I walk to the table and peer over his shoulder, but Lilly’s right. We need to get out of here. This room feels tiny, claustrophobic, like any second the walls will collapse and the ceiling will fall and we’ll be crushed under the weight of the soil and stone. What if someone walks in? The others are gathering at my back, shifting nervously.
I see the page Will is pointing at. Three columns—lists of names, numbers, then a wider column of notes. The handwriting is spidery, a little bit shaky.
Jean Leclair. Age 67. Failed.
Monsieur Mascarille. Age unknown. Failed.
Eleanor McCreery. Age circa 27. Failed.
“Stonemasons,” Will mutters. “Maids. Painters.”
“What is it?” Lilly asks. Words pop out at me from the scribbled notes. Se détériore. Le sang souillé. Manqué. Manqué.
“Failed,” I say quietly. “All of these are failed.”
But what does that mean exactly?
Will starts flipping through the pages. He reaches the beginning of the book. Taps a name with two fingers. “These are scientific notes, surgical procedures. It is says they started in 1760.”
He starts reading aloud: “‘Guillaume Battiste, Age thirty–thirty-five. Beggar. We . . .’” He swallows. “‘We caught him on the roadside. He was stronger than he looked. Struggled, much blood. Frédéric brought him back to the chateau. He had the pox. Failed.’”
Will looks over at me. “There are hundreds of names in here.” His eyes run up and down the columns. “Hundreds of experiments.”
I see an entry about halfway down the page, circled in a thread of bright red ink. I grab Will’s hand, stopping him from turning the page. Let go again quickly and squint down at the writing.
July 7, 1788. Le petit ma?tre XX. Success.
The little master.
There are more words after it, hurried French, blotted with ink.
He has awoken. We took him from his glass cistern yesterday. He has already begun to walk and imitate us. He learns swiftly, quicker than any child. What will he be tomorrow, in a week’s time, in a month?
The lists continue. One success. Hundreds of failures.
Monsieur Vallé, head butler. Experimented on by XX. Failed.
Aimée Boucheron, saucier. Failed.
Célestine Bessancourt–– Whatever’s been written after her name has been scratched out violently, but I’m pretty sure it says “Failed,” too.
Behind me, Jules sucks breath in through his teeth. “Are we in there? Are we one of their experiments?”
Will flips forward again. Nods slowly.
“Here,” he says, and we’re all looking now, staring at our names listed in this ancient book.
Anouk Peerenboom–17. NYC
Jules Makra–16. San Diego
Will Park–17. Charleston
Hayden Maiburgh–17. Boston
Lilly Watts–16. Sun Prairie
No notes. No explanations. After 1808, all I see are lists of names and ages. Maybe twenty people.
“They’re all teenagers,” I say quietly. “Everyone is under nineteen.”
“And look at the dates,” Will says. “Five victims in 1862. Five in 1908. Five in 1970.”
And now us.
Something is nagging at the back of my mind, some connection I feel I should be making but can’t quite grasp–– “We need to go,” Hayden says. He’s practically bounding from foot to foot, his gun out. “Come on, move it!”
We slip out of the room and run for the stairs. My lungs are heaving, scraping me hollow. We don’t stop until we’re back in the palace and the study feels miles above us.
We’re back at Rabbit Gallery about twenty minutes after leaving the study. I recognize the blue wallpaper in the circle of my flashlight beam, the dark wood arching overhead like trees. I see the doors I had my emotional breakdown next to, the paintings lining the walls.
“Hayden,” I say quietly. “This is it.”
I’m not thinking about the cracked leather volume on the operating table, the lists of names, and what it was they built down here. What they did with all those hundreds of dead people, the Carolines and Jacques and Guillaumes. I don’t want to know. I just want to get out of here.
Our lights flick along the rows of glass cases, illuminating the displays inside for an instant before plunging them back into darkness. Hayden goes straight to the nearest one. Smashes it with his gun. The whole case breaks at once, glass raining over the pedestal.
I feel the sound in every cell of my being. Brace myself for the wail of a siren, traps to trigger and splatter us all over the walls like modern art, gruesome Jackson Pollock pieces. Nothing happens. No siren, no blades. They didn’t rig anything this deep in the palace. Probably nobody ever got this far.
Hayden’s face is tense, his eyes glittering with excitement. He doesn’t stop to grab the weapon inside. He runs on to the next case. Smashes it. Now the next. The rest of us pick through the glass as fast as we can. A nervous hush falls, punctuated only by the explosive shattering of the display cases.