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.
“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