I stick with him as he runs his hands through his hair and tries to regain his breath. Maybe this fight was good for him. A, he won it, and B, he got to pummel out some of his grief. Drunks should always pick fights with bereaved people.
“Nicely done,” says Phoebe, and we smile at each other. Eleanor looks uncomfortable.
“I hate men who drink,” she says. “So many lives I saw ruined for a man who couldn’t stop himself.”
Steven brushes grass off his trousers and shakes his head like a dog coming out of water. He begins to walk in the direction his family went. I grin as I imagine the huge banana split he’s going to reward himself with.
He doesn’t limp, but I can definitely see signs of older-man-coming-off-adrenaline-surge in his gait. He’s going to be fine.
I turn back around to Phoebe to say something clever, but behind her, I see someone approaching whose face makes me freeze.
It’s Giraude.
Haggard, unhappy, pale. She wears a black choker necklace around her neck and clothing that seems less ornate than things she’s worn previously. She looks careworn.
I notice: the light doesn’t change. I can still see tourists milling around us. This is no happy interlude from the past that we traveled back to watch. This is real. And it’s happening now.
Giraude’s still alive.
Eleanor, who was halfway between us, runs to Phoebe and pulls her toward me.
“What?” says Phoebe, stumbling at the other end of Eleanor’s strong arm. “Are you okay?”
“Don’t look behind you, miss,” says Eleanor, reverting back to servant-speak in her panic.
Of course Phoebe looks and halts, frozen. I can’t see her face, but I can see Eleanor’s, a study in determination. This is what made her a valuable part of the Arnaud household all those years ago: her commitment to her duty. Which right now involves pulling Phoebe away from a dangerous intruder.
I take a few running steps and am with them. It’s too late to get away from Giraude, but at least I can fortify Phoebe with some attitude. The trick is not to be scared.
“Looks like she has the gift of long life, just like her sister,” I say drily.
“That can be fixed,” says Phoebe, and I whistle in admiration.
Giraude walks straight to Phoebe, bristling with anger in her every step. Her face is locked in a sneer. “I will control myself enough to deliver a message,” she says in French.
“I have . . . no idea what you just said,” says Phoebe.
Giraude’s laugh is a snarl. “You think to flummox me,” she says in English. “But I know this sharp, percussive language. I’ve learned it over the centuries by listening to the visitors and studying the pamphlets they discard on the grounds. I knew one day I might go to England, where Athénaïs believed you went.”
“That’s . . .” Phoebe can’t bring herself to say “good.” She looks at me with desperation, and unheard by Giraude, I reassure her.
“Don’t worry,” I say. “Learn what you can, and if it gets scary, intention yourself away.”
We can always move ourselves somewhere else—just not back in time. That part is controlled by someone else.
“I cannot believe your audacity to show your face to me,” says Giraude, continuing in English. “But since you have, I can make good on a threat. The threat you robbed me of the chance to give so many years ago.”
“That wasn’t me! I didn’t rob you of anything!”
“Taisez-vous!” shrieks Giraude. “Shut up! Be quiet and listen. . . I’ve waited centuries to tell you this.” She pauses, lowers her head, and looks up at Phoebe with her eyes half-coins. Her voice also drops in pitch as she says, “Give me the vials or I will murder everyone you care about.”
Phoebe’s eyes expand.
“You can leave anytime,” I remind her. “I’ll stay here and watch Tabby.”
“I’m not Yolande,” says Phoebe. She’s still scared, but she knows she has an escape route. She stands up straighter and puts her hands in her back pockets. “I look like her—I look like you! But I’m not your sister. I don’t know where the vials are.”
“Please don’t insult me. I know you. I’ve known you for centuries. You’ve adopted the dress and customs of this generation, but I know you.”
“Seriously!” says Phoebe. Her eyebrows are lifted high, and I can see the effort she’s making not to turn and run. Her legs tremble. “My name is Phoebe Irving. I was born in the United States in 1999. My stepdad is an Arnaud.”
“How do you explain this?” Giraude asks. She points to the mole in Phoebe’s cleavage, a beautiful perfect dark circle just at the place her right breast begins to swell.
“My mole?” she asks in disbelief.
“Your mark of beauty.”
“I was born with it . . . What can I say? Your sister has the same mole in the same place?”
“Stop with this ruse,” snarls Giraude. “You have stolen everything from me. I was meant for higher things, and you diluted my inheritance. I want the vials. You get them to me or I will kill. I’ve done it before and I can do it again.”
“I’m a descendant,” says Phoebe, and I realize this is the first time she’s acknowledged that she may be a true Arnaud, not just a stepdaughter of an Arnaud. “I’m an Arnaud, I guess, but my mole is just a coincidence. I have no idea where the vials are. I’ve never drunk from them.”
“You are not Sangreçu?” For the first time, Giraude looks disconcerted.
“No!”
Giraude cocks her head to the side, studying Phoebe’s face with a frown.
“I’m a ghost,” says Phoebe. “I died. Your sister wasn’t even able to touch me. You try!”
Giraude reaches out a tremulous hand to touch that mole and we watch it go straight through Phoebe’s chest. Giraude gasps.
“You are not Yolande,” she says. She sinks to the ground, her skirts forming a circle around her. “Where is she?”
“You don’t have to worry about her anymore,” I say. “Whatever she stole from you, she’s lost it, too.” But she doesn’t hear me, doesn’t see me. Only Phoebe, her descendant, is visible to her. So Phoebe repeats what I’ve said.
“You knew my sister,” Giraude responds. “Then you have her secrets. You know where the vials are.”
“No! I keep telling you. I don’t know,” says Phoebe.
“The only chance I have in this world is to drink again. You find those vials!” She rises and now, if anything, she looks more angry. Maybe we should’ve let her keep thinking Phoebe was Yolande. It gave us a position of power, I realize belatedly.
“Want an example?” she says. “I am in earnest.” She turns her head and it’s like a hawk hidden in a tree looking at all the sweet little starlings flying around carelessly. She scans the tourists, and thank God Phoebe’s family is long gone, somewhere enjoying ice cream. One person stands out. He’s alone. He’s walking really slowly. He’s even lurching.
Her gaze fastens on the drunk German tourist. She hones in on him and begins walking toward him.
How is this going to work? She’s in 1700s dress, with full skirts and her hair a towering concoction. But guess what—everyone’s bent over their phones reviewing the footage of Phoebe’s dad kicking the bloke’s ass. No one seems to notice Giraude.
She walks right up to the German and with an iron grip snags him and pulls him behind a thick bush. I hear his one cry, then eerie silence.
“What do you think she’s doing?” asks Eleanor.
I don’t answer. She knows.
The quiet with which Giraude does it is almost worse than if he were screaming.
We wait.
Only one person emerges from the foliage. She stares at us and the skin on my back contracts with chills. She’s as bad as her sister.
Pure evil.
She wants the vials, and all we know about them is the cryptic thing I heard Athénaïs tell Yolande.
She turns her back to us and walks toward the chateau. Within a few seconds, s
he’s hidden from view. It makes sense. She has walkways she’s developed, secret ways to walk among the visitors. She’s kept herself hidden since the 1700s as the palace went through all its changes: from monarch’s palace to destroyed revolutionary example to museum to restored splendor.
Where are the vials?
CHAPTER SEVEN
The fireworks at Versailles intended for the date of Louis’s marriage to Marie-Antoinette were canceled due to a storm. The postponed fireworks, held in what is now the Place de la Concorde, resulted in a fire. Panicked Parisians attempted to flee the square but were blocked on three sides by the statuary and colonnades that were part of the display. Those who managed to escape via the fourth side (largely blocked by parked carriages) found themselves on the banks of the Seine at a time when few knew how to swim. The mob behind pushed in many who drowned. Certainly an inauspicious start to a doomed reign.
—Sparks and Sizzles: A History of Fireworks
We’re not going to leave Tabby’s family. Giraude’s a killer. This is game-changing.
Eleanor is hugging Phoebe, and together they’re shaking. “I can’t believe it,” says Eleanor. “She’s terrifying. She’s the very image of Madame Arnaud.”
“That’s how twins work,” I say, but my attempt at levity goes sour when they ignore me.
“She’s going to kill Tabby,” says Phoebe in a broken voice.
“No. No way,” I say emphatically. “Not on my watch.”
But that’s all the power I have: to watch. I have no corporeality. I could reach out to stop Giraude, and my ghost hand would go right through her. She doesn’t even see me. I’m nothing to her but cold particles of air.
“Phoebe, no,” says Eleanor. “She doesn’t know Tabby. She picked that man because he was in her way, and slow moving, and stupid.”
“There’s nothing to connect you with Tabby,” I add. “I don’t reckon she remembers her from that moment in the passageway.”
“That was hundreds of years ago to her,” Eleanor says soothingly.
“But Tabby probably made an impression because she was dressed as a child of today, wearing jeans,” says Phoebe. “And she was with me, who she took for her sister. And it caused a small fire.”
She disengages from Eleanor, her face stark and alarmed.
“I’m sorry you’re scared,” I say. “We’ll protect Tabby with everything we have. You might call Giraude’s attention to her by staying so close, so maybe we should keep a healthy distance from now on.”
“I agree,” she says, shivering. “Let’s keep them in our eyesight, but not be with them. We can’t protect them if she zeroes in on them. You saw her hand go right through me.”
I nod grimly.
“So let’s find them,” she says. “But not too close.”
Intention comes so easily to us now, and we find ourselves inside a patisserie where Tabby is indulging in une glace au chocolat, chocolate ice cream. Her mom and dad each drink from a tiny espresso cup and seem to be sharing a plate of macarons. It’s not usual for me to want food or drink anymore; it’s just not something that I feel. But looking at those circular confections held together with sweet ganache . . . I crave them. I wish I could experience them on my tongue, melting away, just one more time.
I lift my glance from the plate to see that Phoebe has moved herself outside and is looking in at us through the window. We’re too close, should Giraude happen by. But Giraude can’t see me or Eleanor, and I reason it’s important to hear what the family is next planning to do. I hold up my finger to Phoebe to gesture that we’ll be out in a minute, and she nods.
After listening for a few moments, I learn that Steven is trying to convince his wife to return to the palace for the nighttime fireworks. Eleanor looks at me, startled.
“No, go to your hotel. Go, go, go,” I chant.
“It’s the experience of a lifetime,” he argues. “When else do you get to see a replica of the fireworks Louis XIV arranged for his court? It’s going to be spectacular. Plus, Tabby loves fireworks.”
“I’m tired,” says Phoebe’s mum. “I don’t know if I want to stay up late to see those and then walk to our hotel in the dark. And, Steven . . . you were in a fight today! I’m still reeling from that.”
“I’m fine,” says Steven. A smile teases at the corners of his mouth. He’s proud.
“Maybe we can promise ourselves we’ll come back in a few years?” she says.
“Do you really want to do this again?” he says. “Next time, Italy. Let’s do Versailles to the hilt and cross it off our list for good.”
“You make a good point. I don’t know if I’ll want to return, it’s so overwhelming.”
“Well, we did get some great ideas for the gardens’ restoration at the Arnaud Manor,” he says.
Tabby has reached the last spoonful of her ice cream. She climbs down from her chair and crawls up into Steven’s lap, the whole time perilously holding the spoon in her fist.
“What’s going on, little one?” Steven murmurs.
Tabby responds by bringing the spoon to his mouth.
“For me?” he asks.
She nods. He opens his mouth and eats the last bite. “Thank you, Tabby,” he says. “Why did you give me your last bite?”
“No fight,” she says.
“I promise.”
“It was all she could talk about on the way over here,” says Tabby’s mom. “It scared her to see you rolling around with that man. Yet another reason not to return to Versailles for the fireworks. Who knows if we’ll run into him again?”
“I won’t fight again, sweetie,” says Steven. He looks up at his wife. “Listen, if you can handle a few more hours, then we’ll be done with Versailles once and for all. Plus . . .” He shifts in his seat, moving Tabby from one leg to the other, for some reason looking guilty. “Plus, I already bought tickets and it wasn’t exactly cheap.”
She laughs. “Well, that happens. Fine. We’ll go to the show. Want to see fireworks tonight, Tabby?”
Tabby’s answer is a gleeful banging of her spoon on the tabletop before her mom stops her. Oh crap. So the idea that they’ll make their way to the hotel safely and we can relax is just not happening.
“We’re in trouble,” says Eleanor to me suddenly. “Because even if Phoebe’s family makes it back to England safely, Giraude’s going to keep killing people here. We can’t let that happen.”
“What do you suggest?” I ask.
“This is our ‘graduation,’ ” she says. “We have to kill Giraude.”
I stare at her. “Let’s take this outside,” I say. “Phoebe should hear it.”
We intention to the sidewalk outside. “Eleanor’s had a brainstorm,” I announce.
“Yeah?”
“Well, it has occurred to me that we do have some sort of responsibility for the vile threat Giraude made,” says Eleanor.
“How are we responsible?”
“Because we know about it and can prevent it.”
“We can’t prevent anything,” says Phoebe. “All we can do is hope my family gets back to England safely.”
“We are the only ones who know what Giraude plans,” says Eleanor quietly. “And she wouldn’t have threatened those plans if she hadn’t seen us.”
“Seen me, you mean.”
“We are a team,” says Eleanor.
“So . . . what do you suggest we do?”
“That’s the surprising part,” I say. No one laughs.
“We must kill her. She’s our responsibility. We understand who she is and how to kill her.”
Phoebe and I share a pained look. Again? she seems to be saying with her eyes. It wasn’t so long ago we were preparing for another murder.
“Or we could get her the vials,” protests Phoebe. “We can try to find them. Then she’ll subside to the outskirts of Versailles for another few hundred years, right?”
“And then she emerges again to put people in danger.”
“If we’ve ‘gradua
ted,’ she won’t be our responsibility,” I say.
“We’re the only ones. It’s up to us. Whether the danger is now or a hundred years from now.”
“We might not be the only ones,” says Phoebe. “Remember that girl who visited Miles’s family? She’s part of that society. . . there are others who know. They probably even know more than we do.”
“But they aren’t here,” says Eleanor.
I look at her with newfound respect. Meek servant wearing black? I don’t think so. “Remember, you were the girl who stabbed someone to the point that the mattress underneath was destroyed,” I say. “You’re cut out for this.”
Back when Eleanor was alive, she assassinated Madame Arnaud. It’s unfortunate that the house resuscitated her and sent her on her merry way.
Eleanor shakes her head. “No, not cut out for it. I don’t like this life,” she says. “This death, I mean. I didn’t agree to any of this.”
“But you’re willing to do what’s right,” I say. “I admire that.”
“There’s a guy lying in the bushes cooling until some groundskeeper comes across his body,” says Phoebe. “I guess it’s up to us to stop that happening to anyone else.”
“It seems we’ve reached accord,” I say. “We just have to start rolling out our whens and hows.”
The door behind us opens and Phoebe’s family is exiting the patisserie. We fall into an uncharacteristic silence as we pad silently behind them, keeping distance between us. Their pace is languid, and after a while I realize they’re just wandering to kill time—I wince at my own mental wording—until the fireworks display.
They pause to put Tabby back into the fold-up buggy that has a carry strap like a purse. The mom has been carrying it on and off all day. Then their pace quickens without the toddler-sized steps slowing them. We follow them back through the front gates of the palace but they slip along past and toward the long walk to the Hameau. How do they have the energy?
“It feels so good to walk,” says Phoebe’s mum. “It’s a meditation for me.”
Steven nods. “And we need peace.”
I reach out and take Phoebe’s hand. We’re thinking about killing someone and they’re lost in memories of the girl who would’ve turned seventeen yesterday.
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