And now I knew where it was coming from.
“Pilar?” I asked. “Are you down here? Are you all right?”
The music didn’t stop. But I heard a weak voice say, “Colette?”
“Where are you?” I called. “We need to get out of here.”
She didn’t answer — or stop playing.
I started to walk in the direction of the music. The bits of the room visible in the pale light spilling from the door seemed like snapshots of a once-beautiful place ravaged by time. The wide wooden planks of the floor were warped and cracking from age and moisture. The intricately woven Persian rugs were stained gray by mildew and the legs of the furniture were splitting from the water leeching up through the floor.
I found Peely in the far corner, sitting on a small bench, playing a violin. The music that came from the bulging, warped instrument was distorted and ghastly.
“Colette, I don’t know what’s happening…. I can’t stop playing.” Her eyes were bright with terror. Even as she spoke, her hand guided the bow, and she gently swayed with the rhythm of the song. She moved like a marionette being controlled by some unseen hand.
“Don’t worry. I’ll help you,” I said, turning to go around the small sofa that separated us.
But my path was blocked.
The ghost of Marie Antoinette stood in my way.
I held my hands up, as if that would keep her away from me — and in the pale-blue light that radiated from the queen’s face, suddenly, I saw it. The black key-shaped mark on my own wrist.
“La fille de la famille Iselin,” the queen whispered.
It was finally my turn.
THE GHOST RAISED her hand in a sharp, sudden gesture, and the room around us glowed with the light of candles and lamps — only instead of golden firelight, these flames were blue and silver and white. The room seemed to grow colder, as if the supernatural radiance sucked the warmth and life out of the air.
The full horror of the situation was on display, a once-beautiful sanctuary reduced to a tomb.
“This was supposed to be our refuge,” the queen said, her voice a harsh whisper. “But we were never safe here. They all betrayed me … but Véronique’s sin was the worst. Because I loved her like a sister.
“We had no place to go. No way to escape. And no one came for us … except the murderers.” She took a step toward me. “Do you know how it felt — to try to bring my children to safety and then to find that the one I trusted the most had run away without me? Had saved herself and her family and left mine to … to die.”
“Marie, I’m so sorry —”
“You may call me Your Majesty!” she snapped.
“Your Majesty … I apologize very much for what my family did to you. But I can’t do anything about it. I can’t change the past. I wish I could.”
“You can do something,” she said. “You can do what Véronique should have done….”
I took a step back from her and found myself in a corner of the room.
“You can die,” she snarled.
Without warning, she picked up a heavy vase from one of the tables and hurled it at me. I managed to duck out of its path but felt it pass inches from my face.
I took the moment to scramble past her toward the center of the room. She picked up one of the upholstered chairs as easily as if it weighed a couple of pounds. I dove behind a sofa as the chair sailed overhead, smashing into a cabinet that had been filled with porcelain figurines. The whole thing fell backward with an enormous crash.
My main objective was to get Pilar and myself out of the room alive. But the queen wasn’t going to let us go without a fight. How do you fight a ghost?
The queen chased me around the room, upending tables, flinging paintings from the walls, and trying to bash my head in with heavy antique sculptures. But she grew less focused by the second, as if the effort of trying to kill me was using up her energy.
Should I try to go for help? If I summoned the guards, they could rescue Pilar while I distracted the ghost.
I made it to the stairs — taking a heavy hit in the leg from a crystal punch bowl — and ran to the top, reaching for the doorknob.
“Very well,” the queen called. “Leave her alone with me. But I promise that if you do, you will never see her alive again.”
Slowly, I turned around. The room looked like a tornado had ripped through it.
Pilar was still playing, terrified tears rolling down her cheeks.
“I’m sure that she will understand,” the queen said, “why she is dying for the sins of her friend.”
I took a slow step down the stairs. “She’s completely innocent. She doesn’t deserve to be a part of this. Let her go and I’ll stay … forever.”
The ghostly blue lights around us flickered.
The queen’s haughty glance turned spiteful. “If I wanted only to kill you, I would have done it before now.”
“Then what do you want?”
Her eyes narrowed. “To show you how it feels.”
“My friend has nothing to do with this.”
“Ah, I see,” she replied in a cold, mocking voice. “You know how to be loyal under certain circumstances.”
“I only know I don’t want my friend to get hurt.”
She glided toward me and stared up from the bottom of the steps. “I was your friend once, Véronique,” she hissed. “And you did not care if I got hurt.”
“My family sucks,” I said. “I get it. But Pilar is innocent. You wouldn’t hurt an innocent person, would you? She’s just a child … like your daughter.”
She flinched.
I gritted my teeth. “And I’m not Véronique. My name is Colette.”
The queen didn’t answer.
“I know what it’s like to be betrayed,” I went on, not sure if I was doing the right thing or not. Can you reason with a murderous ghost? “I understand how much it hurts, but Pilar never did anything to you. You said yourself, Véronique was the worst. So please leave my friend alone and you can do whatever you want to me. Then maybe you can … rest in peace, or something.”
She seemed to consider what I said. When she spoke, her tone was stubborn and haughty. “I cannot rest. For me, there is no peace…. All that is inside me is hatred.”
Then she did something I didn’t expect her to do. She disappeared and reappeared next to Pilar, swatting the violin from her hand. Pilar stared at her, awestruck, and tried to stand up. But before she could take a step, she collapsed to the ground.
“Yes, you care for your friend very much,” the ghost said. “Perhaps your punishment will be to watch her die.”
“No!” I shouted, vaulting down the stairs three at a time. My feet got tangled in my long skirt, and I tumbled down the last few. By the time I got back to my feet, Pilar was being dragged across the room.
The queen dropped her on the ground in front of the massive bookshelf.
“Véronique made me suffer — but she never had to see it,” she said. “You will not be able to pretend that this is not your fault.”
She raised a ghostly hand toward the shelves and they began to tip forward.
I didn’t even have time to think. I charged across the room and threw myself at Pilar, half pushing and half rolling her unconscious body out of the way. A millisecond later, I felt a terrible impact on my body, like someone had punched me — only they were punching every muscle and bone at the same time.
And squeezing the air from my lungs.
I was pinned beneath the huge, heavy bookshelf.
I couldn’t feel my feet or my hands, so I figured that, at the very least, my back was broken, if not my neck.
I drew in a breath of air, and it was as thin as if I’d drawn it from a straw.
My head rested limply on the ground. I couldn’t really move to look for the ghost, but I figured she would be around somewhere. Watching. Waiting. Eager for my death.
The swish of her skirt, pale pink and translucent, appeared in my field of view, an
d I closed my eyes. “Just do it fast, please.”
The queen knelt next to me, her face as anguished as the expression her statue wore at the Basilique. “Véronique, why?” she wailed. “Why did you betray me, when I trusted you to the depths of my very soul?”
I didn’t know how to answer. And my vision was growing dim….
I AM STANDING with my back to a wall, shaking. A wave of nausea passes over me and I bend over to throw up. Reynaud Janvier appears beside me.
“You locked the sanctuary door?” he asks. “And took the key?”
I can hardly breathe through my sobs, but I manage to nod.
“Good,” he says. “Tomorrow, you will go home and tell your husband and father that your family must be in Belgium by Sunday. That was all the time they would give us.”
I can hardly hear his words. My thoughts are too full of my friend, my dear one, my queen.
Suddenly, I change my mind. I stand up straight and prepare to run. I can get through the tunnel and unlock the door. And then they will be safe —
I can do it. If I hurry, I can make it in time.
But Reynaud shoves me back roughly. “Are you crazy?” he growls. “This is not just about you, Véronique.”
He will never let me go to her. He would murder me first.
I collapse on the floor.
We are in the kitchen at Le Petit Trianon, the six of us. We will spend the night here, and then, when the crowds of enraged peasants have dispersed, we will scatter like seeds in the wind. Tonight is the night we have planned for.
Tonight is the night they will come for her.
I will spend the rest of my life hating myself for what I have done this night. I will have three sons, and I will drive them away from me, because I do not deserve to be loved. They will leave me, and my husband will be cruel to me until he dies, and then I will spend my days alone.
I will never forget my sorrow or my guilt, and God will punish me by giving me a long, lonely life.
By the time I am eighty-four years old, I will dream every night of cornflowers and of my queen and her dear children. I will envy those who were tried and executed during the Revolution, for they never had to live and hate themselves as I have done.
Finally, I will grow sick, and my broken heart will give up. In my dying moments, as I choke for air, I will think of her face, and the faces of her precious, innocent children, and I will pray the only prayer I have prayed for more than sixty years.
I will pray that she may someday forgive me.
My grave will be a modest one, my tombstone a simple granite marker without my name, without my birth or death years. On it will be only two words — the two words that defined my wretched life….
As I began to come around again, I heard a faint voice in my head. Not the queen’s voice, but a familiar one. Speaking in French — but I understood her words.
Tell her this, the voice said. You must tell her this for me, or I will never rest.
I coughed, a hacking, ragged cough that burned my lungs as if they were on fire. I forced my eyes open. My vision was blurred, but I knew the queen was still nearby.
“Your Majesty,” I whispered. I forced out the words, trying to ignore the pain in my chest. “I have a message for you … from Véronique…. Je regrette. Je suis profondément désolée.”
Through a veil of pale light, I saw the face of the queen above me. Tears streamed down her cheeks and faded out of the air above my eyes.
“She was … sorry.” I had to pause to draw strained breaths between my words. “She was … so sorry.”
The queen closed her eyes. “Ma meilleure amie,” she said. “Je te pardonne. Et je pardonne tes enfants.”
Marie looked down at me, touched her lips gently to my forehead … and then she disappeared.
A BURST OF coolness traveled through my body like electricity, quickly blossoming into a pulse of pain. I gasped, feeling my arms and legs suddenly spring back to life.
“Colette?” Pilar cried, rushing over. “Are you okay? Do you need me to —”
“If you can help me,” I said, air rushing back into my lungs, “I think I can get out.”
She came closer and looked down at me in horror. “That thing must weigh a thousand pounds.”
“Yeah, but …” I wiggled around a little and found room to move. “Here, take my hands and pull.”
She hauled me out, and after I sat for a minute and caught my breath, we looked under the shelves.
Tipped on its side, supporting the weight of the giant piece of furniture, was the queen’s music box.
It began to play.
“Um, Colette? I don’t think I know where we are. Or how I got here. How did all these candles get lit?” She looked around at the lights, which were growing fainter. “And … how did you learn so much French all of a sudden?”
“What?” I asked.
“You were speaking French,” she said. “For, like … the whole time.”
“Let’s go, and I’ll try to explain when we’re out of here, okay? I’ll tell you everything, I promise.”
We left the cottage and stood out in the night air for a minute, watching the flashlights bob around in the distance.
“I think they’re looking for us,” Pilar said.
“They definitely are.”
“Well … we could go out the back way,” she suggested, pointing off to our right. “I saw it on the map the other day. See the cars? That’s a road.”
I nodded. “Good idea. I just need to do one thing.”
I reached around my neck and took off the medallion. Then I walked to the edge of the pond and threw it into the water. It landed with a soft plink and sank out of view.
Then we started walking. And as we walked, I started talking.
I don’t know exactly how much Peely believed, but she listened to the whole thing and then didn’t say a word. She just patted me on the shoulder.
“I was so afraid you were dying,” she said.
“Me, too.”
She stopped and faced me. “So this does have something to do with Armand? And the murders?”
I nodded. “But I think those are over.”
Then I remembered to check for the mark on my arm — it was gone. So was the mark on Pilar’s. I could breathe again.
When we reached the road, I asked Pilar to use her phone (Mathilde’s was buried forever in the tunnel) to call Jules. She answered his panicky questions and told him where we were. In three minutes flat, he pulled up and drove us back to the hotel. We explained everything to him, and he kept looking at me, taking my hand, like he couldn’t believe I was real.
“I’ll have to find a way to pay for the dress,” I said. “And your sister’s phone.”
Jules shook his head. “Don’t worry about it.”
“I’ll pay,” Pilar said from her spot in the backseat. “You ruined them saving me.”
“Thanks, Peely,” I said.
She gave me a little smile. “You’re welcome.”
At the hotel, we went to Audrey’s room, where she was waiting, her fingernails chewed to nubs. We told her the whole story, and as she listened, her mouth dropped farther and farther open.
“Just to be clear,” she said, when I’d finally finished. “You’re not just messing with me?”
But by the look in her eyes, I could tell she was joking. That broke through a bit of the stunned shell that had hardened around me, and I was able to laugh — just a little.
“But it’s over?” she said.
“I hope so.”
Pilar sat up and folded her hands in her lap. “I know I’m not very smart, but —”
“Stop saying stuff like that about yourself,” I said.
“Well — about ghosts and whatever, I mean,” she said, but I could tell she was pleased. “But I was there, and I saw her, and I think she’s done murdering people. She looked really peaceful at the end.”
Audrey sighed. “That’s good.”
I tried t
o hold in a giant yawn, but it forced its way out. “I think I need to take a shower and get some sleep.”
“You should stay here,” Audrey said. “That way you don’t have to face Hannah.”
“Oh, Hannah.” Pilar frowned. “I forgot about her. I’m not looking forward to dealing with her.”
I wasn’t, either. Audrey’s offer was beyond tempting. But I wasn’t going to send Peely up there alone.
We rode in the elevator together. When Peely knocked on the door, Hannah opened it.
“Well, look what the cat dragged in,” she said.
“Hannah,” I said, “shut up.”
“Pilar, I think your friend needs to learn some manners.”
Pilar stopped in the hallway and looked at her. “Hannah,” she said, “seriously. Shut up.”
I WOKE THE next day unsure of what had really happened the night before. Was the mark on my arm really gone? Yes. Was I really alive? Yes. Had I almost died and then been saved by the ghost of Marie Antoinette?
Yes, to all of it.
It was our last day in Paris. We had to leave for the airport at four o’clock.
Pilar and I headed downstairs to the café for breakfast and found Audrey in the buffet line, waiting for crêpes. When she saw me, she gave me a knowing glance and a smile.
After Pilar got her plate and started walking toward the exit — to eat in the penthouse, I guessed — Audrey stopped her.
“Sit with us,” she said. It was almost a question, like she expected to be snubbed.
But Peely’s eyes lit up. “Yeah, okay. Hannah’s being a total pill.”
Brynn showed up a minute later, and then we all sat down to eat — me, Brynn, Audrey, and Pilar. The conversation was slightly awkward, since all Brynn knew — all anyone from our group knew — was that there had been a falling-out at the party the previous night and I was no longer in Hannah’s good graces (to put it mildly).
But it was still a nice breakfast. Pilar, when she realized nobody was counting her calories for her or planning to criticize her every dreamy thought, relaxed and talked as much as the rest of us.