The coffin lid didn't just open. It flew.
It crashed into a stand of white lilies, sending the vase shattering to the marble floor. The sound was like a gunshot in the silent hall.
"Seal it!" Hermina screamed. Her composure cracked. "It's escaping gas! Contamination risk!"
Two security guards lunged forward, their hands reaching for the wood.
Delphine sat up.
The air rushed into her lungs, cold and sweet. She gasped, loud and wet, like a drowning woman breaking the surface.
The room gasped back.
She saw them. The sea of black suits and designer dresses. The horrified faces of Manhattan's elite.
She looked at Hermina. Hermina was pale, her hand clutching her pearls.
"Oh, my poor Delphine!" Hermina wailed, stepping forward, her eyes hard as flint. "She's having a post-mortem spasm! Don't look!"
Delphine didn't look at Hermina. She looked at the ceiling. She tilted her head to the side, twitching.
"Hehehe."
The laugh bubbled out of her. She scrambled over the edge of the coffin, her limbs flailing. She hit the cold floor with her bare feet. Her knees buckled, and she let them. She crawled.
She moved like a broken doll, jerky and wrong.
A woman in the front row-Mrs. Vanderwall-shrieked and backed away, knocking over her chair.
Delphine turned her head sharply to look at her. She put a finger to her lips.
"Shh," she whispered, her eyes wide and unblinking. "The bad man is sleeping."
Hermina signaled the butler. A sharp, cutting motion across her throat.
The butler nodded. He motioned to three large men in black suits. They moved toward Delphine, a wall of muscle.
Delphine watched them come. She didn't run. Not yet.
When the first guard reached for her arm, she went boneless. She dropped to the floor, sliding through his grip like wet soap.
She wrapped her arms around his leg. She buried her face in his trousers.
"Don't eat me!" she screamed, her voice shrill. "The apples are poisoned! The bubbles bite!"
Hermina flinched. She knew what Delphine meant. The champagne.
"Cedric?"
The voice was frail, trembling.
Delphine looked up. Dame Beatrice Hays. Cedric's grandmother. She was clutching her chest, staring at the open coffin. "Is my grandson alive too?"
Delphine heard Cedric's name and she let out a piercing wail. She rolled on the floor, thrashing, kicking her legs.
"Dead! Dead! All fall down!" she chanted.
The guards hesitated. They were trained to handle drunks and paparazzi, not a grieving, resurrected, insane heiress. Liability was written all over their faces.
"Don't hurt her!" Hermina shouted, playing the role of the saint. "She's sick! Her mind is broken!"
She was giving them permission to grab Delphine.
Delphine saw the gap. Under the long table holding the hors d'oeuvres.
She scrambled on all fours, diving under the tablecloth. She kicked upward as she went. Trays of caviar and silver platters crashed to the floor.
Glass shattered. People screamed.
Flashes went off. The press. Hermina had invited the press to document her tragedy. Now they were documenting her nightmare.
"Cut the feed!" Hermina roared. "Confiscate all phones! Now!"
The lights died.
The hall plunged into gloom, lit only by the red glow of the exit signs.
Delphine crouched in the darkness, breathing hard, smelling the shrimp and the fear.
Game on.
