A Drop of Night

by Stefan Bachmann

  Will flips forward again. Nods slowly.

  “Here,” he says, and we’re all looking now, staring at our names listed on the last written page of 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.

  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.

  43

  We get to 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 where I had my emotional breakdown, 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 did with all those hundreds of dead people, the Carolines and Aimées 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 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.

  I find a handgun, a lightweight polymer throwing knife, a small brushed-steel orb that I’m hoping is a tiny bomb. Most of the weapons are too huge to be used by a single person. Others look too complicated. I study the handgun in the light from my flashlight. Figure out how to click out the cartridge. Feel brilliant for a second. The gun’s loaded.

  Will comes over with more ammunition. I show him what I found. He holds up a Taser.

  “You can have it if you want,” he says, and I actually melt a little, because what’s more adorable than someone offering you a Taser before going into battle?

  I grab it. Give him a half smile. We join the others.

  The hall is covered in chunks of glass now, like the ceiling rained ice. Lilly and Jules have an entire arsenal of weapons lying in a heap by the door. We sort through them, tossing aside the ones that are too big or heavy, slinging the rest onto our backs, attaching them to belts, clutching them in our hands.

  I keep thinking someone might hear us—maybe trackers, or Dorf in his camel trench coat and neat little beard—and this whole desperate operation will be over before we even start. But no one comes. The palace feels dead around us. Hollow. Waiting.

  We hurry out, leaving Rabbit Gallery in ruins behind us.

  I’m almost giddy heading back to the rose room. We’re not talking. We don’t need to. This must be like the parade-and-bugles part of war, the run-up when everything’s still bright waving flags and heroism. You don’t think about the bad things. You focus on nebulous notions of victory and let that float you. A part of me knows it won’t last. But I’ll take it while it does. I’d rather be pumped than terrified.

  As soon as we’re back, the writing desk barring the doors, everyone starts talking at once.

  “I don’t even know what this does,” Lilly says, picking up weapon after weapon and rattling it next to her ear.

  Jules starts lining up explosives on the embroidered seat of a chair, eyeing them mistrustfully.

  I sit down cross-legged on the floor and spread a snowy white pillowcase in front of me.

  “You got a plan now, Nukey?” Hayden asks, and he’s being a jerk, but the thing is, I do have a plan. At least, part of one.

  “Yep!” I jump up, start rummaging around inside the desk. Find some ink, still liquid, and a long curved quill. I start scribbling a hypothetical floor plan of the hall of mirrors onto the pillowcase, guiding the quill’s nub as smoothly as I can across the cloth. The others gather around.

  “They obviously don’t know where we are,” I say, and the nub snags, splattering ink. “Which means they probably don’t know how many of us are left. And they’re going to try to trick us. That’s a given. So we’re going to trick them back.” I look up at their faces, pale and glowing around me. “We’re going to need a volunteer.”

  44

  We’ve gone over the plan four times. We’ve gone over our weapons, discussed how we’re going to use them. We’re ready to go. But we’re waiting, hanging back. It’s like being at the top of the highest drop of a rickety, sure-to-collapse roller coaster, and you—you, in the wagon—get to decide when to take the plunge, freak out, die. No one’s super excited about that part.

  “Your turn, Anouk,” Jules says after a while. “Tell us your story.”

  He’s not expecting an answer. He’s waiting for me to tell him to shut up, and I almost do, just out of habit. But I change my mind. What difference does it make if somebody knows? What difference does it make if everyone knows? Maybe in forty minutes I’ll be gone. Wiped off the face of the earth. I’d like to tell someone before then.

  “What d’you want to know?” I say.

  “Whoa, really?” Jules sits up. “Everything! Why do you hate people? Why did you have to forge your parents’ signatures? Why are you angry all the time?”

  “Jules, don’t,” Lilly says, but I wave it off.

  “No, it’s okay. I’ll tell you. I’ll have to lobotomize all of you afterward so you can’t tell anyone my secrets, but you’re okay with that, right?”

  “Definitely,” Jules says.

  “Okay,” I say. My voice cracks. I feel self-conscious all of a sudden. I brace myself. There’s nothing left to do but let go, talk. “Okay. My parents adopted me when I was four.”

  I stare at the wall, at the roses. They don’t look that great suddenly. Whoever stayed in here would have realized that really fast. The huge leaves and forced perspective: it’s like it was engineered to keep you feeling small. “My biological mom left me at a shelter in Pennsylvania. I don’t even know what her name was.”

  Lilly makes a consoling sound, like that was the punch line of my story. Not even close.

  I pick at the pillowcase plan, the black arrows and scribbles bleeding into the fibers. I think about my biological mom sometimes. Who doesn’t? But she’s not the one who makes me angry. She’s not the one who made me want to run away to foreign continents or break Japanese porcelain with a baseball bat, or sit under the dining room table for three hours ripping my straight-A report card into smaller and smaller pieces, because no one had even asked, no one had cared at all what it said—

  “Usually if you’re in an orphanage past the toddler stage, it means you’re going to foster care. People don’t want messed-up babies, or ones with druggy parents. So when this couple came in and said they would adopt me, it was amazing. I was the weirdest kid. I never smiled. I hardly ever spoke. I just watched people. But for some reason they didn’t mind. They were rich. They really wanted me. At least, I thought they wanted me.” My lungs feel tight. I can still remember the first time I saw them, coming across the parking lot, all honey-colored lighting and flowing hair like they had stepped straight out of an insurance commercial. I bet there are
all sorts of great adoptive parents out there. Waiting lists of people who can hardly wait to give some random kid a great life.

  Mine were not those parents. It was like they were shopping for a purse or a new car, something to complete their idyllic image of familyhood.

  Step 5: Adopt a small child. Great for holiday pictures and also to shut up all your annoying, judgmental friends who think you’re self-absorbed.

  “They could have been monkeys and I would have loved them,” I say. “I did love them. And then when I was six, they had a real baby.”

  The shadowy roses look monstrous now, writhing across the walls. The others are sitting stock-still, waiting, and that old, hot anger is creeping back into my stomach. I see fourteen-year-old-me snipping my hair short in the bathroom, calling myself names for being a whiner, for being needy, for being a typical spoiled brat with no real problems, even though they felt like real problems. They felt like the biggest problems in the world.

  “My parents got the news and it was, like, from one day to the next, I was extra. They didn’t need me anymore. It’s like they blamed me, like I had somehow tricked them into adopting me. I was this imposter they had let into their home and pretended was theirs, and now they didn’t need to pretend anymore. You know how that hurt? Do you have any idea how it hurts when you’re six years old and you don’t have anyone in the universe, because some people came along and said they’d take care of you and . . . and they lied? They tossed you aside after five minutes, like you’re not even a person; you’re just a photogenic accessory and now you’re done, who even cares about you anyway, Anouk.”

  I’m crying. It started somewhere between hurt and take care of you and now it won’t stop. Jules and Will are staring at me, wide-eyed. Hayden’s leaning over a pump-action shotgun, fiddling with it. I want one of the roses to detach from the wall. Swallow me down whole.

  “You wanted all the gory details, right, Jules?” I say. “Well, here you go: my parents hardly even talked to me after my sister was born. They talked about me. I overheard them all the time, being, like, ‘What about her? What are we going to do with her, what if she exhibits emotional problems and influences our daughter?’ And yeah, I had emotional problems after that. I thought my parents were aliens. I started getting paranoid delusions and I couldn’t trust anyone and I watched them playing with Penny and how they loved her a million times more than me, and one morning I took her out of her crib and carried her down the driveway to the street. I was barely big enough to lift her, and she was crying and I was crying, too, and I was telling her we were leaving, and I hated her, and we were never going back, our parents would never see us again . . . I didn’t know what I was doing, okay? I was a dumb little kid and I took her out into the street. A food truck hit us. Larry’s Brasserie Chickens, how ridiculous is that? I broke four bones in my arm. Penny flew fourteen feet. She almost died.”

  “You were six,” Jules says. “It’s not your fault, you—”

  “It is my fault!” I say, and it comes out vicious, jagged. “I wanted her gone, okay? And even after she survived, I wanted my parents to see her ugly, scarred face and love me instead, and think I was special, and think I was talented and awesome, because I never was; I was never enough for them.” I hiccup, and wipe a hand angrily across my eyes, mashing the tears into my skin. “Penny never did anything. She was never angry at me. She just existed, and now she’s going to live with that for the rest of her life, and yeah, I’m sorry. I’m sorry she was born with a mentally unhinged adopted sister and awful parents. I’m sorry for everything, but being sorry doesn’t change jack.”

  I’m still crying, and I can’t read the expressions of the others through the dark and the blur of tears, but I bet they’re horrified. I bet they’re finally realizing what a god-awful excuse for a human being I am. It’s about time. I want to leave now. I want to run out there into the hall of mirrors and spray fire and death around me until there’s nothing left, until this whole palace is ashes at my feet. And then I’ll lie down in the ruins and die, too—

  “Hey,” Lilly says. She grabs my hand. She sounds way too calm. “I’m sorry about your sister. I am, that’s really terrible what happened to her, but you were six years old and your parents sound like complete . . . complete poop, honestly, excuse my French. They were supposed to be your parents and they weren’t, and people do bad things when they feel alone.” She pauses and looks at me earnestly. “But you’re not alone anymore,” she says. “You’re not. You have us now. Right, Jules? Will? Hayden?”

  You’re not my parents! I want to scream. You’re not my family!

  And Jules looks straight at me and says: “Right.”

  “Right,” Will says.

  Hayden’s watching us. “Righty-o,” he says, and his eyes glimmer, sharp and scornful.

  “We’re alive,” Lilly says, and she’s squeezing my fingers so hard it hurts. “We’re here, and we’re together, and that’s what we’ve got. I mean, we’re in a stupid palace full of psychos trying to kill us, but . . .” She trails off.

  I feel the pain in my chest spreading down into my fingertips and sparking away, like Lilly’s a lightning rod. And now it’s gone, and Will’s hand is on my shoulder, and Jules is patting me awkwardly on the back.

  “Are we ready?” Hayden says. He’s putting the shotgun to his shoulder, looking down the barrel, pointing it around the room.

  “We’re ready,” Lilly says, and I am.

  45

  We’re out of the rose bedroom, moving in single file into the heart of the palace. No one’s talking. We’ve said all we needed to say. Our plan’s in motion.

  We start to run, our feet thumping softly against the marble. We keep our lights pointed downward, the beams skimming the floor.

  Ten minutes later we reach a wide, low staircase. At the top is a pair of mirrored doors. We jog up the steps. I open one of the doors, just a crack, as quietly as I can.

  “Guys?” I look back over my shoulder.

  “What?”

  “I think we’re here.”

  The others peek in. Nod.

  This hall of mirrors is not at all like the one in Versailles. I saw the original on a humid day in August, jammed in along with all the other fourth graders whose parents felt Paris would be more enriching than the binge-watching nanny all summer long. I remember thinking the hall of mirrors didn’t really have that many mirrors in it. It was mostly gold. Huge windows, parquet floor, a bunch of chandeliers hanging from the ceiling. On the other wall were some big mirrors, but overall it seemed like a misnomer.

  The Palais du Papillon has an actual hall of mirrors. It’s like a huge version of the glass corridor through which we entered the palace. A kaleidoscope, a fractured prism, high and narrow, glittering faintly blue. Only ten feet wide. Maybe a hundred feet long. Everything—floor, ceiling, walls—is made up of massive panels of reflective glass.

  At the far end, another doorway stands open. Golden light shines out of it, radiating in sharp lines down the hallway.

  Slowly, I ease the door closed again.

  “Ready?” We’re all staring at each other, wide-eyed. I feel like I should say something, give a stirring speech and send us off to death or glory, but my heart’s thudding, deafening. My mouth feels dry suddenly. I can’t think of anything.

  “Ready,” Will says.

  I nod. I feel someone’s hand on my arm and I realize we’re grabbing at one another, gripping hands, sweaty and dirty and alive. And now Lilly pulls away from us and steps through the doors, into the hall of mirrors.

  Here goes.

  She starts down the hall, feet tapping quietly. She looks like a little lost deer. She’s not. She’s got a gun tucked under the bulky sweatshirt Will lent her. She’s got a small bomb and two knives. About halfway down the hall, she slows.

  Don’t turn around, Lilly.

  Adrenaline burns through me. She doesn’t stop. Doesn’t turn.

  I feel every muscle in my body, every tendon
and ligament straining, as if I’m keeping Lilly alive by sheer force of will—

  “Hello?” Lilly calls out. Her voice echoes down the glassy expanse. “Dorf? Is anyone here?”

  Bam. A tracker shoots out of the doors at the other end of the hall, sprinting straight for Lilly, the red light thrumming along its jaw. Lilly doesn’t make a sound. She lifts the gun and fires, and the tracker goes flipping backward, its body squeaking over the mirrored floor.

  Jules throws me a panicked look. I don’t move, don’t look anywhere but down the hall of mirrors.

  Lilly keeps walking.

  And now the ambush starts.

  Halfway between us and Lilly, one of the mirrors flips open soundlessly. Two more trackers step out and move toward her. She doesn’t see them. She doesn’t need to.

  The trackers whirl, but Will and I are already on them. I zap one with the Taser. The second hits the floor, Will’s knife protruding from its leg. A second later it’s knocked out, too, twitching against the glass.

  Lilly’s reached the end. She waves, once, the signal that she’s coming back.

  Jules steps into the hall.

  There’s no way this is it. I draw out my own gun. Come out, come out, whatever you are.

  Lilly reaches us. She’s soaked, her hair sticking to her forehead. We start back toward Jules.

  Hayden has stepped into the hall. Maybe it’s the light, but he looks sick. He’s moving over the mirrored floor like it’s thin ice. He passes Jules and heads toward the open panel and the trackers on the floor. Kneels next to one. Grabs it by the neck and rips open its visor. Slimy skin glimmers in the blue light.

  “Tell us the way out,” he says through his teeth. “Tell us!”

  The tracker gurgles, its eyes rolling back in its head. Hayden goes for the knife already in its leg, and he twists, slowly.

  That was not part of the plan. I run for him. Will’s half a step behind me. “Hayden, stop—”

  He slides out the knife and thrusts it in again. I grab his shoulder. He whirls, inhumanly fast, and smacks me so hard my ears ring. I stumble back. Lilly catches me. My vision blurs, but through the neon flashes inside my skull, I see Hayden stand.