A Drop of Night(49)

No-no-no, NO, it’s going to burn me; it’s going to burn my face. I gasp, clamp my mouth closed, and breathe through my nose. High above, the lights begin to flicker. Or maybe it’s me. Maybe my eyes are dissolving. The itch on my ear has turned into a screeching pain, burrowing under skin and into bone.

“Keep moving, Ooky,” I say to myself. “You can make it.”

I fall. I’m crushing them under me. Blue powder is everywhere, and I hear Lilly screaming. Will grunting in pain.

I roll onto my back, my arms clamped over my face, glass bulbs popping and hissing under me. I look up. The blue is closing over me, an ocean of glass and creeping fumes. My eyes are tearing up, my throat closing. I think I hear something, far away, beyond the shimmering whine of the globes––

“Anouk!”

I shove myself to my hands and knees. I’m coughing, a deep chesty hack. I feel it ripping out of me, but the sound is far away. My eyes are burning, tears streaming down my cheeks. Through the blur I see a figure. It’s running toward me, almost flying, a shadowy shape against the lights.

It’s not Will. Not Jules or Lilly.

I think of the laughing woman in her red gown. Perdu in his loose, bloodied shirt.

I sway, tip forward. See crushed glass and whole glass rising to meet me. The wind-chime clink of the globes is suddenly deafening. Someone is coming toward me. Throwing something—a rope?

Shouting, yelling for me to grab hold. The lights are still flickering, chopping out. I raise my head. And I see:

It’s Hayden. He’s standing at the edge of the field of glass bulbs. His hair is matted, plastered to his scalp. Grime and blood slick his skin. He’s yelling at me.

I grab the rope. It’s thick and tasseled.

I’m out from among the poison bulbs in one pull, squeaking over the floor.

“Hey, Anouk,” Hayden says, and that jerk-face grin is on at a thousand watts as he drags me to my feet and shoves me toward the doors. “Better run.”








Palais du Papillon, Chambres Jacinthe—112 feet below, 1790


On the seventy-fourth day of my entombment, a visitor arrives.

I am still in bed, half asleep, and in that foggy valley between waking and dreaming I dare hope my visitor is Jacques and we are leaving now, finding my sisters, returning to the sunlight. . . .

I hear the rasp of a coat, heavy velvet, the whisper of lace.

“Aurélie? Wake. I have a surprise for you.”

My eyes crack open. Father is bustling toward me like a great swollen blood fly. The white lead paint that clings in flakes and patches to his face cannot hide how old he has become. Skin hangs in swags off his skull. His eyes are sunken, his wig is askew, and his red coat is stained and wrinkled, as if he has not changed in many days.

I sit bolt upright. “Father? Father, what is the meaning of this—”

He ignores me. He begins to pace along the side of the bed, his hands tight around the head of his cane. “A surprise,” he says, impatient and wheedling. “Dress quickly, and let us be on our way. It was a success!”

I slide out of bed opposite from where Father paces and hurry behind a painted silk screen. What was a success? What does he mean, and what am I to do?

I have been waiting for someone to come, Father or Havriel or the head butler, Monsieur Vallé, someone to explain to me this horrible aloneness. But now Father is here and I am caught like a maid in the wine cellar, drowsy and foolish. This is both too sudden and too late.

“Hurry,” I hear Father muttering, his heavy step as he wanders through the room, the rattle and clink of objects he touches. “Hurry, hurry.”

I feel in the dark for my clothing. I will wear it all today—stockings, petticoats, hoops, more petticoats, and damask skirts. I begin to wriggle into the cold things. It is nearly impossible to dress without a servant; I miss half the buttons, but it doesn’t matter. When I feel suitably well armored, I step from behind the panels and fix Father with a cold stare.

“Father,” I say, and my voice is vinegar. “Good health to you. It is wonderful to see you again. I’m sure you have been very busy, but I must confess, I have found the explanations for my imprisonment, for my separation from my sisters and our complete isolation, to be rather slow in revealing themselves.”

Father looks straight through me, his piggish eyes fixed on a point on the wall behind me. “A success,” he says, and flutters his great hands. “Come! Come!”

My skin crawls. “Father,” I say again. My voice shivers. “You will speak to me, please. I am your daughter. I am kept here as a prisoner, without human company, without a word spared to me. Our mother is dead, my sisters are alone, and we cannot mourn her, or comfort each other; we—”

Father’s eyes are on me now, twitching, making a diagram of my face. Then the stupidness and the dullness return and he throws back his head. “Havriel?” he cries in his high, quavering voice. “Havriel, she is being a goat!”

Instinctively, I take a step back behind the screen, as if it will protect me. Havriel opens the door to my bedchamber. He is holding a blindfold.

I cry out at the sight of it. I scream, and my hand closes around the nearest thing, a china figure of a dog. I hurl it with all my strength. “Get out!” I shriek. “Get out! I will not be kept this way!”