A Small Zombie Problem Page 5

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  The mansion was equally splendid on the inside. A cavernous central hallway stretched from front to back. Above twinkled glass chandeliers, the kind that had once been powered by gas. Below gleamed mahogany floors, partly covered by old, fancy rugs.

  Near the baseboard, decorative grilles delivered cool air, which was all the more delicious for the oppressive summer heat outside.

  The walls were hung with portraits of Malveaus from long ago…and not so long ago. They stared out from their gilded frames, dark-eyed, unsmiling, all sumptuously costumed in fine clothing and jewels.

  Escargot came to a stop before a wide pair of sliding doors and, with a gloved hand on each knob, pushed them into the walls on either side. Though very large, they were well oiled and opened with ease.

  “Mr. August DuPont!” the butler declared importantly to the room beyond.

  August entered a grand salon as the doors closed behind him.

  The ceiling was painted with a delicate fresco of curlicues and shells. Above the mantel towered a great mirror, oddly draped in sheer black fabric that obscured the room’s reflection. Every corner and surface was crowded with bronze statuettes, candlesticks dripping with crystals, and vases filled with clouds of sweetly scented flowers. The walls, settees, and tufted chairs were all covered in the same soft green damask fabric.

  It was a lofty room, and it might have been bright too, had the draperies not been closed. Some amount of sunlight did trespass between the heavy, patterned panels, piercing the interior with a glistening, speck-filled shaft. In this half gloom, the olive-colored interior resembled an underwater grotto. August almost expected a catfish to wiggle past his face.

  There was so much to look at, so many “sunken” treasures, it was several seconds before August noticed there were other living people present. Clearly neither, however, was Hydrangea’s sister. Rather, seated on a green settee was a girl around his own age. Beside her, his arm draped leisurely across the mantel, stood a boy.

  August recognized him immediately.

  It was the honey-haired boy he’d encountered at the gate of Locust Hole.

  August’s eyes traveled from the boy to the girl and back to the boy, and he blinked in surprise to see the same face in duplicate; the two were clearly twins. Two pairs of wide-set eyes, dark but translucent, like breakfast tea. Two heads of that singular, tightly waved blond hair. Two full mouths with curving lips that looked like they’d been drawn by an artist. The symmetry and proportions of their oval faces were so perfect, they reminded August of paintings he’d seen in a documentary about the Italian Renaissance.

  They were dressed, August realized, entirely in black—the girl oddly formally, in an expensive-looking dress and high socks; the boy in the same unusual athletic garb as before. In his fist was the grip of a thin silver sword, which he held upright, casually resting on his shoulder, its point sheathed within a protective rubber tip.

  “Do you fence?” the boy inquired, lowering the weapon and crossing the room with an outstretched hand, which August—with little choice—shook. “It’s a gentleman’s sport, you know; all stamina, strength, discipline.”

  He flexed the slender blade, which sprang back and forth with a pleasing twang.

  “A foil, they say, requires the most skill; points are earned by hitting specific targets on your opponent.” He jabbed August’s ribs gently with the soft rubber tip. “But I’m a saber man myself. You just slash away, left and right, really go to town!”

  The foil quickly and loudly sliced the air around him as August blinked nervously, wishing that he too were safely buttoned into a trim, padded jacket.

  “Um,” he said apprehensively. “Who are you?”

  The boy froze mid-thrust, mouth open.

  “Why…you don’t know yet?” He looked half-shocked, half-amused. “It seems we are related, August. Just discovered the fact ourselves, no more than an hour ago.” He drew himself up, with a broad, enthusiastic grin. “I,” he announced with impressive confidence, “am Beauregard Malveau.” He extended his open palm toward the green settee. “This is my sister, Belladonna. Orchid Malveau is our mother.”

  “My aunt…is your mother?”

  “That’s it. We are your cousins.”

  August was stunned. Cousins. What?

  “I didn’t realize,” he stammered, shyly thrilled, “that I had cousins.” He glanced at Belladonna.

  The girl was seated behind a small table cluttered with the stuff of crafting: bottles of glue, paintbrushes in jelly jars, newspaper to protect the tabletop. The pungent, acrid odor of some potent substance stung August’s nostrils.

  “What did he say?” Belladonna inquired of her brother.

  August repeated himself more audibly (and made a conscious note to speak with more volume in the future).

  “We knew nothing of you either,” responded Belladonna absently, slowly rising and moving toward August, her eyes fixed on something above his head. She drew close, peering intently upward, mouth ajar. August got a good eyeful of her unusual necklace, a string of shiny, black-lacquered, chunky tubes that looked strangely familiar.

  “Is that…a butterfly?” said Belladonna in wonder.

  “Is that…rigatoni?” asked August.

  Belladonna’s gaze fell sharply to August’s face, and her mouth snapped shut. She retreated coolly, fingering her necklace.

  “My sister,” said Beauregard, raising his eyebrows knowingly, “fancies herself a jewelry designer. She works exclusively”—he stifled a half smile—“in pasta!”

  “I make things too,” said August hopefully. But Belladonna had returned to her worktable, with a sideways glance appraising the butterfly’s owner. August was suddenly very conscious that his jacket was a size too small, and he realized how dusty his boots must be after the long trek.

  “Do you believe me now, Belladonna,” appealed Beauregard, “about the butterflies?”

  But the girl merely sneered and returned to her creative endeavor.

  “She’s notoriously hostile,” explained Beauregard. “You know”—he leaned over, nudged August’s thigh with the foil’s guard, and whispered into the boy’s ear—“when there are twins, one of them is always evil, right?”

  He winked, and August experienced a surge of delight. Stella Starz and her gang were constantly exchanging winks, confirming one another’s status as co-conspirators, insiders; confirming that they belonged.

  No one had ever winked at August before. It felt warm and welcoming, like he was being admitted to a secret society. Still, he shot a nervous glance at the evil twin. But she was stubbornly engrossed in lacquering a large piece of cannelloni.

  “I promise you,” said Beauregard, placing a firm grip on August’s shoulder and nodding toward his sister, “that not all the Malveaus are so frosty. You are very welcome here, Cousin. You are part of the family now.”

  August smiled bashfully.

  “In fact”—Beauregard straightened, eyebrows high, clearly struck by a brilliant idea—“you must be our guest at the annual crawfish boil. We host it at Château Malveau every year.”

  Belladonna’s head jerked up. She glared at Beauregard. She glared at August.

  “Beau!” she barked with an expression of shocked contempt. “You can’t be serious.” She held out her palm toward August. “He’s obviously—”

  “Ignore her,” interrupted Beauregard as August flushed with embarrassment; it was clear that Belladonna didn’t think much of him.

  “It’s real fun,” Beauregard reassured August kindly. “There’s a band. And dancing. A whole mess of things to eat. And this year, Mama’s letting us play paintball! It’ll be the perfect opportunity to introduce you to the crew!”

  “You sail?” asked August.

  Beauregard and his smile paused. “Crew
!” he repeated with emphasis. “Like posse. Entourage. Gang. Friends!”

  Friends? Gang? August’s heart skipped a beat. There was a gang!

  Beauregard was studying August with a puzzled and slightly concerned expression.

  “So…how peculiar are you, exactly? I mean, the butterflies are curious enough as it is, but they give you some personality, I guess. I think I can sell them. But there’s nothing even stranger, is there, that I should know before I take you on? Nothing unpleasant or gross? No sleeping in coffins? No monsters in the cellar?”

  “Uh…no…I…,” stammered August, feeling vaguely like he was being interviewed for a job he hadn’t applied for.

  “The Malveaus,” said Beauregard more seriously, his smile less broad, “have a certain reputation in these parts. Ours is the finest, most powerful family in the county. We wouldn’t want anything—or anyone—to be associated with us that wasn’t…respectable. Normal, you understand?”

  August thought about his highly strung, tiara-wearing aunt. He thought about his boarded-up house and his squalid attic bedroom and the fact that at nearly twelve years old, this was his first venture beyond the garden gate. He thought about the alarming incident in the graveyard.

  “Nope,” he said quickly, shaking his head with confidence. “Everything else is perfectly normal.”

  Beauregard’s face lit up again, and he gave August’s shoulder a friendly shake.

  “A whole new cousin,” he said, beaming. “A DuPont, no less.”

  August’s hand twitched. Surely this must be the right moment. He swung his open palm into the air. But August’s first high five would have to wait. At that very moment, the doors again slithered open to reveal the neckless butler.

  “Miz Orchid,” bellowed Escargot, “awaits Mister August in the Chamber of Jewels!”

  The Chamber of Jewels had clearly been designed as a library, with walls of rich mahogany shelving that scrambled from floor to ceiling. And indeed, a small collection of ancient, leather-bound books still inhabited some lower areas.

  But most of the available shelf space had been given over to the display of gemstones. Each was protected by a glass dome and sat upon a round wooden plinth with a small metal plaque to identify the contents. Museum lights recessed into the underside of the shelves illuminated the specimens beneath and cast the room in a ghostly glow.

  As he appeared so far to be alone, August browsed the collection. Some of the gems were as you might expect: gloriously hued, and cut with many glittering facets. Others were smoothly surfaced and opaque. Still others looked like any rough, commonplace rock you might kick down the street or throw down a well.

  A few of their names were familiar: amethyst, fire opal, yellow sapphire. Others had more exotic, intriguing titles: meteorite, bloodstone, zebra rock.

  One specimen in particular caught August’s attention. It bore the name tag “Cadaverite.” But it was not the stone that arrested him; rather, it was the stone’s absence. Despite the labeling, the display was empty.

  August found something inexplicably tragic about this vacant dome and the undeniable fact that something was very much missing.

  He was contemplating possible explanations when, from the corner of his eye, he noticed a slight movement. August turned to observe a palmetto fan wafting gently back and forth. It was held by long, slim fingers—fingers that belonged to a person seated in, and concealed by, one of the high-backed chairs angled toward the fireplace.

  August was not, and had never been, alone.

  Softly rustling, the figure rose from that shadowy part of the room. It was a woman, extravagantly dressed in a lengthy, black silk gown. An elaborate, high black comb protruded from the back of her predictably honey-blond hair. Her entire personage, from comb to ankles, was draped in a veil that glittered with tiny black seed pearls.

  Behind the black lace lay twinkling black eyes, a fine nose, and enigmatic, rose-colored lips. August would not have been surprised if the woman had introduced herself as queen of the underworld.

  But she didn’t.

  Instead, she tilted her head and examined the boy with curiosity.

  “There was gossip, of course,” she said in a voice as warm and creamy as café au lait, “surrounding the ghost of Locust Hole. But then, ghost stories are not uncommon around these parts and rarely credible.”

  August could see some resemblance to Hydrangea. The women shared a similar height and frame and must logically have been close in age. But where Hydrangea seemed limp, fragile, and exhausted, the air around this woman buzzed with some vital, magnetic energy.

  “It was only,” she continued, “after Beauregard returned with his report—you met your cousins, yes?—that I deduced this so-called phantom could only be Lily’s child. It was rumored that my youngest sister had given birth, but all assumed that the baby was taken—along with its mother—by the epidemic.”

  With a soft expression, the woman reached out and absently touched August’s cheek.

  “You’re like her,” she said. “At least, from what I recall. She was just a girl the last time I saw her. Before I…left.”

  “I don’t remember her,” said August, speaking more loudly in order to be heard the first time.

  “It was so long ago,” agreed the woman. “And yet also like yesterday. The Peruvian flu was a democratic disease, I will give it that, claiming the lives of rich and poor alike. Men. Women. Children too.”

  She looked away, toward the shuttered window, the fan rippling her veil.

  “It took my husband, you know,” she said. “It crushed my heart. It emptied the world of happiness, of music, of color.”

  She glanced briefly around and gestured at their surroundings.

  “And so we wear black. And close the shutters. We cover the mirrors.” Her chest rose as she sighed deeply. “Ours, child, is a house of eternal mourning.”

  “You must have loved him very much,” said August.

  The woman’s gaze was fixed on something in the past, in sadness. Her black eyes burned with something fierce and awful.

  “I was robbed,” she said in a voice raw with grief and fury that sent a shiver down the boy’s spine. “I would do anything to recover what I lost.”

  For a moment, the room was horribly silent. And then, as if suddenly returning to the present, the woman started slightly and, facing August, smiled. She extended her fingers in a regal manner that suggested they should be kissed. Navigating the huge black diamond rings, August did so.

  “I,” quietly announced the woman, “am your aunt Orchid.”

  “I brought you a gift,” blurted August, presenting his now rather crumpled parcel.

  Orchid Malveau laid her fan and August’s box on a table topped with black marble and delicately unwrapped the gift. From the tissue, she withdrew a model. It depicted a skeleton boy being carried aloft by a large orange balloon.

  August was suddenly painfully aware of the opulence surrounding them. His model instantly seemed out of place and foolish. Ridiculous, even.

  “I made it myself,” he muttered.

  “How…enchanting.” Orchid’s smile seemed forced. She moved to the mantel and pushed aside a lush potted fern, replacing it with the skeleton boy. “I shall treasure it forever.”

  Orchid’s genteel politeness somehow made August feel even worse. He nodded, deeply embarrassed.

  Orchid seemed sympathetic to his plight.

  “I’ll have Escargot bring us tea,” she said gently, twisting a brass S-shaped handle affixed to the wall. On its release, August heard the muffled sound of a bell somewhere deep within the bowels of the mansion.

  “In the meantime, child, come sit here. I have a proposal for you!”

  The marble-topped table was repositioned before the fireplace, and on it, tea was served. The DuPonts’ finances were suc
h that scrimping and saving was the norm, and dining at Locust Hole was necessarily a humble affair. August, therefore, had never sat before such a sumptuous spread as this. You see, afternoon tea at Château Malveau was not just tea.

  It did indeed include a pitcher of sweet tea, but also a pot of fragrant chicory coffee. And towering above the beverages were tiered silver stands, crammed with mouthwatering delicacies: wafer-thin pralines, crustless crawfish sandwiches, and airy beignets dusted with powdered sugar.

  August was wondering if he’d overloaded his plate, and whether or not he should tuck his napkin into his shirt, when Orchid reopened the conversation.

  “So, child,” she said, coffee cup in one hand, saucer in the other (she had lifted her veil sufficiently to permit food and drink), “what do you make of my collection?”

  “Of gemstones?” said August absently, deciding which tantalizing morsel to try first. “It’s very comprehensive.”

  Orchid returned her cup and saucer to the table.

  “This…hobby, I suppose you might call it,” she said with a tragic air, “is the only thing that brings me anything resembling pleasure. It fills my waking hours. Indeed, I have spent years acquiring a specimen of every gemstone in the world.” She heaved a heavy sigh. “Except one.”

  There was a moment’s silence. August had a thought.

  “Cadaverite?” he suggested.

  “Why, aren’t you observant,” said Orchid with a small smile. “Clever boy. Cadaverite is the rarest of all minerals. Nearly impossible to locate and recover. Only a handful of fragments exist.” She paused, tapping the arm of her chair with one finger. “But it just so happens that I know where one may lie!”

  August’s mouth, at that moment, was too full to respond. In the subsequent silence, he became suddenly aware of the deafening crunching coming from inside his mouth (the pralines were irresistible). He smiled sheepishly, cheeks bulging, forced a gulp, and licked the stickiness off his teeth.