We are in the Debauchery District, near the club, so it shouldn’t surprise me that Elliott finds us, drawn by all the noise. He pulls me up, so that the two of us are standing on the base of a statue beside a stone horse.
People are shouting and crying, and I hear the words “hero” and “rescue.” Elliott raises my hand, clasped in his own, above our heads, and the crowd cheers. I look around at all the faces. After the devastation of the city, it’s just nice to see people smiling, to see that they have something to be happy about. The little girls are finding their families, being reunited.
Will is standing in a doorway, outside the adoring crowd. Elise must have found him. He has his hand on her shoulder, though his eyes are trained on me. Henry is holding Elise’s hand.
He is the only person who isn’t clapping. His tattoos stand out starkly on the pale skin of his neck. He must realize I took Henry into danger. He must be furious. But his face is completely blank. I pull away from Elliott.
But he doesn’t let me get far, pressing his palm against the stone wall behind us, nearly pinning me to the building. He leans in, as if to kiss me. The crowd cheers wildly. The way that he’s claiming me makes me feel claustrophobic, and I put my hand to my ribs, gasping for breath.
Elliott says something about me being shy. He doesn’t yell it for everyone to hear, but he says it loudly enough that the ones in the front will repeat it for the others. The crowd is exhilarated.
I don’t like his possessiveness, but if he wasn’t holding me, I might collapse from exhaustion and pain.
“Slip away with me,” he whispers, and I think he means something suggestive, that he wants to be alone with me, and I do not want that.
“You should stay,” I say. “You love being the center of attention.”
“I believe they are clapping for you,” he responds. “But that doesn’t matter. We have to get away from all of this. I’ve found your father.”
And he has to catch me because my knees give out. My father or my father’s body?
“We have to get to my steam carriage,” he says. “Come.” He waves to the crowd and leads me away. Inside the stables, he hands me a pair of goggles. “We’re going to go fast,” he says, smiling.
We pass an entire city block that has been gutted by fire. Charred bed frames stand within neat brick squares. A chair. A chimney standing all alone, the wall that surrounded it gone. We pick up speed, and the wind blows through my hair. It rushes against my face, as if it’s blowing away all the disease and decay.
Soon the top of the Akkadian Towers comes into view, far above the other buildings in this part of town. It seems impossible that we once had the ability to build such things. That I ever lived there.
“The tower is still standing,” I marvel. “It was burning when we left the city.”
“The rain doused the fire, so it’s mostly intact. People still live on the lower levels. Most of the richest occupants moved to less damaged premises, of course.” Elliott pulls the carriage into a building that once housed a smithy. The carefully lettered sign outside says the business services steam carriages.
“It’s as good a place to hide this as I can think of,” he explains. He secures the carriage, taking a few small parts from the engine and pocketing them.
The street-level windows of the buildings here are mostly shattered. Can we still make glass? Are any glassmakers still alive?
No blacksmiths, no new windows. Elliott’s plan should be to start a school so that people can relearn these arts.
A potted flower sits on a balcony above us. A red geranium that has somehow survived all the death and destruction.
We’re standing in the shadow of the Akkadian Towers. For a year, I pulled up to the imposing double doors with April in her ostentatious steam carriage. Did the doorman survive the fire? What happened to our cook? Before the Red Death, couriers would have been in and out, going about their business, but the streets are deserted.
We enter the alley behind the unfinished tower. The last time I walked here was with Will, and we saw a dead boy with his well-crafted leather boots and his immaculate white mask. Elliott pulls open a door with broken hinges and ushers me into a dark corridor.
“Is this building attached to the other?” I ask.
“The two buildings share a basement.”
If we had moved here when I was younger, when Finn was alive, the two of us might have explored the building more. Instead, I stood on the roof and thought about jumping.
Elliott leads me through the empty echoing cellar that connects the unfinished tower to the half-ruined one where I used to live. He takes a match from his pocket and strikes it, using the fleeting light to determine our path. When it burns down to his fingertips, he drops it to the floor.
“I need to start carrying candles,” I say, mostly to myself. I follow Elliott to a stairway that leads up and connects to the stairs for the main tower. I suppose the elevator will never be repaired, now.
We are, perhaps, four stories up when we hear a sound from the corridor. Elliott puts his hand on my arm, and then, slowly, one finger to his lips. We tread lightly, trying not to draw attention, as we climb the next set of stairs. Luckily, stairways in the Akkadian Towers don’t creak, even after a fire. When we stop to catch our breath, I raise my eyebrows.
“Squatters,” he whispers.
I frown, glancing upward. I hate the idea of anyone living in our old apartment. “They’ll avoid the highest levels,” Elliott reassures me. “The building is unstable, so they’ll want a quick escape route.”
“Is it safe?”
“Probably not.” Elliott smiles. I tread more carefully and avoid any spots that look damaged.
Finally we reach the top floor. The door to my family’s apartment stands partially open. I stop on the threshold. Elliott takes my hand, and with his other he pulls out a small gun, almost exactly like the one he gave me.
Our footsteps echo against the tile floor. If anyone is here, they will hear us.
Elliott leads me down the hall but does not stop at Father’s study; he makes no move toward it. I break away from him and slide the door open. The room has been ransacked. The paneling is torn from the wall, the desk is crushed into splinters.
“There is nothing to see in there,” Elliott says, except he hasn’t entered the room.
“You did this,” I say, stepping farther into the destruction, away from him. “You came here without me.”
“There wasn’t enough information in his journal. I thought maybe I’d find more here.”
I turn. He’s leaning against the doorframe, his face inscrutable. I’ve been waiting for him to bring me here, hoping . . .
My eyes burn.
At the back of the study, nothing remains but wooden beams. It used to be covered with a handsome wood paneling that hid shelves upon shelves of glass jars. In the jars are rats, floating in liquid. Several have fallen to the floor and broken, spilling limp dead rats and noxious liquid, which is perhaps what is making my eyes sting.
“This is where he did it,” I whisper. “This is where he created the Red Death.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
“COME AWAY, ARABY,” ELLIOTT SAYS SOFTLY. AND then, more urgently, “I didn’t break those jars. The building must have shifted, or someone else has been here. We should get out of this room.”
On the floor, I see a brooch in the glass. I bend down—it must have belonged to Mother—but Elliott grabs me.
“I don’t think you should touch that.”
He’s right. We step back into the hallway and slam the door behind us. But as ever, it makes no sound.
We creep through the empty rooms. In the kitchen, Elliott’s boots crush the shards of bone china that have fallen from the cabinet. Through the arched doorway that leads to the dining room, I see that the vase at the center of the table is still filled with roses—all dead.
I leave Elliott in the kitchen and slip into my bedroom. Crossing the floor in three quick steps, I throw open the door of my closet. No one has pillaged this wealth of whalebone and silk, so I grab a favorite dress, a lovely muted red. In a quick movement I discard the one I’ve been wearing, which is stained and soiled with tunnel debris.
“Much better,” Elliott says from the doorway.
I blush deeply and pull the red dress over my head. He steps into the room as I adjust the skirts, pretending that I was not just undressed in front of him. Mother would be mortified.
A glance in the mirror to adjust my hair reminds me how terrible my mask looks, cracked and stained with grime. In my bureau, my spares are packed in cotton. I drop the cracked mask into the drawer, where it lands with a hollow thud.
“Here.” Before I choose a new one, Elliott hands me a tube of red lipstick. “I think you were wearing this the first time I saw you.”
“The first time you saw me, you thought I was dead.” But I glide the lipstick on anyway, because it reminds me of the days before, and April. Then I cover it with a new white mask.
Elliott raises an arm to escort me out, but I remove one more mask from the bureau. This one covers the whole face, and it glitters.
“This was for one of your uncle’s infamous parties.”
Elliott takes it from my hands, drops it back into the bureau, and slams the drawer.
“As long as I have anything to do with it, you’ll never attend one of his parties.”
He stalks from the room, but I hesitate. Should I tear the gemstones from the mask? In our little band, Elliott controls all the gold. And money often equals power.
I rip off a few gemstones and pocket them, then grab Mother’s favorite scarf and wrap it around my shoulders.
“Your father won’t come if he thinks anyone is here. Let’s go to the other apartment.”
And so we enter Penthouse A, April’s old home. This apartment appears untouched, with chairs upholstered in gold silk still arranged around low glass tables.
“Where did your mother go?” I ask.
“As soon as the city became frightening, she ran to Prospero’s protection.”
The doors to the bedrooms are wide open, and Elliott collects a blanket from his mother’s bed and two bottles of wine from the kitchen before he opens the door to a closet, steps inside, and gestures for me to follow.
“I’m not sure I want to crawl into a cupboard,” I start to say, but then he pushes the back wall and light filters in. I follow as he walks into the garden where he first recruited me to join his rebellion. This humid, lush, abandoned place is where he and I began.
“It certainly was easier for you to get into the garden last time than it was for me,” I say, remembering the utility closet on the floor below and the hatch I had to climb through.
“I was testing your ingenuity. I couldn’t use a party girl who didn’t have the initiative to find and climb a ladder. You know, my uncle murdered the architects who built the Akkadian Towers. He didn’t want anyone to know the building the way he does.”
“How well do you know it?”
Elliott’s eyebrows draw together. “Not as well as Prospero. Not as well as I’d like to. The garden is far from the only secret in the Akkadian Towers.”