, my dear Araby, he won’t tell me,” Elliott says. “And I think you would object if I suggested torturing him.”

He’s testing me. But I’m not sure what he is trying to determine. Whether I care about Will? Whether I’m completely dedicated to his cause?

“I would never let you torture any of our friends.” I smile at him, but his response is completely serious.

“I doubt I’ll need to resort to it. The printing press is large, it can’t be that cleverly hidden. We’ll find it.”

“Unless we’re going to search for it now, I suppose we’d better move on,” I tell him.

“Come upstairs.” He offers me his arm, and after a moment, I take it. “You’ll need something to wear,” he says. “We need to eat, to regroup with the men and whoever’s left here. And your dress reeks of smoke.”

His rooms are exactly as I remember them, except for the state of his bookcase. The leather volumes are shoved haphazardly on the shelves, some even upside down. Elliott leads me through the sitting room to his sleeping chamber. I pause at the threshold, but he continues to the dressing room.

“Here,” Elliott brings out a dress and tosses it to me. “This should do. I’ll wait out here.”

Once I’m alone I scrub my hands quickly in his washbasin, wincing at the state of my fingernails. I take off the flowery dress and kick it to the side. The new dress is a soft silvery-gray silk, shot through with threads that are almost white.

It fits perfectly, and when I open the door of the dressing chamber, Elliott has changed too. Waiting for me. He’s wearing black, with a gray vest of the same fabric as my dress. He takes out a matching silver pocket watch and considers it.

“This dress is lovely,” I say. “I’d have expected something brighter from April’s spares.”

Silence stretches out between us. His posture is stiff and uninviting. I touch the fabric of my sleeve. He never said the dress belonged to April. I am a fool. The green one he gave me for the steamship’s christening was probably not April’s either. Elliott’s life didn’t begin when he met me. I never assumed it did. But the way the vest and the dress match—that had to be intentional.

Before I can find the words to question him, he snaps the pocket watch closed. “Let’s go to the dining room,” he says. Elliott takes my arm, and as we pass by a mirror I can’t help admiring the picture we make.

As we enter I search the room for Will, but the table holds six chairs and he isn’t in one. All of the men are older. The frightening one, with the face of a lizard, the one who tried to keep me from taking the book of maps, is flanked by two other villainous-looking fellows. Between them sits a slumped man with wild hair and sad eyes. He is the only person in the room who doesn’t have a mask, so perhaps that is why he looks so out of place. Or maybe it’s his obvious nervousness.