Hawthorn (25 page)

“Did he notice that I was gone?”

“Thank the Bells, no. He's been gone all night. I was terrified he'd come back before you. Were you really plotting with Miss Corey and Miss Sharp all night?”

I turned away to hide the blush that was rising to my face, but even with that blasted veil covering her face she was too sharp to miss my guilty expression. “You were with Raven, weren't you?” she demanded.

“So what if I was?” I replied, tilting my chin up and defiantly meeting her gaze through the netting of her veil. “You spent quite a few nights alone with Marlin on the
Lusitania
and you don't even love him. I
do
love Raven and I don't know when I'll see him again . . .” My defiant speech ended on a warbled sob. Helen's shocked expression faded into pity. She opened her
arms and let me fall into them. While I soaked the front of her blouse with my tears she patted my back and murmured soothing lies.

“There, there, of course you'll see him again. This will all be over soon and you'll be free to go and Raven will be waiting for you. At least you'll have someone waiting for you.”

I pulled myself up and wiped my eyes. “Helen, you have
two
men in love with you. Marlin saved your life at Victoria Station. He's been guarding you since we got to Paris. And you must feel something for him after all those nights on the
Lusitania
.”

“Oh that,” Helen said, looking embarrassed, “that wasn't what you seemed to think it was. Marlin wanted tutoring in French. He's planning on applying to the Sorbonne when all this is over.”

I gaped at her. “But you let me think . . .”

“Did I? I suppose I wanted to shock you. You're always the one flying around having adventures. I wanted to be the daring one for a change.”

“So you and Marlin . . . ?”

“No.” Her eyes widened. “But you and Raven . . . ?”

“Yes,” I said, blushing again and trying to keep from smiling at the memory of his kisses, his touch . . .

“Well, I suppose everything's different in wartime. I suspect things won't ever be the same between men and women after this. And you don't have to tell me how it was—I can
see
that. You look different.” She gave me an appraising look, pushing aside her veil a little to examine my features. “You look older but also newer—like you've been washed clean by the rain.”
Her eyes came to rest on my wrist. She snatched my hand up and gasped. “The shadow net! It's gone!”

I looked down at my wrist and saw that she was right. Where the net had been was a sprinkling of tiny burns. I remembered the moment when Raven and I had come together . . . how I'd felt as though I was on fire. “I think it burned off when we . . . when I . . .”

“You mean
that's
how to get rid of it?”

“Well,” I said, my face flaming, “I think it was feeling as if the dark couldn't touch me anymore, not because there isn't darkness in the world, but . . . I felt like I could see the darkness in me and in him but it didn't matter anymore because there was something bigger between us—a light that burned everything else away. At least . . .” I finished with an embarrassed grin. “I think that's when it happened.”

“Oh,” Helen said, her blue eyes wide as china saucers. “Oh!” She lifted her hand to adjust her veil and a very tiny bit of the shadow net fell away.

“Helen! Your veil—it's coming apart.”

She stared at the scrap in her hand. “I think it's because this is the first really honest talk we've had in months—since before we fell down that hole into Faerie.”

“I think it is,” I agreed, reaching out to take her hand. But before my fingers reached her the door banged open and van Drood walked in. His head was bare, his silver-streaked hair wild, and his cape thrown back from his shoulders. He looked
bigger
than before, as if his nighttime wanderings through the crowds had inflated him. The skin over his face was red and
stretched taut as if he'd been singed by the bonfires. His lips were very red as if he'd been drinking red wine—or gorging on blood.

“Ah, my two little turtledoves,” he said, “still safe in the nest. I was afraid one of you might have flown the coop.” He gave me a look that made me think he knew exactly where I'd been. I was terrified that he'd punish Helen for my transgression, but instead he grinned and clapped his hands. “Pack your bags. We're leaving Paris within the hour!”

WE LEFT PARIS
that morning in van Drood's Rolls-Royce Silver Shadow, Spring-heeled Jack driving. Van Drood suggested we sit in the rear-facing seats so we could get a “last glimpse of Paris before it falls” while he sat across from us facing “the front,” as he called it. We drove north through the city, caught up in the crowds of men heading toward the Gare du Nord and the Gare de l'Est. We passed the
salons de couture
on the Rue de la Paix, all their shop windows now sporting tri-color flags. The opera house was draped in red, white, and blue bunting, too, and in the cafes along the Rue la Fayette the usually bored- looking coffee drinkers waved flags at the troops marching to the station.

“Fools,” van Drood said. “They think they're going off to a fancy dress ball. Look at those ridiculous red trousers. They'll make easy targets for the Hun.”

“I think they look handsome,” Helen said.

“They do,” I agreed, “but perhaps they should wear something a little less . . .
conspicuous
into battle.”

“It won't matter,” van Drood said, rubbing his hands together. “In a month those pretty red
pantalons
will be covered in mud and the only red anyone will see will be their blood oozing
into their precious French soil. Listen to them . . .” He cranked the windows so we could hear the soldiers singing. Instead of “La Marseillaise” they were singing a song about Alsace and Lorraine, the territories France had lost in the last war.

“All they can think about is getting their precious Alsace and Lorraine back.” He paused, as if aware he'd said too much, but I detected in him a rare willingness to talk, perhaps fed by the fervor of the crowds.

“So these troops will go to the French-German border. What's wrong with that?”

Van Drood snorted, but didn't say anything.

“Oh,” I said after a moment, “it leaves the Belgian border undefended . . . but the Germans wouldn't march through Belgium, would they?”

“I see you've studied your geography,” van Drood replied warily. “I commend your history teacher—what was his name? Rupert Bellows? Is he still in London trying to rouse the doddering old fools at the foreign office to the current threat?”

I was surprised that van Drood didn't know that Mr. Bellows was in the Ardennes. Instead of answering his question I asked one of my own. “Wouldn't the Germans risk angering the British by violating Belgian neutrality?”

Van Drood made a mocking sound. “The British won't commit their troops so fast, and when they do it will be too little too late. The German army, aided by my recruits, will sweep over France. They'll be marching down the Champs-Élysées by September. So don't look so sad, my darling.” He leaned forward to pat Helen on her face. I tensed, afraid he'd notice that her veil was torn. I had wrapped a bit of netting
around my wrist to keep him from seeing that I was free, and I'd helped arrange Helen's veil so the torn bit wouldn't show, but if he touched it . . .

But as his hand approached Helen's face the veil moved. It was only a slight stir, but it seemed to change van Drood's mind. He dropped his hand and sat back in his seat and looked out the window.

“Yes, we'll be back in Paris before the leaves fall,” he said heartily, but I thought I detected a shadow of uncertainty pass over his eyes. Was he afraid of the shadow net that he himself had thrown over Helen? If so, that might be useful. But the thought that even van Drood was afraid of the thing he'd entrapped her with made me feel sick with fear for her.

We drove northeast through Picardy and Champagne, over flat country and rolling hills, past dozing villages and castles perched on hilltops, van Drood ticking off the names of villages like bowling pins the German army would soon knock over. The names sounded familiar to me and I knew I should pay attention in case he revealed a bit of strategy that would prove useful later, but I hadn't slept the night before and the movement of the car combined with van Drood's droning voice soon put me to sleep—

—and dropped me, as though I'd fallen through a rabbit hole, into the burnt and ruined Blythewood of the future. I was standing in Mr. Bellows's classroom in front of the map of Europe reading the names of villages marked with red pins.

Liège, Ardenne, Charleroi, Mauberge, Sambre, Nancy,
Verdun, Reims, Meaux, Paris . . .
someone had pinned a photograph next to Paris. I took it down and stared at it. It was a picture of a man and woman driving on the Champs-Élysées, only it was obviously shot in a studio against a painted backdrop of the Arc de Triomphe. The man's face was a blur.

I
knew
this photograph. Etta's sister Ruth had had it taken with van Drood in Coney Island last year.

“He was planning even then on taking Paris.”

I whirled around and found Helen standing behind me. She was dressed head to toe in black and wearing the shadow veil, but it was torn and ragged. She stepped forward and looked up at the map.

“We should have paid more attention in class,” she said with a rueful smile that reminded me of the old Helen.

“Are we really here?” I asked. “Or are we in the car with van Drood?”

She shrugged. “How should I know? Raven's the one who's been attending lectures on time at the Sorbonne.”

I sighed. “This is just a dream, then. I didn't tell you about Raven going to the Sorbonne. You're just a projection of myself.”

Helen frowned. “That seems awfully self-centered of you.” She shook her head. A blonde curl escaped from under her veil and a piece of the netting fell off. I noticed now that the netting on her sleeves was also unraveling. “No matter, though, what's most important is that we stop this.” She tapped the map with a gloved finger. “We're already too late for some of these places. Liège, Charleroi, Mauberge . . . but we could still stop him here.” I leaned over her shoulder to see where she meant, but a fog had risen obscuring my vision.

“Uh-oh,” Helen said. “He's here. I'd better go now.”

I jolted awake in the car, my neck jerking painfully against the seat cushion, upsetting Helen, whose head had been resting on my shoulder. Van Drood was staring at me.

“Bad dream?” he asked.

“I-I don't remember,” I stuttered.

His lips parted in a wolfish grin. “You shouldn't keep such late hours. I'll have to keep a better eye on you in Bouillon.”

“Bouillon?”

“A quaint village in the Ardennes on the river Semois with none of the distractions of Paris.”

He jerked his chin toward the window and I looked out—and immediately wished I hadn't. I was staring into a churning abyss. We were on a steep winding road far too narrow for the huge Rolls-Royce. Below us a fast-moving river dashed over jagged rocks. We were so close to the edge that I could feel the car teetering as I leaned toward the window.

I shrank back from the window, afraid my weight would send us hurtling to our deaths. Van Drood laughed. “Anyone would think you couldn't fly! Now, my dear fiancée
is
afraid of heights, I know. Aren't you, my dear?”

“I'm much better than I used to be,” Helen replied. “Heights seem a minor thing to be afraid of given the state of the world today.”

Van Drood barked a short laugh. “Delivered with élan, my dear. But I really can't have a wife with such a crippling disability. Jack . . .” He clapped his hands and Jack looked back toward van Drood. Seeing him take his eyes off the road made me feel
sick. “Can you pull over at the top of this next curve? I want to show my bride the view.”

“That's not necessary,” Helen said. “Ava will tell you I'm not much for scenery. I'm really more of a city girl.”

“Nonsense! I've gone to a lot of trouble to bring us all this far. I want you to appreciate my efforts. Right here will do, Jack.”

We came to a stop in the middle of the road. There was no shoulder on the side on which to pull over, which meant that if any other vehicle came around the hairpin turn in front of us it would likely plow right into the Rolls and send it crashing down the cliff. But there seemed little point in mentioning this to van Drood. He was already getting out of the car, pulling Helen with him. I followed, determined to spread my wings if he pushed Helen over the cliff.

Which looked like what he was trying to do. He'd dragged her to the edge of the road, where the earth dropped away into empty air. His arm was clasped around her waist, one hand gripping her elbow. Helen was pressed back against his arm, staring down into the chasm. The air roared with the sound of the rushing river and the thrum of my blood thundering in my veins. I stepped next to Helen and looked over. Across the valley stood a ruin of a castle, the stones so black they seemed to block out all the light. A waterfall tumbled from the rocks into the river below. The rocks looked very sharp from here.

“Don't worry,” I whispered. “Even if he pushed you I could fly and save you.”

“Could you?” As he spoke I heard a heavy click and felt
something cold encircle my wrist. I looked down and saw that Jack had snapped a metal cuff to my wrist. It was attached by a metal chain to the radiator grill of the Rolls. I jerked at the chain but it wouldn't budge.

“I'd stay still if I were you,” van Drood said. “If you thrash around you might upset Helen's balance.”

To demonstrate he gave her a little push. She teetered on the edge of the cliff, dislodging stones and clods of earth that plummeted straight down to the river. She turned around to reach for me but as I shot out my hand Jack was there with another metal cuff to snap onto my wrist.

Van Drood smiled and pushed Helen over the cliff.

The veil billowed out to reveal Helen's horrified face as she reached for me. I screamed and flailed against the chains, the cold steel biting through my skin. At the last second van Drood reached out and grabbed her hands. He knelt at the edge of the cliff, holding her over the abyss, and leaned forward to whisper something in her ear. I only heard it because of my Darkling ears.

“Don't . . . you . . . ever”—he spit out each word—“
ever
try to get inside my mind again.”

Then he lifted her up to the road and let her go. He stood up, dusting the dirt from his knees, and turned to Jack. “I think the ladies have had enough sightseeing for the afternoon. You can remove the handcuffs from Ava. I don't think either of the young ladies will be giving us any more trouble.”

Helen wouldn't meet my eyes for the rest of the drive, but I kept staring at her. The netting on her sleeves was torn—just as it had been in my dream.

The descent into the little village of Bouillon would have been pretty if I wasn't sick to my stomach with fear. What did van Drood mean by Helen getting inside his mind? I knew that through the shadow net van Drood was able to get inside Helen's mind, but had Helen somehow found a way to reverse the process? And what about my dream? Was it really only a dream or had Helen found a way to communicate with me in a shadowy dream space? What was she trying to tell me? Could she dare risk trying again after van Drood's threat?