A Drop of Night

by Stefan Bachmann

  Hayden is unbarring the hatch, crawling out. “Leave him,” he says over his shoulder. “We’re not coming back.”

  Lilly looks at me, her face streaked with tears. I meet her gaze for a fraction of a second. Shake my head and scramble out after Hayden.

  Flashlights click on. The floor creaks under our feet. I catch one last glimpse of Perdu in the panic room. His head is tipped back, eyes wide as he watches us go. Hayden slams the hatch shut. Now it’s just us, the dark, our flashlight beams swooping along the walls.

  We hurry east, the way we came, darting through the doors as quietly as we can. Hayden’s up front, then me, Will, Lilly, Jules. We’re drawn out in a line.

  Will taps my shoulder with his good hand. I glance back at him. “Anouk?” he says under his breath.

  “Yeah?”

  “Can I talk to you for a second?”

  “Sure.”

  He starts talking, fast. “It’s Perdu. I don’t know if I was imagining things or what, but when he was in the panic room, he—”

  Hayden doubles back. “Stay close,” he mutters.

  I recognize the bedroom we’re in. The ornate four-poster, tasseled ropes missing from the canopy. Somewhere up ahead I hear a dull rushing, crackling sound, like a distant waterfall.

  I look over at Will, waiting for him to continue, hoping he’ll save it for later.

  He sees my expression. “I don’t know what I saw,” he says, moving away from me again. “I’m going crazy.”

  Join the club. We’re back in the antechamber to Jellyfish Hall, the cloakroom with its dozens of small drawers and cupboards. It seems smaller somehow. Our light beams bounce on something. Something that definitely wasn’t there before.

  “What the—” Jules starts to say. My stomach drops.

  A roiling mass hangs in the darkness. The doors to Jellyfish Hall are half gone. Blue fumes are creeping toward us in a hissing, bitter wall.

  40

  “Get out!” Will yells. “Out!”

  We stumble backward, turn, run. Hayden’s screaming, raging, like the whole universe has conspired against him. We back into the bedroom, try the set of doors in the eastern wall. They lead into a room buzzing with magnets. It’s a billiards room, but the orbs are shimmering steel, floating above the table, ready to smash anyone who enters. Hayden is almost jerked in, the gun in his pants dragging him through the door. We all pull him back, clawing at his shoulders, trying to get him into the bedroom. Will slams the doors shut. We pile up against the side of the bed, gasping.

  “Now what?” Lilly whispers.

  Now what, indeed. We can’t go back to the panic room. It’s Perdu’s tomb now. I think of him shut up in there, wheezing, almost dead, maybe all the way dead.

  Hayden has his head in his hands, fingers working his scalp. “I want out,” he says, his voice awful, deep and grating. “I hate this. I hate them.”

  “We can get around,” Lilly says. “We can backtrack and keep heading north a different way, like we were going to do in the first place. It’s—it’s not the worst thing that could happen.”

  But it is. We waited six hours for nothing. We banked on getting through Jellyfish Hall and getting out, not running back into the middle of the palace.

  I tuck my flashlight under my arm. My head aches. “Perdu told us something about this. At least, he tried to. He said if you go along the edge of the pond you’ll fall in, and if you jump in the middle you’ll be all right. He meant the traps. That the traps go along the perimeter of the palace. And if Dorf wants us in the hall of mirrors, it’s probably going to be somewhere at the center. Which means there’s no other way to go. The traps are always on. I don’t know if Hayden just stumbled on a broken one, but the rest of them are trigger-ready, to keep everything down here in. We’ll have no choice but to go find them.”

  “We’re dead,” Jules says. “We’re just done, over, terminated—”

  “You guys made it this far,” Hayden interrupts. His face is greasy, sweating. “How hard can it be to get through a couple of trap rooms?”

  I laugh bitterly. I don’t care if he’s angry; so am I. “We made it this far because we had help. Something saved us in Razor Hall, then you rescued us from Jellyfish Hall. The Sapanis don’t want us mangled, but now I think they’re done being patient. They need us for something and we’re not cooperating, so either they’re going to scrape our pulverized corpses out of their trap rooms, or catch us. I wouldn’t be expecting any merciful treatment anymore if I were you.”

  “Merciful treatment?” Hayden snaps. “I’m suggesting we run. I’m suggesting we force our way out at all costs. What are you suggesting? Nobody hold your breath; she’s not that great at being helpful.”

  I sit up. “I could try kicking your teeth in, Hayden. I think that might be really helpful.”

  Hayden looks like he’s about to go ape, pummel everything, me included. I press my thumbnail into the grid of lines on my flashlight’s grip, until I no longer want to smack him with it. “We can fight,” I say.

  Hayden snorts. “I’d take you out in two seconds.”

  “Not us, idiot, we can fight the Sapanis. We can go to the hall of mirrors. Dorf thinks he can bag us when we get there and that’ll be the end of it, but what if we’re not that easy? What if we stop freaking out and actually do something instead of just running around screaming?”

  “I think running around and screaming has been really acceptable behavior under the circumstances,” Jules says.

  I shake my head. “They’re fighting something, too. They already lost a bunch of trackers. Their camera feed is down. We have a gun.” I point at Hayden.

  “They probably have more guns,” Will says.

  “We have the element of surprise,” I say. “They think we’ll be terrified and panicked—”

  “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 guns—”

  Hayden reaches over and digs his thumb into Jules’s collarbone, giving his shoulder a decidedly unfriendly squeeze. “You’ll learn to.” 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 says. “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?” Lilly asks. She doesn’t look opposed. She looks like she’s bracing herself for the answer, armoring herself, battening down the hatches. “We’re fighting?”

  “Looks like it,” Hayden says. His ar
m 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 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.

  41

  We crawl out of the chandelier room, pick ourselves up, and run six rooms farther. 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.”

  “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?”

  Will does that barking non-laugh thing and looks at the ceiling.

  “We’ll take a different route,” Lilly says. “We can go six or seven rooms west. That should be far enough from the perimeter. Hopefully. And then we can head south. We’ll be fine.”

  “What’s Rabbit Gallery?” Hayden asks. He’s tugging at something at the bottom of his leg, like he’s got an uncomfortable wrinkle in his sock.

  “It’s an exhibition hall full of weapons and stolen art somewhere south of here,” I say. “But I’m not sure if we can make it that far.” I glance at the others.

  Lilly nods. “We can. It’s either that or we find swords and letter openers and, like, joke them to death.”

  Hayden grimaces. I look over at him. He’s still pulling at something inside his shoe. When his hand comes up, it’s holding a waxy yellowed strip of skin.

  Jules’s eyes widen in disgust. “Leprosy much?” he says.

  Lilly swallows loudly. “Hayden, are you okay?”

  “Yeah,” he says, but he looks confused. “Yeah, I’m fine.”

  We stare at him a second. I shake my head. “We make a run for it, then? All in favor?”

  Nodding all around. We grab our flashlights.

  “Leave the food and anything we don’t need,” Will says, dragging the desk away from the door with his good hand. “We’ll come back here.”

  I dig the compass from my sweater. Lilly shines her light at it. We head out.

  We’re going west this time, away from Jellyfish Hall and toward what we assume is the center of the palace. At the very first door we all stop. Listen. No sound. We open the door and step over the threshold, and it feels like walking toward an oncoming truck, staring down those glaring headlights and sixteen growling wheels, and being like: Psh. I got this. We’re heading straight for Dorf, straight for the trackers and whatever it is we were brought here for. It feels like tempting fate. So, about 30 percent exhilarating, 70 percent stupid.

  After five rooms we turn south again, through the dark, echoing halls. No traps so far. Dorf was telling us the only safe way to go was toward the palace’s center, but I don’t think he counted on us backtracking. We start to run, lights flashing, our feet quiet on the polished floor.

  42

  It’s possible we’re lost. We’re heading south, and no one’s been decapitated yet, both good things, but we had to go up a steep, narrow staircase about five rooms back, and now we’re someplace I don’t recognize at all: a suite of small, luxurious rooms, tucked above the huger halls and ballrooms below. Little windows are embedded in the paneling, low, near the floor. The panes are angled downward, and through them I see chandeliers, marble floors about thirty feet below. These rooms are small, paneled in dark cherry wood. The ceilings are so low. It’s like running through a dollhouse. The air is warm. The lamps are lit, glistening on coffee-colored leather and brass-riveted wing chairs.

  And now we get to the last room. It’s a complete dead end. One door in, one door out.

  “Whoa,” Jules says, drawing up short. “Wrong way—”

  We all spin, jostling one another. I throw a glance back over my shoulder, glimpse a desk, shelves. An operating table? I pause. Jules runs into my back.

  It is an operating table. It’s standing in one corner of the room. The surface is covered in ancient, tightly stretched leather. It’s spattered in places, marked with dark rings and stains.

  “Is that blood?” Will has stopped, too, now, peering around.

  “Coffee stains,” Jules says. “Let’s go.”

  But all of us have stopped now. It’s like a little laboratory. Not a creepy, Frankenstein one with pig brains on the shelves. A neat, organized study, almost cheery. Glass ampoules line the shelves, stoppered with cork. Stacks of books, some of them marked with feathers and silver pins. Old paper everywhere, crinkly heaps of it.

  I look again at the desk. My skin goes cold. A glass of red wine is standing next to the pen stand, still half full. The rim is stained a little, like someone just drank from it.

  “We need to go,” I whisper. “Someone was here. Like, minutes ago.”

  If they come in, we’re stuck. Done for.

  Will has gone over to the operating table. He’s leaning over it, and I see there’s an enormous leather-bound book lying open on top of it, cracked bindings, the paper old and yellowed, wavy with moisture and age. Will places a hand on it, brushing a finger down the page.

  “Will, we need to get to Rabbit Gallery,” Lilly says. “You heard Anouk; someone was here—”

  “Look,” Will says. “You guys, look at this.”

  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 ci
rca 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 translate 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 says they started in 1760.”

  He starts reading aloud: “‘Guillaume Battiste, Age thirty to 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 château. 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. L’homme papillon. Success.

  The butterfly man.

  There are more words after it, hurried French, blotted with ink.

  He has awakened. 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. They didn’t stop after whatever it was they had created. They kept trying for something, for . . . what?

  Monsieur Vallé, head butler. Experimented on by l’homme papillon. 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?”