A Drop of Night(59)

“We can get around,” Lilly says. “We can backtrack and keep heading north a different way, like we were going to do in the first place. It’s—it’s not the worst thing that could happen.”

But it is. We waited six hours for nothing. We banked on getting through Jellyfish Hall and getting out, not running back into the middle of the palace.

I tuck my flashlight under my arm. My head aches. “I think Perdu told us something about this. At least, he tried to. He said if you go along the edge of the pond you’ll fall in, and if you jump in the middle you’ll be all right. I think he meant the traps. That the traps go along the perimeter of the palace. And if Dorf wants us in the hall of mirrors, it’s probably going to be somewhere at the center. Which means there’s no other way to go. They’ll keep the traps around the perimeter triggered. We’ll have no choice but to go find them.”

“We’re dead,” Jules says. “We’re just done, over, terminated—”

“You guys made it this far,” Hayden interrupts. His face is greasy, sweating. “How hard can it be to get through a couple of trap rooms?”

I laugh bitterly. I don’t care if he’s angry, so am I. “We made it this far because we had help. They saved us in Razor Hall, then someone triggered the magnet room before we got there, then you rescued us from Jellyfish Hall. They didn’t want us dead, or maybe something else didn’t want us dead, but now I think they’re done being patient. They need us for something and we’re not cooperating, so either they’re going to scrape us dead out of their trap rooms, or catch us. I wouldn’t be expecting any merciful treatment anymore if I were you.”

“Merciful treatment?” Hayden snaps. “I’m suggesting we run. I’m suggesting we force our way out at all costs. What do you suggest we do? Nobody hold your breath; she’s not that great at being helpful.”

I sit up. “Oh really? I could try kicking your teeth in, Hayden. I think that might be really helpful.”

Hayden looks like he’s about to go ape, pummel everything, me included. I press my thumbnail into the grid of lines on my flashlight’s grip, until I no longer want to smack him with it. “We can fight,” I say.

Hayden snorts. “I’d take you out in two seconds.”

“Not us, idiot, we can fight the Sapanis. We can go to the hall of mirrors. Dorf thinks he can bag us when we get there and that’ll be the end of it, but what if we’re not that easy? What if we stop freaking out and actually do something instead of just running around screaming?”

“I think running around and screaming has been really acceptable behavior under the circumstances,” Jules says.

I shake my head. “They’re fighting something, too. They already lost a bunch of trackers. Their camera feed is down. We have a gun.” I point at Hayden.

“They probably have more guns,” Will says.

“We have the element of surprise,” I say. “They think we’ll be terrified and panicked—”

“We are terrified and panicked,” Lilly says.

“But we don’t have to be!” It comes out angrier than I wanted it to. “What’s the worst that could happen? We die. But we could die sitting around here, too. At least we died trying to do something, at least we tried to show those people we’re not—” We’re not weak. I’m not. I’m not some brainless little pawn waiting around to be stomped on, manipulated. I’ve been that before, and I’m done with it. “They’ll be expecting us to stumble in there all bloody and desperate and give ourselves up, maybe betray each other for a chance to get out of here alive. What they won’t expect is us coming in guns blazing.”

Okay, that was cheesy. This isn’t a pep rally, Ooky, and you’re not Lara Croft.

But everyone’s listening. Not agreeing, but definitely listening.

Hayden is smirking. “I like it,” he says. “We’ll call them out. Duel at twenty paces.”

“I can’t shoot,” Jules says nervously. “I don’t believe in that—”

Hayden reaches over and digs his thumb into Jules’s collarbone, giving his shoulder a decidedly unfriendly squeeze. “You’ll learn.” He trains his eyes on us. “I think we should do it.”

Will’s got his one good hand spread across his knee in his thoughtful pose, his eyebrows knit. In the beam of my flashlight I see the door to the magnetized billiards room. The wood is barnacled with metal trinkets—a snuffbox, a small clock. I watch a long hairpin turning slowly, floating toward the door as if through water.

“Maybe we can do a decoy or an ambush,” I say. “Plan out as much as possible in advance. And we’ll need more weapons.”

“And when they’re all dead?” Lilly asks. “Like, hypothetically, we’re standing on a mountain of corpses but then what? We’re still stuck down here.”

“Hostage,” Will say. “If Dorf is there, or Miss Sei, we could take one of them alive. We would have a bargaining chip.”

“So are we doing this?” she says. She doesn’t look opposed. She looks like she’s bracing herself for the answer, armoring herself, battening the hatches. “We’re fighting?”

“Looks like it,” Hayden says. His arm is limp at his side, but his fingers are tapping a nervous beat against the floor. “If we’re going to die, let’s do it splattering Dorf all over a wall in the process.”