A Drop of Night(67)

What are they waiting for?

My eyes flick to the left. We’re trapped. I see Lilly and myself in the glass, desperate, frozen.

Wait.

One of the reflections isn’t Lilly.

About four reflections in is a shape. It’s matching its pose to Lilly’s, head down, arms limp at its side. But it’s not Lilly. It’s the woman in the dripping red dress. And suddenly she skips a mirror as easily as stepping through a doorway and starts toward us.

Oh God. I reach out to touch the glass. It isn’t glass. It’s air. The woman picks up speed, coils into a crouch, and launches herself. The trackers leap toward us.

I grab the first thing I can get out of my pocket: the steel globe with a button at the top. I jam the button and hurl it. The globe cracks against the first tracker’s helmet. Rolls away. Seriously?

The woman rams into the trackers, and she’s like a tiny vicious hurricane. She swings through them, sinuous and savage, a whirl of red, her arms wrapping necks and legs, breaking them. I catch a glimpse of teeth, long and spiny.

Lilly and I dive through the opening between the mirrors and feel our way down a passageway. I glance back over my shoulder. I can still see her. She’s corpse white and hunched, and her dress is in tatters, whirling around her like a cloud. She hurls a tracker into a mirror and turns, looking toward us. She’s not breathing hard. She’s not breathing at all. Her eyes are dead black.

A tracker strikes her aside and heads our way. It never gets a chance to run. The woman catches it by the neck. I spin forward again, but I hear the sound it makes, the bite.

That thing is not human.

None of them are.

Slam, slam.

The mirrors keep shifting. Something’s coming after us.

We’re in another compartment, three walls of glass. Another dead end. I hear something running. I hear panting, close by, right next to me, then veering away.

Lilly, I mouth. Gesture toward a gap in the mirrors. We’re going to have to backtrack.

Snick—soft as a fingernail paring. And there’s the woman, her head emerging between the mirrors.

I freeze. White skin, glossy and hard like stone. No hair. Not even eyelashes. Her wig’s gone. She blinks once, translucent lids over black. She slides into the compartment, lithe as a cat.

“Stay back,” I hiss, pulling a knife out of my belt. “Stop, do not come any closer!”

She lets out an ear-shattering shriek.

I lash out, and she dodges. Skitters to the side. Now she leaps forward, catching me behind the knee. My legs fold. I fall and my head slams into glass.

She vaults onto my stomach. Liquid like dirty water is flowing from her dark eyes. She’s sniffling, crying.

“Aurélie?” she says. One of her hands flies up, and the hand has claws, spiny thin like a cat’s––

Over her left shoulder, a harsh zapping sound.

The thing falls in a heap on my chest.

Lilly’s standing behind her, an expression of sheer horror on her face. She’s holding my taser. We stare at each other. I push the woman off and scramble to my feet. The woman has a smile on her face even though she’s stunned, convulsing on the floor. Her eyes are open, flipping back and forth between us, and there’s a little scar under one of them, like a scratch of moonlight.



We follow the glow of reflected light, three turns, straight ahead. Now we’re out of the maze, in a music room with a gilt spinet. A tropical jungle mural is painted on all four walls, lush and colorful, bright birds peeking through the brushstroke undergrowth. There’s a door in each wall. We head for the one straight ahead.

The lights are on. Finally, finally, the lights are on again.

“We’ll get them,” I whisper. We’re clinging to each other, stumble-running like a couple of drunks. “We’ll find them; it’ll be okay.”

But I don’t know that. When we get out, Jules said, like it’s a foregone conclusion. It’s not. It’s wishful thinking.

A voice, soft and singsong, drifts after us out of the hall of mirrors.

“Auréliiiiiie.”

I let go of Lilly and surge ahead. Rip open the doors of the music room. Step into a gallery. It runs perpendicular to the music room, like the crossbar on a T. There’s another door straight across from me. And about thirty feet away, at the end of the gallery: people. Way too many people.

It’s a triangle formation of trackers, waiting like inky statues.

Dorf and Miss Sei are next to them, sitting at a table in high-backed gilt chairs, like they’re posing for a portrait. Miss Sei’s legs are crossed elegantly. Dorf’s hand is resting on the marble table. They both have guns.

I freeze. Right in the middle of the gallery, like a deer caught in headlights. Behind me, still in the music room, Lilly does, too.

“Anouk,” Dorf calls out, and his voice echoes, deep and final, like a funeral bell.

The trackers start toward me. Three steps and they’ve accelerated to full speed. They’re flashing past Dorf and Miss Sei, straight for me.

They haven’t seen Lilly. She’s still in the music room. I have a split second to make a decision.

“Lilly?” I hiss, without turning. “Get back, go, go, RUN!”

And I throw myself forward across the gallery. I burst through the doors opposite, spin,, start closing them. I see Lilly through the narrowing crack. She’s running back through the music room toward the hall of mirrors––