Mellon laughed so hard I thought he was going to pass out. “You’re good luck, all right,” he finally said. “But you’re also crazy, Mireya.”
“And you just figured this out? Tsk, tsk, Mr Mellon of the Philadelphia Mellons,” I murmured. “Only a crazy person . . .”
My voice trailed off, and I didn’t finish my thought – only a crazy person would still be at this school after what happened to me. I was crazy enough to insist on staying. But I had lost myself somewhere, and I wasn’t about to give up the fight of getting me back. That meant sticking it out here, now, in this place.
Mellon got quiet. “If you’re crazy, then I don’t want to be sane.”
I kept clutching his hand, and he kept holding mine. And my focus slowly shifted from the swarm of rats to the fact that I was holding the hand of a gorgeous blond boy in springtime, under the light of a New York City moon.
We stood there for a while, Mellon’s hair all silvery in the shadowy night. “We better get out of here before we end up as rat chow.” My voice sounded raspy but coherent.
“Of course. Right as always.” Mellon led the way forwards.
The stars danced over our heads in a swirling foxtrot. “Where are we going, Mellon?” It occurred to me I was drunk or high, but no, my mind was as clear and sharp as the night.
When I looked at him, his eyes sparked silver, like his hair. “I want to show you something. Don’t be frightened.”
Of course a bolt of pure adrenalin shot through me after that, but I swallowed hard and held on to Mellon’s hand. “But should I be? Scared, I mean.”
He smiled then, a lonely and untamed smile, an expression I never imagined could look so at home on Jonathan Mellon’s patrician face. “Yes. You should be scared. But you’re crazy enough to come with me anyway. And, Mireya, no matter what happens, I want you to know that’s a good thing.”
I took a step closer to him, despite the fact his words freaked me out. “Why? If I only . . .”
“If you only nothing.” He pulled me along, under the shifting cotton of the clouds racing by on the wind over our heads. “Just come on.”
Our steps quickened as we broke into a run across the quad. No one else crossed our path, though a dense cloud of little birds wheeled wildly over our heads.
He pulled me up the stairs of Low Library, past the kneeling Rodin statue,The Thinker,to the entrance of the St Paul Chapel. Faint music rose from the depths of the crypt in the basement. The crypt housed a famous student-run club, the Postcrypt, which hosted musicians on Saturday nights.
I followed Mellon down the slippery, slightly damp stone stairs. As we got closer to the wooden door barring our way into the club, I was surprised to see him pass by the little room, nodding at the kilted guy half asleep on a barstool by the doorway.
“Where are you going?”
He lifted his fingers to his lips and shushed me in response, then pointed to a stairway I’d never noticed before, heading still deeper underneath the chapel.
“Down here,” he said.
These stairs were made of different stone than the grey granite of St Paul’s Chapel – something red and crumbly like brick, but with streaks of pearlescent white flaking into opalene brilliance under Mellon’s elegant feet.
I slipped a little – there was no handrail – and Mellon grabbed me by the elbow to steady me. We exchanged a glance in the low, flickering light, and as he leaned to me my heart started to pound so hard it was almost painful.
“Mireya?”
“What?” I whispered, half-tranced by the shadows on the stairs.
“Don’t forget to breathe. You’re turning blue.”
And he smiled, a kind, warm smile to show me he didn’t mean to belittle or tease. I smiled back, and for a moment, in a delicious flash of sensation, it was like I’d gone backwards to a Mireya who had never suffered.
And then that light, girlish Mireya vanished once again.
“Steady,” Mellon whispered. “The stairs get steeper.”
And so they did. The stairs became blocks of cold brass, slippery and worn through in the middle, strangely scarred and dented by something even colder and harder. The air got colder too, and damp.
But not mouldy. At first I took that apple blossom scent for cider, but when I saw the first flower petals on the stairs, I gasped.
That flower smell came from flowers.Flowers.
