“I’ve known all of this since like three months ago,” she said. “I’ve just been wondering if you were ever going to stop lying about it. You know — since we’re your friends.”
Pilar turned to me, open-mouthed. “You’re on scholarship?”
“I was going to tell you,” I said. “But I was waiting for the right moment.”
“You’ve been lying to our faces,” Hannah said. “For almost a year. And then you lied about Armand.”
I opened my mouth to defend myself, but the thing is … she hadn’t accused me of being poor, or of having a mom who worked in the mall — she’d only accused me of lying. And she was right about that.
I’d been lying to them for almost a year.
My face flushed as I turned away.
And then I saw her in one of the mirrors —
The ghost.
There was no mistaking the queen, though once I’d caught sight of her, all of the costumed women in the room seemed to be involved in some elaborately choreographed dance to keep me from being able to see her again.
I’d swing my head and catch a hint of her reflection out of the corner of my eye — and then find myself looking at just another partygoer.
I turned to Pilar. “Peely, don’t go anywhere by yourself tonight, okay? Promise?”
“What’s wrong with you? Pilar, don’t promise her anything.” Hannah glared at me. “You’re over, Colette. You’re completely cut off. Especially after tonight.”
I let my glance travel across the room as I searched for the white plumes of the queen’s headpiece. And I said, “I don’t care.”
“Excuse me?” Hannah said.
“You’re excused, Hannah,” I said. “And I don’t care if you cut me off. You’re a terrible friend. Actually, you’re a terrible person.”
“You’re both being crazy,” Peely said. She looked as if she might cry. “I thought tonight was supposed to be special.”
“Oh, grow up,” Hannah said.
“Don’t talk to her like that,” I snapped. “Like she’s a little kid.”
Hannah took a half step forward. “Don’t you ever try to tell me what to do.”
I really didn’t have time for this. But I stood my ground. “Hannah, I promise you that from this day on, I’m going to say exactly what I want to say to you at the exact moment when I want to say it —” I stopped and looked around. “Where’s Pilar?”
Hannah screwed up her face in an angry scowl. “What?”
I grabbed both of her arms. “Where did she go?”
Hannah shook me off. “How should I know?”
I ran away, darting through the crowd, searching for Peely and, at the same time, trying to keep an eye out for the ghost.
Every time I saw the queen reflected in a mirror, I would turn and see a living, breathing human standing where she ought to have been.
She was playing with me, taunting me.
I made my way down the entire length of the hall that way — turning my head back and forth, frantically spinning to try to catch another glimpse of the ghost.
I got all the way to the end of the Hall of Mirrors.
Peely was gone.
I STOOD LOOKING helplessly past the velvet rope that led into the next room. The guard gave me a knowing look, just reminding me he was there.
“There she is!” Hannah’s voice, clear and cold, cut through the rest of the sounds as she pushed her way toward us. “She’s not supposed to be here! I uninvited her!”
The guard looked at Hannah curiously … and then he walked away from his post to go see what her problem was.
“Thanks, Han,” I murmured.
For the moment unwatched, I slipped around the velvet ropes and through the darkened doorway on the other side.
The ghost stood in the center of the room, a haughty look on her face.
Then she disappeared. On the floor where she’d been standing, I could see a little purple feather — the same kind that had fallen from Peely’s hat in the penthouse.
The queen wanted me to follow her.
And she was using Pilar as bait.
When I went into the next room, the door slammed shut behind me, and the lights came blazing on. The electric lights were made to mimic the candles used two hundred years earlier.
“Where is she? Where’s my friend?” I called, looking at my surroundings in the dim flickering light.
My gaze stopped on a painting on the wall. It was the one from the postcard. La Duchesse sitting by a pond. Véronique.
I stared up at the face that looked so strikingly like my own and tried to imagine what she must have been thinking, what would have caused her to forsake her dearest friend.
I felt eerily calm, because there was no going back now, no choices left to make, nowhere to run. I was either going to find a way to save Pilar and myself … or I wasn’t.
The queen had a plan. I just had to let her reveal it to me.
In the center of the room was a round table. I leaned over to study the intricate carvings at its center. There was a tiny pattern made of cornflowers, and then between every fourth or fifth flower was a key.
The table sat on a huge circular rug. As I walked onto the rug, I felt a change in the floor underfoot — as though there were a hollow space beneath it.
Suddenly, the rug rolled back in one quick motion, revealing a trapdoor.
My heart went all fluttery, and not in a good way. The queen was giving me directions again.
The door had a latch, which seemed to be locked. And then I realized that I had a key — my medallion. The tiny metal pieces on the latch fit into the hollows of the carved key, and tiny spikes stuck through the cutout cornflower.
I held my breath and turned it. The lock moved easily, not like it had been sealed for two hundred years, and I was able to lift the door open.
“Oh, God,” I said.
Darkness yawned before me like the mouth of a lazy, hungry monster.
A set of stairs led down to impenetrable blackness.
I can’t.
I stepped back and leaned against the round table for support, gripping its carved edges.
You have to.
I looked around the room. The doors were still shut — and I knew they wouldn’t open for me. There were no other exits.
It was this or stand there like a lamb in line for the slaughterhouse — and miss my chance to save Peely.
On the round table was a candle on a little dish — the kind people in period movies carried up to their bedrooms at night. Somehow, the candle had been lit, like it was waiting for me.
You made it through the Catacombs. You lived through the elevator ride.
This was much worse … but it was also much more important.
I grabbed the candle from the table, took a deep breath, and stepped down onto the first step, then the second, then third — pausing to remove my medallion from the lock and pull the trapdoor closed.
I descended the rest of the stairs, while from overhead came the heavy thud of the rug unrolling over the trapdoor.
For the first minute or so, I was too busy trying to drag air into my lungs to take stock of where I was.
Finally, I managed to calm my breath and look around.
This was a tunnel, but it was nothing like the Catacombs. It was more like an extension of the palace. The walls were papered with a beautiful Asian-inspired pattern. Though much of the paper had begun to curl at its edges, the colors, never exposed to daylight, remained brilliant. The ceilings were easily a foot above my head. The floor was green-and-white-marble tile, and every few feet was a wool rug — eaten threadbare in places by moths, but still mostly intact.
I kept throwing glances over my shoulder, but the queen hadn’t appeared behind me.
The farther I went, the worse the conditions in the tunnel became. I seemed to be heading out under the palace grounds, because in places the seams between the wall and ceiling were split by the winding, wandering roots of a tree. The
re were damp spots where the wallpaper had mildewed and peeled away, and some of the tiles were cracked and chipped beneath my feet. Eventually, all traces of the fancy, manicured space were gone, destroyed by time and neglect, and I was surrounded by nothing but rot and ruin, the smell of damp dirt permeating the air. I kept trying to think what it reminded me of — until I remembered my grandmother’s storm cellar.
My heartbeat echoed off my eardrums, and I could feel myself start to panic. Go, go, go. I had to concentrate to keep the bright flashes in my vision from tripping me up.
The ground grew damp beneath my feet, turning the hem of my dress black and wet with mud. I must have been passing near one of the ponds.
Soon the water was ankle-deep, inky and opaque in the darkness. There was no way to know how deep it would get — if part of the path had decayed into a muddy pit, I would be sucked in, trapped. But I had to keep going. I trudged onward through the murky, freezing mud, my ice-cold feet squishing in my shoes. Mathilde’s dress was ruined beyond any hope of repair, but I pushed the thought out of my mind.
I paused at one point to listen more closely to a sound on the edges of my hearing … a slow whoosh.
It sounded almost like …
I let the light of the candle stray to the tunnel behind me. It hit the surface of the muddy water — and the bits of light seemed to quiver.
The water was moving.
Breathless, I stared at the same spot, trying to figure out what I was seeing.
The whoosh grew noticeably louder….
The water level was rising.
With a burbling sound, a wave of dark water surged down the tunnel toward me. Suddenly, instead of being ankle-deep, it went halfway to my knees.
I didn’t have time to think. I needed to get out of there — but first, I needed to ditch the massive dress before its weight pulled me down. I tore at the buttons of the bodice as I began to run. What had seemed like a harmless burble sounded like a full-on roar as I struggled to lift my feet.
Finally, I was able to free myself from the top of the gown. Then I grabbed at my waistline and gave a tremendous, merciless tug. With a ripping sound that would have broken the heart of anyone who loved clothes, the skirt split from waistline to knee. I shoved it down and climbed out, leaving the dress slumping in the mud like a melted Wicked Witch.
Now I wore a simple white cotton underdress with a lightweight skirt that I could gather and hold in one hand. Which I did.
And then I ran.
Even as I went, I could tell that the water was getting higher and higher, as though someone had released a floodgate. Soon it would be up to my waist … and then my chest … and then my neck … and then …
I was a decent swimmer, but what good was swimming if the water went all the way to the ceiling and left me with no air?
I think I would have opted for a swift decapitation over the feeling of being lifted and pressed to the dirt ceiling above, choking for a few last swallows of air, my lungs finally filling with freezing water….
Just when I was beginning to think there was no end — no end I would live to reach anyway — there was a sharp turn to the right, and fifteen feet after that, the tunnel dead-ended. In front of the dirt wall was a splintery wooden ladder that led to a trapdoor overhead.
I hesitantly put my foot on the bottom rung of the ladder and let a little weight press down on it.
It snapped in two. The pieces disappeared into the murk with a splash.
“Awesome,” I said, tying the skirt of my dress into a knot.
I stepped onto the second rung. That one held.
I had no choice but to wrap my hands around the rough wood and hold on tightly as I made my way up the remaining six rungs, slivers embedding themselves into the skin of my fingers and palms. The fifth rung snapped like the bottom one had, but the rest held. At the top, I gingerly let go of the ladder with one hand to push up on the door.
The whole thing gave way under the pressure of my gentle push. The boards plunged into the water below as I whipped my head away to protect my face from falling splinters of wood.
I managed to drag myself out of the hole, panting and gasping for air. The water in the tunnel below churned and bubbled like oil. I stared over the edge at it for a moment before looking around. I was in the center of a small square room, and above me were the sparkling stars and shining moon. At first I thought it was a courtyard, and then I figured out that the roof had simply given way at some point. The walls were pale-yellow plaster.
I was in Le Hameau.
A single door led out of the room. I reached for the knob, but it opened ahead of me, without being touched.
Through another door ahead, I could see the great room with the hearth and the black-and-white-tile floor. There was no sign of Peely, so I crossed the room and went into the round turret where I’d gotten stuck my first time at Versailles.
Upstairs I found a long hallway, with rooms coming off one side. At the very end of the hall, an open doorway glowed with the golden flicker of candlelight.
When I reached it, I stood and stared.
This had been a playroom. It held several small child-size beds, and one larger bed — as though the queen had slept here, surrounded by her children. The walls were still lined with shelves, though most of them were empty. There were a few broken wood and metal toys scattered around, and debris littered the floor.
The feeling of loss was so thick you could practically breathe it in. I thought of the innocent children who’d been torn from this place, separated from their parents … locked up — in some cases, until their deaths.
My thoughts were interrupted by a thin, tinkly, metallic tune, graceful and haunting. Once upon a time, it might have struck someone as playful, but in this desolate setting, it echoed in my ears like a funeral dirge.
The sound came from under the big bed, so I knelt and looked for its source.
I found a small wooden music box, polished to a gleam under a half-inch layer of dust, which I wiped away.
I tried to open the latch, but it was locked.
I set it down and looked around the rest of the room. The walls had once been a pale peach-orange. Now they were splotched with gray and streaked with black mold. On one wall was a painting of Marie with her children, the canvas roughly slashed. The queen wore a flowing blue dress and wore her hair simply, in loose, powdered-gray curls around her collar. A blue-and-white-striped cap perched on her head. The children were similarly plain, in the royal equivalent of playclothes. They all sat close to one another, and Marie’s eyes gleamed with maternal pride.
Suddenly, the eyes in the portrait gleamed brighter.
The ghost came swooping toward me, and I staggered backward, collapsing onto the big bed. The ancient mattress sagged around me like quicksand, trapping me on my back, a cloud of dust billowing in the air.
The ghost hung in the air over me.
“Tu te souviens?” she whispered.
I racked my brain for the translation…. Do you remember?
“Tu te souviens, Véronique?”
“I’m — I’m not Véronique,” I stammered. “But I’m sorry. I’m so sorry that they betrayed you — please don’t kill me!”
She sneered at me, and a red line slowly made its way across her neck.
“Je ne vais pas te tuer … maintenant,” she whispered.
What did that mean? I’m not going … something, something now. She wasn’t going to kill me now?
Until she broke my heart?
The wound on her neck grew wider, and ghostly red blood began to ooze out of it and drip down. I instinctively cringed away from it, but nothing landed on me. Opening my eyes, I saw the drops of blood vanishing in the air inches above my face.
As the queen hovered over me, seething, her skin turned from rosy pink to pale gray, as if death were overtaking her. Her teeth rotted and fell out of her mouth, disintegrating in the air just like the drops of blood. Eventually, her hair grew stringy and came
out in clumps, and her flesh decayed and flaked off in small pieces, which disappeared in midair.
And then she was gone.
I lay on the bed — or rather, in it — my chest heaving.
The room was silent, except the sound of my huffing and puffing.
Had I done it? Had apologizing really been enough?
I flailed around for a minute like a beetle stuck on its back, finally managing to roll to one side and heave my legs off the bed frame. There was a Colette-shaped indentation in the old mattress.
I picked up the music box and dusted it off. Holding it in my hands, I wandered out of the room in a daze, trying to figure out how I’d get back to the main palace.
But first I had to find Peely.
I had just started to descend the staircase when I heard a sound below me. My first assumption was that the security guards had tracked me down.
But the sound wasn’t footsteps. It was music — the same song the music box played, only louder, less mechanical-sounding. I couldn’t tell exactly where it was coming from, but I followed it to the bottom of the stairs.
I pulled open a door off the great room, revealing a bashed-in dinner table with several broken chairs upended around it. I walked toward the old hutch standing against the far wall. Behind its shattered glass doors, the shelves were covered with the remnants of whatever beautiful dishes had once been inside.
I paused and listened….
The music sounded as if it were coming from inside the hutch.
As I stared, the whole thing swung smoothly away from the wall — as if it weighed twenty pounds instead of several hundred.
Behind it was a door with a latch like the one on the trapdoor in the floor of the palace — made to be opened by my medallion.
I carefully set the medallion in the latch and turned it. The door opened away from me, revealing another set of stairs.
This must be the safe room.
The music came from inside.
I went to the bottom of the stairs. The room was shrouded in darkness and smelled like warm sewage, but I could hear the music plainly.