Another Faust (45 page)

Bicé put her hands up to stop her ranting. “Calm down.”

“I don’t want to calm down. This was supposed to teach her a lesson. Now all my work is ruined, because we can’t stay anymore. And it’s all her fault!”

“You did a vicious, awful thing and just because you didn’t think of the consequences for yourself, now you’re trying to blame Belle?” said Bicé.

“You don’t even know what I’m talking about, Bicé.” Looking at Belle, Victoria went on: “But you know what you did. And now you look like a baboon and you deserve it. You weren’t even strong enough to take what was given to you.”

Belle couldn’t find her voice. Bicé raised hers. “Calm down, Victoria.”

“No! I hate all of you! I hate that I have to live with you! And you don’t even know what she’s done. You’re here playing the fairy godmother, and you have no idea what she’s done to you.”

Belle suddenly woke up. “Don’t, Victoria.”

“How’re you going to stop me? You don’t have
her
helping you anymore. You’re just another pilgrim.”

“It’ll hurt you too . . . if you tell,” said Belle.

“How? We’re leaving. I don’t ever want to see you again.”

“What’re you two talking about?” said Bicé.

“You,” said Victoria. “We’re talking about you, and you don’t know it. Just like you don’t know how any of us got here. You don’t know how we all made the deal with Vileroy, how she came to our real homes at midnight and told us we could have what we wanted. You don’t know because you never had the heart. You would never have taken the deal. That’s why you don’t have the mark. You don’t even know that we weren’t adopted at birth. We did it when we were ten! Everything you remember before then is fake. Why do you think everything you remember doing is so unlike you? So uncreative? None of it happened. You were a happy little twin in Italy till your sister here sold you out.”

“Stop!” screamed Belle, but Victoria wasn’t about to stop now.

“She wanted to be pretty so bad, she had you kidnapped and brainwashed in your sleep. Go ahead, ask her. And she didn’t even have to. She just wanted to keep something from her past life. You were the teddy bear she dragged along. Face it, Belle, you’ve done some ugly things. You sold your own sister to the devil and then pretended all this time that you actually care about her. Just like you’ve pretended to be the pretty little queen. Well, you’ve done some ugly things. And now you have the face you deserve.”

Belle was standing still, slow, silent tears rolling down her cheeks. Bicé stood next to her. Victoria was still fuming, her chest expanding and contracting as if she’d just lost a race.

In the aftershock, from the doorway, Christian — who had been standing there a while — said, “I don’t get it,” and Valentin — who had been lurking behind him — laughed.

After Belle had fainted or pretended to faint (no one ever knew), and Valentin had disappeared to his room, Victoria stormed out toward the east wing of the house, where Madame Vileroy lived, because that was the only comfort she had. Christian and Bicé walked by themselves, and Bicé told him everything she’d heard. She told him about the letter she had seen — the desperate query of a boy with no options. It was all clear now. The four of them had made the deal when they were ten — even Christian. He must have changed his mind later on. Otherwise, why the fake memories?

“That’s why my mark was so light,” said Christian, rubbing his heart.

“That’s why I don’t have one and yours went away when you decided you didn’t want to steal anymore,” said Bicé. “And it explains why we remember you being so eager to steal when we were eight. The memories before we were ten are all fake. Oh, Christian. We had an entire life somewhere else.”

“We have to get out of here,” said Christian, stopping midstride. Bicé kept walking. “We have to leave,” he said again.

“Maybe,” said Bicé.

“That’s the only way to make this right,” he said. “We have to get out.”

“Not yet.”

“I don’t understand. I thought you’d want to leave tonight. You’ve been the biggest victim.”

Bicé stopped.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to bring it up. Belle probably —”

“There’s still more to this than we know.” They were in front of a door that Christian hadn’t seen before. It was Victoria’s.

“What’re we doing?” asked Christian.

“Victoria has been spying on us.”

Christian looked on. He felt a hiccup in his breathing. It looked to him as though Bicé was disappearing and appearing again, like a cut in a film. Then the door was open.

“How’d you open it?” said Christian. The knobs only opened for their owners.

“I froze everything and dragged her over here,” Bicé said with a quick grin.

“You put her back so she wouldn’t know?”

“Yeah, but I spit in her ear.”

The image of the short Bicé dragging an inanimate Victoria like a mannequin to the door, using her hand to fool the doorknob, and dragging her back, probably by her ankles, made Christian smile.

The insects in the room were terrifying to Bicé, the ultimate invasion of privacy. Christian recognized them immediately. He had seen them all over the city, stealing information. He’d even caught a few as they floated through his window, around the tennis court, inside the locker room. He had wondered what their lives were like and let them go.

Now the two of them stared at the room, a plague of flies, moths, mosquitoes, beetles, and bees. They hovered and buzzed and droned around everything. Their wings clattered against one another. Larvae were falling from the undulating swarm onto the linoleum, dropping like candies onto a factory floor.

“This is grotesque,” whispered Bicé.

“What?” said Christian.

“This is how she’s been spying,” said Bicé.

“I heard her talking about her moths . . . but this . . .” Christian kept his lips tight.

“They’ve evolved. The moths must not have been enough. She’s so . . . so greedy.”

“How does it work? They spell it out in the air or something?”

“Maybe they sting it in her ear.”

The knowing cloud sparkled in Christian’s eyes as he stepped forward. Bicé didn’t stop him.

“How did you find out about this place?” asked Christian, walking curiously toward the swarm.

“When I stop things to study, I’ve started looking around. Vileroy doesn’t want me to, but I’ve been trying to figure out the secrets of this place. I caught Victoria in here. She uses it all the time.”

“Will they attack us?” asked Christian.

“They shouldn’t, I don’t think. They seem to be programmed. I think they’ll obey whoever’s got access to the room.”

Bicé fingered the can of insecticide in her pocket. She had picked it up when she stopped everything to open the door, just in case anything went wrong.

As Christian stepped closer and closer to the center of the swarm, he thought about everything that had happened, everything he could possibly ask. He wanted to know how they had each gotten here to this miserable place. Was it one big decision or a thousand small ones? He wondered who their parents had been. How could Belle betray her sister the way she had or Victoria continue worshipping Madame Vileroy even after knowing who she was? And he wondered why Bicé seemed so reluctant to leave.

Deep in thought, Christian barely noticed how muffled Bicé’s voice sounded as she gave out instructions. He looked over at her and saw her motioning to him. He tried to make out her words, but he couldn’t. Dozens of little antennae were prodding inside his eardrums. He tried to fight the impulse to struggle. They were touching every inch of him. If he brought up his hand to swat them away from his face, he would only bring more insects. It was like trying to dry your face in a swimming pool. But Christian was used to being submerged. Instead of the crystals of his blue lagoon or the refuse of his watery grave, now he had tiny legs probing at every pore in his skin. He didn’t know how to get the insects to speak to him.

Outside, Bicé yelled, “Tell them what to do!”

Christian shook his head but couldn’t get any space. He said, “Bicé, help.”

Suddenly Bicé’s voice became magnified in his ear midscream. “What to do! They’ll listen to what we say.”

Hearing her voice was like being thrown a life preserver. And at the same time, with the bugs acting as his ears, it was as if they suddenly became one body. Christian calmed down a little. “What should we ask them?”

“All I know is what I’ve guessed so far.”

“Show us the future,” said Christian.

Bicé started to say, “I don’t think they can do that,” when they both heard the buzzing grow louder. At first it was just static, but soon they both began to catch words, here and there in the garbled hissing. The feeling was uncomfortable at first, as though each little sting was a hardwired cable being jacked into their ears. They weren’t exactly hearing the words of the insects, more like their brains were having the information shoved into them. Soon, not only were they hearing, but they could also see visions forming behind their eyelids. The experience of every little bug, whatever it had seen and heard, was being forcefully uploaded into their heads. And soon, they didn’t even notice the discomfort.

They saw Valentin alone in his room. He was playing a first-person shooter on his computer.

“What is this?” said Christian.

“It’s happening right now, in the other room.”

“But that’s just Val, gaming. I asked for the future.”

“Oh my,” said Bicé, “look at his clock.”

Christian saw the clock at the upper right-hand corner of Valentin’s computer. It was six hours ahead.

“He’s going
forward
in time?”

“I didn’t think he could.”

“How are we seeing this?”

“Look.”

There was a tiny moth, sitting quietly like a porcelain statuette on the back of Valentin’s chair. Val jumped up from his seat with his arms raised in victory. He strolled out of the room. The moth followed, apparently reporting back to the hive — now including Christian and Bicé — instantaneously. Bicé was about to say something, but neither she nor Christian could speak when they saw Valentin walk down the hall and into a room where
another
Christian and
another
Bicé were sitting. From the thick of the hive, Christian and Bicé watched as the moth hovered around Valentin. In the other room, Christian looked to Valentin and the scene played out like this:

The Christian who was watching, the one in the hive, said, “What’s happening?”