Briar Queen (13 page)

“I don't understand.”

“Look closely at the black markings on the wings.”

Finn squinted and thought she was seeing things; scrawled blackly across the orange wings, repeatedly, were the words:
Lily Rose is alive
.

“Who sent it?” she whispered, awestruck.

“Well, there's no signature, but we couldn't ignore it even if it's a trick. If there's even a possibility your sister is . . . well, we can't abandon her.”

Finn carefully took possession of the second half of the Ghostlands key. “Dean Cruithnear thinks one of the professors works for Seth Lot?”

“Let's just say that certain things have occurred to make Rowan believe one of the others is serving the interests of the unknown.”

“What about you? Why does he trust
you
?”

“Well, I'm sort of his great-and-then-some granddaughter.”

Finn kicked back the covers. “I
knew
he was older than he looked! Was he cursed, like the Black Scissors?”

“Sort of. Only it wasn't supposed to be a curse. That's a story for another time. Now, you'll be going to Lulu's tonight, with Jack and Moth, to leave for . . . that place.”

“Lulu's
Emporium
?”

In a small voice, Jane said, “What will I do if you don't come back? I don't think I could . . .”

Finn was not the hugging type, but she got on her knees and slid her arms around the woman. “Thank you, Jane.
Thank you
.”

“You can thank me”—Jane hugged her back—“by returning with your sister. You and Jack will be going to Rowan Cruithnear's house in the Ghostlands, where Rowan can protect you and prepare you. He can provide you with guides and guards and a witch who will lead you to the Wolf's house. He can't come with you right now, because he thinks it'll lead Seth Lot to you.”

Finn sat back. “When I return, Phouka said no time will have passed.”

“Not if you do it right. Finn . . . what will I tell your father if something happens to you?”

“I'll be back before he realizes I'm gone. And nothing will happen to me.”

BY ELEVEN O'CLOCK
, Finn was ready. She'd packed a leather backpack with Eve Avaline's silver dagger, Slim Jims, apples, three cans of espresso, two bottles of iced water, and a gift for Jack. She was dressed for travel in boot-cut jeans and a black sweater, her red coat, and Doc Martens.

As she slid a good-bye letter to her da beneath her pillow—just in case—she looked around the room and said to her ghost, “If I don't come back, make sure he gets that.”

A flash from the antique Leica camera on her desk made her flinch. She slowly walked toward it. The camera clicked and flashed again.

“
Okay
.” She grabbed the camera and shoved it into her backpack. As she did so, she heard a clatter and turned to see that the first photograph she'd taken of her and Jack in the sunlight had fallen to the floor. She bent down and picked it up. The glass over the photo hadn't even cracked. She traced Jack's image. He watched every sunrise, every sunset, and lingered at each as he hadn't been able to before—as if expecting that fragile humanity he'd stubbornly longed for to vanish at any moment. She glanced at her sister's journal on a nearby table. Lily had always been there for her after their mom died. Lily had championed Finn, encouraged her, and enraged her. And then Lily had abandoned her.

Finn pushed her hands through her hair as the anguished realization that she was choosing Lily's welfare over Jack's overwhelmed her.

Then Jack was knocking at the glass doors.

She stood, walked to them, and opened them. Dressed in a Victorian greatcoat of black suede, his hair tied back, he looked like some kind of nineteenth-century assassin. He had a backpack flung over one shoulder. “Ready?”

“Very.” She slid her own small backpack on and smiled to prove she wasn't scared.

As they strode to Jack's sedan at the curb, Jack said, “Phouka and Cruithnear conspired on this. Phouka and Moth will meet us at Christopher's. Sylvie's there too—you'd best call her and tell her we're on our way.”

AS FINN GOT OUT OF JACK'S SEDAN
in front of Christie's house, Sylvie ran down, threw her arms around her, and whispered, “I knew the HallowHeart professors would come through.”

“It was Cruithnear and Jane Emory, actually.”

Christie sauntered up, hands in his coat pockets, his dark red curls sticking out from his knit hat. He said, “So you're going.”

“You,” Finn said steadily, “are the best friends I've ever had.”

“I suppose
he'll
protect you, being a killer and all.” Christie meant Jack. His voice was stripped raw. “Just don't forget where you belong. No matter what that
place is like—and I'm imagining some seriously messed-up American McGee version of Disneyland—it isn't your world.
This
is.”

“Okay, Christie.”

“Take this.” Christie took a small book from his back pocket. “Famous poems. Words are weapons against them.”

“And this.” Sylvie pressed into Finn's other hand a silver compact mirror decorated with a pretty geisha. “My good luck charm against Grindylow.”

Then Phouka stepped forward with Moth and handed a wooden dagger to Finn, another to Jack. Both were made of polished wood and inscribed with symbols. Phouka's silver eyes seemed to convey all the strangeness of the Fata world as she said, “Made of winter wood. They won't decay in the Ghostlands, as silver and iron will. And”—she took from her coat a scabbard made from the same wood—“this is for your silver dagger, Serafina. It fits? Good. Don't draw that silver until you absolutely must, or it'll rot. This scabbard will protect the blade until then. The only way I know of to kill a Fata such as Lot is to strike as he is riding the shadow, in the midst of a change—that's when he'll be vulnerable. The wooden weapons are for defense. Your silver knife is to kill him. Strike once. Strike true.”

Finn wanted to say she wasn't sure if she could do that—until she thought about what Lot had taken from her.

“Finn,” Jack spoke gently, “we need to go.”

Moth nodded once to Sylvie and Christie before striding toward Jack's sedan. Finn hugged her friends one more time before turning and following Jack. She glanced through the trees, at her home. Her father was probably working on his students' papers, drinking tea and believing she was safe in bed. With any luck—well, with an insane amount of luck—she'd be back in that bed before the sun rose. And Lily would be home.

Jack drove onto Main Street, which was beautiful with its banks of snow, the Christmas lights, and shop displays. It was busier than usual, with most of the shops cordially remaining open until midnight, nearly every pedestrian carrying a shopping bag. As the sedan turned onto a narrow avenue, Finn glanced at Moth in the backseat. “Are you sure you're ready to return?”

“Lily somehow got me free of that place. I'm not going to leave her there.”

A few streets later, Jack parked the sedan in front of Lulu's Emporium, an old
church that had been renovated into a fancy Chinese restaurant. Moth and Finn shouldered their small backpacks as Jack led them through the doors into a sophisticated dining room with red lamps and votive candles illuminating statues of scarlet dragons and manga-style paintings of saints.

“Lulu.” Jack inclined his head to the curvy woman sauntering toward them, her pale hair wreathed with jasmine, her black silk dress and high heels patterned with the same flower. She wasn't a Fata, but Finn sensed she wasn't all that ordinary, either.

“Hello, Jack.” She arched an eyebrow. “Introduce me to your friends?”

“This is Finn Sullivan. This is Moth. This is Lulu. And Lulu is—”

“—a guardian of the betwixt and between.” Lulu's eyes, for a moment, pooled to an unsettling black before she smiled like a movie star.

“Witch,” Moth muttered.

“The polite term is
ban dorchadas
. Woman of darkness.” Lulu winked at Moth.

Jack turned on him. “Exactly what have you got against witches?”

“The polite term is ‘woman of darkness,'” Finn reminded him.

“I don't trust them,” Moth said, defiant.

“That may be a problem where you're going.” Lulu led them through a pair of scarlet doors, into a courtyard shimmering with snow and scattered with slender trees. In the center was a stone arch carved into images of eyes, hands, and feet tangled in vines, flowers, and fruit. There was a black door in the center with a golden lock-plate, but no handle. Finn, gazing at the door, felt a breathless anticipation.

“Isn't it pretty?” Lulu smiled. “Phouka's idea, to center it in that, after she shut up all those wonderful old houses.”

“Lulu, Moth,” Jack said, “I need to speak with Finn alone.”

As Jack drew Finn a little ways down the path, he took from his coat pocket a tiny box of carved wood. “Merry Holidays.”

She fumbled in her backpack, produced his gift wrapped in gold paper. “Same here.”

He unwrapped it as she lifted the lid of the box, revealing a pendant—two lions clasping a ruby heart. It matched the ring she'd given him, only it was made of white gold.

“For my lionheart,” he told her, lifting from his box a small golden phoenix on a leather thong. His teeth flashed. “I'd rather be a phoenix than a jackal.”

“Merry Christmas.” She kissed him, quick, because Moth and Lulu were watching.

Wearing their gifts, they walked, hand in hand, back to the door to the Ghostlands. Finn wasn't scared anymore, which was probably crazy. As Jack fit together the pieces of the key and a butterfly-winged woman with a skull head formed, Finn was a little disappointed at the lack of special effects.

Lulu said, “After you pass through the arch, you'll be at the train station near Rowan Cruithnear's home. Rowan will send someone for you.”

“Train station?” Finn's eyes widened as Lulu continued, “Rowan plans to get the elixir—which loses its potency here—from the Blue Lady while you wait, safely, in his house.”

Finn said, “What ‘elixir'?”

Lulu explained: “Phouka told you your blood will be like a beacon to the Unseelie. The elixir will make you seem like one of us. Jack may need to take it, too.” She looked at Moth. “I don't know about you.”

“We'll see.” Moth was watching her. “After Rowan Cruithnear, what then?”

“Rowan wants you to have guides—Fata ones—and the Grindylow heart, the compass Absalom Askew gave you, can be used if you're ever lost. Remember, the roads in the Ghostlands will run parallel to those in the true world. Sometimes, the true world breaks through. You're not to interact with such breaks, because it will take you out of the Ghostlands and you'll end up somewhere in Tennessee or Alaska or something.”

She stepped forward. “Now for the rules. Rule one: Don't eat or drink anything that isn't from the true world—that includes fruit you haven't picked yourself. Two: In the Ghostlands, beauty often conceals danger. Three: Poetry can be a weapon—
heka—
spells in the voice. Four: You're going to drink an elixir . . . take one dose only, no matter how tempted you might be to take more. As for your tech—your cell phones—don't bother. They won't work. And Fata mechanicals can only be operated by Fatas. Spirit energy.”

Finn's eyes grew wider with each warning cited. Beyond the arch and the door she could see the streets of Fair Hollow and the winking lights of an electric tower—it didn't seem possible that there was another reality. She said, “Is that all?”

“That's all.” Lulu stepped back and saluted. “Good luck.”

Jack inserted the key into the lock and the door fell open.

For neither Death nor Change comes near us,

And all listless hours fear us,

And we fear no dawning morrow,

Nor the grey wandering osprey Sorrow
.

                
—
T
HE
W
ANDERINGS OF
O
ISIN
,
W. B. Y
EATS

A
s Finn stepped into the Ghostlands, it was as if she'd passed through an electric current. Her breath was swept away and her entire body tingled and went numb. She thought she was falling—

When she opened her eyes, staggering a little, she saw a field without snow, without power lines or electric towers, only a cascade of stars across a sapphire-black sky. The silence around her was alien. Her first breath shot adrenaline to her brain. As terror sheared her nerves, she realized she wasn't holding hands with anyone. She whirled in a panic. “
Jack!
”

“Here. I'm here.” He stepped before her.

“Where's Moth—”

He pointed to something that fluttered around them—a large, pale-winged insect, a luna moth. “There.”

“That
can't
be . . . We
need
him.”

“He'll change back. The Way through must have triggered the curse. Back in Shakespeare's day, he pissed off Absalom.”

“
Absalom
did that to him?” She reached out a hand to the insect, which continued to frantically circle them. It was so fragile—and it contained all of that brooding young man, condensed. Did he understand what had happened? “What a nightmare, for him.”

“Absalom, being Absalom, has forgotten how he cursed Moth. I think we've found out how.”

“We can't
leave
him like this.”

“We don't have a choice. We must catch that train, Finn. We need to get the elixir from Cruithnear before we encounter the bad sort of Fatas.”

The moth was the size of her hand, and it was white with silver markings—she peered closer. “Do those look like death's head markings on its wings?”

“Don't think about it. You'll make yourself sick.” As Jack turned away, his eyes seemed to silver. “Right now, we've other things to worry about: that is
not
the right station.”

“What do you mean, it's not the right—” Her voice shook. The building before them had been created in the '40s art deco style. On either side of its circular stair were two green marble statues of goddesses draped with crimson ivy that had run riot. Within the leaves, Finn saw angular faces of green stone with hollow eyes and open mouths, weatherworn green men wreathed in thorns. Like most Fata places, the railroad station exuded an ominous sentience.

“This isn't the right station. I've never been to this one. I've no idea where we are.”

She breathed deep. “Let's find out then.”

He looked at her as if not sure whether to be impressed or worried, then indicated her wrist. “Your sister's bracelet—it's not falling apart. Remember? Silver rots here.”

She glanced at the bracelet, and the silver charms winked in the starlight. “It must be magic.”

They walked to the station. Beyond the broken windows, a chandelier of orange crystals lighted a deserted lobby and a wall scrawled with sparkling graffiti, like runes. Phosphorescent toadstools scabbed another wall shattered by a cadaverous tree fruiting with apples. On the platform was a sign with names and times:

Blackwing . . . Midnight

Phantom Queen . . . Three o'clock

Chimera Blue . . . Anytime

“Do things here run on—dare I say it again—magic?”

“If you want to call it that.”

She sank down onto a bench, her backpack between her feet. She shivered. She couldn't hear any insects, and the air carried the scents of alien flora. “What are we going to do?”

“Wait for the next train. We'll just be taking the circular route to Cruithnear.”

That was somewhat reassuring, but she was still shaking a little. “Tell me more about
him
.” She didn't say Seth Lot's name out loud as the moth glided around them.

Jack settled beside her. “I was sixteen. I was starving, desperate, and phenomenally stupid. My dad—the exorcist—had warned me about them. Lured by a beautiful face, I walked right into their lair.”

“Reiko.” Finn imagined Seth Lot in his fur coat, all fin de siècle wolfishness, cupping the face of a young and pretty Jack and smiling at him like a king about to grant knighthood. She imagined that same king whispering into the ear of a Jack with scars and cold eyes and no hope of being anything other than a killer. Her voice broke a little as she said, “Reiko took you to him. Even though people disappeared in his house.”

Jack's voice had a low intensity as he continued, “He mutilated some of his Jacks and Jills until they didn't look human anymore. He smashed one boy's skull into another shape. He broke one girl's bones and reset them until she was a
thing
. And what else did they have after that? Serve him or die. I think many of them wanted to die.”

Finn watched a slight tremor begin in his hands as his eyelashes flickered. She hurt for him.

“Fatas don't murder mortals, Finn. But Lot has learned how. As for killing Fatas—he'd do that without a thought, using his Jacks and Jills, the Grindylow. He's a criminal of his kind, an outcast for that reason. The face he wears is a mask over the beast he has become after centuries of riding the shadow.”

Jack had once explained to her that
riding the shadow
was a term the Fatas used to describe the process of changing their shapes, a rare thing. Shapes were very important to the Fatas, and Finn suspected they didn't retain memories or personalities very well without some definite, long-term form. They were spirits, after all.

She looked around, reaching out to touch a satiny-red rose that blossomed from a bush clawing up one wall.

The moth fluttered into her face as Jack's hand closed over hers. “Remember rule two? Beauty conceals danger—that rosebush might have once been a person. Don't pull anything off it.”

Finn remembered what had happened to Christie and Sylvie, what Reiko had done to them. “That was Reiko's hobby, wasn't it—changing people into
things
. And Seth Lot's hobby . . . we'll have to kill him, won't we?”

Jack's eyes were dark. “Yes.” He didn't elaborate.

The forlorn whistle of a train disturbed the air—it was a startling sound in this still, starlit place. Finn had liked that sound while nestling in her bed late at night, in Vermont—now, it made her taut with excitement and dread. “What train do we take?”

“The first to come our way.”

She stood up. “What's the train made of, if not iron?”

“Something you might call organic metal.”

The locomotive that came hurtling up the tracks was of a dark metal that seemed to have
grown
into the forms of roses, thorns, and ravens. Its windows, tinted red, smoldered with interior light. As the train slowed to a gliding halt, Finn marveled at its lavish details. When the doors slid open, Jack stepped up, turned, and held out a hand. He pulled her in, and the moth fluttered past her.

The train car's interior was a luxury of rose-red leather, brass lamps shaped like Greek harpies, and black lacquer. Finn asked, “Where are the other passengers?”

“Hopefully, there aren't any. We haven't gotten you the elixir yet.”

After they'd settled into a seat, the train lurched forward. As an alien night flashed beyond the windows, and Finn began to experience a stomach-churning dread, Jack told her, “If we're ever separated, ask the way to Orsini's Books in Crossroads. You'll be safe there. Everyone knows Orsini and he's a friend of mine. And one more thing—let's not ever get separated.” He slid the Grindylow's heart compass from his pocket and frowned at it.

Finn asked, “Why do you think the key didn't take us to the right station?”

“That's a good question.”

She was about to demand an
answer
to the question, when a man entered their car. He wore a black-and-red conductor's uniform, and his long hair was the same rosy hue as the car's interior. He bowed to them, his eyes flashing. Finn's skin crawled when he spoke. “Payment?”

Jack held out a little tin box. The conductor accepted it, tilted the box's contents—two ivory objects—into his palm. When he smiled, his teeth glinted silver. “Very good, sir. As you can see, there's been a change of plan. Cruithnear's precaution.”

“At the last minute. I see. And where are we going, if not Cruithnear's?”

“To the
Ban Gorm,
for the elixir. A driver will meet you in Darkside, at the clock tower.”

As the conductor turned and walked out of the car, Finn slouched in her seat, somewhat relieved they now knew where they were going. “Well, that answers my question. Why did you give him teeth?”

“Don't ask.”

“Where did you get them from?”

“And so she asks.” Jack glanced out the window. The train sped past moss-draped trees, a rusting tractor, and a chapel of white, rotting wood. They might have been traveling through any midwestern or southern state. “You really want to know?”

“No. I don't. Why did Rowan Cruithnear mess with the plan, d'you think?”

“Maybe to deceive the traitor he suspects.”

“Who is the
Ban Gorm
?”

“The Blue Lady, purveyor of things from the true world.”

“Like what kinds of things?”

“Curiosities and worldly objects. Art. Books. Music—record players work here. Typewriters. Clocks—”

“Got it.” A swarm of flickering lights shot past the window.
Fireflies,
she hoped, and she began to study objects in the car. Gazing into one of the lamps ebbing with a jellyfish glow, she whispered, “I'm sorry I brought you back here.”

“Don't be an idiot.” He leaned close and his mouth blossomed over hers in a kiss as intoxicating, as sweet, as blackberry wine. She didn't feel like a girl when
he kissed her, but like fire in a girl's form, burning and hungry. It was he who pulled away this time and breathlessly said, “We'll have to not do that so much.”

“It
is
distracting.” Feverish now, she curled her hands in her pockets to keep from touching him again.

The door to their car slid open to admit a Fata dressed in a green coat brocaded with roses, her yellow hair wound into plaits. She carried a basket of black wicker. As she sat near the front, turned away from them, Jack met Finn's gaze and shook his head in warning. Finn stared at the Fata woman, who made a curious sound, as if she were breathing in a scent—

Jack broke a tiny crystalline sphere between his fingers. As it crumbled like sugar in his hand, the fragrances of honey and fire blossomed through the car, and Finn realized he was disguising the scent of her
blood
.

“It'll be all right,” he said calmly. “Go on and sleep. We've a ways to go.”

Not wanting to sleep, not with a blood-scenting Fata on the train, Finn nevertheless closed her eyes and let exhaustion overpower her.

THE TRAIN HALTED
and Finn immediately awoke. The scent of fire and honey from the tiny globe Jack had broken had faded.

Jack murmured, “Another one.”

A young man had entered their car. His silvery-white coat matched the pale hair sleeked down his back. A violin case of ivory leather was slung over one shoulder. Cold air followed him as he moved down the aisle. Finn didn't dare look at his face.

Jack pressed one hand over hers. A dagger slid from his right sleeve, into his other hand. It wasn't the same knife he kept in his boot—this knife was black, its handle shaped like a jackal's head. She shuddered at the idea of violence, so early.

The Fata sat in the back, where he could watch them without being seen.

“Narcissus.” The Fata woman in front spoke casually.

“Yes, Greta?” the white-haired musician answered.

“Do you scent red? Do you see a shadow cast upon the floor?”

Finn saw her own shadow stretching from her boots and realized no one else in the car—including Jack—had one.

The musician replied, “I do.”

The yellow-haired Fata turned her head and met Finn's gaze, her own shining silver. Finn slowly looked over one shoulder and found the Fata called Narcissus staring at her. She could almost feel every muscle in Jack's body tense. There was a moment of silence and a pressure in her head. A drop of blood fell from her nose, onto her wrist. Light-headed from fear, she flinched and quickly raised a hand over the lower half of her face. The moth fluttered against her cheek.

Jack said in a careless tone, “You will leave us be,
Narcissus and Greta,
because I'm Jack Daw, and I don't have a shadow, and the blood within me has turned to venom. I have dealt with far worse Fata than a
ban sidhe
and a ganconer.”