“Do as I tell you,” he says, and he is moving swiftly, lighting a lamp, adjusting the flame.
I pull Bernadette next to me and position doe-eyed Charlotte across from her. On any other occasion Bernadette would hiss at me, tell me she is only two years younger than I am, that I have no right to boss her, but even she knows better than to do that now. I place Delphine in front of me and try to smile at her, try to look as though I am not frightened out of my wits.
“Close your eyes,” Havriel orders.
This is madness. I will not.
Havriel’s hands clap over my eyes. People are entering the room. I hear breathing, the crinkle of starched linens, the whisper of soft feet on stone. I want to scream with the closeness of them, the stifling weight of their bodies in this tiny space.
Havriel’s hands are gone. My eyes flicker open again. I see the mirrored wall behind Delphine. I see Mama, blurry in the glass. The servantshave horrid faces, she whispers.
It is not Mama. It is Havriel, and he is murmuring, “Quickly. Quickly!” and now I feel breath against the back of my neck and the scratch of cloth. Fabric slips down across my hair.
“What is this?” My voice is shaking. “I will not be blindfolded! I will not—”
It is not a blindfold. It is a sack. The black cloth slides down over my eyelids, blowing out the room like a candle. Soft hands spin me in circles. Delphine is no longer in my grasp.
“Delphine?”
I am forced to walk, bundled along.
“Delphine, where are you?” I reach out blindly, but I cannot find her.
What did you fear, Mama? What is down here?
Bernadette makes a small noise at my side. I try to reach out to her, but someone has me by the shoulder and is guiding me swiftly forward. We are passing through a door. I feel its shape around me, the change in the space.
“Keep your arms in,” Havriel says suddenly, from somewhere to my left.
I draw my arms in tightly against my body, and a whirring, trickling sound surrounds me, as though I have just stepped into a dripping grotto. We walk for many minutes. The space no longer feels close and claustrophobic, but vast and cold. I hear the click of doors opening. And now we are in a room, and I feel the deep warmth of a burning fire. I smell lamp oil and spiced wine and wood. I smell—
“Frédéric?” Havriel says, and my heart quails.
Father.
I can smell his perfume. I can count the number of times I have spoken to him on the fingers of one hand, but the smell of him, the threads of it hanging in the chateau after he has passed through its halls, the hint of it on Mother when she is sad and ghostlike: I would recognize it anywhere. It is the smell of roses, lilacs, the sweet, thick burr of lilies on the very edge of rotting. A heady, oily scent, dried and dried again until it is an atmosphere, oozing from his every pore.
“Frédéric,” Havriel says again, moving away from us. His voice is gentle, as if consoling a small child. “Frédéric, your children are here. Aurélie and Bernadette and the others. Your daughters.”
And now I hear him: “Children?” he whispers, his voice wet and weak, echoing behind his tin mask. “But where is Célestine? Where is my wife?”
I wake with a gasp, the air ripping into me. It’s freezing cold. I’m lying on something hard. My eyes are open, but all I see is blackness. My mouth tastes raw. Bloody. What just happened?
I don’t move. I don’t know if I can move. And now I’m scared, every nerve ending flaring, setting my skin on fire. Images flash across my vision: a glinting red pill. Wrinkled sheets, straightening from one second to the next. Dorf smiling, his lips forming words: the experience of a lifetime, he says, and toasts us.
Maybe I got away. Maybe I got out into the fields and hid and that’s why I’m cold.
But I didn’t. I ran upstairs and––
They caught me.
Oh no. No-no-no. This was stupid, freaking idiotic; I swallowed some of the pill juice. I was knocked out.
I’m so dead.
The air is perfectly still. The surface under me is smooth, glassy. I listen, the blood hammering in my ears.
I’m not alone. Somewhere close by, someone is breathing. Multiple people.
Who? Are they watching me? My heartbeat speeds up. I’m sweating despite the cold. My mind instantly jumps to kidnappings, human trafficking, eighties horror movies with meat hooks and dusty lightbulbs and gallons of blood. But you don’t fly in murder victims and slaves to France on a private jet and let them eat at your table. You don’t send them reams of embossed stationery.
I uncurl one hand and move it slowly across the floor. Don’t panic, Ooky. You can figure this out. You can get out of this––
Something slithers against my fingers. I jerk back. Cloth. I touched cloth, felt the faint warmth of skin. Someone’s lying next to me. A foot away.