“We are terrified and panicked,” Lilly says.
“But we don’t have to be!” It comes out angrier than I wanted it to. “What’s the worst that could happen? We die. But we could die sitting around here, too. At least we died trying to do something, at least we tried to show those people we’re not—” We’re not weak. I’m not. I’m not some brainless little pawn waiting around to be stomped on, manipulated. I’ve been that before, and I’m done with it. “They’ll be expecting us to stumble in there all bloody and desperate and give ourselves up, maybe betray each other for a chance to get out of here alive. What they won’t expect is us coming in guns blazing.”
Okay, that was cheesy. This isn’t a pep rally, Ooky, and you’re not Lara Croft.
But everyone’s listening. Not agreeing, but definitely listening.
Hayden is smirking. “I like it,” he says. “We’ll call them out. Duel at twenty paces.”
“I can’t shoot,” Jules says nervously. “I don’t believe in that—”
Hayden reaches over and digs his thumb into Jules’s collarbone, giving his shoulder a decidedly unfriendly squeeze. “You’ll learn.” He trains his eyes on us. “I think we should do it.”
Will’s got his one good hand spread across his knee in his thoughtful pose, his eyebrows knit. In the beam of my flashlight I see the door to the magnetized billiards room. The wood is barnacled with metal trinkets—a snuffbox, a small clock. I watch a long hairpin turning slowly, floating toward the door as if through water.
“Maybe we can do a decoy or an ambush,” I say. “Plan out as much as possible in advance. And we’ll need more weapons.”
“And when they’re all dead?” Lilly asks. “Like, hypothetically, we’re standing on a mountain of corpses but then what? We’re still stuck down here.”
“Hostage,” Will say. “If Dorf is there, or Miss Sei, we could take one of them alive. We would have a bargaining chip.”
“So are we doing this?” she says. She doesn’t look opposed. She looks like she’s bracing herself for the answer, armoring herself, battening the hatches. “We’re fighting?”
“Looks like it,” Hayden says. His arm is limp at his side, but his fingers are tapping a nervous beat against the floor. “If we’re going to die, let’s do it splattering Dorf all over a wall in the process.”
Lilly throws Hayden a look a concerned look. I turn to Jules. “Jules?”
“Well, we’re not finding the exit without Perdu—” Jules starts.
Hayden pounds his hands together. “Unanimous.” He stands, and faces the dark. “And now we need a new base camp. Pronto. Check out the chandelier.”
I glance up. The chandelier is turning slowly, rotating down its chain with a soft creaking sound. Its arms are blades, folding outward in elegant swoops, reaching almost to the corners of the room.
We crawl out of the chandelier room, then pick ourselves up and run six rooms further. Will swings us to a stop in front of a pair of ornate doors carved with golden petals. I peer up through the gloom, squinting at the scroll above them. “‘Chambre de la Rose,’” I read out loud. “‘For my darling, my heart, my treasure, Madame Célestine.’”
“Sounds like a safe bet,” Will says, and we push in, light beams swinging through the space. It’s a bedroom. Beautiful. Everything is small, not quite child-small, but like it was built for a very short person. The wallpaper shows massive blooms, huge, abundant leaves, no thorns, makes you feel like you’re a tiny bug right inside the rosebush. Pale wood tables and flowery upholstered chairs look like they’re sprouting right up out of the floor.
This does seem like a safe bet. No one wants My Darling, My Heart, My Treasure tripping a wire and blowing herself up, right?
Hayden slams a dainty white writing desk against the door and we congregate around the bed. I drop onto it, dragging my legs up. Jules kicks off the pillows, hurling them at the wall.
“Hall of mirrors,” I say. “We need to get there. We need to get in. And then we need to take it over.”
Will hangs his flashlight from a tassel and gets on the bed, too. Lilly follows. Hayden throws himself into one of the tiny chairs. It creaks under him, the dainty legs bending.
“How are we going to find it?” Lilly asks. “It might be miles from here.”
“I don’t think so. It’s obviously not to the north. They said we’d have one safe direction to travel. They’re basically rolling out a carpet for us.”
“What about weapons?” Jules says. “I’m sorry, but if we’re hacking at the trackers with swords, this is not going to be a successful endeavor. It’s just not.”
“Wait.” Lilly sits straight up. “Rabbit Gallery.”
“What?”
“It’s full of weapons. It’s like a weapons buffet.”
“Uh-huh. That hall is at least a mile back, and there were trap rooms between here and there. Remember the room Will got all excited about?”