This was not part of the contract. Undisclosed drugs were not part of the contract. I’m going to get my phone and I’m going to call someone. I don’t know who, but someone needs to know where we are.
“Is there a problem, Anouk?” Dorf’s voice floats into the hall. “If there’s a problem, just let me know—”
I see a glass door at the far end of the hall, facing the border of trees and the fields. I could make a run for it. I taste something bitter on my tongue. The pills are dissolving, trickling into my mouth.
Crap-crap-crap, get rid of them, get out of here––
I turn, see Miss Sei striding across the hall toward me. She’s got Norse God and Red Spikes with her and they look freakish, dangerous, streaks of moonlight and shadow from the windows slashing across their faces.
I cough and spit a thick red glob onto the stairs. Wipe my mouth and stagger up them.
I’m so slow. What is happening? I can still taste the pill, can feel threads of numbness spreading into my cheeks. I reach the upper hallway, stumble down it, my hand on the wall.
“Anouk, what’s the matter?” Dorf’s voice reaches me, slowed down and warbling, from downstairs. “Why don’t you get some rest, it’s been a long day—”
I swear he sounds like he’s grinning. I fumble with the door handle, burst into my room. I need my phone, I need to call Penny––
I crash into the side table, almost knocking over the lamp. Swipe my hand over the marble top. The door is wide open. I hear them in the hallway. Where’s my PHONE? I whirl, glance around the room, swaying.
I see the drapes. Chairs. Pillows. No wrinkled sheets. Lilly’s monstrous hiking backpack is gone. The bed is made. There’s a water ring on the mahogany.
I heave myself toward the bathroom door. Collapse against the frame. A dull, pulsing pain explodes inside my skull. The sink is polished, empty. No bottles of mascara, no tissues, no toiletry bag. Everything’s been cleaned. Wiped down.
The pulsing becomes a beat, drowning out my thoughts. I’m on the floor. I see shoes approaching, black and shimmering, like beetles, swarming toward me. My pupils are dilating, my vision going blurry-clear-blurry.
Please, no, Mom-Dad-Penny, someone please help me––
And I’m gone.
Stairs to the Palais du Papillon—47 feet below—October 23, 1789
I see Mama in my mind’s eye, crawling down the gallery. Her beautiful gown is stained with blood and soot. She is coughing, weeping, and ash is whirling like a winter storm, filling the gallery. It coats her face and lashes, turns her to a statue of white and gray, and in the distance the flames flare, red-hot and hellish.
We cannot leave her. We cannot leave her behind.
I stop. The young guard collides with my back. Delphine squeaks in surprise.
“We must go back,” I whisper. “We must go back for Mother.”
“Mademoiselle, we cannot—“The young guard tries to guide me onward, but I dig my fingers into the stone on either side and refuse to move. It is foolishness, I know it is, but she is my mother. In Versailles they murdered two guards, and they were not even noble. I hope to God they have not yet taken her head.
Mademoiselle, if we return we will all be killed.” The young guard’s face is strangely exquisite in the torchlight, his expression not unkind. His words slide off me like water.
“I will go alone if you will not help me, but I will not leave her to be burned.”
“Please, mademoiselle. Baptiste!” The young guard calls after his companion. “La demoiselle, elle—”
I hear the old guard pounding back up the steps, shoving past my sisters, the rushing sound of his lantern as it flares. I do not move my gaze from the young soldier.
“Please help me,” I say to him, and my voice is a pitiful-thin thread. “We cannot leave her. If Father were to hear that we had abandoned her to the révolutionnaires he would—”
The old guard grips my wrist, dragging me savagely about. “Your father will do nothing,” he spits. “The Marchioness Célestine was driven to hysteria by the sight of her burning home. She could not be reasoned with, ran back to fetch her jewels, and was killed. That is all your father will hear, do you understand?”
His teeth are like china, gleaming in his leather face. I recoil from him, try to twist away, but his fingers only tighten further, digging into my skin.
“I asked you, mademoiselle, if that was clear. I trust that even in my brutish, peasant French you understood the question.”
“I do not believe you are in a position to command me, monsieur. Do not come if you do not choose to, but—”
The old guard turns my wrist so that my elbow points into the air and I shriek with the pain. My eyes fly to my sisters, panicked, as if I can do something to stop them from seeing, from hearing. They stare back, Charlotte’s mouth hanging open.