At the end of the room is an archway. People stand beneath it, their eyes pass over me, but none of them seem surprised that I’ve appeared through a hole in the ceiling. I take a deep breath but choke before I’ve fully inhaled. Directly in front of me, a man lights a pipe. The smoke that billows around him is more than any one pipe could produce.
The walls of this new room are covered with lavender silk. The lights are low and purplish, streaming through windows with leaded violet panes. Low couches line the walls, and people recline upon them, laughing quietly. The conversation here is intimate, sedate.
On a low table is an assortment of implements. Syringes, pipes. Gauzy curtains caress my face.
“This is the good stuff,” a girl murmurs. “It’s been in the prince’s storehouse for years. They say it gets better with age.”
A dark-haired boy leans close to me. His hair is tousled like Will’s. I wish, fleetingly, I could go back to the time when I was merely a patron of the Debauchery Club, waiting breathlessly for Will to flirt with me. That April could be beside me, laughing at my awkwardness whenever he appeared.
“I have what you want,” the boy says, trying to entice me. But it’s not Will’s voice, and it’s easy to say no.
Among the pipes and the vials on the table is a small brush with a painted handle. It’s beside a small jar of sparkly silver eye shadow. April’s eye shadow. She used it just hours ago. I grab both and drop them into the bag, pulling the drawstring tight.
I leave behind these people, lost in oblivion, as the gong sounds once more.
Six objects. The game is nearly over. And then I’ll have to choose. Not between Will’s safety and my mother’s. I won’t accept that. I’ll have to choose how to kill the prince. Unless my father gets to him first.
The room that I’ve stepped into is completely white.
The music is sedate, but after the silence of the last room, it seems loud. Musicians play sitars and violins. I imagine that the girl from the Debauchery Club might be here, singing about suicide. The dances in this room are informal, people swaying to the music, too close for propriety. Mother would not approve.
Will—the real Will—is standing across the room. My heart stops. And when it starts up again, it hurts. It beats wildly. He’s wearing a formal jacket, velvet with brocade trim, but underneath, it’s the same sort of thing he wore when he was examining us at the club—a fitted shirt, dark pants. No vest or other fashionable additions. He’s scanning the room, the dancers. He’s looking for me.
He sees me before I reach him, and I stop a few paces away, too overcome with relief. Too confused to speak. He’s wearing the same dark mask as all the other men, but on him it is entrancing.
I look at his mouth, exposed as it is. And then it’s impossible to focus on anything else.
We’ve only stood here for a moment, but it feels so long that I’ve begun to believe that he is never going to touch me again. Finally he puts his hands on my shoulders and draws me in. His thumb caresses the base of my throat, carefully avoiding the rope burns.
Our masks bump together, and one of the peacock feathers drifts slowly to the floor.
But the moment is interrupted as the horrible clock toll pulses through the room, shaking the walls and the floor with a peal that is louder and longer than any before.
The crowd surges, pushing us back toward the bare white walls.
“It’s the prince,” someone says. “A madman is chasing him.”
I have to stand on tiptoes to see anything, but indeed, the prince is running through the room. His mask is askew, and his eyes dart this way and that.
A figure in dark robes and a mask that covers his face follows. He carries a scythe in his hand. He moves like he’s stalking prey, slowly, methodically.
The revelers are crying, falling to the floor, scrambling over one another to get away from Father and his blood-streaked mask.
“Who let him in?” I hear a man scream.
“The Red Death,” a woman moans.
“Don’t let them out of your sight,” I tell Will.
Pushing myself away from the wall, I force my way through the hysteria, pulling Will along. We hold hands even while pursuing death. My hand fits so perfectly in his.
Before we reach Father, guards pour in from every direction. Everyone freezes, from the half-dressed revelers to the contortionists in their unnatural positions.
The guards surround the prince. But Father has disappeared. I eye the soldiers. Before Will and I can proceed, Elliott enters the room.
He halts just inside the doorway, but his jaw clenches below the line of his mask, and I know he sees me. With Will.
“Take the prince,” he says to his men, without taking his eyes from me.
“Araby, Prospero is up to something.” At Will’s warning, I look to the prince, who raises his arms and then drops them dramatically. Debris begins to rain from the ceiling. At first it’s simply confetti, but then orange marbles pour down. The sound is like raindrops, and when the marbles hit, they sting. Courtiers trip as they run for the door, trying to shield their faces. Some scream as sharp glass slivers begin to fall.
“I want him alive,” Elliott calls, lunging into the crowd. His fair hair shines in the candlelight.
I put my hand on Will’s arm, allowing Elliott to pass us. The doorway he’s headed for is one that I explored earlier. And Prospero is long gone.
Like the first two rooms of the ball, the shadows behind the stage hold a less obvious door. We have to fight the crowd running the other way, but eventually I drag Will into a black corridor. Only steps from us, two guards are pushing Father, in his deathly black robes, against the wall.
“Dr. Phineas Worth, you are under arrest.”
“No!” I hurl myself at them.
One of the guards shakes his head. “We have our orders. Step away, Miss Worth. Your father is a murderer.” But neither one touches me. They probably still think that Elliott and I . . .
Will tries to break in, but the guard blocks him. While they are distracted, I throw my arms around Father.
He strips off the dark robes and mask and presses them to me. “Do what has to be done.”
The guards pull us apart, but they don’t take the robes away.
Cradling the bundle, I feel something in the pocket. My heart constricts.
I look to Father as the soldiers shove him toward the violet room. He nods. When they are gone, I reach into the pocket and pull out a glass vial. Holding it to the light, it looks empty, but I know something horrible lurks inside. Not only is there a cork stopper, but it has been sealed with wax. Will draws a sharp breath.
“Are you going to try to stop me?” I ask him. Because I know he has strong opinions about murder and death. About right and wrong.
“No,” he says. “But I’m going with you.”
I couldn’t ask for anything more than that.
I drop the robes and the mask of the Red Death. Clenching the vial in my fist, I lead Will through another door. And now we have reached the center of Prospero’s labyrinth.
The walls, the floors, the ceiling, all black. Everything except the windows—those are a horrible bloody crimson.
This room is smaller than the others, and already crowded with courtiers fleeing my father and Elliott’s guards. We move through the press, pushing when we have to. Like the outer room, everything in this room is black, from the wood floor to the wall panels. Manacles line the walls. Instruments of torture. And the clock looms over everything, ebony, tall, menacing.
Prospero cowers in the shadow of the great clock. No one recognizes him, because these people have never seen him cower. They don’t expect the pathetic, trembling man with tears streaming down his face to be their cruel, sardonic prince.
Elliott warned me how difficult it would be to kill someone. Even this man who deserves it more than anyone. Prospero and I stare at each other.
“Elliott is coming.” Will puts his hand on my wrist. The movement reminds me of the black velvet bag that is hanging there. Of Prospero’s mockery of decency and love. His destruction of my own family, and so many others. I consider dumping the contents over the prince’s head, but these items are too precious to me.
“Tell everyone to get out,” I say to Will. “Clear the room.”
Will doesn’t hesitate. “Move!” he shouts. “Out of the room, get out, or face certain death.”
Most flee, but some wait, expecting some sort of show. They’ve been at Prospero’s court too long.
Taking the final steps across the room, I break the wax seal with my fingernail. I stop when the toe of my shoe touches Prospero’s silk jacket. He pulls his arm away, still hunched in the shadow of the clock.
I scrape at the cork to coax it out of the vial, but it breaks off, too far down in the vial to get at.
“What is going on?” Elliott is behind me now. I look back for a moment, and our eyes meet across the black room. He won’t forgive me for taking his revenge from him.
I throw the vial to the floor. It shatters at the prince’s feet.
The clock begins its thunderous peals, and Prospero’s mask hits the floor with a crack.
He climbs to his feet and stretches out to me, but I just shake my head. A single red tear rolls down his face.
Elliott’s men flood the room even as he collapses. Prince Prospero is dead.
The sun rises, blazing through the red windows. The glass shards sparkling against the wood floor are far more beautiful than the diamonds Prospero fastened at my mother’s throat.
And then someone knocks my feet out from under me, and I hear the word “Murderer!” leveled at me as I hit the floor.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
ELLIOTT’S SHADOW FALLS OVER ME, AND I LOOK up at him over his uncle’s body. He’s looking at Prospero, his face stricken.
Two guards take my arms, but even as I find my footing, one of the guards begins to convulse. Red tears streak his face.
“I told everyone to clear the room,” Will says from somewhere behind me.
“She killed the prince,” the other guard insists. “Elliott ordered that he be taken alive.”
Elliott silences him. “Araby Worth has always worked for me. She killed the prince at my command.” He pulls me up and leans in to my ear. “I still need my execution,” he whispers. “But don’t worry, I have a prisoner who will do.”
Father. The shock hits me like a blow. I see the truth written on his face, which is so close to mine that we could be about to kiss.
Elliott lets me go. Will catches me, giving me a moment to find my strength.
“We should get out of this room,” I say, taking Will’s hand so he knows I can stand now. “We don’t know . . . how well protected we are.” Will just emptied his vial this afternoon, and I’m unsure how long it takes for the antidote to enter his system.
“The party is over,” Elliott calls. “Everyone should return to the city.”
Our camaraderie, whatever held our small band together over the past weeks, is gone.
“You should find your mother,” Elliott says.
I don’t look back at him or at Prospero’s corpse as I guide Will out of the room.