“I’m staying here.” I step in front of Elliott, forcing him to look at me. Malcontent is on the other side of that door. As terrified as I am of him, he’s April’s last chance. And as much as they despise each other, Father and Elliott can work together. They can save some of the people. “Go through Penthouse A,” I tell Elliott. “Take my father with you.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Father says. “I’ve only just found you.”
Elliott doesn’t say anything.
“If anyone stays, it will be me. I’ll tell them that I’ve been hiding here, alone,” Father says.
“Malcontent will kill you,” I say. “He wants you, and he wants Elliott.”
“Do you think he wants you any less?”
I don’t. Malcontent will kill me. Publicly, to show his power. But of the three of us, I am the most expendable.
Elliott’s silence is unnerving. I know he’s angry, and hurt. But we were trying to accomplish something together. Before I sacrifice myself, I want him to acknowledge that. He doesn’t even look at me.
Whatever was between us, it seems to have slipped away.
“Araby . . .” Father’s voice is anguished. “I’ve already lost your brother, your mother is imprisoned. I can’t—”
What he says next is lost in the sound of hammering at the metal door. Malcontent’s men have realized that it is locked from within. They know someone is up here.
“Go.” I push him, and he doesn’t budge. Elliott may be ready to leave me, but Father is stubborn. I steel myself to hurt him. “You might be able to save me later. If not . . . well, there isn’t much for me to live for in this ugly, decaying world, is there?” Father blanches. And I shove him away from me.
But as I go to the metal door and begin twisting back the lock, I’m thinking of Will. He was the one who showed me that living was better. He knows that the suicidal girl is gone. But if I think of the things I’ll never be able to say to Will, I won’t have the strength to do what has to be done.
“If you’re still here when I open this,” I say over my shoulder, “Malcontent will take all of us. And everything will be lost.”
“He’ll search,” Elliott says. “He isn’t stupid.”
“Then be quick and find a place to hide.”
I hear their footsteps—the one who hesitates must surely be Father—but I can’t look away from my task. I give the lever one last twist and steel myself. The hinges make a terrible sound as the great metal door slides back. I don’t let myself look in the direction Father and Elliott have gone. I won’t give them away.
“Miss Araby Worth.” A chillingly cold voice calls from the bottom of the metal ladder. “What a pleasure. Now I can hand deliver your invitation.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
INSTEAD OF MALCONTENT WITH HIS CLOAKED henchmen, Prospero stands at the bottom of the ladder, a red rose in the pocket of a heavy, well-made jacket. He’s wearing both a mask and protective gloves.
He sees my surprise and laughs. “Were you expecting someone else?”
“You never come into the city. Especially not with the Red Death . . .” I’m frozen at the hatch, staring down.
“I wanted to see it one last time,” he says softly. “Come, join me.”
I’m caught. I can’t flee, or he will find Elliott and Father. I’ll have to find some way to escape him before he leaves the city.
“Good, good,” Prospero says as I climb down. “This is so fortunate, because I’ve already retrieved my niece from the Debauchery Club. I know she won’t want to attend the ball without you.”
“April . . .” My voice gives out. I have to swallow before I can finish. “You have April?”
“Of course,” he says. “Have you ever known her to miss a party?”
“How wonderful that you found us,” I whisper. “We’ve longed for a party.” But how will we keep April’s illness a secret so that he doesn’t kill her on the spot?
It feels much farther going down the stairs than it did following Elliott up. We don’t stop until we reach the lobby. Though the room is still ornate, it seems tarnished now. A doorman I don’t recognize bows to the prince. Outside, the moon is rising.
Black carriages line the street, and two of Prospero’s soldiers load crates and barrels into the steam carriage directly in front of the Akkadian Towers. The windows up and down the street are dark. Even here, in the wealthiest section of the city, all but one of the streetlamps have gone dark. Several young girls stand in the last flickering pool of light. They wear ornate dresses, their masks decorated with sequins. One clutches her gold invitation between gloved fingers. A young man carrying a violin case walks up. He’s also holding his invitation. They all climb into a carriage, prepared to be shipped away.
I search the line of carriages. Prospero could be lying about April. But then something flutters out of a carriage window. A glossy black feather. And there’s a flash of blond hair before the curtain falls back into place. April. Prospero puts his hand on my shoulder, and I jump.
As I watch, the carriages begin to move, carrying her farther away from safety and the hope that we’ll find her father and get a cure.
Only Prospero, me, and a handful of his guards are left on the street. They are wearing black cloaks of the sort that Malcontent’s men usually wear. Prospero waves, and one of the guards brings me a similar one. “All the better to blend in at night,” he says. “My brother may be crazy, but he has a few good ideas.” His eyes flash once, and then he turns away.
Three wizened guards join us. They all have silver hair. At least most of the young men seem to have defected to Elliott’s side. One guard has a jagged scar from his ear to his chin. He is thin, and he wears a sword. The other two guards are stocky. One has eyes that are set too close together. The other holds a musket and gives me a look so cold that he must know who I am. And hate me for it.
I’d swear I’ve never seen any of them before, but the man with the sword reaches out to touch my hair. “I liked the purple better,” he says.
“We must move quickly,” Prospero says. “We’ll pay our respects to the dead, give my brother these ”—he holds up the keys I remember from the throne room, the ones to the pumping station that could help save the city—“and then we’ll be on our way.”
“So you have given up on the city.” I try to put all the scorn I can into my voice.
“It’s never been what I wanted,” he says. “I tried, but your father ruined everything.” This man has always been at the center of the web. He is even more to blame for all of the death and despair than my father. I slip my hand into my pocket to feel the cold solidness of the gun. I have one bullet left. If I get the chance, I’ll kill him.
As Prospero leads us across two wide avenues, the tip of my boot crushes part of a shattered mask. We stop in front of the great cathedral. It is miraculously intact, spared from fire and vandalism. The stone is a costly white marble, and in the dim moonlight, it glows a little. It isn’t tall, not compared to the skyscrapers that surround it. But it has a soaring quality, especially from where we are standing, under the great stained-glass window.
Gargoyles peer down at us from the ornate window ledges.
“Our mother was to be buried here,” Prospero remarks. “Our father offered a very generous donation. But the priests said that the crypt was full. Father increased his offer, until the greedy priests agreed. But they never did it. They took the money and discarded her body because they were afraid to pry up any of the stones, terrified to open the vaults. The warnings are carved throughout the building, in Latin. ‘Beware of the vault.’ Inside were heaps of unidentified bones, the victims of a plague. The priests believed that a terrible illness would be unleashed on the city if they opened the tomb.”
Prospero steps across the threshold, touching the scrollwork beside the door with one gloved finger.
I follow him, searching the scrollwork for any such warning. Could the plague have originated in this cathedral, instead of in my father’s lab?
Prospero keeps talking. He’s always loved the sound of his own voice, especially here, where even a whisper carries and echoes.
“Those priests were fools. My brother and I tunneled into the vaults. We found rings, jewels, and even a locket with a snippet of hair. Years later, I gave that locket to your father when I asked him to find a solution to our rat problem. He was excited to study an ancient plague.”
My heart sinks. I should stop trying to find ways for Father to escape the guilt. It always comes back to him.
“Come inside.” Prince Prospero beckons from the cavernous darkness. Without meaning to, I have stopped on the threshold. His cold eyes glint from the shadows, chilling me, though the night is unseasonably warm.
Names are engraved in each of the flagstones beneath our feet. Stepping-stones, burial stones, there is no difference in an ancient church like this. Some are engraved with images too worn to decipher. Pieces of an enormous pipe organ lie abandoned and decaying. A patch of night sky is visible where the roof has collapsed.
The prince murmurs something, and as I strain to make out his words, I hear something else. The soft rustling of thousands of wings, shifting restlessly in the darkness of the eaves. The cathedral is filled with bats. Enormous, bloated, disease-carrying bats.
Prospero freezes, and his eyes move upward, ever so slowly. Is it possible that he did not know bats have taken up residence in abandoned churches throughout the city? Even the smallest children know this.
By now the sky is fully dark. The slightest sound could wake the bats. I’m afraid even to breathe.
But Prospero walks to the front of the nave, easily a hundred paces from where I am standing, and kneels. His men stand in the doorway, watching me, their weapons ready. Prospero puts both hands to the altar and presses until some sort of panel pops out—a wooden drawer. He takes the keys from inside his vest, but before he places them inside, stone grates on stone, and one in the floor rises. A figure in dark robes ascends silently from beneath it. “You weren’t supposed to be here until tomorrow,” Prospero rasps.
The keys jingle, once, as he holds them above the secret compartment, as if unsure what to do with them. And then all I hear is the whisper of restless wings.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
A SINGLE BAT LEAVES THE SAFETY OF THE ROOF and swoops downward, and then everything is silent again.
Malcontent lets his hood drop. His hair is shot with white, and his eyes are bloodshot.
While Prospero is cold, Malcontent burns. And yet . . . there is a little of Elliott in each of them.
“How appropriate to meet you here,” Malcontent says, “where your crimes began.” He steps away from the slab of limestone that must conceal a tunnel rather than a tomb. Two of his men follow.
“Elliott could do much to improve the city,” Prospero says to his brother. “I trust you will stop him.”
In this moment, my loathing for both of these men eclipses all other feelings. They are bent on destroying what’s left of the city, sabotaging everything Elliott is trying to do.