by Max Candee
“Are we waiting for someone?” I finally asked. Then my worst nightmare appeared. Jean-Sébastien and Luca rounded the corner and hopped into the rear seat without opening the doors.
“Boys! That’s no way to get into a car,” Sister Daphne scolded, though she couldn’t hide a grin. Why did she always think that Jean-Sébastien and Luca were so cute?
“That’s how they do it in the movies,” Luca said.
Marie just laughed. “I think they were quite manly, don’t you, Anna Sophia?”
Uh-huh.
“That’s just what we need around the castle, some dashing young men,” Marie said as she started the car.
Great. And what I needed was for this night to be over.
Marie drove like a drunken racecar driver, and we arrived at Irvigne Manor long before Lauraleigh and her group. I had to admit, the place looked pretty spectacular. Paper lanterns trailed up the driveway. They were just beginning to glow as the sun set. Candles were lit in every window of the enormous house. I resisted the urge to look at it through my dream stone again. If there was a huge shadow hovering over the castle, I didn’t want to know about it. Maybe it was cowardly of me, but I didn’t want to creep out so early after our arrival. Somehow, I felt that I would have enough chances to do that later.
Inside, the main foyer was decorated with streamers and balloons. As usual, Marie had set up a whole slew of games. Tonight, the theme seemed to be a carnival. A massive pair of doors was open at the end of the parlor, showing the ballroom all decked out with game booths. Attendants waited for guests to try Whack-a-mole, darts, skee-ball, and more. Every booth had dozens of stuffed toys hanging above for prizes.
“Ooh! Can we go play?” Beatrice asked, her eyes sparkling.
“Of course, my dear,” Marie said. “Irvigne Manor is all about fun. Now go win yourself a giant teddy bear!”
“Are you coming, Anna?” Beatrice asked, and skipped away without waiting for my answer.
I followed her, but more slowly. We were the first guests, and I wanted a chance to see the house before the others arrived.
Candace was busy ordering everyone around as usual. I’d had only one class with her this year, but that was enough to learn that she was a pain. Like her mother, Candace got everything she wanted, but she didn’t have Marie’s charm. Candace was just plain bossy.
“Put that platter on the table,” she yelled at Mei, who struggled under the weight of an enormous platter. “Not that table, the other one. And make sure it’s straight in the middle!”
Poor Mei! She didn’t look happy. Along with Gaëlle and six other girls, she had been adopted by the Montmorencys. I liked Mei. She was small and quiet, with straight black hair and beautiful almond-shaped eyes. At the orphanage, she had always been kind to the younger kids, me included. She’d been adopted two years ago, but she wasn’t a student at the Collège or in any of the town’s public schools, as far as I could tell. I wondered what she’d been doing all that time. Was she being homeschooled? I watched her disappear down a long hallway that probably led to the kitchen. Soon she returned carrying more food and looking flushed as if she’d had to run. How many people had Marie invited?
“Hi, Mei.”
She almost dropped the platter of sandwiches; I must have startled her.
“Oh. Hi, Anna.” Her eyes darted across the room to where Candace and Marie were arguing about the music selection, then back to me. “What are you doing here?”
“I was invited. I mean, it’s a party, right?”
“Right. Of course.” She frowned. That was strange. I’d always thought of Mei as a friend. Why wouldn’t she want me here?
The doors burst open, and a group of guests entered. I didn’t recognize any of them. They were adults dressed in fancy clothes, with a crowd of laughing children running around them. Gaëlle waited patiently beside Marie to take all their coats. Weighed down under the mountain of jackets, she hurried into a small room off the parlor. The guests laughed and talked loudly until the music kicked in and drowned out their voices. I turned to ask Mei who they were, but she was gone.
I was beginning to really dislike Irvigne Manor. Something was off about that place.
Lauraleigh arrived with the other girls from the Collège. Gaëlle took their coats too. I thought it was time to save my friend from coatroom attendant duty.
“Marie, would it be okay if Gaëlle showed me her room?” I asked, approaching the two. “I’d like to put my stuff in there for tonight.”
“Of course, my dear,” Marie said with a patronizing smile. “Gaëlle, find Olivia and have her join me here to greet our guests.”
“Yes… Mother,” Gaëlle said, and lowered her eyes. I had the feeling that Gaëlle still felt uncomfortable calling Marie “Mother.”
“And be sure to give dear Anna Sophia a tour of our home. Let her know exactly what she’s missing!” Marie laughed as if she’d made an uproariously funny joke.
“Let’s find Beatrice first,” I said. I didn’t like the idea of leaving her alone with all those strangers.
Beatrice was busy at the skee-ball machine, but she happily let us take her away when we told her about visiting Gaëlle’s room.
“Do you have a fairy bed?” she asked. “You know, the kind with the lacy top?”
“You mean a canopy bed?” asked Gaëlle. “Yes, I do.”
“Is it pink? I love pink.” Beatrice continued to chatter on about all her favorite colors, animals, and ice cream flavors. We crossed the parlor, where the guests were sampling the feast. In the corner, a few people were dancing while others lounged on couches.
“Where did all these people come from?” I asked.
“André and Marie know everybody,” Gaëlle said with a small shrug. She sounded like she didn’t want to talk about it.
André’s booming laugh echoed over the music, and she winced. I grabbed my backpack from the coatroom and followed her up the grand staircase. The walls were covered with portraits of people dressed in old-fashioned clothes. At the top, we turned left down a long hallway. We passed beautifully carved doors on each side, all closed. I assumed those were bedrooms. One of the doors opened, and Olivia came out.
I hadn’t seen Olivia since she was adopted from our orphanage two or three years ago. She was a small, thin girl, with lank blond hair and blue eyes that seemed much too large for her face.
“Marie is looking for you,” Gaëlle said. “You’d better hurry; you know how she gets.”
Olivia bit her lip and nodded once before hurrying off toward the stairs.
“What did you mean by that?” I asked.
“Oh, nothing, it’s just that Marie… I mean, Mother can get impatient sometimes. She likes her parties to be perfect.”
I wasn’t buying that for a minute.
“Are these bedrooms for the other girls they adopted?” I asked. “I guess they’re your sisters now. It must be nice to have such a big family.”
Gaëlle nodded. “Only Mei, Olivia, and I are left. But they are really nice.”
“Where are the others?” I tried to remember their names. Stephanie and Vivienne had been adopted from Luyons, like Gaëlle, and I was sure there were at least two other girls from other orphanages.
“Oh, they’re older now,” said Gaëlle. “Off to university already.”
I tried to remember Vivienne and Stephanie. Were they old enough for university? I didn’t think so. But maybe I was being too suspicious.
Gaëlle opened the last door at the end of the hall. Her bedroom was bigger than most of our classrooms back at the Collège. The walls were papered in pale pink. The fairy bed, as Beatrice called it, sat like a castle in the middle of the room. Gauzy lace draped over the canopy frame and hung to the floor. At least a dozen pillows were arranged neatly on the satiny pink bedspread. Beatrice squealed in delight when she saw all the toys and dress-up clothes along one wall and ran off to play with them.
“You can put your stuff over here,” said Gaëlle, poin
ting at a plush love seat. “And the bathroom is through that door.”
The bruise on her face stood out in the bright pink room.
“Thanks.” I tore my eyes away from Gaëlle (I still didn’t believe her story about that bruise) and looked around the room in wonder. Apart from the mess that Beatrice was already making, the room was immaculate, almost staged, like a hotel room.
“You must be very happy here,” I said, adding just enough doubt to my voice to encourage Gaëlle to open up.
She shrugged. “I don’t really spend much time in my room.”
Double glass doors led to a balcony. I opened them and stepped into the moonlight. The back garden spread below us. Flowers glittered in the pale light like jewels. Beyond the garden was the hedge maze, and behind it was the open field where our balloon had crashed. From above, I could see all the twists and turns of the maze. It was a true labyrinth, with a small building, almost like an enclosed gazebo, at its center.
“What’s that?” I asked, pointing at the building.
Even in the dim light, I could see Gaëlle go pale.
“I don’t know,” she stammered. “André doesn’t let us go into the maze. He says it’s too easy to get lost. Come on, let’s go inside. I’m cold.”
She turned toward the doors, but I stopped her.
“Gaëlle, you know I’m your friend, right? You can tell me anything.”
She looked me straight in the eye. She was scared; I could see it. But she turned away again and said, “Of course, everything’s fine.”
Back in her room, we found Beatrice dressed as a fairy princess. Over her dress, she’d added a frilly pink skirt, and on her head, she wore a tall cone hat with a trailing veil.
“Can I wear this to the party?” she asked. Gaëlle smiled, the first real smile I’d seen from her in weeks.
“Of course,” she said. “Why don’t we go get some ice cream sundaes?”
“Yes!” Beatrice cried out.
Back in the hallway, I heard voices coming from the far end near the stairs. André’s thunderous laugh was unmistakable.
“Let me show you where our family lives,” he was saying. “This wing is entirely devoted to our daughters. You can see we take our responsibilities as new parents extremely seriously.” He must have been bringing guests on a tour.
“Let’s go this way,” Gaëlle said quickly.
But before she could open the door across the hall, André found us. “Ah! My darling daughter Gaëlle, with her little friends.” He beamed as if we were a treasure he had found.
Three people walked with him: A man and woman dressed in expensive clothes and a third man who stood apart from the others. The couple seemed enthralled by the opulence of the house. The woman kept touching everything – the walls, the moldings around the door, the side table and lamp – with the tips of her gloved hand as if checking for dirt. But it was the third man who caught my attention. He was tall, with long black hair that he wore in a neat ponytail. Like the others, he was dressed in fine clothes, but they were all black, from his suit to his shirt to his tie. The reason he startled me, though, was that he gazed at me with dark, deep-set eyes. A small smile twitched his lips.
“And who are her lovely friends?” the man asked. I was struck by his accent. It was so much like Uncle Misha’s that he had to be Russian.
Beatrice curtsied like a real princess and said, “My name is Beatrice. I’m a fairy princess.”
“Oh, isn’t she cute!” the woman said, squeezing Beatrice’s cheeks. “I want a little girl just like that one.” Her husband beamed and nodded.
The dark-eyed man didn’t even glance at Beatrice.
“And your name?” he asked me.
“Anna Sophia, sir.” I didn’t curtsy. His gaze made me uncomfortable.
“You look just like another Anna that I once knew,” he said. His words confused me. Was that a compliment?
“Thank you, sir,” I mumbled.
“I… uh… thought they might like to see the kitchens,” Gaëlle said. “We were going down for sundaes.”
“Of course, of course!” said André. “You girls need some fattening up. You’re all as thin as rakes.” André steered his friends back the way they had come.
The man in black watched me over his shoulder as they walked away. A shiver ran down my spine as if his gaze had blasted me with coldness.
Gaëlle opened the door across the hall. Instead of another bedroom, it opened into a stairwell. Beatrice happily hopped down the stairs, but I took them slowly. Who was that strange man with the Russian accent? Why did he seem so interested in me?
The kitchen was bustling with activity. At least three cooks were setting desserts on trays to take out to the guests.
“Is it okay if we have ice cream?” Gaëlle asked one of the cooks.
He nodded and waved her away as if she were a bother. Gaëlle opened a stainless steel door. The freezer was bigger than my bedroom! She took out several flavors of ice cream and dumped them on the counter. From a tall cabinet, she took bowls, chocolate sauce, and candy sprinkles.
“I used to spend a lot of time in the kitchen when I first came to live here,” Gaëlle said with a small smile. “I like how the cooks are always moving. They never rest. They used to let me stir the soup sometimes.”
“But now?” I asked.
“Now… I’m just really busy with other things.”
I didn’t ask what those other things were. Gaëlle would tell me when she was ready, I hoped.
After we had gobbled the ice cream, Beatrice wanted to play carnival games again.
“Why don’t you take her there,” I said to Gaëlle. “I need to find the bathroom; then I’ll join you.”
“Sure,” Gaëlle said. “It’s right through that door.”
I followed the hall that she pointed to. It was dark, with only one dim light on the ceiling. I suspected that guests weren’t usually allowed back there. I didn’t really need to use the bathroom; I wanted to snoop. Something odd was going on at Irvigne Manor, and I intended to find out what it was.
At the end of the hall, another staircase led down. With a backward glance at the kitchen to be sure that no one was watching me, I headed down the narrow stairs. They emerged on the first floor by a servants’ entrance. The only light came from the moon shining through a small window. I could hear music and laughter from the party, but they seemed very far away.
Suddenly, my dream stone grew hot – so hot, it felt like it was burning my skin. I yanked the stone out from under my shirt. Holding its leather thong, I let it dangle. It spun clockwise until the thong strained; then it spun back the other way. Back and forth, it turned like that; then it stopped. The moon shone right through the stone’s hole onto the keyhole of a door across the hall from the stairs.
Weird.
By now, I had seen enough weirdness not to dismiss it as a coincidence. Obviously, my dream stone wanted me to open the door. I wished I had brought Squire with me, but he was up in Gaëlle’s room. I’d have to face whatever was behind that door alone.
The dream stone wasn’t hot anymore – now it was cold as ice. I dropped it back under my shirt and shivered as it touched my skin. The door wasn’t locked, but it was heavy. I could only open it a crack. Stone steps led down into blackness. Damp, cold air blew up the stairs. It stank of rot, like garbage, rotten food, and decay. A low wail from below sent chills up my arms. I couldn’t tell if it was the scream of a human or an animal.
I suddenly felt sick enough to throw up. I jerked back from the door. The dark hallway spun around me. I held my stomach, gagging.
I needed fresh air now!
I stumbled toward the glass door, threw open the latch, and ran outside. The door slammed shut behind me, probably locking me out, but I didn’t care. Crawling toward the bushes at the edge of the patio, I held my stomach and sucked in deep breaths of fresh air. Slowly, I started to feel better.
What on earth could be in that basement? It smelled like
death. Was it linked to Gaëlle’s odd behavior? Were André and Marie keeping some kind of demon or monster down there? That could be the source of the black shadow I’d seen.
With shaking hands, I lifted the dream stone up and peered through the hole again.
There it was. Blackness oozed around the house like oily fog. I dropped the stone and pressed my hands to my eyes. Just looking at it made me feel sick and dirty.
As much as the shadow had disgusted me and peering into that basement had terrified me, I knew I’d have to go back and investigate. It was as if the dream stone were urging me on.
I steeled my resolve to return just as the back door flung open. André and another man came out onto the patio. I scooted into the shadows of the bushes, certain that they wouldn’t be happy to find me lurking about the servants’ entrance.
“You have nothing to worry about,” said André without his usual bluster. He sounded impatient and even a little worried. “Everything’s going according to plan. You’ll have all nine, just as I promised.”
All nine? I wondered. Nine what?
The other man didn’t speak for a moment. His back was to me. He had a long black ponytail. It was the man in black from upstairs.
“I’m not concerned about quantity,” the man said in his Russian accent. “It’s the quality of your prisoners that concerns me.”
Prisoners? I sucked in a breath, and pressed myself into the shadows. Now I was sure that being seen was a bad idea.
The two men descended the stairs and walked through the garden.
I followed them even though I knew how dangerous that was. My heart pounded in my chest, telling me to turn back and run away. But my feet kept moving forward, following the men through the garden toward the hedge maze. The two of them disappeared through a crack in the hedge, and I hesitated.
I’d seen the labyrinth from above. If I wandered too deeply into it, I would never find my way out. Or even worse, I could stumble right into André and that creepy man.
Their footsteps echoed through the hedge. They were getting away. Without further hesitation, I dashed into the labyrinth.