The Darkness Dwellers Read online

  With the liberation of Paris looming, Hitler ordered the German army to leave the city in ruins upon its retreat. Hidden in the catacombs beneath Paris, Gordon Grant’s unit was tasked with intercepting Nazi communications, decoding them on-site, and protecting the town from destruction. However, it is now believed that Gordon Grant was operating as a double agent.

  When French and American forces arrived in Paris, they discovered that the men in Grant’s unit had been slaughtered. The tunnels beneath Paris were rigged with explosives that, fortunately, had failed to detonate. Despite an extensive search, Gordon Grant’s body was never discovered. Reports claimed he had escaped the city with the German army—and the femme fatale who had turned him against his own country.

  I leaned back in my chair and wondered what Madame Beauregard’s fancy friends would think if they knew she still had the hots for a saboteur.

  Chapter 6

  The Great Switcheroo

  NEW YORK CITY: SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 15

  The human brain is a devious little organ. Spend all night cramming your head with facts and figures, and you’ll discover it’s empty the next morning at test time. Beg it for a clever comeback during a spat, and it will finally deliver four hours later when you’re alone in the bathtub with a face full of soap. It’s almost as if our brains like playing tricks on us. They enjoy knowing things that we don’t. Even when we sleep, our brains tease us with riddles. Sometimes we can solve them. More often than not, they just drive us nuts.

  That night I dreamed I was standing outside a grand ballroom. A benefit for the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children was about to begin. Everyone was eagerly awaiting the guest of honor. I was about to join the festivities, when a woman pushed past me. I couldn’t see her face, but I recognized the wig she was wearing. In one gloved hand the woman carried a golden cage. She stepped into the ballroom, and the crowd turned to face her. When Livia Galatzina held up the cage for all to see, I noticed that it contained a tiny white mouse. The guests went wild, and the ballroom doors slammed in my face.

  “Gee, that looks comfortable.”

  Every inch of my body ached. I forced my eyes open and saw nothing but wood. It wasn’t the first time I’d fallen asleep facedown on my desk. I let my head flop to one side. A man was standing outside my room, chewing on a piece of toast.

  “Hi, Dad.”

  “What were you studying that kept you up so late?” my father asked.

  “Etiquette,” I mumbled.

  “Fine, don’t tell me.” My parents rarely believed a word I said. “There’s coffee in the kitchen.”

  “What time is it? Am I late for school?”

  “It’s Sunday, Ananka. Drool on your desk all day if you like.” He disappeared, humming the “Anvil Chorus” on his way down the hall.

  There was some reason I needed to get up, but I couldn’t remember what it was. Sleep was beckoning me back into blissful oblivion, when I was jolted to consciousness by the sound of my phone ringing. It was Luz Lopez.

  “Hey,” I answered, my eyelids drooping.

  “Have you heard from Kiki?” No hello. No how are ya? Some people might have called Luz brusque. Others would have preferred the word rude.

  “Kiki,” I repeated, now completely awake. How could I have forgotten about Kiki?

  “You said she was going to call you when she got to Pokrovia,” Luz said.

  Another dose of adrenaline shot through my system. “She didn’t.”

  “Yeah, I figured,” Luz said. “We need to meet. I’ve got something to show you.”

  “What is it?”

  “Like I said, Fishbein, it’s something I need to show you.”

  “Okay.” I sighed. “Send a text to the other girls. I’ll meet you all at Fat Frankie’s in thirty minutes.”

  As usual, Fat Frankie’s diner was packed with police officers. I could see Oona peeking out from our regular booth at the back of the restaurant. She appeared to have her eye on a handsome young recruit who was sitting at the counter munching on a giant cruller. No crisis, however large, could keep Oona from flirting.

  “I’m here,” I announced, sliding in next to Betty. “Let’s get started.”

  Luz pulled a sheet of paper from her army-issue backpack. “Can I just state for the record that I thought it was crazy for Kiki to go to Pokrovia without taking proper precautions?”

  “What have you found?” Thanks to my growing anxiety and the odor of vaporized lard in the air, I was beginning to feel slightly nauseous.

  “I get e-mail alerts whenever anything about Kiki or the Irregulars is posted online. This picture showed up on a French gossip blog this morning.” Luz passed around a photo of a girl with white hair emerging from a black limousine. She was dressed all in black, with a scarf hiding her face below the nose and sunglasses concealing her eyes. Kiki Strike.

  “Wow. Is that Pokrovia in the background? It sure looks fancy,” Iris marveled.

  “That picture was taken in Paris,” Luz corrected her. “Last night. In front of the Prince Albert Hotel.”

  “What is Kiki doing in France?” Betty asked.

  “Didn’t her plane have a layover in Paris?” DeeDee asked. “Maybe they had to deal with some mechanical trouble. Or maybe Kiki just decided to stop off in France for a café au lait. She always complains that you can’t get a good one in New York.”

  “I have no idea if Kiki’s in France or not,” Luz responded. “The only thing I know for sure is that the girl in this picture is not Kiki Strike.”

  “What do you mean, Lopez?” Oona leaned forward across the table and snatched the photo out of Iris’s hands.

  “It can’t be Kiki,” Luz stated. “I took some measurements and made a few calculations. The girl in the photo is at least five foot seven. What’s Kiki? Four foot ten?”

  Oona examined the photo more closely.

  “Are you sure?” I asked.

  “According to the blog, there was an incident last night at the hotel. The Princess of Pokrovia slapped a bellhop for denting one of her Louis Vuitton suitcases. Sounds like she made quite a scene.”

  “Well, it’s not our Princess of Pokrovia,” Betty insisted. “Louis Vuitton luggage is way too conspicuous for Kiki. And she’d never slap a bellhop. Or make a scene.”

  “Of course Kiki wouldn’t,” Luz said. “But it does sound a lot like another princess I know.”

  “Sidonia,” I said with a groan.

  “Exactly,” Luz said. “So, let’s take a moment to examine the evidence. Kiki disappeared sometime last night. Then her deranged cousin showed up in Paris that very same evening wearing a white wig. I don’t know how they managed it, but Livia and Sidonia must have gotten their hands on Kiki. Except for the white hair, no one really knows what Kiki looks like. I think Sidonia is going to pretend to be the true heir to the throne.”

  “But what about the movie?” Betty asked. “I thought Livia and Sidonia were supposed to be in Scotland!”

  “I called the set this morning,” Luz said. “The director thinks Livia and Sidonia are still locked up in their suite, waiting for the script to be rewritten. But no one has actually seen them in days.”

  “What are we going to do?” DeeDee asked, and everyone at the table immediately looked at me.

  “Anyone feel like a trip to Paris?” I asked, just as a bear-sized man covered in curly black fur approached our table. It was Fat Frankie himself, making a rare appearance among his patrons. The bloody stains on his apron made me wonder if he’d been butchering meat for the lunch special or disposing of an unnecessary employee.

  “Hey, what’s up, Frankie?” Oona asked. She had introduced the Irregulars to Fat Frankie’s the previous summer, but according to Kiki, Oona and the owner had been friends for ages—ever since the day Frankie discovered an eight-year-old Oona sifting through the restaurant’s garbage cans and brought her inside for a hamburger on the house.

  “My waiter just told me you were here,” said the man,
his big, sad eyes focused only on Oona. “After all these years … I just can’t believe it.”

  “Believe what?” Oona said, the smile still stuck on her face.

  “That you would run away without paying for your food. I let it pass the first time ’cause we’re friends and all. But three times? My waiters have families, Oona. They depend on the money they make here at the diner!”

  “No! Frankie! It wasn’t me!” Oona insisted.

  The denial seemed to break Frankie’s heart. “That’s what I said when they told me. I said it couldn’t be her! But then I looked at the security tapes. I thought you were a nice girl now.”

  “I am!” Oona yelped, but Fat Frankie dragged her from the booth and frog-marched her out to the snow-covered sidewalk. The policemen having breakfast at the counter turned to stare at the pretty girl with the bright red face. By the time the rest of us caught up with her, Oona was almost in tears.

  “What’s going on, Oona?” DeeDee demanded.

  “Did you really skip out on your bills?” Iris asked.

  Oona opened her mouth, but no words came out. Silently, she spun around in the sidewalk slush and stomped off down the street.

  “Why would she do something so stupid?” Luz asked. “This was her favorite restaurant.”

  “Boy, you guys never cut Oona a bit of slack, do you?” I said.

  “Why should we?” Iris asked. “You know what Oona’s like. She was nice for about ten minutes after we saved her life. Then she went right back to being a pain in the butt.”

  “Oona’s difficult, but she’s also incredibly loyal,” Betty argued. “She would never steal from Fat Frankie.”

  “Yeah, but Fat Frankie watched the tapes …,” Luz began.

  “Fat Frankie saw someone who looked like Oona,” I explained. “Doesn’t mean it was actually her.”

  “Who else could it … ?” DeeDee stopped and sighed. “Lili Liu is still in town, isn’t she?”

  “Yeah,” I confirmed. “This is the third time Lili’s gotten Oona in trouble. She’s been stealing from restaurants and stores all over Chinatown.”

  “How come our relatives are such pains in the butt?” Luz groaned. “Kiki’s aunt. Lester Liu. And now Oona’s identical twin?”

  “They’re not identical,” DeeDee insisted for the millionth time. She was the only one who thought the two girls weren’t a perfect match. “I’d say they’re fraternal twins at best.”

  “We have to stop Lili before she gets Oona sent to jail,” Iris said.

  “Couldn’t we have one crisis at a time?” Luz asked. “We haven’t even figured out what to do about Kiki yet!”

  “We’ll deal with Lili in a day or two. Here’s what we’re going to do now,” I told her, taking charge. “You, Iris, and DeeDee are going over to Oona’s house. You’ll all apologize nicely and then finish working the baldness cure. Betty and I are going to pay a visit to Amelia Beauregard.”

  “Who’s that?” Luz asked.

  “The woman who leaves the lilies in the Marble Cemetery every Valentine’s Day,” I said.

  “Why are you going to see her?” DeeDee asked.

  “Because she might just be our ticket to Paris,” I said.

  Chapter 7

  What Happened to Kiki

  LOCATION UNKNOWN: SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 15

  It makes no difference whether you’re Manhattan’s stealthiest cat burglar, the fastest safecracker in Queens, or the brawniest bandit in all of the Bronx. There’s one place on Earth you’ll never break into. No matter how hard you try—or what surgical tools you possess—you can never break into another person’s mind. Which makes the task before me particularly difficult. For now I must describe events as they happened to someone else—and try to see the world as it looked through her icy blue eyes. It would be easier if I were allowed to tap my imagination from time to time or add a few embellishments. But Kiki Strike is a stickler for the truth, and she’s promised to “inform me” if I get my facts wrong.

  The first thing Kiki says she remembers is waking up freezing. The cramped room was octagonal, its walls stone and its tall, arched windows boarded over. Outside, the wind battered the building, and frigid breezes crept through its cracks. A rotting rope hung from the center of the ceiling. At the top of the rope was a large metal bell. Kiki was inside a bell tower, but the church it belonged to could have been in Pokrovia or Poughkeepsie. There was simply no way to tell.

  Hoping to make a racket, Kiki grabbed the rope and pulled with all her strength, but the bell wouldn’t budge. She tried to pry a board off the windows, but it refused to give. She yelled until her voice grew hoarse, but no one came to her rescue. Finally, there was nothing to do but sit down with her back to the wall and try to make some sense of the situation.

  That’s when she saw it—a small black book that blended in with the floorboards. The cover was filthy, and the spine had crumbled away. Kiki flipped to the first page, where she found a title, The Two Little Princes, and a short inscription written in fresh black ink: For my beloved niece. It was a cruel joke, Kiki realized at once. Like all royal children, she had always been haunted by the tale of the Princes in the Tower—two little English heirs to the throne who were locked away in the Tower of London so that their evil uncle Richard could become King of England. No one knew how long they’d survived after their imprisonment. But they were last seen in 1483, when the elder was twelve and his brother just ten. Their whereabouts remained unknown for almost two hundred years—until the day their bones were discovered at last, buried beneath an ancient staircase. The thought of their final hours, alone in a dark, rat-infested prison cell, was enough to make your average princess tremble in terror. And a book on the subject was the sort of twisted gift that only Livia Galatzina would be evil enough to give.

  As soon as she’d finished ripping the book into a million little pieces, Kiki tried to recall what had happened. The last thing she remembered was dinner service on the plane to Pokrovia by way of Paris. As the flight attendant delivered the disturbingly pink salmon entrée to the passengers, she’d paused at Kiki’s seat just long enough to refill Kiki’s coffee cup. Across the aisle sat Verushka Kozlova, disguised in her nun’s habit. She, too, had only a cup of coffee. Yet somewhere over the Atlantic, Kiki had felt her eyelids grow heavy. A second cup of coffee did nothing to help. The sound of snoring drew her attention across the aisle. Verushka’s head was tilted back at an unusual angle, and the sounds that came from her throat made Kiki think of a dying goat. Suddenly, a herd of goats stormed down the aisle past her chair. Dizzy and disoriented, Kiki rose and followed them as they hurled themselves from the emergency exit into the darkness. She felt herself falling and falling. …

  And now she had landed.

  Chapter 8

  The Lady Factory

  NEW YORK CITY: SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 15

  L’Institut Beauregard was located in a prim four-story townhouse on West Tenth Street in Greenwich Village. Its bricks were all the perfect shade of red, and its shutters were painted a tasteful forest green. The slush that splattered the rest of the city had miraculously spared the building. Its stairs were cleaner than the floors of an operating room.

  Betty followed as I opened the front door and entered a lovely waiting room. A homey blaze crackled in the fireplace, and plush velvet armchairs were arranged around a gently worn Oriental carpet.

  “You’re not students.” The voice was too young to sound so haughty. A girl only a few years our senior was sitting at an antique writing desk in the corner. She had pearlladen ears and straight blond hair that had never known a tangle. A gold pin bore the name Taylor Lourde.

  “How did you figure that out?” I asked. “Was it the life in our eyes?”

  The girl showed no sign that she’d heard my joke. “Students arrive through the side entrance. Girls with bad ideas come through the front door. If you’re here to ‘rescue’ some friend of yours, you might as well leave right now.”

  “We’re here
to see Madame Beauregard,” Betty said.

  “And what makes you think Madame Beauregard will see you?”

  “What’s up with the attitude, Taylor?” I said, leaning across her desk, my face inches from hers. “I thought this school was supposed to teach you to be polite.”

  “It teaches girls how to be ladies. There’s a difference.”

  “I’d say.”

  The girl opened her mouth to bite back, and then snapped it shut at the sound of footsteps.

  “Miss Bent. Miss Fishbein. How nice of you to pay us a visit.” Amelia Beauregard glided into the room. Once again, she was dressed in gray—from the gray silk blouse buttoned up to her chin to the gray stockings that made her legs look cadaverous. Even her few bits of exposed flesh were almost grayish in color, as though the women were slowly turning to stone. She checked her watch. “It’s four o’clock. Would you care to join me for tea?”

  “Yes. Thank you, Madame Beauregard,” said Betty. “That would be lovely.”

  As soon as the woman’s back was turned, I stuck out my tongue at Taylor Lourde and received a snooty snarl in response.

  Amelia Beauregard led us through the building, past a large room with an observation window that faced the hall. A class was in session, and a man in an argyle sweater was teaching ten young women how to curtsy. Outside the window stood an anxious mother, watching nine of the girls dip in unison while the tenth repeatedly fell flat on her butt.

  “Mrs. Underwood.” Our hostess acknowledged the woman with a nod.

  “Oh, Madame Beauregard!” the woman moaned miserably, grabbing and clinging to Amelia Beauregard’s elbow. “Ivy’s hopeless! I’ve been watching for fifteen minutes, and she hasn’t managed a single curtsy!”