Illuminate (32 page)

I went to Lance’s door and knocked softly. A muffled voice came from within.

“Huh?”

“Hey, it’s Haven,” I called. “You okay?”

The door opened, but his eyes didn’t. He looked like he was still asleep. No glasses, mussed hair sticking up in every direction—messy in a way I didn’t think short hair was capable of being messy. “I’m okay, really, just really knocked out now, but feeling better. Thanks.”

“Good. Sorry to, uh, wake you. I’ll let you get back to sleep.”

He gave a groggy wave and stumbled back into the dark. I heard the springs of the bed as he hit it.

When I got the door of my room open, I was just relieved to see nothing on fire. It took so little to make me happy these days.

20. Charm Her, for God’s Sake

I changed out of my uniform and into my sweats, prepared to begin my drills downstairs earlier than usual. After devouring my apple and cereal (straight from the box, like some kind of caged beast), I gave a quick glance through
the book,
that
book, just in case there was some new terrifying bit of knowledge it had to impart to me, but I found no new scribblings inside those pages.

And so down I crept, plank by plank. I could feel my limbs getting stronger, the wooden slats becoming more familiar. I knew where the grooves were, where my fingers could nestle in, and my feet knew how to land as I swooped down or flew up. When I hit bottom, I set my watch and took off at my fastest sprint. My body seemed to be learning the path, committing its curved corners and straightaways to memory. Soon I hoped I would be able to do it without a flashlight if I needed to.

I came to that bend where it opened out into that dilapidated old room and I stopped short, nearly stumbling onto the ground.

Sitting there, propped up on the exposed wall beams beside that mysterious locked door, was the most effective stop sign I’d ever seen: the photos. I knew it was them without even being able to actually see them, the whole exhibit shrouded beneath a velvet covering. The silhouettes of those twenty-some rectangles, big and small, bulged beneath the swath. One of the framed corners peeked out, teasing and tempting me. I looked over my shoulder—a reflex, as though I expected someone to be there telling me to mind my own business—and I inched toward it. I grabbed hold of the covering and pulled it back in one sharp flourish, unveiling all of them at once.

And as soon as I did, I jumped back, reeling, and gasped.

My eyes skimmed across the surface of these things staring back at me, taking them all in as one cohesive horror show. I wanted to scream but the shock silenced the sound. I had to shake my head and close my eyes to clear my vision. But the sight had been branded into my brain. They had mutated into something terrifying: unraveling, decaying flesh. Photos, it seemed, of a circus freak show, not of the most beautiful people I’d ever met.

I summoned my strength and crept forward, reaching out to paw through them, hoping that some were unharmed. But, no, every one of the pictures of the Outfit had transformed into something grotesque. This was more than vandalism. These looked like portraits taken of monsters. My hands shook; everything trembled. The horror of it all infected every inch of me. These pictures now showed once-perfect people riddled with festering sores, eyes melting down their faces, bloodied and missing features, amputated and jagged limbs that appeared gnawed off by wild dogs. Some looked as if they’d been run through a meat grinder. Their hair was thin and scraggly or entirely gone and replaced with lesions and bulbous purple and green growths. Their clothing was tattered, and in some cases their entire bodies were ripped open, spilling their internal organs. Lucian’s innards were being feasted upon by a rabid vulture.

I had combed through the whole mess, each worse than the one before it, before I found Lance’s and Dante’s pictures tucked in back. Lance’s looked just as I’d last seen it: with that scar beneath his eye, but otherwise just fine. In fact, if anything, it seemed overall more ethereal and powerful than it had the night of the gala. His eyes sparkled, deep and peaceful, sure and firm, holding their ground. His stance, the way he held his arms, the set of his shoulders, all appeared stronger. Dante’s photo, on the other hand, seemed just the slightest bit . . . off. His bright smile had faded in wattage. I didn’t think I was imagining this, or that I was too influenced by our tiff earlier today. His image was dulled. I studied it for a moment and then I set the other photos back in front of it, looking at each one again—much as it made me cringe to do it. But no, I hadn’t missed a thing: mine was not here, and Aurelia’s wasn’t either. Where were they? Had they been spared? Were they not as warped as the others? Or was it possible they were worse? With fast, jittery fingers, I put the covering over the top of all them again and backed up, scrambling and stumbling, watching the mass of velvet there as though it might come after me.

I turned and sprinted straight back to my ladder, up to civilization. I couldn’t be down there with those disfigured images anymore. Up and up I climbed, clawing at the planks with mad, raw hands, until I made it back to my room. I flung the closet door closed and blocked it off, again with that desk chair, then curled up in my bed, hugging my knees to my chest. I closed my eyes, focusing my beating heart, trying to slow it down to a pace that wouldn’t give me a heart attack. When I finally succeeded, I reached over, pulling that dreaded book from its home in my night table.

Today’s date had been written in on a fresh page with these words:

We mustn’t let fear keep us from seeking answers. Go searching. You know where to go. Trust what you see and hear. When something doesn‘t add up to a sensible answer, it simply means you‘re missing some key pieces. Be careful, be smart, but be daring.

I shut the book and shoved it back in its place. I could take this riddle to mean only one thing: I had to go looking for those two missing photos and I had to go now. I had to go to the place where my gut told me it didn’t want me to be: back up into that passageway that led to Aurelia’s office.

With only a bit of a struggle—the crawling made my sore muscles ache and my knees burn until the passage opened enough for me to stand upright—I found my way back to that little peephole. By now it was after eight in the evening, and the room was deserted and dark, save for the dim, buttery glow of the art deco lamp on her desk. It was always locked when she wasn’t in there. But I needed to get in, it was just that simple.

I flipped my flashlight back on and shone it all around me, illuminating this musty secret corner of mine. My other hand felt the walls around me, patting at the jagged wooden beams on my sides and the strange rough stones in front. And then I hit an edge with my fingertips—an odd horizontal slice knifed straight through those stones and level with my chin. I had seen something like this before, in my closet, so I looped the flashlight around my wrist and pushed with both hands and all my force. Sure enough, it started to give. I threw my whole body into it, planting my legs firmly on the ground, and pushed harder. It popped, the sound of something springing loose after years of being closed up. Bits of mortar and dust rained onto my fingers in a soft, crumbly spray, and this telephone-book-thick rectangular cutout creaked open. I pushed easily now, and it opened outward, a narrow door hinged on the left side. I craned my neck out as best I could: I was directly above her desk, the flat screen on the back of this doorway. After several failed attempts to pull myself over the ledge into the room, I took a running start.

Clomping against the flimsy floor beneath me, I launched myself at the wall, my foot catching on top of one of the stones, and I pushed off, my hands grabbing at the ledge. Over I went, landing on the carpet of Aurelia’s office and thumping my head against the wall. I imagined I had the makings of at least a date-size lump on the back of my head. But I was in.

Now I could get to work. I stood on the desk chair and unhooked my flashlight from where I had stashed it, then scanned the room for plausible hiding spots for a photo the size of Aurelia’s. I tried the usual suspects first: inside the coat closet in the corner near the door (nothing, not even a sign of passageways like in my closet); behind the painting over the couch. I examined the floor and the walls themselves for any seams that indicated doorways or secret compartments. I walked around the entire perimeter of the room, running my fingers along the wood paneling, searching for something that didn’t quite fit.

I found myself standing before that wall of built-in bookcases. I had read in one of those history books that all manner of sins had been hidden in hollowed-out books or behind façades of book spines during Prohibition. It made perfect sense that this hotel, full of nooks and niches and tunnels, would have something lurking behind a display like this. I started tapping and pushing at some of the books, shaking the shelves to see if anything might open up. It always worked in old movies but it seemed ridiculous and haphazard now. I stepped back and shone my flashlight all around, and then I spotted it: a round quarter-size disk embedded in the wooden border along the far end of the bookcases. When I got closer, I saw the pentagram design, same as I’d seen on that mysterious door downstairs. There could be no clearer sign than the repetition of this symbol that there was evil at work here.

I rummaged through Aurelia’s desk and found that key ring buried beneath some papers: a trio of pentagram-shaped cylinders, all different sizes, hanging from it. I tried the medium-size one first—it was the length of a white piano key—pushing it slowly into the disk on the wall and, sure enough, a click sounded, and a pop. Two shelves in the middle of the wall of books opened, jutting out like a loose tooth waiting to be pulled. I tugged on this section expecting the whole column to come open, but this waist-high window was it. I leaned in, shining my flashlight, and found a small room with two velvet-shrouded pictures propped against the wooden beams of a wall.

I slithered over like I was climbing a fence. Once inside, the space enveloped me. It was eerily quiet, like a tomb, and pitch-black except for my flashlight. The darkness was alive and hungry and it magnified the silence, filling the area so completely that you almost believed you could scream and it would be instantly stifled. It was a cell, an isolation chamber. I wanted out as soon as I was finished.

Wasting no time, I threw off the covering and the two photos stared back at me, side by side. My knees weakened the second I caught sight of the horrid changes to Aurelia’s photo. The blemishes I’d noticed days ago were nothing—they had bloomed into a whole new breed of all-encompassing, gag-inducing revulsion. Now the woman’s luscious long limbs melted like shiny plastic in the sun and seeped onto the ground in the picture. Her bony, yellow-nailed finger chased after an eye that had popped out of its socket on a bungee cord of a vein. Her bird-like neck had been slit and the festering gash oozed shades of red, yellow, and green, which matched the sores and wounds all over her body. Aurelia looked just a few steps removed from Calliope, the once-beautiful girl, who showed up a charred and decaying monster at the gala and in my dreams. I had to look away.

So my eyes fell on my own elusive photo. Why had she pulled mine out from the pack? Why sequester it here with hers?

With the exception of my scars, I had been spared the kind of grisly disfiguration Aurelia’s photo had suffered—and since the scars were all mine, they were the ugly truth, so I couldn’t be too upset about those. No, something entirely different had happened to my picture. My entire pose had changed; now it looked like I was lying down on my back and there was a smudge of light above my head. I leaned in, training my flashlight upon it and reaching out to touch it. If I wasn’t mistaken, it looked like a halo had formed over my head. Could that be right? That didn’t make the least bit of sense at all. How had this happened? I was so lost in thought that I must have tuned out the rattling at first. But then my ears seized on it and my whole body froze.

The door. The door to the office shook against its frame, and the soft flutter of voices wafted in. I bolted up.

Of course, of course, of course: the light had been left on, the keys were left out. Aurelia never would have done that if she wasn’t planning on returning soon. Something took control of my body and instead of thinking, I took flight. I didn’t even cover the photos back up. I just leapt out of that opening, flashlight in hand, waving its light beam around, as I slammed those two bookshelves back into place. I sprinted to the desk so fast I covered the length of the office in only three long galloping strides, threw the keys onto her desk, hopped up onto her chair, flung the flashlight in the opening, and then, springing up on legs I didn’t know could jump so high, I hoisted myself through the opening with arms that suddenly felt capable of lifting boulders. I landed with a thump inside, smacking against the hard ground. But the adrenaline coursing through me kept me from feeling the least bit of pain. Instead, it bounced me back up to my feet and infused me with enough force to yank that panel back into place just as the office door burst open.

Aurelia walked in with Lucian trailing her; he swung the door shut behind them. She was talking to him in a harsh tone, one she usually used on me. My sweat-coated head in my hands, I leaned against one of the wall beams, shaking. I closed my eyes, trying to calm myself.
You have to focus, you must listen.
I watched out of that peephole.

“I’m not myself today,” Aurelia was saying, as she took her place behind her desk, dangerously close to me. “This . . .
situation
. . . with the gallery and so forth. Oh, here they are.” She interrupted herself, waving the key chain in the air. “Beckett will need this later.” She held it out with her fingertips for Lucian to take, then she sat in her chair. I hoped I hadn’t left a footprint on it. Lucian sat on the couch, looking bored, adjusting the cuffs poking out from his suit jacket sleeves, touching the cuff links to be sure they were secure. “But at any rate, I’m a bit taken aback because I just thought we would have more time to work with. I don’t understand how she’s gotten so powerful so fast.”