UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
HarperCollins Publishers ..................................................................
Everything stops. Sound. Time. Will, Jules, and Lilly seem to be floating mid-stride a few feet ahead of me. I’m paralyzed, one hand raised.
I see the figure out of the corner of my eye. About ten feet to my left. A woman.
Fear slams my veins, a ten-milligram morphine drip shutting me down. My eyes swivel. The woman is standing, staring at me. She’s wearing an elaborate gown, deep red, making me think of slaughterhouses in dim light, flaps of flesh hanging everywhere. The skirts seem to be drenched, dripping dark water onto the floor. Her hair is powdered gray, piled up on her head, but her face is young. Flawless. Beautiful. Creamy white, no wrinkles. Her eyes are wet black.
“Fuyez,” she says to me, and the word is like the tinkle of a bell, pure and dainty. “Vous enfuyez d’ici.” She extends a hand toward me. She has something on her wrist, a knobble of veins, pulsing under her skin. She opens her mouth and I don’t know what it is—a smile, a grimace?—but the teeth behind those delicate lips are crazy, every which way. “Vous enfuyez d’ici!”
Flee from here.
“Anouk?”
I spin. Jules is beside me. I feel like I’ve just been electrocuted, like I grabbed an exposed wire. Will and Lilly are turning back now, wondering what’s going on.
“You okay?” Lilly asks.
I look back over my shoulder. The woman is gone. The floor where she was standing is gleaming, spotless.
“I’m fine.” I move past Jules. My brain is breaking. Cracking up like a mirror.
The announcements are coming closer.
The announcement finally reaches us in a room that looks like a candy box. Pillows in powdery pinks and mint and blue, fat as marshmallows. White furniture. Everything soft and pastel. Everything except Dorf’s voice, which comes scratching through the ceiling like the rusty prongs of a fork.
“Anouk. Will. Jules. Lilly. I hope you’re doing well.”
We stop dead in the middle of the room.
You hope we’re doing well? What are you, a holiday card? It’s like shooting someone in the chest and then asking if they’re hurt. No, we’re not doing well, FREAKHEAD, thanks for asking.
Dorf doesn’t miss a beat. “I’m sure you’ve noticed you’re not quite alone down there.” His voice was probably icy smooth when they recorded it, but it pipes in tinny, the flow interrupted by a steady sequence of ticks and fizzes. “You’ve caused quite a bit of trouble. Clever of you to cut the camera feed.”
“What?” Jules says. Looks over at me. I stare back, shoulders raised in a shrug.
We didn’t cut the camera feed. Did we? We smashed a few lenses in that big hall with the razor wires. That’s it.
“I want to inform you that your continued movement through the palace is an exercise in futility. Even if you were to reach the surface, you will find the world closed to you. Your parents have already been informed of the unfortunate circumstances in which all of you were killed in a plane crash over the Atlantic. The media is running the story. Debris has been found. Your families will be paid a generous settlement.”
“Are they serious?” Lilly whispers.
“So you see, it might be best to accept circumstances as they are. We’d like to make a deal with you. If you are getting this message, if you are still alive—and we’re fairly sure you are—come to the salle des glaces. The hall of mirrors. We’ll meet you there.”
“They think we’re dead?” Lilly says, full on panicking now. “They actually think we’re dead?”
She looks like she’s about to cry, and I feel sorry for her. She loves her parents like crazy. They probably love her like crazy, too. How awful must that be, knowing they think you’re gone forever when really you’re just lost and trapped and all you want is to get back to them?
Will and Jules have gone really quiet, too.
We hurry through the candy-box room’s cloud-blue doors.
They slam behind us. We’re in an antechamber of some sort, a cloakroom judging by the hundreds of polished oak drawers and cupboards lining the walls. The little desk in one corner. The voice comes on in here, too.
“Anouk. Will. Lilly. Jules. I hope you’re doing well––”
The message repeats itself. I can hear it on the other side of the next set of doors, too. We throw them wide.
Behind me I hear: “Oh, and to be clear . . .”
We missed a part.
“. . . this is not a request.”
Will closes the doors behind us. We’re standing in a vast, pale hall, almost as big as razor hall. A ballroom.