Page 45 of In the Garden of Monsters

“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe our minds are just drawing strange parallels because this is such a creepy place.”

“Maybe. But they are compelling parallels.”

As I put the journal back on the shelf, thinking it would be safest there, I remembered the secret passage and asked Paolo if Giulia had mentioned it again.

“Ah,sì.I think it is somewhere in this room.Perchè?”

“Maybe it leads to something that would give us a hint about all this.”

He shrugged, then gave me a big smile. “And because it is a secret passage. Everyone wants to find the secret passage.”

I chuckled. He was certainly right about that.

Soon we were examining every little nook and cranny of the library, pressing the edges of the wallpaper, feeling under drawers in the desk, tipping back books on shelves. We hadn’t been at it long when I heard Dalí bellowing for Paolo.

“He must have seen the painting,” he said with a sigh. He gave me an apologetic look, then headed toward the sound of the maestro’s voice.

As I watched him walk out the door, my gaze landed on a tiny bronze detail on a corner of the lintel—an arrow pointing toward the bookcase on its left.

Julia...

I ignored the voice and followed the arrow, which led to another at the edge of the bookcase. This one pointed down. The arrows were so tiny that if you didn’t know what you were looking for, they would be easy to miss among the decorated bookcases.

Julia...

The truth was, I was losing my fear of the whispers, hearing them now for what I thought they surely must be—a warning. About what, I could hardly imagine, much less say aloud. About Ignazio? About the seeds? About my potential death?

I felt along the edge of the bookcase until I found another bronze arrow, this one an arrowhead without a shaft, pointing toward the wall. I pressed it, and suddenly, there was a whoosh and a slight sucking sound as the corner of the library seemed to pull backward in upon itself, revealing a door. It opened to an extremely dark set of stairs. The air was stale, and I was pretty sure no one had used the passage in centuries. I marveled that Vicino Orsini had found someone with the technology to create a staircase like this.

Beyond the library, I could still hear Dalí’s voice, and occasionally, I caught my name. Much as I wanted to find a light source and descend into the passageway, I was sure they would miss me soon. I did not see any way to pull the door closed, but when I pressed the arrow again, the bookcase and the corner swung back toward me and clicked shut.

Just as I turned away from the secret door, Dalí appeared in the library. “My little goddess, you must come now. Those fools! They destroyed you, and they melted your visage. I must make it anew. Now!”

Reluctantly, I let Dalí lead me to the salon, where he had me lie upon a table, one leg and arm dangling, my head barely propped up by a pillow. I was naked, but a fire raging on the grate not far away kept me warm. Dalí had blissfully forgone the notion of the pomegranate seeds and seemed focused primarily on capturing my image with the intention of adding any adornment later. He banished everyone with the instruction that no one was to enter, not even Gala. When Dalí first began to paint, I tried to spark conversation about his technique, but he commanded my silence with a grunt and a sharp wave of his hand.

So I lay there for hours, with only a few short breaks. I had not yet seen Dalí in such a fervor, so deeply invested in his art on the canvas rather than the art of his personality.

My mind ran wild, thinking over every meal I had eaten, every interaction with Ignazio, and every whisper of the ghosts. I didn’t understand how Orpheus fit into this puzzling mix, but his actions were so deliberate that I was sure he did. Nor did I understand the connection of these ghostly women to this place and why all their names were Julia. But, above all, I couldn’t get my head around this person named Aidoneus.

“Maestro Dalí, do you sometimes find that life is more surreal than your paintings?”

He frowned. I thought I had annoyed him, and he might not answer, but then he fixed his wide eyes in my direction. “No. My paintings are more surreal, but they are also safer.”

“I wish I could live in one of your paintings,” I said wistfully.

“But you do, little Proserpina,” he said, turning the canvas toward me so that I could see my body rendered in paint, stretched across a vast ocean, floating, my hair falling to touch the water, my eyes open, staring at the viewer.

“My name is Julia,” I said, suddenly angry at his insistence on calling me Proserpina. Perhaps Dalí was entangled in the murderous scheme that was unfolding around me. He was practically possessed with the idea of me eating the pomegranate seeds, demanding my compliance.

“You are who I say you are! You bear the name that I give you, the name that will live on for centuries after you, that will be forever emblazoned upon this canvas. You are Proserpina, a woman stolen from her life, stolen from her loves, doomed to darkness. Now HUSH.” He slashed an arm across the air toward me, like a sword sweeping off a champagne cork. “HUSH!”

When we finally finished, it was late. Ignazio had left me and Dalí a warm platter of bread, roasted chicken, an assortment of savory pastries, and some more Elysium wine. Despite my desire to taste the heavens again, I decided I would not have any wine that night. I wanted my wits about me, even though, to my relief, there wasn’t a single pomegranate seed in sight.

While we ate, the others played Machiavelli, a card game Paolo had taught them. “It’s a little like rummy,” Jack explained when I joined them. The goal of the game was to be the first person to play all their cards. After my first hand, Gala and Dalí, who’d been downing the wine incessantly, had become so intoxicated that they started undressing each other right there, in front of us. Embarrassed, Paolo quickly excused himself, and I, not wanting to be an unwilling part of the Dalís’ orgy, followed suit.

“Dio mio,”Paolo cursed after we had escaped the salon. “They are wicked.”

I wasn’t sure I thought of them as wicked, just oversexed, but I didn’t say as much. While I had been privy to a number of sexually deviant situations in the art world, the Dalís took it to another, much more uncomfortable, level.

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