“They had been working on her,” Jacques continues, his eyes growing distant, haunted. “They had opened the skin of her arms, and . . . there were diagrams everywhere, and books and papers and cisterns filled with water, large enough to hold a human body, and vials of blood, and in the corner was a man. At least, I think it was a man. I do not know. He was seated like a sculpture, and he was marble white, and his face, his face, Aurélie.”
He grips my hands and peers at me beseechingly, searching my countenance as if it holds some secret he is desperate to know. “He spoke to me,” Jacques whispers.. “He asked me to come closer and sit with him awhile. He asked me if I was afraid. I ran from there, but I can still smell the blood and the stench of decay. It was like a charnel house in those rooms. They have been murdering us, Aurélie! The servants that went away, the ones we thought had been released: the Bessancourts have been butchering them.”
I tear my hands out of Jacque’s grasp. “I refuse to believe this. My Father is mad, but he is no murderer. What would he have to gain from this? He is a man of reason, a philosopher and a scientist—”
“I am afraid to return to the kitchens,” Jacques says, as if he did not hear me at all. “I am afraid to speak to anyone. What if the marquis were to find out what I saw? What if that thing tells him—?”
I cannot breathe. It is too warm in this chamber. The air feels thick and silky, like hot steam.
“What if they kill me?” Jacque’s voice is pitiful, a little boy’s keen, and it pierces my heart to its core, because I know it is not fear of pain or death that drives him. He fears what will become of the ones who depend on him. His siblings and his mother, my sisters and me. We are all clinging to his back.
I grip my skirts in my fists, so tightly it hurts. “There is a logical explanation to this. I know there is. Ask the head butler to come to me. Better yet, tell him I demand to speak to Father. Tell anyone. Tell them I left a note. They have nothing to gain from murder. Perhaps it was the carcass of an animal you saw, or perhaps Madame Boucheron was already dead. It is not unheard of, the study of corpses for medicine and the betterment of human knowledge; it is not impossible—”
“And what if he tells you the truth? What if he says he is killing us?”
I go very still and release the skirts from my hand. “Have you found the way out?”
“I’m close, I—”
“Then bring me a key, Jacques. Bring me a pistol, bring me something!” I feel the tears pricking behind my eyes, a hot, painful pressure. “If they catch you, I will have nothing, do you understand? My sisters are lost!”
And suddenly we collapse into each other, and his arms are tight and fierce around me. We cling to each other like drowning people, part in fear, part in desperation.
“I will come back, Aurélie. I promise. They will not kill me, not before I’ve found a way. I will return as soon as I possibly can, and when I do, we are leaving. We will go back to the surface. Home.”
When he is gone, and I am alone again in the beautiful room, I lay my head against the wall and weep.
Come back, I pray. Come back before it is too late.
The announcements start about twenty minutes after my feelings-vomit outside Rabbit Gallery. We’re moving through a suite of warm-toned, curlicue-filled rooms, all idyllic landscape paintings and satin wall coverings that glitter like insect wings. Jules is ripping a strand of thread from the frayed edge of his pocket. I’m feeling like a car ran over me. And now Lilly freezes, one hand raised.
“Guys?” she says.
“What?” Jules pauses, looking back at her.
“D’you hear that?”
Will and Jules hurry over to her. I don’t. I don’t hear anything. Honestly, I can’t even bring myself to care right now. All I can think about is the picture hanging in the gallery and me bawling everywhere. I try to listen for whatever Lilly talking about. All I hear are the lights. Maybe the whirr of an air vent––
“. . . is being transmitted . . .”
There it is. A single spike of sound, and now it’s faded back into a distant, indistinct line. Deep in the palace, a voice is droning.
“Trackers?” Jules asks.
“I don’t think trackers talk,” Will says.
I don’t think so, either. Those things were massacred right outside the library doors and we didn’t hear a sound. Something tells me they weren’t made to vocalize.
“I think it’s a recording,” Lilly says. “I think it’s Dorf.”
On some unspoken command, the others break into a jog. I follow, making a point to run a little behind them. I know this is pathetic junior-high type behavior, but I’m emotionally stunted and this is how I deal, okay? We’re heading north like Perdu told us to. The voice seems to be on loop, sometimes closer, sometimes farther away. The cut in my foot starts to throb again. I want to eat everything—painted fruit, stone grapes, the wallpaper. I want to hide behind my hair.