“What the…?” Zachary starts and then can’t figure out the rest of the words so he finishes the question aimed at Mirabel with hand gestures indicating both the gun in her hand and the elevator door.
“It’ll render that door useless, hopefully it will take her a while to locate another one. Don’t look at me like that.”
“You’re pointing a gun at me.”
“Oh, I’m sorry!” Mirabel says, looking down at her hand and then placing the gun in her bag. “It’s a single-bullet antique, one-and-done. You’re bleeding.”
She looks behind Zachary’s ear and takes a handkerchief printed with clocks from her pocket. She pulls it away more bloodied than he had expected.
“It’s not that bad,” she tells him. “Just keep this on it. We’ll get it cleaned up later. It might scar, but then we’d be twins.” She lifts her hair to show him the scar behind her ear, which he had noticed earlier, and he doesn’t need to ask how she got it.
“What is going on here?” Zachary asks.
“That’s a complicated question, Ezra,” Mirabel says. “You’re very tense. I take it teatime was not particularly pleasant.”
“Allegra threatened my mother,” Zachary says. He has a feeling that Mirabel is trying to distract him. To keep him calm.
“She does that,” Mirabel says.
“She meant it, didn’t she?”
“Yes she did. But that threat was attached to telling anyone about our destination, wasn’t it?”
Zachary nods.
“She has her priorities. Maybe stay down here for a few days, I can do some reconnaissance. Allegra won’t do anything unless she feels she has no choice. She’s had opportunities to get rid of all three of us and we’re alive and kicking. Mostly,” she adds, looking down at Dorian.
“But she actually kills people?” Zachary asks.
“She hires people to do the wet work. Case in point.” She nudges Dorian’s leg with the toe of her boot.
“Are you serious?” Zachary asks.
“Do you need another story?” Mirabel asks, reaching for her bag.
“No, I do not need another story,” Zachary answers, but as he says it the taste of the knight and his broken hearts comes back to his tongue and he remembers more details: the patterned engraving on the knight’s armor, the summer evening field blooming with jasmine. It is muddled in his mind like a memory or a dream captured in sugar. It calms him, unexpectedly.
Zachary sits back on the faded velvet bench and leans his head against the elevator wall. He can feel it vibrating. The chandelier above is moving and it makes him dizzy so he closes his eyes.
“Then tell me a story,” Mirabel says, and it pulls him out of the sleepy dizziness. “Why don’t you begin at your beginning and tell me how we got here. You can skip the childhood prequel part, I know that one already.”
Zachary sighs.
“I found this book,” he says, tracing everything backward and landing squarely on Sweet Sorrows. “In the library.”
“What book?” Mirabel asks.
Zachary hesitates but then describes the events that led from the book finding to the party. A short sketch of the preceding days and he is annoyed at how little time it takes to relay and how it doesn’t sound like all that much when distilled into individual events.
“What happened to the book?” Mirabel asks when he’s finished.
“I thought he had it,” Zachary says, looking down at Dorian. He looks asleep rather than unconscious now, his head resting on the edge of the velvet bench.
Mirabel goes through Dorian’s pockets, turning up a set of keys, a ballpoint pen, a slim leather wallet containing a large amount of cash, and a New York Public Library card in the name of David Smith along with a few business cards with other names and professions and several blank cards marked with the image of a bee. No credit cards, no ID. No book.
Mirabel takes a few bills from Dorian’s wallet and puts the rest of his things back in his pockets.
“What’s that for?” Zachary asks.