chapter 7
Alex rode to Glenarvon-LaLaurie on the back of Astrid’s motorcycle, which seemed to be a modified Italian design that she handled with expert efficiency.
Alex kept his fingers locked at Astrid’s waist as they rode, and he tried to process her presence in Secheron. Too much was happening too fast for him to follow it all. The girl had come into the school, bouncy and brash and strange, and all along she had been harboring a secret—a secret mission, in fact. There was nothing to hang on to here, he felt, nothing to trust. And Sangster had handed Alex over to her care as if everyone knew that she wasn’t a thrall, like Vienna Cazorla had been—a servant of the Scholomance, out to betray them. No one could know if that were the case. And yet here they were.
And the bike—the strangest thing about Astrid’s motorcycle was not the complete lack of controls but rather the unearthly sound the engine made, which he couldn’t get used to. She had almost parked it in front of the school before he had advised her that the proper way to deal with your undercover transportation was to stash it in the woods, which she did, right next to his own motorcycle.
“A Kawasaki Ninja.” She watched Alex drag several rough-cut limbs and cover up both bikes. “You go to a lot of trouble to hide what you are.”
Alex blinked. “I don’t think so.” He watched her standing there, her hands clasped together. He had a thousand questions and no idea where to start.
Astrid shrugged and began walking, and Alex followed. When they reached the school, they went in through separate doors. Alex waited in the stairwell for the bell to ring, and at three P.M. he made his way into his European History class.
He slid into his seat next to Sid, who brightened but also shook his head with an apparent array of questions.
A moment later, Paul and Minhi came in, holding hands briefly before they separated, Paul next to Sid and Minhi in front of them. Just his luck he had all three of his friends in one class. He prayed class would start before he had to get into the whole business about Secheron.
Minhi turned and looked at him. “I thought you were just going to be gone during lunch.”
“Yeah, it, uh, went long.”
The door opened and Astrid came in, finding a seat at the far end of the class. She waved at them and smiled. Alex watched her sit and then turned back to Minhi, who looked like she was doing math in her head, sizing up Alex’s story.
Alex asked brightly, “How are things going with, uh, Astrid?”
“I don’t know. She’s been missing for a couple of hours.” The same distrust. Minhi would make a crackerjack detective, Alex thought.
Paul was listening and pursed his lips. “No way.” He laughed, his giant frame shaking. “Is that where…Blimey. Nice.”
“Come on.” Alex opened his hands. “What?”
Minhi looked at him more coldly than he felt he probably deserved as the teacher came in and put him out of his misery.
As Alex melted into the rhythm of class, he felt again the strangeness of a double life. Only hours ago, he had been nearly cut in half by a skull-headed lady on horseback, and now he was listening to something about the start of World War I that he could barely find the needed concentration to follow. He felt the mantle of Student Alex slide over him, and he forced all thoughts of the undead into the recesses of his mind as he opened his history book and began to take notes.
At dinner, the four friends met up in the cafeteria, taking their seats near high windows that looked out onto the grounds.
Astrid joined them, and this time her kiss on Minhi’s cheek was met rather more slowly than it had been in the morning.
They chatted as Astrid sketched in a notebook, peppering Minhi with questions about LaLaurie.
All through dinner and after, Alex kept looking out the window, as if he could spot the skull-faced army that had melted away after the attack. Astrid put down her pencil and looked out, observing to the others, “It should be snowing soon. The woods will be lovely. You’re so lucky to be here.”
Minhi nodded. “It will be lovely! You’ll see. I can take you out in the morning if you want to see the woods before the snow.”
“Oh, I have, when we walked this afternoon,” Astrid said excitedly. She cast her eyes at Alex. “We spent hours exploring. Alex is a gallant tour guide.”
“Ah,” Minhi said evenly. “Yeah, that’s what my old roommate said.”
Alex briefly considered pounding his head against the table but decided it wouldn’t help. It was the story, after all. “I’m getting a soda,” he said, rising and walking to the back of the room.
At the drink dispensers, in the upper end of the cafeteria where the kitchen had been closed and the shadows were growing long, Minhi appeared next to him.
“So you move fast.” Minhi busied herself getting a glass of orange juice.
“It’s not really like that,” Alex said.
“Oh? So you didn’t cut class with a girl you just met this morning?”
“No, I—well, yeah, but it was…” He looked at Minhi. Her brown eyes were wide and expectant. “Um, there was something you wanted to…ask. Before I left earlier.”
She watched him for what seemed like a long time. “I don’t know,” she said finally. “It’s probably not the time.”
“Stop,” he said.
“Stop what?”
“Your juice, it’s overflowing,” he said, pointing to her glass.
“Oh!” Minhi turned and pulled the glass away from the dispenser. “God, I’m so stupid.”
“No,” Alex said. This was all wrong. “No, it’s…let’s go back.”
“To what?” Minhi’s mouth curled into a thin frown.
“Okay,” Alex said. “Look. I can’t keep being jealous.”
“What?”
“Don’t…” He searched for words, looking back at the table. “You know what I mean. I don’t know what else to say, but I can’t keep being jealous of you and one of my best friends, and, Minhi, you can’t keep encouraging me to be. Okay?”
She stopped and looked at him for a long time. Then she said, “Okay. I get it.”
“Yeah? Okay?”
“Okay,” Minhi said definitively.
Alex nodded. “So we’re done with this?”
“We’re done.” Minhi nodded. Then she smiled, smirking at him. “You really do think you’re something.”
“It’s only what everybody tells me.”
They went back to the table and sat, and Paul reached for Minhi’s hand.
Minhi looked down at a sketch Astrid was absently making on a napkin with her pen: the tall staff with the circular dish, the horse with the scythe-wielding skeletal figure. Minhi tapped it. “That’s interesting. Are you drawing The Triumph of Death?”
Alex looked at her. “The what?”
“The Triumph of Death,” Minhi said. “The painting.”
“Triumph,” Alex repeated. The Queen had spoken that very word—no, but close to it, she’d said Triumphant when Astrid had challenged her.
“Yeah, it’s kind of amazing. You should check it out,” Minhi said.
Sid started to say something when Alex held up a finger. “Do you have an image of it?”
Minhi seemed to suddenly engage, tilting her head as if she could tell he was thinking something important. As she reached down and pulled a tablet computer out of her bag, Alex felt a mix of emotions—excitement that Minhi might help shed some light on the events of the day, and intense relief after the conversation they’d just had. Like maybe they could go back to being normal.
Minhi brought the tablet to life and spoke into a microphone symbol. “Triumph of Death, painting.” She lay the tablet down as a series of images appeared on screen, and she expanded one of them to fill the whole display.
The image that filled the screen, though, was a horrific nightmare. Alex’s eyes widened as he took in the painting.
The Triumph of Death illustrated in monstrous detail the slaughter of humankind by an army of skeletal beings: the army of death itself.
Across the foreground of the painting, people ran from skeletons that trampled them, cutting their throats, choking them, and dragging them away. A whole slew of people were being herded into a holding cell, like a huge cage or trailer. Dogs chewed on the remains of the fallen. In the distance, ships smoked on the water and cities burned. A great leader of the skeletons, astride a bone-thin, reddish horse, swung an enormous scythe: Death. Alex saw again and again the shock and horror on the faces of the people, their mouths open in cries of agony and despair. All around in the background of the painting was black destruction, buildings and ships burning, little specks of fire floating on the wind.
“Oh my God,” Alex whispered under his breath as he started running his fingers over the painting, zooming in and scanning across. The Triumph of Death looked like the scene that he had just observed on the curtain of night that surrounded the town of Secheron.
“What is it about?”
“Death wins,” Minhi said. “Death has dominion over all.”
Dotting the scene were tall staffs with circular wheel-like constructions on the top, very much like the satellite dish–type device the Queen had used. Alex tapped those and looked at Minhi. “What are these?”
She shrugged. “Who knows? In the painting they’re used as gallows to hang people on.”
This was unreal. The vampires were copying a painting, exactly as it appeared.
Alex looked into Astrid’s eyes and she seemed to reflect back his own thoughts.
We are in trouble.