Page 95 of Xantera
She doesn’t want to know.
I nod against her hand until she slowly pulls back.
Like all the kitchen staff I encountered, ignorance is bliss. Or maybe safety, actually. What the servants don’t know they can’t be tortured over.
We continue meandering the narrow passageway. Down those same spiral stairs, past the same light bulbs and doors, I trudge after her for what seems like longer than the first time. Until finally, we come to a door that looks exactly like all the rest, except it has a white outline.
The white drawing room.
Watching carefully, I try to get as close as I can so I don’t miss a single twitch of Eleni and this mysterious door. Of course, she glowers at me when I step on her foot, before a long slim key materializes out of her sleeve.
It looks nothing like Diggory’s key. This one is needle-like, long, sharp, and silver.
I quickly find out that’s by design when Eleni presses it into the wood, not a keyhole, just the wood right where I imagine the latch would be. Her movements are purposeful as she lets me observe exactly what she’s doing. The key slides in like butter, and then to my horror, she sinks her thumb into the razor sharp edge still slightly sticking out from the frame. And the door pops open.
Blood. She offered her blood to the door.
Swallowing down my stomach, my eyes cut back to Eleni. My mouth gapes, but I struggle to get any words out.
“Thank you,” I say again, stilted.
She retrieves the little silver key, presses it horizontally into my palm, and pushes me through the doorway.
I blink against the brutal change of light.
The white drawing room is everything the corridor isn’t.
And yes, it’s definitely white. White sofas, a marble white fireplace, a white wooden coffee table, white flowers in white vases.
Bright sunlight streaks across the room, illuminating the room in an angelic way. My eyes bounce to and from every surface.
Books on the side tables. Busts of faces I don’t recognize sitting on each side of the mantle. Lamps on the two desks that sit on opposite sides of the room. A tufted circular ottoman with a tray sitting atop it with what looks like a quill and ink.
But no paper, I notice, when I make my way toward it out of curiosity. I weave the sharp servant key through the hem of my sleeve as I take in the room.
Glass cloche. Glass cloche. Where is the glass cloche?
My heart burns. My hands tremble in anticipation, at how near I am to the very thing I need to bring the Wall of my nightmares down once and for all.
I close my eyes and channel Lucan’s voice, trying to remember his words. They feel like forever ago, when I was in those catacombs. The same ones below my feet. The same ones I’ll need to escape back through to find the nearest door.
Smack in the middle of the old white drawing room in the north wing, on a table, under a glass cloche.
My eyes fly back to the table sitting in the middle of three sofas arranged in a square around the fireplace.
I take a cautious step toward it, as if I could set off some type of trip wire, andthere.
My hesitant steps become leaps, my heart ticking like a bomb. There’s a glass cloche there, sitting on the coffee table, previously hidden behind a tall porcelain vase.
I blink when I reach it, confused. Lightheaded. This can’t be right. Right? Is it a trick of the light?
My hands fly down so quickly, I almost knock the glass over, but I’m able to lift it in my sweaty palms.
And still, it’s empty. There’s nothing under it. No key. Noanything.
Not even a speck of dust.
I’d diagnose myself with catatonia.
