by Anya Allyn
“I know it does. Why are you here?” Her eyes bored into me. “There’s something here that poor little Cassandra wants but could never have. Tell me what it is.”
“You have it wrong. It’s the castle that wants me.”
Her expression faltered a little, and she looked about hesitantly, as though the walls could talk to her. “You’re just a little girl who doesn’t want to take her medicine.”
“I took your medicine. And I’m about to throw it up.”
Beaumont turned his head. “Ugh, there’s not much I draw the line at but I draw the line at vomit.”
“Very well, perhaps two caps were too much for someone unused to it. You can go until you feel a little fresher. Then we’ll resume your treatment.”
She unlocked the manacles. The metal clanged against the wall.
The Poiret-clown stepped silently towards Doctor Verena, stopping to stand before her. He kissed her passionately.
I backed away from the room, rushing into the corridor opposite. There was nothing here—just a blank wall with a ceiling soaring into a ragged blackness. A rope hung from somewhere up in that blackness, swaying slightly. No, not just a rope—it had a loop on the end. It was a noose. I glanced back over my shoulder. Doctor Verena and the men would know I’d run into a dead end. Any minute, they’d come looking for me. Maybe if I climbed the rope far enough upward, they’d think I’d double-tracked. It was a stupid idea. It was my only idea.
Taking a long breath, I placed a foot in the noose and then tried pulling myself up the rope. I’d done it a few times in gym class. But this rope was old and fraying. I’d gone so high that I’d surely break a bone if I fell now. I craned my head upward. I could see nothing. I climbed up into the pitch darkness. No one could see me here now. I put my feet against the wall to steady myself. If they saw the rope moving, it would be a dead giveaway.
My feet pushed through into empty space. Taking a hand away from the rope, I felt around the wall. Some of the stone blocks must have crumbled away here. It would be easier to sit in the hole in the wall than hang there on the rope. I could wait here for the castle walls to move again.
I scrambled from the rope into the hole and sat on rough stone blocks. Breeze blew across my face—there had to be a window close by. I welcomed the fresher air. Crawling across the stone blocks, I tried to find a more comfortable position. My shoulders and back ached from pulling myself up the rope.
My eyes grew accustomed to the darkness after having the bright lights of Doctor Verena’s office glaring in my face. I shifted further along on the stone blocks, stilling myself as the last stone block rocked precariously. My back froze as a massive, gleaming object came into view—the moon.
Horror dawned on me as I realized where I must be. I gazed above my head. The massive structure of the castle soared overhead. I was perched in some hole on an outside wall of the castle. Below, there was nothing—just yawning darkness. In terror, I realized the cliff stood directly below, all the way down to the crashing ocean.
17. NIGHT OF THE CHANGE
Something—someone—moved below me. I squinted in the dark light. I could just make out the outline of a balcony, with a figure sitting on the edge of the balcony wall. He drank straight from a bottle, the breeze shifting his white shirt about his body.
He turned his face sharply upward, as though he sensed me. “Cassie!”
It was Zach’s voice. I didn’t answer.
“Jump down here,” he commanded me.
I shook my head. The jump was not far—about six foot—but the balcony was to the left of me. If I missed, I’d be sent tumbling hundreds of feet down the cliff.
“It’s okay. Just do it. You can’t stay there.” He reached over the side of the balcony, extending out a hand. His voice was slightly slurred.
Any movement I made was going to rock the stone block that I was crouched on. Even trying to head back could make it fall. If the castle moved again while I stayed here, I would lose my balance completely. My head swam as I readied myself to jump. The night sky tipped over me as I sprang from the block. I had the sensation that I was both falling and that I had landed on the hard stone floor of the balcony. I didn’t know which one was my fate until I felt Zach’s hands under my shoulders, helping me to my feet.
I breathed deeply, my heart racing. Bending my head over the balcony wall, I let the salty ocean wind rush into my lungs. I wanted every bit of that tainted dungeon air out of me.
“Are you okay?”
I nodded, catching my breath.
Zach pulled me close to him. “Come dance with me, Cassie, like you did that night on Whitehaven beach.”
“Are you crazy?” My voice was low, almost a whisper.
His eyes were slightly unfocused, as though he’d been sitting here drinking for quite a while. He smelled of red wine and the ocean. “I just want you. If wanting you makes me crazy, then so be it.”
“You’re drunk.” I moved away from him.
“So are you. And you were so drunk at the dinner table the first night you came here, I had to carry you into bed.” He held up his bottle of red wine, taking a swig from it. “Let’s get more drunk, together.”
“That was you who carried me out of there?”
“Yep. Wasn’t gonna let any of those other lechers do it. My family have odd ideas. I went back to help Molly back to her room straight after.”
“Thanks for doing that. I need to get back to Molly right now. Can you tell me which way to go?”
“You have to wait for the walls to shift again.”
I eyed him in confusion. “How are the walls even moving? How is that even possible?”
He gazed at the floor of the balcony. “Almost all of the internal walls and floors can move. When I was a kid, I used to wander for hours during the time of the désorienter, as it’s called. Most of the time, no one knows when a désorienter is going to happen. A night of a désorienter is meant to be a time when we’re supposed to be the most alive, a time when anything can happen.”
“What kind of things?” Dark thoughts ran through my head. “Doctor Verena just had me trapped in the dungeon.”
“Anything and everything,” he replied vaguely. “Parker’s Aunt Verena has always been strange—I’m sorry you got stuck there with her. And I hate it that you got stuck down there in the dungeons. That’s never supposed to happen during a désorienter—I mean, unless you want to go there.”
“I didn’t want to go there. I didn’t want to go anywhere. These walls—they could kill people. I don’t even know if Molly is okay. She was in bed on the other side of the room—but when I woke, a wall slammed in between us.”
“The beds are bolted in place—the walls only move in between them. She’ll be okay.”
“Okay? Is there anything such thing as okay in this castle?”
He looked away, his expression tightening. “No. I guess not.”
“And what do you mean that no one knows when the walls are going to move around, anyway? Walls don’t move by themselves. Is this some sick game of Henry’s?”
He gave an offhand shrug. “It goes a long way back, back to the time the castle was built. In the fourteenth century.”
“This place was built with moving walls? Why?”
“My ancestor, Lord Balthazar Batiste, had it built to his own whacked-out specifications. It’s like a maze with pieces that move up, down and sideways. Balthazar was an insane old man. He gave poor villagers a home in his castle and then tortured them for his own amusement.”
“My God….”
Zach’s face twisted. “This balcony was apparently a favorite spot of his. He’d come out here and take in the ocean view... and enjoy the screams of the villagers from the dungeons.”
My stomach rolled, my mouth dropping open.
Zach cringed, noticing my reaction. “And from all reports, no one stopped him. Until the night a few villagers retaliated and stormed the castle. They freed all the prisoners and then set fire to B
althazar in his bed. But he didn’t die. Burned black as coal, he retreated to some passage in the castle where they couldn’t find him.”
“Shame. That he didn’t die I mean.”
“Yeah. And I know what you’re thinking. You’re wishing my family line had died with him. But there was one girl from the village that they didn’t find. They ended up thinking she must already be dead. She wasn’t. Balthazar was keeping her in a secret prison in the bowels of the castle. Apparently he went on to have twin babies with her—a boy and a girl. The girl married a man with the last name of Baldcott when she was thirteen. So yeah, it all goes way back.”
“Who was he—Balthazar?”
“I don’t know, exactly. I think he came from a branch of a royal family. There was a war, back in those days. How’s your history knowledge?”
“Not my best subject.”
“Well, there was a war that lasted for a hundred years. And that’s what it was called afterwards. The Hundred Years War. It was between the Kingdom of England and the Kingdom of France. It went from the thirteenth century to the middle of the fourteenth century. Balthazar was born somewhere at the end of all that. As a young man, Balthazar took English prisoners and brought them here to the hill on which this castle stands. There was a tree on top of the hill, and he impaled the prisoners live on the branches—and let them die there in agony.”
A metallic taste came into my mouth. “He was allowed to do stuff like that? Just because it was a war?”
“I think people were too scared to stop him. He murdered the people of his own country too—the French. War was just an excuse to inflict horror on others. And it wasn’t just soldiers... He impaled innocent women and children on the tree as well.”
“I’ve seen pictures like that... in a library of the castle.” My voice was taut, low.
Zach raised his bottle of wine to the air as though making a mock salute, and took a swig. “To my sick, twisted, despicable family history….”
He turned to me. “All I can do is try to protect you as best I can. As soon as the désorienter began tonight, I went looking for you. But the walls changed, and I got stuck here. So I took some wine from the stash in the larder and waited for the walls to change again. Then I was going to head straight back to look for you. And maybe… I was hoping….”
“Hoping what?”
“Hoping you might change your mind about me. On the night of a désorienter, your mind is supposed to be open—open to change.”
“Nothing’s changed for me, Zach....”
He dropped his head. “Yeah... I figured that. It’s just... this is probably the last night that I can ever be with you like this. Did you hear what my father was talking about at dinner last night?”
“I heard him saying something about an s’emparer—do I have that right? Some kind of tradition?”
“Yeah. It’s called the s’emparer. It always happens on the night before the first day of spring. Every unmarried person over the age of sixteen wanders the castle on this night, wherever the castle takes them. And the castle decides who will marry who.”
“And you believe in that stuff?” I stared at him incredulously.
“Well, I know it sounds pretty lame. But... well that’s just the way it’s always been. It’s how everyone here has married through the years.”
“What does it mean, anyway—s’emparer?”
“It means to seize, to take.” He winced. “As in the man seizing a woman for marriage. It’s an old, old term.” His eyes clouded. “The coupling ceremony will take place tomorrow. And I have a very good idea who the castle will choose for me. Her family has been connected with mine for a very long time—a few generations back, our families were even blood relations.”
I stared out over the balcony, the crashing waves washing through my mind. Part of me still remembered how much I wanted Zach—wanted him desperately. Even though it had just been days ago, it seemed an eternity had passed since Zach had been mine and I had been his. Every moment with him had been a precious thing. And all that time, he had known that he was soon to marry.
“So, how is your girlfriend, anyway?” The word girlfriend tasted bitter on my tongue.
“Sienna is not my girlfriend.” His voice sounded hurt.” Mom pushed her onto me a year ago, when I’d just turned seventeen. She is nothing like you and she’s nothing to me. But I have no choice in who is chosen for me. I was born into a life without choices. This strange life. I grew up thinking all people knew about the other planes of existence. I grew up without any place to really call home. This castle… this place, was supposed to be home to me. But it’s not and never was.”
Wind whipped across my face and chilled the skin beneath my clothing. “How long were you at the house in Miami?”
“Only long enough for my parents to rip it apart and put it back together again. They were looking for the book—the second one. They didn’t find it, obviously.” He shook his head ruefully. “My family was about to head to Australia to live—somewhere conveniently close to where you were living. Then news came that you were moving back to Miami—and so we stayed where we were.”
“You were good at keeping up the act, I’ll give you that. I trusted you completely.”
“Yes, it was an act at first. When Emerson and I met you and Aisha on that island, yeah, it was all a setup. The lunch, the TV screens switching to the news broadcast… it was all planned. But when I saw you on the screen—the way you looked when you came out of that dollhouse place, and how shaken you were when you watched it—I couldn’t bear it.”
“On that beach in Australia, when your sister said she didn’t need to worry about deadly creatures in the water… she said that nothing could hurt her. What did she mean?”
His eyes grew distant. “You already know part of the answer to that. If we enter a space occupied by a copy of us and touch them, what happens is that we copy over them. Like what happened to you in the serpent’s cave. In other words, the other copy vanishes and we remain. It makes us a little stronger.”
“Your family has done that? I mean, traveled to another world to copy over other people? Other people who are yourselves?”
“Not exactly. We have to bring them into our own world first. Whoever is in their real world will remain and the other will get... absorbed.”
“Oh my God...” I backed away from him a step. “That’s what happened with Emerson, isn’t it? A copy was brought in from another earth. To make Emerson well again.”
Placing his elbows on the wall, Zach held his head in his hands. “Yes. That’s what happened. I can’t do anything about what my family does. It's happened… once before. Just before I met you. My parents tricked our mirror family into coming here. Then we absorbed them. My parents told me it was just like I was looking into a mirror—and sending the other me into the other side of the mirror. But that's not true and that's not what it is at all. And it’s not something I want to do again. Ever. Henry wanted us to do it. He and Audette and the ghosts of the castle joined with their ghosts from that other earth at the same time. Henry wanted to make us strong as a family—at any cost.”
“Zach, is that what all this is about?”
He sighed, his eyes growing heavy. “It’s about never dying. It’s about living an infinite number of lifetimes. But the ghosts—all the spirits of the castle—they can’t live again. Not yet. Not without the book. Once they have it, they’ll bring all the ghosts back to life. And more than that, they’ll be able to reach places they can’t get to now. Right now, they can only reach a limited number of earths. They don't let me in on their meetings, but I think they can only get to a few others in total. But with the knowledge of the book... all the universes will be theirs.”
It was too much to even imagine. The inside of my head felt as hard and brittle as glass, about to shatter at any moment. "I heard your father say something about parallel universes. Why are things different on the ice world if the universes mirror each other?"
H
e remained looking out to sea. "Parallel universes are the same, until something changes their course. It could be the smallest thing. It could take just one person to change the way they think and do something different that day. And then the universe starts on a different course." Pausing, he turned to me. "Look, you have every right to think the things that you do about me. I have no excuses. I grew up being told that the people who get ahead are the people who go after what they want. Even if that means other people suffer. My family have done bad things to people. Me included. I’m just as bad as them.”
“You cut me to pieces, Zach. You’re right. You’re just one of them.”
“Guilty. I somehow wasn’t able to see how wrong the things my family does are… until I met you. I guess I’ve spent my life switching off where my family is concerned.”
“Makes it easier to live with yourself, right?” I said acidly. “Were you having fun that night of the ball when you said those words to me, you and only you? You swore you didn’t say that, but I know you did. You were mocking me. I know those words—they were from a note on Jessamine’s mirror in her grandfather’s house in Australia.”
“Okay, yes, I did say that. But I wasn’t mocking you. Yeah, the words were from that note. I found Jessamine’s old room one night during the Feast of Fools. My parents wouldn’t allow us to go down into the dollhouse, so we all just stayed in the house. I saw the note on the mirror. I knew Tobias had written those words. Those words stuck in my head because Tobias is the only member of my family who has my respect. He ran away from the castle and cut himself off completely from the family—something I’ve never had the guts to do. I wanted that so badly—just a normal life. And when I met you, I wanted that for you too. I wanted to sail away and find somewhere to hide away with you—you and only you.”
The cold wind stung my cheeks.
He stared fixedly down at the ocean as though it were an enemy. “After that night of the ball, I hated myself. Seeing your face, knowing what I’d done to you… was unbearable. I wanted to throw myself off the edge of that cliff and smash myself to smithereens down there in the pitch darkness. But you know, none of us ever die. I can kill myself here, but I’ll live on in an infinite other worlds. I’ll hurt you again and again and again… infinitely.”
