“It’s white,” she’d say.
Kane’s mind drifted from the reverie, wondering where Sophia had run to. Maybe she was at home. Maybe she was at the police station right now.
The sun set and the garden shifted to hues of pink and orange, a cue that caused the guests to drift up the wide patio steps toward the château. Ursula remained lost in thought until suddenly she clapped her hands and yelled, “I’ve got it!”
People turned on the steps. She rushed Kane onto the patio and into an isolated alcove behind two hydrangea.
“This is all so familiar, and I couldn’t figure out why until just now. The wedding, the garden, the Beazley family. It’s all from The Devil in the Lily! It was a big romance novel last year. Like, huge. They’re making a movie.”
Kane shrugged.
“Okay, well the details don’t matter, but basically the book focuses on a rivalry between the main character—who I guess is Helena—and her competitor, the wicked Katherine Duval. They’re after the same guy, this hot industrialist prodigy, Johan Belanger, who totally despises Katherine but has no choice but to marry her because of her family’s investment in his business, and—what?”
Kane didn’t realize he was making a face.
“Listen, don’t judge me. It’s a good book, okay? I know you don’t read romance so I’ll just tell you how it ends: Katherine is totally insane. She’s like…the devil, I guess? It’s a metaphor. I don’t know. But this gives us everything we need to know about this reverie! Don’t you see that? All we need to do is make sure we re-create the resolution in the book. Oh, it’s so easy!”
Ursula was thoroughly convinced, and there was little Kane could do to counter any of this. She knew this story, and she knew this world. Still, Kane couldn’t quite reconcile the reverie’s plot with the Helena Quigley he had imagined. But, then again, he didn’t know the woman at all, and it wasn’t his place to speculate what worlds she harbored in her mind.
Ursula peered through the hydrangea.
“Okay, listen to me Kane. The climax of The Devil in the Lily happens the night of Augustine’s wedding. My wedding, that’s happening right now. If I’m right, Katherine is going to try to stop Helena and Johan from eloping, and Helena is going to shoot her. That happens during the fireworks in the book. My husband told me those are at midnight. That means we need to find Katherine and make sure she discovers Helena’s plan, but not too soon. Only soon enough to get murdered. Oh, it’s so good! I love this.”
Ursula looked truly enthralled to be acting out this book, but Kane couldn’t shake a churning uncertainty that something was off. Nothing was ever this easy for him.
“I’m not Elliot, but here’s the plan.” Ursula sat Kane down. “Stay here. You’re Cousin Willard, a side character who tried to run away at the start of the book but got caught and dragged back, then put in some sort of institution. He doesn’t talk and barely listens. Basically a warning of what happens to those that defy societal expectations, like Helena and Johan will by eloping. The point is that this is a Beazley family affair, and you should stay out of it, okay? Let me and the Others handles this. Just chill until we can get Helena and Johan to elope, and then we’ll come find you once the reverie is ready to be unraveled. Okay? Okay.”
Wait! Kane mouthed.
“What?”
Don’t leave me.
Ursula took his hands.
“Don’t worry, I’ll take care of everything. You have nothing to worry about, okay? Just get ready for the unraveling, and promise me you’ll stay here.”
“I—”
“Don’t say it. Just do it.”
She hustled into the crowd, leaving Kane to wait with his fear.
And wait he did. Just not there. Whether it was his usual anxiety or a sharper instinct, Kane found himself edging the patio, watching the faces in the crowd. He wondered who they were. Were they completely made up by the reverie, or were the faces memories of people Helena knew? Perhaps her mind had gathered all the ghosts of her past to inhabit her imagined world, to witness her triumph over her rival, to respect Helena here in ways they’d failed her in her actual life.
It didn’t feel right.
Guests pressed into couples beneath archways festooned with vines and glittering berries. Kane slipped into the ballroom, gasping at the towering pillars, glowing chandeliers, and a skylight striped with sunset. He found himself at a table heavy with fruits and pastries, where he saw the strangest thing. Topping off the lavish display was a birdcage, which was odd, but the birds within it were even odder; they were assembled from delicate feathers of porcelain, with chrome beaks and unseeing eyes made of ball bearings. Little, ornate machines.
Then they blinked. Were they windup? Clockwork? Kane leaned close and they ruffled their feathers. It was oddly organic. Then something past the birdcage snagged Kane’s eye.
It’s him!
Kane rushed around the table, pushing through guests until he reached the dancing couple he’d spotted. He clapped a hand on the man’s shoulder and spun him around.
Kane looked into the sea-foam eyes of Dean Flores. Recognition, then dread, masked Dean’s face.
“Cousin Willard,” Dean said, as lucid as Ursula.
Then the person Dean had been dancing with pushed the two boys apart.
“What in the heavens is going on?” she said, looking over Kane with unmitigated disgust. “What gives you the right?”
Kane saw her eyes, and his heart cracked clean in half. He couldn’t answer even if he wanted to, for the person berating him in the middle of the reverie’s ballroom was none other than his own sister.
Sophia was here. She had followed them in.
Sophia was in the reverie.
• Seventeen •
THE NEST
“No.”
Kane choked the words out, the pain only a fraction of the horror he felt seeing his own sister adorned in the reverie’s splendor. And the way she looked at him, without a hint of familiarity; she wasn’t lucid in the least. She had no idea who he was. She had no idea who she was.
She belonged to this world now. She belonged to Helena.
And, by the easiness of the embrace Kane had torn apart, a moment ago she had belonged with Dean. They were together.
Dean shuffled them all into a dark hallway. He whispered a few placating words to Sophia before taking Kane aside.
“It’s not what it looks like,” he said. “I recognized her as your sister. I was keeping her safe.”
“She shouldn’t even be here, and how did you get…”