Chapter 3 3

The darkness was Delphine's friend.

She pressed her back against the table leg. She could hear the heavy boots of the security guards crunching on the broken glass.

"She's under the table," one of them whispered. "Grab her legs."

Delphine wasn't under the table anymore.

She had rolled out the other side the moment the lights died. She was crouching behind a velvet curtain near the window.

She remembered the self-defense classes she took at the clinic. The instructor was an ex-Marine with a limp. Chaos is a ladder, he used to say. Climb it.

She grabbed a handful of walnuts from a spilled bowl on the floor. She tossed them hard toward the left side of the room.

Clatter. Crack.

"Over there!" A guard lunged to the left.

Delphine moved right.

She kept her movements erratic. She hummed a broken tune, "London Bridge is falling down," stopping and starting, throwing her voice.

A guard loomed out of the shadows. He reached for her.

Delphine didn't pull away. She stepped into him. She hooked her foot behind his ankle and shoved his chest.

He went down hard, crashing into a tower of champagne glasses.

Crash! Boom!

"Yay!" Delphine clapped her hands, dancing a little jig in the dark. "Make it go boom!"

"Just sedate her! Now!" Hermina's voice was a screech in the dark.

Delphine saw the glint of steel. The butler was moving toward her, a syringe in his hand. He wasn't hesitating like the guards.

She needed a shield.

She saw Senator Miller standing frozen near a pillar.

She sprinted toward him and wrapped her arms around his waist.

"Daddy?" she sobbed, wiping her snot on his expensive suit. "Is that you? Did you bring the ponies?"

The Senator stiffened. "Delphine? My dear, please..."

The butler stopped. He couldn't stick a needle in Delphine while she was hugging a U.S. Senator.

Out of the corner of her eye, Delphine saw Beatrice moving toward the coffin. She was going to check on Cedric.

Hermina saw her too. She turned away from Delphine, moving to intercept the old woman.

No. Delphine needed Cedric found. She needed a witness.

She let go of the Senator. She dropped to all fours and galloped-actually galloped-toward the wall.

The butler lunged, the needle missing her neck by an inch.

She grabbed a heavy silver candelabra from a side table.

She didn't swing it at the butler. She swung it at the wall. Specifically, at the red box labeled 'FIRE'.

Smash.

The alarm shrieked. A deafening, pulsing wail that vibrated in her teeth.

And then, the hiss.

The sprinklers overhead burst to life.

Water, cold and relentless, poured down on them. It soaked the silk dresses, the wool suits, the expensive hairdos.

The room erupted into chaos. People were slipping, screaming, running for the doors.

Delphine stood in the rain, the water plastering her hair to her skull. She watched the makeup run down Hermina's face like black tears.

She stuck her tongue out at Hermina.

Then she pointed a shaking finger at the coffin.