A Drop of Night(13)

I dream I’m floating in a black expanse of water, only my face and hands breaking the surface. And slowly something else rises to the top, a girl in a sumptuous dress, only she’s facedown, her back like a velvet island, her cold fingers brushing mine, and I start to thrash, the black water boiling around me—



I wake up feeling like a slug. This is what happens when you sleep in your clothes—you get that nasty, greasy mixture of chilliness and warmth, and you remember all the times you slept in airports, car seats, on Ellis Winthrope’s cracked-leather couch, braving the smell of rank tennis socks and stale chips because you didn’t want to be home, you really, really didn’t want to be home––

I blink a few times. Roll onto my back. The room is dark.

“Lilly?”

I rub the heels of my palms into my eyes. Kick off my shoes and pad to the bathroom. “Lilly, what time is it?” The bathroom is solid marble. One side of the sink has been taken over by a jumble of bottles and candy-colored makeup tubes. There’s the decanter of brandy Lilly was talking about. It’s mostly full and Lilly is definitely not here.

I take a quick, scalding shower and poke my head back into the bedroom. Lilly’s backpack looks like it ate an entire wardrobe of sparkly jeans jackets and tie-dye and feathers and then threw up, which is a pretty understandable reaction. My luggage still isn’t here. I thought Dorf said someone was going to bring it up.

I look out the window. The light is completely gone now. I scramble out of the bathroom, wrapping up in the lone towel as I run for my phone. Hit the screen. Crap. It’s 5:25.

I tear back into the bathroom, drag on the same clothes I flew here in. Skinny jeans, chunky-knit gray sweater with a kangaroo pocket, the brogues. Hope dinner isn’t a formal affair. Open the hall door. And almost knee Lilly in the face.

She’s sitting right outside, cross-legged on the floor. Jules and Hayden are with her. They were talking, but they all stop as soon as I step out and stare up at me with too-round eyes.

“Hey,” Hayden says after a second. Grins his stupid 1940’s movie-star grin.

I step around them and head for the stairs. “Hey,” I say, in a way that I hope also communicates: I hate you.

I don’t know why I’m angry. Big surprise that they didn’t wake me up for their jolly discussion round. What was I expecting after the last twenty-four hours?

I pass Will as he’s leaving the boys’ room. Start down the stairs. I wonder what they were talking about. Probably me. Something along the lines of ‘Anouk is going to be such a pain to work with, and maybe we should just burn her at the stake right now.’

The hall is empty when I get down, the columns forming shadow triangles across the checkerboard floor. I drop into a chair in front of the massive, cold fireplace and lean over the armrest. Rifle through a basket of magazines and newspapers. Will isn’t exactly bursting with friendliness, either. I bet no one was talking about that.

Lilly comes down a minute later and sits next to me. Glances over surreptitiously like she’s trying to think of something to say.

I pick up three newspapers and spread them over my lap. They’re all from today, unwrinkled and unread. The headlines are about car accidents, bombings, a head of state looking constipated about something. I start drafting better headlines in my mind, proper daydream-y screamers:

“The French Pharaoh: Eighteenth-century Billionaire Builds a Tomb of Egyptian Proportions.”

“Mad Marquis: A Secret History.”

“Unearthed!—A Dramatic Tale of Underground Palace Full of Mystery and Exclamation Points!”

“I was going to wake you up,” Lilly says quietly. “I was, I just forgot, and I know you think we were talking about you, but I swear—”

“I actually don’t care,” I say, and immediately feel weirdly awful, because I think she was serious.

I slap down the newspapers and dig for my phone. My pocket’s empty. I left my phone upstairs. I look around for a clock. There’s one across the hall, twelve feet high, dark and thin, like a loner Goth kid at a jock party, standing in the corner, spiny hands creeping over a pale face.

I can feel Lilly peering at me, hurt. I don’t know what to do. The ticking is weirdly loud and harsh. My brain must have been filtering it out, because I didn’t notice it a second ago.

Will comes down the stairs, looks at Lilly and me and the empty chair next to us. Deems the waters too dangerous. Leans against the wall.

Hayden and Jules come down.

At precisely 5:30, a door opens and Professor Dorf and Miss Sei come snapping toward us over the marble.








Chateau de Bessancourt—October 18, 1789


We remain in the chateau like ghosts. It is so quiet here, the gardens and the park slowly succumbing to neglect and silence. All five of us—Mama, me, Bernadette, Charlotte, and Delphine—are draped across the sofas or curled on the rugs in a tense sort of stupor. The servants have all been sent down. I watched them crowding the staircase, a procession of cooks and maids in dirty aprons and snowy caps, butlers in gleaming livery, musicians, wigmakers, and tailors, their faces stiff as funeral masks.

Mama is pretending that all is well. She dresses for dinners that are not served, thanks maids and footmen who are no longer here, pantomiming desperately to us that we are not alone in the path of thousands of starving, angry peasants.