A Drop of Night(47)

Clang. My heart contracts so fast I swear it pulls a muscle. Will’s sword is now stuck flat against the white paneling like it’s been glued there. His hand is open. I realize the walls are covered in holes. Neat, round depressions, exactly the size of the steel orbs.

Will approaches the wall cautiously. His pocket zipper snaps off, joins the sword.

“Will, what is your problem?” Lilly whispers. “Get back here.”

He traces a finger around one of the depressions. Turns. There are holes in the opposite wall, mirroring them. “Something comes in,” he says. “Something changes the temperature too much, and the magnets in the walls and ceiling are charged. These fly out”—he waves a finger from the holes toward the center of the room—“and rip into whatever’s standing in the way.” He smacks his hands together. “Something’s been through here.”

He pulls the sword off the wall, straining. Slides it over the floor, out the other end of the vestibule. Now he’s looking back over his shoulder at us, all puzzled like we’re being dense. “It’s already been triggered,” he says. “I thought I said that.”

He follows the sword out.

Lilly, Jules, and I exchange looks.

“Is that supposed to be a comfort?” Jules asks in a strangled whisper. “Who triggered it?”

“And what if they’re still here,” I say.

I slide my letter opener over the floor, too. I’m following Will, slipping between the suspended orbs. I imagine them zipping out of the walls, smashing together like hydrogen atoms. What would happen to someone standing in their path? They would smack into bone and sinew, pinning you in the air probably, and you would die like a weird scarecrow, hanging from whatever points they hit you.

I glance back. Lilly has taken out her earrings and left them behind on the parquet, little glinting dots against the wood. Her sword goes spinning over the floor, a few inches from my foot. She and Jules are coming after me. I brush against the orbs as I pass. They’re close together. Cold, solid even though there’s nothing holding them up. I look down. One of them has a streak of blood on it, a fresh red film on the silver.

I burst out the other side, gasping like I just surfaced from a ten-foot dive. Pick up my letter opener. Jules and Lilly emerge after me. No one’s talking. Just get-out-get-out-get-out.

We head along a gallery that looks like an elaborate waiting room. The floor is highly polished bronze, the walls lined with embroidered sofas and dainty chairs. The recorded voice is somewhere behind us, echoing through all these beautiful, deserted spaces, floating down silent corridors and up staircases, over gilt armchairs and out-of-tune spinets: a disembodied murmur below the soft thrum of the chandeliers.

Wait. The buzzing is back—a high whine, shimmering in the air. I put my hands to my head, slowing. I need water. I need to stop. Just for a second. Just one second.

I think I hear the announcements, only it’s a new voice now, a thin, indistinct whisper, murmuring in French, almost like another frequency overlapping with the first. And in the background, barely, barely audible, someone is singing.

Four blind mice. Four blind mice. See how they run, oh . . .

. . . see how they run.

The buzzing spikes suddenly, piercing, sliding red-hot into my ear—





UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers ..................................................................




Everything stops. Sound. Time. Will, Jules, and Lilly seem to be floating mid-stride a few feet ahead of me. I’m paralyzed, one hand raised.

I see the figure out of the corner of my eye. About ten feet to my left. A woman.

Fear slams my veins, a ten-milligram morphine drip shutting me down. My eyes swivel. The woman is standing, staring at me. She’s wearing an elaborate gown, deep red, making me think of slaughterhouses in dim light, flaps of flesh hanging everywhere. The skirts seem to be drenched, dripping dark water onto the floor. Her hair is powdered gray, piled up on her head, but her face is young. Flawless. Beautiful. Creamy white, no wrinkles. Her eyes are wet black.

“Fuyez,” she says to me, and the word is like the tinkle of a bell, pure and dainty. “Vous enfuyez d’ici.” She extends a hand toward me. She has something on her wrist, a knobble of veins, pulsing under her skin. She opens her mouth and I don’t know what it is—a smile, a grimace?—but the teeth behind those delicate lips are crazy, every which way. “Vous enfuyez d’ici!”

Flee from here.

“Anouk?”

I spin. Jules is beside me. I feel like I’ve just been electrocuted, like I grabbed an exposed wire. Will and Lilly are turning back now, wondering what’s going on.

“You okay?” Lilly asks.

I look back over my shoulder. The woman is gone. The floor where she was standing is gleaming, spotless.

“I’m fine.” I move past Jules. My brain is breaking. Cracking up like a mirror.

The announcements are coming closer.



The announcement finally reaches us in a room that looks like a candy box. Pillows in powdery pinks and mint and blue, fat as marshmallows. White furniture. Everything soft and pastel. Everything except Dorf’s voice, which comes scratching through the ceiling like the rusty prongs of a fork.

“Anouk. Will. Jules. Lilly. I hope you’re doing well.”