Spectacle(104)

A man with a kerosene lamp stopped by and shone his light on them. “Mon Dieu! Is that Zoe Klampert?”

“What’s that?” said another man. “Zoe Klampert?”

“Stay back,” said Christophe, putting his hand up. “Albert, use the whipcords.”

Christophe pinned her wrists behind her back as Albert took out the handcuffs. The name Zoe Klampert rippled through the crowd. She flailed and kicked as Albert tried to secure her. The crowd pressed in, surrounding them.

“Excusez-nous,” said Christophe, raising his voice.

Albert spoke even louder. “Give us room.”

But the crowd drew closer.

Nathalie burned with panic, worried that the people would get in the way, that somehow Zoe would escape and outrun all of them in the darkness and go on tormenting her and Paris and—

“Murderer!” someone yelled.

A young man charged Zoe, flanked by two women, and knocked her off balance. More people joined the fray and yanked Zoe away from Christophe and the policeman.

Zoe thrashed like a fish. The gaslight nearby threw just enough light for Nathalie to see her expression.

Pure terror.

Good.

She stepped closer to get an even better look. Their eyes locked briefly as Zoe screamed for help. A plea? How dare she?

Nathalie lunged to join the attack and was jerked back by both arms.

“No,” said Simone, pulling Nathalie close.

Louis adjusted his grip. “You don’t want any part of that.”

Someone from the mob lost his balance. He fell at their feet, bounced up, and reentered the chaos. Christophe took an elbow to the chin trying to peel someone away. Nathalie winced.

Zoe was invisible; so many people surrounded her Nathalie could only hear her cries.

“My work will change the world! Don’t kill—” The crowd swarmed over her like hungry ants. The revelers from the other block passed by, saw what was going on, and joined in.

Zoe was cowering on the ground when the frenzy of violence and anger burst. Nathalie heard garbled, futile repetition of “My work!” before the murderess was silenced.

The crowd devoured her. They stepped on her. Slapped. Spit. Kicked. Pinned. Punched. Cursed.

By the time more policemen came over and broke it up, Zoe Klampert was beaten, bloodied, and limp.

And dead.





50


Nathalie gawked at the corpse.

She’d stared at and studied dead bodies all summer. She’d had visions and nightmares about them.

Yet for a second, she wasn’t sure if the puddle of flesh and limbs and blood that used to be Zoe Klampert was a corpse at all. When is a body no longer a corpse?

Christophe placed his hand on her back and asked how she was doing. Dazed, she answered with a shrug. How was she doing? She didn’t know. She wouldn’t know until enough time passed for people to stop asking her. “I’m glad she’s dead. How—how did you find us?”

“Louis’s red hair, actually.” He touched a cut on his chin. “I saw some activity in the crowd and moved toward it. Then I saw Louis get Albert and followed. Louis told me you were with her in an alley.”

He shrugged in defeat, as if this were somehow his fault.

“I was so close I could see you when she came up to me.” Nathalie felt like she was describing a strange dream. Had this really just happened? “At first I didn’t know what was going on, then I had this horrific moment of clarity. All—all I could think of was chasing her.”

“Clarity?”

She guided him off to the side, where there were fewer people, and explained everything. Zoe had been right, she learned, about Hugo Pichon’s body in the morgue. Christophe admitted, with no small measure of embarrassment, that he didn’t recall a specific encounter with a beggar because they were everywhere.

As Nathalie spoke, he soothed her with reassuring words, reminding her how brave she was, had always been. When she finished talking, he gave her shoulders an understanding squeeze. “It’s over, Nathalie. Finally.”

It was and it wasn’t. Would any of this truly be over, in her mind? She turned to the corpse. “I’m looking at her body and I still can’t believe it.”

Simone and Louis came up beside them. “I can,” said Simone. “Show them your foot, Louis.”

He winced, showing them the bottom of his shoe. A hole went right through it, exposing tender, pink flesh. “Stepped in the acid.”

“Maybe Papa can heal you,” Nathalie said. Papa. He must be worried she hadn’t met up with him yet. How much time had passed, anyway? “I should get back to him now.”

Christophe bid her farewell and joined the other policemen; Louis and Simone said they’d walk with her back to Papa.

Nathalie paused as they walked by Zoe’s body. Her left arm, broken and askew, was near Nathalie’s ankle; for a brief moment she envisioned Zoe grabbing it and pulling Nathalie to the ground.

Zoe’s brown robe was torn, exposing punctures like bee stings inside her elbow. Injection sites.

She had taken the blood of the Dark Artist and Hugo Pichon. Who else? More Insightfuls?

Agnès. Girl #5. Had her blood ever coursed through those veins? That of the other victims?

No more injections, no more experiments, no more death. Nathalie reached for one of the lesions and covered the hole with her fingers.