We crawl into bed above The Good Book shortly before dawn, moments before the soldiers begin to stir. I lie awake, eyes shut to the rising sun streaming in through the windows, listening to Winnie and the others prepare for another day of training. The weight of what we have to do presses down upon me. I try to remind myself that I am working to avert a mission Winnie doesn’t believe in; that if we succeed, we keep her safe. But I’m not sure she’d see it that way. Once the soldiers have left and after we give up on the prospect of sleep, Harp reads from her comments a new flux of theoretical locations of the Raptured—Billings, Boise, Boulder. I can’t concentrate. I look around the room that will later be filled by my de facto family, and force myself to acknowledge that if we are caught—and right now it seems inevitable we will be—I’ll never see any of them again. I explain to Harp why I’m distracted, and I can tell by her frown that she understands.
“I just wish we could say goodbye,” I tell her.
Later, after the soldiers have returned to the command center, all of us cluster around the television together, watching the Church of America News Network in our usual, irritable, terrified way.
“You guys,” Harp suddenly addresses the group, “are so boring.”
No one responds. I see Kimberly roll her eyes at Colby. I watch Harp, unsure of what she’s doing—all I know is that she has a glint in her eye I recognize from what feels like a long time ago, the arch easiness that always comes with her burgeoning plans.
“I mean it,” she tries again, after a minute. “Don’t you ever have fun? Don’t you party? When we were with the New Orphans, there were parties every night. Epic ones—music, so much booze, everybody grinding up on each other, going nuts … ”
“I thought you said the New Orphans were useless.” Diego raises an eyebrow. “I thought you said they were pawns of the Church.”
“Uh, yeah?” says Harp. “That doesn’t mean they don’t have great parties.”
Julian gazes at her, tapping his bottom lip with his finger. Winnie watches the screen, but she seems to be trying not to smile. Diego says,
“Well, I’m sorry being a soldier is not the non-stop rave you were expecting.”
“I’m sorry for you guys,” Harp replies. “You never take any time to unwind. If that works for you, no judgment! If it were me, though—well, never mind.”
“If it were you, what?” Julian asks.
She gives him a sad half-smile. “Life is short. Shorter for a soldier. If it were me, I’d want to have some fun before I gave up my life for my—extremely honorable!—principles.”
Julian frowns. Robbie stares at Harp; he looks slightly pale. But everyone else appears to ignore her. Just when I think they must be unusually immune to Harp’s particular charms, Elliott gets up, leaves the apartment without saying a word, and returns twenty minutes later with a paper sack from which he pulls two bottles of tequila, two bottles of vodka, and a bottle of whiskey. He stays silent, but he unscrews the cap on the whiskey, holds the bottle up to Harp in a solemn salute, and takes a long, eager sip.
No one has to say it’s a party for it to become one. After some prodding from his cousin, Diego busies himself in the kitchen and a mix of delicious smells—roasting garlic, sautéeing onions, fresh cilantro, sizzling meat—begins to waft into the room, making everybody hungry and a little giddy. Harp pours tequila into a couple of dozen glasses and, when she runs out of glasses, directly into some soldiers’ mouths. But the soldiers are shy with one another—they remind me of myself, the first time I went to a house party with Harp one night last July. I was unnerved by the presence of fellow students, most of whom I’d never spoken to outside the context of history projects and French study groups. “Who did you expect to be here?” Harp asked incredulously, and then she dragged me around to every person there, forcing me to say hi. “You guys know, Viv, right?” she’d say. “I’m taking her on as my protégée.”
I watch her perform the same magic tonight, easing everyone out of their formality with a drinking game she invents on the spot. She turns up the volume on the news and shouts, “Every time they says the word ‘sin,’ we drink!” Within ten minutes, everybody is red-cheeked and giggling, though Harp (who, like me, hasn’t had a sip) is horrified. “Jesus, I didn’t realize how much they used the word ‘sin’! I don’t want these people to die tonight!”
But nobody seems to mind. It’s funny to watch the upright facades fade away, the real personalities shine through. Diego serves us a huge, warm, fantastic meal, which we eat on the floor, balancing paper plates in our laps: rice and beans; creamy guacamole with lots of salt and lime; bread dripping with melted butter and roasted garlic; golden-brown, smoky pork chops we have to cut into thirds for everyone to have a piece; orange slices for dessert. Robbie—who has somehow managed to sneak a couple of shots of tequila despite Frankie’s scolding eye—turns on music as the plates are cleared, and Amanda’s militia drifts into groups of twos and threes, chatting in corners about the things they don’t have time to care about anymore, books and bands and old secular TV shows. Kimberly and Julian invent new cocktails, mixing Elliott’s alcohol with every liquid in the fridge—they taste, spit in disgust, fall over each other laughing, and try again. Birdie and Colby sway together in the center of the room, slower than the beat of the song, while beside them Robbie performs a frenzied dance, banging his head, kicking indiscriminately, creating a wide berth around him. On a couch in the corner, Diego has his arm around Winnie; he murmurs into her ear and she sips happily from her glass, nuzzling close to him. He had planned to go to the Chateau himself tonight, for another long stretch of surveillance, but clearly that plan has been forgotten.
Harp makes rounds with the bottles, and when she empties one, she opens another. Around eleven, people begin to drift up to bed, but not before tossing their arms around Harp and me, insisting we do this every night. By eleven-thirty, only a few remain—Diego and Winnie; Kimberly sprawled across a couple of desk chairs, snoring deeply; Julian, lying on the floor; and us. I catch Harp’s eye—we’ll have to leave soon. She stands, kicking gently at Julian’s feet. He moans.
“You should go to bed,” she says. “Do you need help?”
“I need you, Harp.” Julian grabs her ankle. “Can’t you see I’m in love with you?”
She struggles to hide a smile, and to my surprise I can make out just the faintest flush of color. “You’re drunk,” she says, laughing, trying to pull away.
Julian grins and lets go. He reaches up and Harp takes his arm with both hands, pulling him to his feet. “Don’t minimize my feelings, girl. That’s cold. That’s damn cold.”
We watch him stumble out the door and up the stairs. After a moment, Diego and Winnie follow. Winnie stops to pull me into a loose-armed hug, and when she moves away, she wears a sleepy smile filled with so much love I feel a pang of guilt, like a knife between my ribs. Diego pauses at the door.
“You guys coming?”
“We’ll clean up first.” Harp nods to the empty bottles, dirty glasses, paper plates.
“Listen—thanks for that. I didn’t realize how much we needed it—but I guess you did.”
Harp smiles, but I notice the tightness around her eyes.
“How did that measure up to your New Orphan parties?” Diego asks.
“It was like a hundred million billion times better,” Harp says, truthfully, “in every way.”
* * *
When Diego is gone, Harp opens her hand to show me a watch on her palm—I recognize it as Julian’s, and though we’ll need it to make sure we’re on schedule, I’m not sure I want to know how Harp came about such Dickensian pickpocketing skills. We clean quietly, aware of Kimberly’s slumbering body—if we wake her, we’ll never leave. Slightly after one, when all footsteps upstairs have finally ceased, we make our way out, mindful of every creaking floorboard, the deafening pounding of our two hearts in the dark. It isn’t until well after we’ve left, until there’s a mile between us and our protectors, that we manage to speak.
“So … ” I begin, eager to think of anything but what we’re about to do. “Julian, huh?”
I don’t have to look at Harp to know she’s blushing; she shifts in her seat and I can practically feel the sheepish pleasure radiating from her skin. “He’s just drunk. If I had a nickel for every declaration of love I’ve received from a drunken stranger … ”
“He’s not really a stranger, though. We’ve known him over a month. And he’s cute.” Harp stays silent, and I’m so jittery I keep prodding. “Don’t you think? Come on, you can’t pretend he’s not cute.”
“It doesn’t really matter,” Harp replies quietly. “He’ll probably be dead by the end of the month, so why bother thinking about whether he’s cute or not?”
The drive to the Chateau is ingrained now, and when I park in our spot in the driveway of the abandoned house, I can almost convince myself we’re still on stake-out. But this time, we step outside. We’re wearing the clothes Winnie brought us when we first arrived at Cliff House—dark, practical, and easy to run in. Harp had been disappointed at the time—“Couldn’t she find anything with sequins?”—but now these nondescript outfits are a comfort; we blend in easily with the night. We pad down the twists of the hill. The wind blows unpleasantly warm, knocking my hood back, exposing my face—I have to tie it tightly at my chin. There’s an exotic California smell on the air: sage and lavender. It’s completely foreign to me, so uncomfortably new that I feel an ache in my stomach, a helpless longing for my house in Pittsburgh. I push the feeling away. I could never be content in that house anymore. I’m not even sure such a house could contain me.
The thin gate behind the Chateau gives way to the kitchen entrance—there’s a cluster of garbage cans reeking of rotting food, a single light above the back door. The security camera hangs over it. I check the time: 1:29 a.m. We can only hope Dylan was able to unplug it. I try the door he promised would be unlocked and it opens. I step into the kitchen and freeze. I’m waiting for an alarm to ring, a voice to shout, “Intruder!” But nothing happens. Harp slips in behind me. We stand still, letting our eyes adjust to the dark. Harp brought a flashlight, but we won’t use it unless absolutely necessary. We want to be shadows. The kitchen is huge; stainless-steel hoods and stoves gleam in the light peeking in through the door. I see a line of copper pots on the wall, a block of knives. I’m sure it’s all very fancy; I’m sure it’s unlike anywhere I’ve been before. But Dylan told us security makes a loop every twenty minutes: we have to move.
The service elevator is at the opposite end of the kitchen, around a dark corner, across from what appears to be a meat locker. I press the button and cringe at the thunderous sounds: the whoosh of the elevator’s approach; the deafening ding as its doors open. There’s no way it didn’t wake the whole hotel. We clamber in and I wave Bella’s ID in front of the sensor, press the button for floor six. When the doors seal us in, Harp turns to me with a wide, slightly manic grin.
“You know, Viv, when we started hanging out, I don’t think I understood quite how much sleuthing I’d end up doing. I’m not complaining! I’m into all this hardcore Nancy Drew shit. Maybe we should consider costumes next time, though? Or props? Comically overlarge magnifying glasses?”
I don’t answer. I can hardly hear myself think over the hum of anxiety that thrums through my body, making my teeth chatter. The floors tick by, too quickly; three, four, five, and we’re there. The doors open on red carpeting and white walls, gold lanterns hanging from the ceiling. About twenty feet away, the hall makes an L-shape, and it’s down that longer section, Dylan says, that we’ll find Peter’s room. I check the time again. 1:40. I hear feet treading carpet in the unseen part of the hall; I put my arm out to stop Harp from strutting forward. There’s a closet to our right and I dart into it, dragging her with me, hoping as we close the door that the guard hasn’t reached the hinge of the hallway in time to see the flash of our movement.
It’s cramped—extra towels and sheets folded along built-in shelves, a vacuum tilting in one corner. Instinctively we crouch to make ourselves smaller. The footsteps grow louder, closer. Harp claps her hands over her mouth. I can see the outline of the guard behind the slats of the closet door, his blue legs in a wide stance; he pauses.
There’s a crackle of static and then a voice. “Hey, Jerry,” the Peacemaker says, “What do you call a sleepwalking nun?”
Another crackle, then a muffled voice at the other end of the walkie-talkies. “What?”
“A roamin’ Catholic!” The Peacemaker chuckles merrily. Across from me, fingers still pressed to her lips, I see Harp’s shoulders shake. I glare at her in reproach, but I start to feel the blood return to my fingers—we see the guard turn back the way he came and start walking. “I love that one. I should tell Mulvey when she gets back from the fundraiser—it’ll crack her up.”
“Yeah. Okay. Hey, Bob—you still on the sixth floor?”
“Leaving now.”
“Grab me a towel? I just spilled Coke everywhere.”
“Sure thing”—and there’s not even a moment to panic, because Bob’s shadow looms in front of us once again, and alarmingly, the doorknob turns in his hand; he’s opened it half an inch, and my thoughts are a whir—I’ll throw myself at him; I’ll scratch out his eyes; I’ll buy Harp the time she needs to get out of here. But then the hallway is filled with movement and distant murmurs and Bob closes the closet door again.
“Evening, Mr. Blackmore,” we hear him say, as a pair of footsteps approach. “You’re earlier than we expected!”
“Ah—hi there … Bud, is it?” The oily voice of Ted Blackmore seeps under the door. Harp grips my arm, digging her nails into my skin.
“Bob.” Bob sounds a little annoyed.
“Bob.” Blackmore sounds even more annoyed at having been made to repeat it. “So sorry. Quiet night, I hope?”
“Very, sir. When you folks are out at these fundraisers, the place is just about deserted—it’s a little spooky to be honest with you. Almost haunted!”
“Well, Bob,” Blackmore replies snippily, and I hear a door across the hall open, “you’ll want to watch who you make observations like that to. Remember the Book of Frick: ‘In this world there be no spirits but the Holy Spirit.’ Chapter eighteen, verse sixty-two. I’m sure you don’t want to give off the impression that we Believe in ghosts.”
“Oh—no, sir! I was just—well, of course I don’t believe in—”
“Let’s hope not,” Blackmore interrupts him. “Now, I really must sleep. Thank you for all the work you do, Bob. Frick’s blessings to you.”
“And to you, too, sir.” Bob sounds confused, but the door has already closed on him. There’s a pause, and Harp’s nails dig in deeper, but then he wanders off, muttering (“There be no spirits … I only said it felt haunted!”), having forgotten all about Jerry’s Coke below.
We wait until the bustle in the hallway has died away and then I count to ten. I pull my arm out of Harp’s grasp. We have to do it now or we’ll never do it.
We stand and open the door. I step into the hall. There’s no way to cover ourselves now—we shouldn’t be here; if someone were to see us, there’d be no explaining ourselves away. We move swiftly down the hall, trying to be noiseless, trying to feel like air; we take the right-hand turn, watching the doors numbers flick by: 627, 625, 623; 621. And then there it is. Harp has a credit card out to jimmy the lock—whose it is and how she got it I have no idea; she leans forward, but some self-destructive instinct kicks in, and I raise my hand to knock: three times, loudly.
Harp jumps back at the sound. She looks around, panicked eyes searching for a reaction, but there’s only silence up and down the hall. Behind the door, too. I raise my hand to knock again and Harp grabs me to keep me from doing it, and that’s how we’re standing—my arm in the air, Harp clutching my wrist desperately—when the door finally opens.
He wears a white button-down shirt with the top button open, an untied black bowtie limp around his collar. He has a new hollowness under his cheekbones, deep circles under his eyes. His eyes are the worst part—that cool, alien blue. We stare at each other a long moment before he seems to understand what he’s looking at, but then I see his eyebrows rise, his jaw go slack. I wait for him to shout, to give us away, but he’s silent. Harp’s grip on my wrist tightens. She wants to run, I think, and I don’t blame her: it’s like staring at the ghost of someone long dead, someone you loved who now wants to hurt you. I catch his scent—woodsmoke and cinnamon—and my head goes fuzzy; I’m flooded with longing, and I’m furious with him for making me feel it. I tug my hand out of Harp’s grasp and tighten my fingers into a fist—I am going to punch Peter Taggart in the face. I am going to punch him until all the bones in my hand are ground into dust. But I don’t get the chance, because what happens next takes me so completely by surprise: his shoulders slump; his open mouth stretches into a feverish, incandescent grin; and Peter steps into the hallway, where at any moment all three of us could be seen, to pull me into his arms.