“After all we went through to rescue him he’s paying for our coffee. Wait, we both had tea, didn’t we? Either way, it’s on him.”
“What do you think they did to him?”
“I think they interrogated him and I think they didn’t get the answers they wanted and then they drugged him and strung him up for dramatic impact and waited for us to show up. I can help once we get him inside.”
On cue the elevator stops and the doors open, revealing the antechamber. Zachary tries to pinpoint the feeling the arrival has and can only think that if the apartment above his mother’s store in New Orleans still existed seeing it again might feel like this, but he cannot tell if it is nostalgia or disorientation. He tries not to think about it too much, it is hurting his head.
Zachary and Mirabel lift Dorian using the same system of careful awkward weight balancing as before. Dorian is no help at all with the forward motion. Zachary hears the elevator close and head off to wherever it lives when not occupied by unconscious men and pink-haired ladies and confused tourists.
Mirabel reaches out for the doorknob, shifting more of Dorian’s weight over to Zachary. The doorknob doesn’t turn.
“Dammit,” Mirabel says. She closes her eyes and tilts her head, like she’s listening to something.
“What’s the matter?” Zachary asks, expecting one of the many keys around her neck might solve the problem.
“He’s never been here before,” she says, nodding at Dorian. “He’s new.”
“He is?” Zachary asks, surprised, but Mirabel continues.
“He has to do the entrance exam.”
“With the dice and the drinking?” Zachary asks. “How is he supposed to do that?”
“He isn’t,” Mirabel says. “We’re going to proxy for him.”
“We’re going to…” Zachary lets the question trail off, understanding what she means before he finishes asking.
“I’ll do one, you do the other?” Mirabel asks.
“Sure, I guess,” Zachary agrees. He leaves Mirabel holding Dorian mostly upright and turns back to the two alcoves. He picks the side with the dice, partly because he has more experience with dice than with mystery liquid and partly because he’s not sure he wants to drink more mystery liquid and it doesn’t feel right to spill it.
“Concentrate on doing it for him and not yourself,” Mirabel says when he reaches the little alcove with its dice reset to roll again.
Zachary reaches for the dice and misses, grasping the air next to them instead. He must be more exhausted than he’d thought. He tries again and takes the dice in his hand and rolls them around in his fingers. He doesn’t know much about Dorian, doesn’t even know his real name, but he closes his eyes and conjures the man in his mind, a combination of walking in the streets in the cold and the paper flower in his lapel and the scent of lemon and tobacco in the dark in the hotel and the breath against his neck and he lets the di
ce tumble from his palm.
He opens his eyes. The wobbling dice are hazy in his vision but then they focus.
One key. One bee. One sword. One crown. One heart. One feather.
The dice settle and stop and before the last one ceases to move the bottom falls out of the alcove and they disappear into the darkness.
“What did he get?” Mirabel asks. “Wait, let me guess: swords and…keys, maybe.”
“One of each,” Zachary says. “I think, unless there are more than six things.”
“Huh,” Mirabel says in a tone that Zachary can’t decipher as she lets him take hold of Dorian again who suddenly feels much more there with the memory of the storytelling fresh in his mind and that faint lemon scent. It’s warmer down here than Zachary remembers. He realizes he lost his borrowed coat somewhere.
On the other side of the room Mirabel picks up the covered glass and looks at it carefully before uncovering it and drinking it. She shudders and replaces the glass in the alcove.
“What did it taste like when you drank it?” she asks Zachary as she takes Dorian’s other arm again.
“Um…honey spice vanilla orange blossom,” Zachary says, recalling the liqueur-like flavor, though the list of notes does not do it justice. “With a kick,” he adds. “Why?”
“That one tasted like wine and salt and smoke,” Mirabel says. “But he would have drunk it. Let’s see if it worked.”
This time the door opens.