A Drop of Night (3 page)

I spot Jules Makra first. He's leaning against a pillar by Gate
B-24, scrolling through his phone. We each got a little bullet-pointed spreadsheet in the blue folder, like we're superheroes in a lame cartoon. Age. Skill set. Majors. Extracurriculars. Mug shots so we know how to spot one another.

Jules is tall, gangly. Jittery. Elaborately sculpted black pouf hairdo that looks like he spent ages trying to get it right. It's starting to droop. His earphones are in and his leg is bouncing to a very irregular-looking beat. I tap my fingernails on the handle of my bag. Steel myself and walk toward him, suitcase whizzing behind me.

A second before I reach him, he looks up. Sees me. Grins.

Jules Makra up close: a little bit punk, a little bit hipster. Rolled-up chinos and this weird, bright
thrift-shop shirt plastered with Russian dolls and flowers, all crinkled up under a lopsided bomber. His eyes go sharp for a millisecond, little splinters over his grin. He's assessing me.

I assess him back. “Are you with Professor Dorf?”

“Yeah!” he says. He pulls out one earphone and his grin widens. “You're Lilly?”

“No.” I glance around for the others.

“Um. You're Anouk?”

No, I'm William Park
. I almost say it out loud, but then William Park shows up, so I don't.

I like Will Park's face. He looks like someone studiously observed everything about Jules and inverted it. He's tall, too, but bulky and broad shouldered, and while Jules looks like he's about to pop a shoulder blade out of his skinny back, Will looks self-contained. Calm. Except for his jaw, which is sharp enough to cut stone and slightly tense, like he's clenching it. Nervous, maybe. He's wearing a newsboy cap pulled down low and a ratty old pea coat that was probably shabby chic in the 1920s.

Jules tugs out his other earphone and grins again, only I think he grins wider at Will, probably in the hopes of avoiding the debacle-that-is-Anouk. “Hey!” he says.

“Hey.” Will's voice is low. He goes straight for the handshake. He only looks at me for a second before his gaze drops. His eyes are blue.

Jules is frowning, probably wondering what the odds are that everyone on this team is an asocial freak. I sit down on my suitcase. Will leans a shoulder against Jules's pillar and looks out into the crowd. Incredibly awkward silence ensues. One of those silences where everyone knows they're being awkward, but there's nothing they can say to break it, and so they just freeze up and hope for a quick and speedy death.

Hayden Maiburgh shows up next. He's just as tall as the rest of us, but he's another type entirely. The type I like to avoid at all costs. He's wearing a private school blazer and blue-mirrored aviators, and his hair's been lacquered into a brassy swoop. He looks like he's on his way to play polo or bathe in gold bathtubs of champagne, and he grins at us as he approaches, that sort of
Hey, losers
grin some people are born with.

“Hey, losers,” he says, and I almost spit out my metaphorical mouthful of water. He's doing one of those fake bro handshakes with Jules, all splayed fingers and fist bumps. Except Jules has no idea how bro handshakes
work, and I'm pleased to say the whole thing is failing miserably. Unfortunately, that seems to please Hayden, too, like the handshake is a test and Jules flubbing it up settles the hierarchy. Hayden turns to Will, grinning, ready to do the whole maneuver again. Will is completely oblivious. He grips Hayden's hand, harder than looks comfortable, shakes it once, and goes back to gazing soulfully into the crowds.

I stay on my suitcase. Stretch out my legs and give Hayden a death glare when he glances down at me. Now I look away, like he's too boring even for glaring at. Try to visualize the files in the blue folder, lining everybody up in my head:

Anouk Geneviève van Roijer-Peerenboom. Seventeen years old. Gymnast. Jerk. Speaks five languages fluently, has basic knowledge of eight more, nationally acknowledged teen academic studying art history at NYU. Recent graduate of St. Winifred's Preparatory School in Manhattan. Can now also climb and scuba dive.

Jules Makra. Seventeen. Graphic design student. San Diego, California. Won a prize for drawing a chair or something.

Will Park. Seventeen. Engineering student from
Charleston, South Carolina. Has nice eyes.

Hayden Maiburgh. Seventeen. Philosophy major at Cornell.
That's a joke. What does he philosophize about, weight lifting? Juice boxes? The plight of the one percent?

The fifth kid isn't here yet. Lilly Watts. Sixteen. Sun Prairie, Wisconsin.

She arrives three minutes later, and I guess she walks up like a normal person, but it feels
like she explodes onto the scene like an anime character, blowing everyone backward in whooshy streaks. She's short and plump. She looks like a hippie-indie American Girl come to life, feathers in hair, colored wristbands, a bedazzled leather jacket with fringes. Except she's also carrying the most enormous hiker backpack I have ever seen. It dwarfs her. Towers over her head. Her nose is shiny, greasy looking.

She takes one look at us propped against pillars and suitcases like a tear sheet straight out of
Vogue
and her eyes pop wide. “Oh my
gosh
.” She spreads her fingers, palms downward. “You guys. We're going to France.”

She does a little dance. Now she's smiling right at me. “I was literally afraid today wasn't Wednesday. I mean, I couldn't find anyone, and this one time I slept all night and
all day and missed an entire twenty-four hours, so I thought maybe I had slept through Wednesday and today was Thursday. I know,
Seriously, Lilly?
But I thought it. Hi!”

She shakes Hayden's hand because he's closest, and she's laughing and jabbering, and Hayden is smiling down at her a touch derisively. I wonder if Lilly notices.

Now she's talking to Jules. He jokes around. They blab. Lilly does one of those shoulder dip things and says “Ohhh, me, too!” and I imagine they're talking about their mutual mastering of the blinding toothpaste-commercial smile.

Lilly gets to Will. For a second she looks like she wants to hug his poor quiet self, but she tucks that thought back into a folder of good-deeds-for-later and instead grabs his hand in both of hers, beams at him, and tells him she loves his historically accurate coat. Right before she gets to me, I stand up.

“Hooray,” I say flatly. Do some jazz hands. “We've arrived. Where's Dorf?”

Lilly stops in her tracks. Everyone stares at me.

“We're supposed to meet him here,” Hayden says.

“Did anyone else totally fail at the climbing wall part of preliminaries?” Jules says.

“Hi,” Lilly says, and waves at me, a tiny, frantic motion.

I pivot, scanning the faces flowing past. We're right where we're supposed to be, Terminal 4, Gate B-24. But the rows of gray waiting seats are empty. There's no flight info up on the screen.

“Maybe we
all
slept through Wednesday,” Lilly says. She laughs, but no one else does. I'm actually freaking out a little bit. If I got the wrong day, the wrong time, the wrong airport, if I have to go crawling back home and find out that permanent marker
does
stick on stainless steel—

Something clanks behind me. The metal door to the skywalk, opening. I whirl, see four guys in black suits striding out. They're dressed impeccably, but the rest of them is rough. I glimpse a tattoo snaking above a collar. Silvery scars crisscrossing a row of knuckles. One has an actual chemical-red Mohawk, six spikes rising in angry sunrays down the center of his scalp.

Walking between them is a fifth man. At least fifty. Elegant and scholarly looking, huge as a boulder. He's got a neatly trimmed beard, silvered glasses, a hat. A colorful silk foulard is knotted under his chin. He looks like Indiana Jones if Indiana Jones got old and fancy and
bulked up on several hundred pounds of broccoli and protein shakes. He also looks exactly like his picture: Professor Dr. Thibault Dorf.

“Hello, hello!” he calls out. His voice isn't loud. It's deep, a raspy, rich, velvety sort of voice that makes everyone within ten feet turn and stare. Us included. The bodyguards are picking up our bags. Red Spikes is behind us, herding us through the metal door and down the skywalk, and Dorf is saying: “It's wonderful to meet all of you. And all on time! Welcome to Project Papillon.”

He has a trace of an accent. Not French. Not British either. I don't know what it is. Lilly immediately latches on to his arm and starts explaining to him how un
believably
excited she is to be here. I look over at the nearest bodyguard type. Vulture eyes. Blond stubble up his face, so pale it's almost gray. He looks like a Norse god. He brings a hand up to his ear, and he's got a headset there, running down his jaw. A light is blinking in it—a thin red strip, throbbing silently, like he's getting a message now. A whisper plugged straight into his skull.

The others are starting to talk, warming up to each other, making friends. I watch the light, and I watch the guy, and I wonder what he's hearing.

Mother was invited down today. No one has seen the Palais du Papillon yet, no one but Father and Havriel and the legions of craftsmen who live in the depths, heedless of night and day, working and painting and sculpting tirelessly by lamplight.

The invitation arrived with much pomp: three footmen in full livery—scarlet coats, gold braid, and silk stockings, the center one bearing a small gilded casket—knocked on the door to Mama's chambers. Mama was in her boudoir, asleep in a patch of sunlight like a cat, and so it was I who leaped up to receive the gift, and it was I who snapped open the lid and peered inside like a great nosy peacock. A single square of paper lay within, cushioned in dried posies and apple blossoms.

My darling, my treasure, my heart,
I read. The card was edged with gold, and it smelled so sharply of cloves and
rose oil and thick perfumes that I almost gagged.

I request your most excellent presence at the gates to the Palais du Papillon, on this day, the 27th of August, 9 o' clock.

Forever in love, Frédéric du Bessancourt

I replaced the card quickly and dropped into a chair. The reason for the invitation is clear: Father's mysterious palace is nearing completion, and he is eager to show it off.

I hand the invitation to Mama when she wakes and feign surprise when she tells me what it says.

“May I go, too?” I ask, perhaps too bluntly; Mama peers at me, startled.

“No,” she says. “No, my sweet, he did not say to bring anyone. He is very particular.”

“I am particular, too,” I say, frowning in mock seriousness. “Particularly curious.” And I laugh, but Mother's smile is weak as watered brandy, and so I do not press the subject. Her quietness does not trouble me. I am as excited as if I were going myself. Last month, Charlotte, Delphine, and I watched the armored coaches approach down the avenue, the horses sweating, gleaming in the sun, the drivers shouting merrily down to the gardeners as they passed. We saw sofas from Paris, spinets from Vienna, bolts of silks and brocade from
London and Flanders, so heavy they bent the servants double, loaded down into the lower passage and disappearing into the shafts and the dark, as if swallowed by some insatiable beast. The palace will no doubt be a wondrous sight. And vast. There were so many coaches. An endless snake of them, all filled to bursting. It seems Father can afford anything he pleases: to grow fat on honeyed quail and petits fours; a wife as beautiful as Mama; four daughters and no sons. A palace that would put the king of France to shame. I wonder if there is anything he cannot have.

Mother passes me on her way out, dressed in splendor like a Venetian Madonna. Her gown is deep, rich crimson, finest silk, like poppies, berries, roses. Her sleeves and bodice are weighted with pearls. Her wig is a mountain of smoke-gray locks, pinned with silver flowers. She is going alone down to the gallery. There, Father and Lord Havriel will meet her. Not even Madame Kretschmer or the maids have been allowed to accompany her. She does not see me as she passes, and I want to call out to her, to say something, wish her luck, but she is gone already, tapping slowly down the stairs. I keenly await her report.

We're greeted on the plane by a spindle-thin Asian woman in
a pencil skirt and high-collared white blouse. Her eyes are striking—mismatched green and gray vortexes, the pupils wide and black, like someone took a hole punch to a starscape. She's sizing us up. Her gaze is borderline scary, like she's weighing meat.

“Miss Sei,” Dorf says. “Chief science officer from the Sapani Corporation. She'll be assisting with the expedition.”

Her tongue clicks against her teeth and she strides away down the body of the jet, waving for us to follow.

We do, and I watch her shoulders moving in a square under her blouse. Next to me, Jules lets out a low whistle. “We are
definitely
traveling first class.”

I'm assuming he's referring to the iPads in the armrests, the flat-screens showing screen savers of beaches
and waterfalls, the random potted mango plant next to the jump seat.

Miss Sei ushers us into a lounge, all white leather and shiny black wood. Sofas curl along the walls like huge Persian cats. A bar stands in one corner, three Art Deco stools and a bunch of brightly labeled bottles poking up like glass chimneys. Red Spikes, Norse God, and the others file past us, through a glass door and into the jet's next compartment. Miss Sei gestures us toward the sofas and follows them, wordless. Dorf pauses. He smiles at us.

“All yours!” he says, and sweeps his big hands out on either side. “I'll see you in Paris, bright and early tomorrow morning.”

He ducks after Miss Sei. A door slides shut. We're alone.

Wait, that's it
? No introductory speech? No “Welcome, young chickadees”?

We sit in a semi-catatonic daze for about a millisecond. And now Jules says: “This. Is. Awesome,” and sprawls himself all over a sofa, and it's like no one even thinks this is bizarre. Lilly bounces from barstool to mango plant to waterfall screen saver, cooing appreciatively at everything. Hayden goes to the bar and starts clinking
through the bottles. I sit down on a couch, hook one leg over the other, and watch the carnage.

Will eases himself onto the sofa next to me.

Neither of us speaks. The pilot tells us to prepare for takeoff. I glance over at Will. His hands are on his knees. His eyes are serious, like everything he's seeing is an epic tragedy.
I agree, Will.

Jules and Lilly are on their phones, laughing about something, and I get sour grape-y for a second, wondering if they remember the contract stipulations about no social media and no sending pictures, or if they're just doing whatever and hoping they won't get caught.

Will clears his throat. I glance over at him. He clears his throat again and says: “There aren't any seat belts.”

His voice is gorgeous, deep and quiet, and it has a slight drawl, the
a
's and
r
's softened to buttery nothings.

“Nope,” I say.

Silence. That must have been his entire repertoire of small talk, so I decide to help him out. I wave toward the others. “Gonna be a blast, huh. Nine hours with these people? And then two weeks. And then another nine hours. What we really need are cages. And tranquilizers.”

He peers at me. His eyes go a shade bluer and a shade curious.

“Cages and tranquilizers!” I say again, louder. The engines are revving up. The lights on the runway spread away in twin orange lines, like well-trained fireflies.

One of Will's eyebrows cricks a little. “No. But seat belts would be a good idea.”

Um
. . .
right. I don't know how to communicate with people who don't understand sarcasm. Supposedly you can tell the intelligence of someone by how well they recognize humor. I don't know if it's true, but I live by that. It's a comfort to assume that when people don't think you're funny, it's because they're just stupid people.

“Okay.” I scoot an inch away from him and slide my headphones on. “Good talk.”

End of that relationship. I hit the screen on my iPod. Music flows.

I watch the cabin slant as the plane takes off. Will doesn't move from the sofa, which strikes me as awfully gallant of him, considering I just scratched his name from my mental Book of All Things. I close my eyes and wonder if maybe I could get along with these people. It's not impossible. People make friends sometimes, just by accident.

“Hi!” Lilly squeaks, and practically pile-drives herself between Will and me. “We didn't really meet before. I'm Lilly. Hi.”

My eyes snap open. I was listening to Ingrid Michaelson, and I was at that part of the song where you can actually hear the smile in her voice.
Let's get rich and buy our parents homes in the south of France.
I love that part. I listen to the whole song for it.

“Hi,” I say. I don't take off my headphones.

“What's your name?” Lilly asks. She smiles at me encouragingly.

“Anouk,” I say. “Didn't you read your folder?”

Lilly's smile splinters a tiny bit, but somehow she keeps it in place through sheer force of will. I look at her curiously. She doesn't
seem
brilliant. She doesn't seem like she can climb a wall or scuba dive, either.

“That's a cool name,” she says. “Is it Russian?”

“What?” It comes out annoyed. I slip my headphones down my neck. “No. Dutch, I think. Or Flemish.”

“Ooh, my aunt lives in Flemings!” Lilly says. “Yeah. In Wisconsin.” She touches my knee and gives me another smile, like living in Flemings, Wisconsin, is an accomplishment.

It is. I don't know how anyone does it.

“Congrats to your aunt,” I say, moving my leg. “No, really, Flemings, Wisconsin. Wow.”

Lilly's eyes go sharp. For a second I think she's angry, but nope: it's the same look she gave Will before deciding to not-hug him. Only this time she's decided that whatever my problem is, it's not going in the good-deeds-for-later folder. It's going to be dealt with
now
. She pulls her scuffed-up chucks onto the sofa, wraps her bedazzled arms around her knees, and starts talking. It's like watching waves come in on a beach, or someone vomiting after a party: endless, and you wonder where it all comes from.

Will looks over at us, slightly alarmed. Now he gets up and moves to a different sofa.
Take me with you!
I want to scream, but he's not so good with mental telepathy. And Lilly's nowhere close to done.

She talks about baking quinoa vegan brownies. Her alternative-hippie homeschooling parents, whom she clearly adores. A 3-D-looking tattoo of a fly on her arm, which she now realizes was a bad idea because it makes her look like she has the plague or is demonically possessed. She was grounded for getting that tattoo, and when she was done being grounded she got a second
tattoo on the sole of her foot. She sang The Beatles' “Yellow Submarine” in her high school's talent show and didn't win. She doesn't actually show me the tattoos. And why is she still in
high school
?

I throw my head back and stare up at the little lights in the ceiling. Lilly's barely even breathing between paragraphs. She's definitely too enraptured by her own stories to care that I'm being socially abominable. Her voice becomes a buzz in the background. Everything becomes a buzz. Air systems, jet engines, the clinking of glass—all of it fades into a single flat line of sound.

I sit up. Glance around. It's so weird. Like an eerily slow-moving dream. Hayden is lying on a sofa, sipping Orangina through a straw. Will and Jules are next to each other, and Jules seems to be trying to make conversation, and Will seems to be trying not to die of awkwardness. I look to the sliding panel that separates us from Dorf and the rest of the jet. The glass is frosted, shot through with clear strips. I see a sliver of Miss Sei—a leg, some skirt. One eye wide, watching me.

There's a beeping, sudden and shrill, and sound envelops me again. The captain's voice breaks through the speakers: “Miss Sei, Professor Dorf, we're
coming up on some turbulence. Would you like to—”

A commotion on the other side of the glass. The speaker goes off in our compartment, but I can still hear it, muffled, in the one ahead of us.

I shiver. Lilly looks over at me, questioning. I slide my earphones back on and turn the music up loud.