My memory of the duke’s house is dim. It was a drafty old fortress, a precarious and ancient heap rising from the middle of a great old wood, like a castle from a fairy tale. The duke’s children and the servant’s children were indistinguishable from one another and seemed terribly frightening to me, scarecrow creatures drinking ale in the kitchens and playing wild gambling games with the guards. But there is one scene that stands out clearly: I am kneeling next to a great bed, surrounded by many people, and I am peering at the cankerous old duke. He died only days after Father’s and my arrival in his house. His body lay curiously solid and forsaken, his belly a vast snowy hill beneath the sheets. His face was covered in sores, and his wife and children, even the guards, were all weeping quietly into their sleeves and beards and lace handkerchiefs.
Father had not yet begun the return journey. He was in the chamber, too, and I remember his expression as he looked upon the figure in the bed. It was an expression of animal terror, a condemned man looking upon the countenance of his executioner. And I could not understand why, for to me the duke’s silent, oozing face looked perfectly at peace.
The steels orbs float at three different levels. Knee. Torso. Head. Three across, seven down, making a grid. They’re the size of Ping-Pong balls.
Will studies them, his blue eyes clear. And he steps into the room, like he’s walking into a party.
I grab at him and so does Jules, trying to haul him back. “Are you insane?” I hiss, but he shrugs us off, slipping lithely between the floating orbs.
“Will, get back here!” I whisper from the doorway.
He turns and points to the zipper on one of his pockets. It’s floating, sticking straight out from his pant leg, doing weird circular motions like a tiny waterwheel.
“Magnetic,” he says, and he sounds fascinated, which makes me want to slap him twice around his dense head.
“Will, this is not a science project,” I snap, and my voice squeaks in a worried way that I do not appreciate at all. “This is a room designed to kill an idiot.”
He shakes his head and moves farther in, one hand reaching out to touch the orbs as he passes them. We stay in the doorway. “There’re magnets in the walls probably,” he says, like he’s talking to himself. “And the floor and ceiling. Vertical and horizontal bars of magnetism, pluses and minuses. At the cross-point the orbs stop—”
Clang. My heart contracts so fast I swear it pulls a muscle. Will’s sword is now stuck flat against the white paneling like it’s been glued there. His hand is open. I realize the walls are covered in holes. Neat, round depressions, exactly the size of the steel orbs.
Will approaches the wall cautiously. His pocket zipper snaps off, joins the sword.
“Will, what is your problem?” Lilly whispers. “Get back here.”
He traces a finger around one of the depressions. Turns. There are holes in the opposite wall, mirroring them. “Something comes in,” he says. “Something changes the temperature too much, and the magnets in the walls and ceiling are charged. These fly out”—he waves a finger from the holes toward the center of the room—“and rip into whatever’s standing in the way.” He smacks his hands together. “Something’s been through here.”
He pulls the sword off the wall, straining. Slides it over the floor, out the other end of the vestibule. Now he’s looking back over his shoulder at us, all puzzled like we’re being dense. “It’s already been triggered,” he says. “I thought I said that.”
He follows the sword out.
Lilly, Jules, and I exchange looks.
“Is that supposed to be a comfort?” Jules asks in a strangled whisper. “Who triggered it?”
“And what if they’re still here,” I say.
I slide my letter opener over the floor, too. I’m following Will, slipping between the suspended orbs. I imagine them zipping out of the walls, smashing together like hydrogen atoms. What would happen to someone standing in their path? They would smack into bone and sinew, pinning you in the air probably, and you would die like a weird scarecrow, hanging from whatever points they hit you.
I glance back. Lilly has taken out her earrings and left them behind on the parquet, little glinting dots against the wood. Her sword goes spinning over the floor, a few inches from my foot. She and Jules are coming after me. I brush against the orbs as I pass. They’re close together. Cold, solid even though there’s nothing holding them up. I look down. One of them has a streak of blood on it, a fresh red film on the silver.
I burst out the other side, gasping like I just surfaced from a ten-foot dive. Pick up my letter opener. Jules and Lilly emerge after me. No one’s talking. Just get-out-get-out-get-out.
We head along a gallery that looks like an elaborate waiting room. The floor is highly polished bronze, the walls lined with embroidered sofas and dainty chairs. The recorded voice is somewhere behind us, echoing through all these beautiful, deserted spaces, floating down silent corridors and up staircases, over gilt armchairs and out-of-tune spinets: a disembodied murmur below the soft thrum of the chandeliers.
Wait. The buzzing is back—a high whine, shimmering in the air. I put my hands to my head, slowing. I need water. I need to stop. Just for a second. Just one second.
I think I hear the announcements, only it’s a new voice now, a thin, indistinct whisper, murmuring in French, almost like another frequency overlapping with the first. And in the background, barely, barely audible, someone is singing.
Four blind mice. Four blind mice. See how they run, oh . . .
. . . see how they run.
The buzzing spikes suddenly, piercing, sliding red-hot into my ear—