Page 78 of The Mask Falling

“Cross?” I tilted my head. “About what?”

“He neversayshe’s cross. I just know.”

“I wish we had friends,” Jean-Michel said wistfully in his tiny voice. “Onésime does.”

“Onésime goes to school in Valençay,” Mylène told me. I knew from the dossier that it was the most expensive boarding school in France. “We have tutors. Maman doesn’t like us to go outside, except in the gardens. She says the bad anormales would kidnap us.” She considered me. “But maybe you are a nice one, like Cade.”

“Onésime says there are no nice anormales,” Jean-Michel said, his voice muffled by his blanket.

“Cade must be, silly, because Maman and Papa have let him stay in our house.”

“Oh.”

“I don’t know about Paige, though,” Mylène added, giving me a look. She was the spitting image of Frère, but she had inherited that piercing stare from Ménard.

“Maybe I can prove I’m a good anormale.” I looked between them. “We could play hide-and-seek, and I promise I won’t try to escape. If I keep my promise, that proves I’m not a monster. Deal?”

Jean-Michel scrambled up, shyness forgotten. “Yes, please!”

“Are you good at it?” Mylène asked, bright eyed. “I’m the best.”

These poor kids were so desperate for friends that they wanted to hang out with a prisoner in the attic. Good old Scion parenting. “I’mverygood at it,” I confirmed. “I’ve had a lot of practice.”

“All right. We can play. But you can’t be cross if I win. I always do.” Mylène spoke as if this skill were a great burden. “Do you promise that, too?”

“Promise.”

I followed the kids out of the room. Mylène took a set of keys from the lock and tucked it into her pocket.

It turned out that the room I had been confined in was one of several in the attic, which had clearly been a grand apartment at some point in the recent past. Dust swirled in wide bars of sunlight. Furniture had been pushed against the walls and draped with heavy-looking sheets.

I was out of my cell. Now I had to get out of the attic.

Mylène spun as she crossed the floorboards, making her frock wheel around her. “Do you live somewhere nice, Paige?”

“Very nice,” I said, thinking of the safe house. “I’m staying with a friend.”

“Maman says that all anormales live in squalor.”

“What doessqualormean?” Jean-Michel piped up as he clambered over a dust-covered chest.

Mylène hesitated and looked to me. “Dirt,” I said.

Both children looked solemn for a moment. “Well,” Mylène said, pulling on a ringlet, “some anormales must deserve it. They do bad things and hurt people and steal and lie. Onésime said that—”

“Good morning, everyone.”

I stopped. Ahead of us, Cade was leaning against the wall, arms folded. When Jean-Michel ran to him, Cade scooped him up.

“Cade!”

“Hello, you.” Cade chuckled. “Showing our guest your secret hideout, are we, Mylène?”

“We are testing Paige,” Mylène informed him. “If she plays hide-and-seek with us and doesn’t run away, then she’s a good anormale. If she’s mean or tries to escape, we tell Papa and she has to have her head cut off.”

His gaze darted to me. “That sounds like a fun game.”

I stared him out.

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