Briar Queen (15 page)

He lowered his head and his warm hands dropped from her, leaving her cold. “We need to search this house for that elixir and leave before Caliban recovers.”

THEIR SEARCH ENDED
at a glass and metal cabinet, its drawers filled with tiny bottles. “Most of these are perfume,” Jack said. “But—” He selected a dark blue one shaped like a mermaid and sniffed it. “Mermaid venom. It'll disguise your blood scent for a while.”

Finn gazed doubtfully at the stuff. “I don't have to drink it, do I?”

“No. Don't get it on your skin either. Here.” He carefully doused her clothes with the liquid, which smelled like patchouli and ocean air. “Moth. You, too. Just in case.”

“Where will we go now, for the elixir?” Moth grimaced as the mermaid venom contacted his clothing.

Jack selected a few more bottles and dropped them into his backpack. Then he
walked to the pool of bones and water weeds that had been his friend Atheno. He bowed his head for a moment, before gathering the necklace of green pearls from the mess and draping it around his neck. He straightened, his face in shadow. “Scarborough Fair. It's always here at winter's beginning. That's where we'll get the elixir.”

“I remember that place.” Moth shouldered his backpack, and Finn realized the backpack must have transformed with him, like his clothes. “It'll be a bloody unsafe trek—and the
crom cu
will know that's where we're going.”

“It's closer than Cruithnear and we can't risk another train ride without the elixir.” Jack sheathed the black
kris
in one sleeve and the Renaissance blade in his left boot. “May I see the compass, Finn?”

As Jack studied the Grindylow compass and Moth paced, Finn plucked an object from the Blue Lady's collection of bottled potions—a small glass vial shaped like a female sphinx. It was labeled
Tamasgi'po,
and the words
Spirit in a Kiss
were written beneath the name. Absalom had mentioned something called
Tamasgi'po
while warning her and Jack about Seth Lot's house. She tucked the sphinx vial into a coat pocket.

She didn't look back at Atheno's remains as they left the
Ban Gorm
's house, but grief nipped at her.
Had
the amiable Fata betrayed them? Or had Caliban lied?

There is a queen in every house of them. It is of those they steal away, and make queens of for as long as they live or that they are satisfied with them
.

                
—
V
ISIONS AND
B
ELIEFS IN THE
W
EST OF
I
RELAND
,
L
ADY
G
REGORY

A
s Sylvie unlocked the door to her father's shop, she knew her stepmom would be at Pilates and her dad at the Antlered Moon Pub's poker night. She'd once liked the thrill of being alone in the apartment at night—not anymore. Since it was nice and warm in the recently closed shop, she switched on the banker's lamp and the old stereo in the alcove office. Listening to the comforting sound of a DJ chatting about the weather, she glanced out the front window at the snow-swept street where traffic lights swung in the wind and the occasional car glided past.

She began rummaging through the office closet. When she found what she was looking for, she grabbed the rectangular wooden box that held the Ouija board she'd bought at a garage sale and sat on the floor. The board, made in Italy, was illustrated with beautiful images of Renaissance people. She set the black planchette beneath letters shaped like mythical creatures and gnawed at her bottom lip before placing one hand on the piece of wood. “Spirit who haunts Finn Sullivan's house . . . I call thee to me, answer by the count of three.”

She counted swiftly, waited.

The planchette twitched, slid jerkily to the letter
B,
its image a bear.

“‘B' . . . ‘E' . . . ‘T' . . .” It finished spelling
Betrayal
.

The air hummed. Sylvie blinked and shivered. The shadows in the shop seemed to alter, the moonlit spaces folding into a landscape of snow, the salvaged objects becoming a forest. The front door blurred into a stone arch, and beneath that arch stood a figure in a blue T-shirt and bell-bottom jeans, his feet bare. Long, dark hair eddied around his face. He spoke as if from a great distance. “
Sylvie Whitethorn. The Dubh Deamhais . . .”

Sylvie stood, the sweat cold on her skin. She took an unsteady step forward. “Thomas Luneht. You
can't
be the one haunting Finn—”

“ . . .
warn you
.” His voice became static. “ . . .
not here . . . go to Sphinx . . .
Betrayal.”

Thomas Luneht and the otherworldly landscape vanished.

Sylvie sank down onto a voyage trunk, staring blankly at a carved door reclaimed from an old mansion in Albany.

The bells above the entrance to the shop began to jingle, stopped as if frozen by an invisible hand. A glacial breath snaked through the heated air. She reached out and, fumbling, switched on another lamp.

There was a rustling near the grand piano her father had obtained from a composer's estate. Something giggled.

Sylvie scrambled up and stretched out the hand on which she wore two silver rings. She'd been such an idiot—she'd used a spirit board in a place filled with things salvaged from the dead. And her parents weren't home. She backed toward the stair that led up to the apartment.

The white-wigged mannequin in the corner, the one in an eighteenth-century ball gown, rocked slightly. Sylvie nearly fell over a bicycle. She staggered up.

The mannequin began to glide across the floor, the gown's fabric rustling like desiccated leaves. Sylvie told herself she'd faced worse than some stupid piece of plastic. She pulled herself up, grabbed the bicycle, and flung it at the mannequin.

The bicycle hit and snapped off the mannequin's nose and two fingers. The mannequin staggered but continued sailing toward her.

It stopped a few inches away and the shadows veiling it vanished in tatters, revealing a flesh-and-blood woman in a powdered wig and ball gown, her eyes black, her teeth red and sharp. Crystals glittered on her eyelashes. In a staticky voice, the Unseelie said, “You . . . play with the dead.”

Sylvie backed away, but the creature followed like some undead Marie Antoinette. Sylvie's lungs hurt from the supernatural cold. Her breath misted as she exhaled. When her spine struck the office desk, she fumbled through the papers, seeking something she'd seen earlier. “What
are
you?”

The creature bared its red teeth and whispered, “I am Cold Jenny and I am your dea—”

Driven beyond fear into mania, Sylvie slammed her father's silver letter opener into the Unseelie's left eye. As the blade sank into plastic, she let go of the handle and watched, her mouth open in an unvoiced scream, as the mannequin tumbled to the floor, the letter opener sticking from a painted eye. One of its hands fell off and rolled beneath the piano.

Sylvie grabbed a shovel propped near the back door, strode over, and slammed it down on the mannequin's neck, separating its head from its body.

EVER SINCE THAT HORRIFYING NIGHT
when a monster had risen from a bathtub in his house, Christie had been a light sleeper. The kelpie had come from the old well in the basement. Mr. Wyatt had helped seal that well by advising Christie's dad to fill it with concrete. When it was done, Wyatt had etched a symbol of protection in the concrete, before laying the boards back over it.

Christie hated going down into that basement, but he did it every evening, to check.

Tonight, afterward, he stepped onto the porch to gaze at Finn's house through the trees.

“Aren't you cold?”

He was always tense and only jumped a little when Phouka came out of the dark, her pale skin competing with the new-fallen snow. She looked deceptively girlish in tartan trousers and a jacket of mauve fur opened to reveal a black T-shirt with the silhouette of a white cat on it. Her auburn hair was swept into a fur hat with earflaps. She made him breathless and hot all at the same time.

“Not as cold as
you
.” He stepped to the middle of the porch as if that could stop her from coming up the stairs.

Her lavender-gray gaze drifted over him. “Christie Hart, speak something of a poem to me.”

He said, “‘
She came to Envy's house, a black abode, ill-kept, stained with dark gore, a hidden home in a deep valley, where no sunshine comes, where no wind blows, gloomy, and full of cold
.'”

“Ovid.” Her eyes glinted the silver of Fata anger. Sweetly, she continued, “And not very flattering. May I come in and get warm?”

“My family's in there.” He lifted his chin, defying her.

“Why would I cause thee and thine harm, Christie? Now, may I come in?”

He backed away. “I don't think so.” He turned and hurried into his house, then shut and locked the door. He loped up the stairs, avoiding a skateboard, a pair of ski boots, and a dog toy.

He stepped into his room—and found Phouka lounging in the leather armchair he'd inherited from his grandfather.

“How—”

She recited something in Irish, and he recognized the Gaelic welcome from the plaque his mother had hung over the front door. He'd completely forgotten to take it down. He slumped against the wall. “You came through the window?”

“It's tradition. Haven't you read
Peter Pan
?” She moved to her feet. “I like what you've done to your door.”

His door was Sharpied with lines from his favorite poems. He watched her out of the corner of one eye as she wandered around his room, her fingers gliding over his collection of old albums, the taxidermy fox he'd bought in a junk shop.

“Why are you here? I don't want you here. Good-bye.” He opened his door and didn't look at her again.

“Would you look at me if all I was wearing was this fur hat?”

He sucked in a breath through clenched teeth and told himself
not to fall for it
. He didn't turn.

“Can I prick you?” he suddenly said as he plucked a thumbtack from the bulletin board near the door. He swung around to face her, a little disappointed to see she still had her clothes on.

She held out a hand. He took hold of it. Her skin was cool. He gently stabbed the ball of her thumb. When no blood welled, he felt an idiotic betrayal and lifted his gaze to hers, glimpsed what he might have mistaken for sorrow if he'd been stupid. He stepped back. “That's what I thought.”

Her eyes darkened. “Christie . . . when Rowan Cruithnear tried to go through
the Way, we discovered a hex scratched onto Cruithnear's half of the key.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means there's a traitor among the professors and the key malfunctioned. We don't know what happened to Finn and Jack and no one can use the Way until the key is fixed. Including Rowan Cruithnear.”

“Why are you telling me this?” He wondered if there was a type of hysteria that made a person numb. Maybe it was just shock.

“Because Finn is your friend and I thought you should know.”

“Thanks. Really.” He wanted to swear at her. “Tell me what you're going to do to help her.”

“We need to fix the key. I've shut all the Ways and can't open them again. Not so soon.”

“Meanwhile, Finn and Jack are stranded?” He pushed his hands over his face. “Please . . . just leave.”

She was close in the blink of an eye and whispered into his ear, “‘
And even with such-like valor, men hang and drown their proper selves. You fools . . . I and my fellows are ministers of fate: the elements of whom your swords are temper'd
.' Every queen needs a wise man, Christie Hart. You'd better learn to become one.”

As her lips brushed his, he felt as if dew-shimmering cobwebs grazed his skin. In the second he realized what a bad mistake he'd made offending her, she was gone.

SYLVIE'S DAD AND STEPMOM WERE HOME NOW
—it was past midnight—and she was about to do something very reckless. Her father always seemed to hear her bedroom door open, or her feet creaking the stair. Ever since she'd fallen off her bike—and into Reiko Fata's bad spell—he'd become less easygoing about her nocturnal activities.

I should just move into the dorm,
she thought, gliding down the back stairway in her socks and trying not to breathe.
I'm eighteen. I should be going wild
. The entity called Cold Jenny had made her afraid enough—and brave enough—to seek supernatural help.

She was out of breath by the time she'd biked up the lane leading to the abandoned house called the Sphinx with its Egyptian sculptures and windows like dark pools. She left her bike at the foot of the steep stairway and began to climb. This
had been Thomas Luneht's house. This was where his spirit had directed her to go.

On the narrow porch, she opened her backpack and pulled out a store-bought book on witchcraft, adjusted her silver bracelets, touched the iron nail in one pocket, and removed a blue candle and a piece of blue chalk. She drew the symbol from the book, and lit the candle, wishing her hands would stop trembling. She set the old photograph she'd brought in the center of the symbol and recited the words she'd memorized, from Edgar Allan Poe:

“‘By a route obscure and lonely,

Haunted by ill angels only,

Where an eidolon named NIGHT,

On a black throne reigns upright . . .'”

A chill skittered across the back of her neck as her breath became vapor. The branches of the nearby trees rattled. Snow whispered.

The soft voice from behind her frightened her more than any sepulchral words. “
Sylvie . . . Whitethorn . . .
”

“Can I look at you?” she asked cautiously.

“No.”

She closed her eyes and pictured Thomas Luneht. She tried not to think:
He's dead
.

“
. . . betrayal . . .”

“What
betrayal
? Thomas”—she swallowed the sour taste of fear—“is it Finn and Jack . . . ?”

“He's here . . .”

Thomas Luneht's presence was snuffed out with a sound like electricity popping, and she pressed a hand over her mouth. Someone else stood behind her. Terror gripped her limbs as a voice, cool, masculine, and amused, reached her.

“Speaking to the dead, Sylvie Whitethorn, is never a safe endeavor. Believe me—I know.” Something had used Thomas Luneht to lure her here. She tensed to run, her muscles so taut she thought they might snap. She said, “
Who are you?
”

“You know who I am, Sylvie Whitethorn.” As he crouched beside her, leather creaked and she could smell winter and wood smoke. She turned her head. He wore a long coat and a hat like a Spanish cowboy's, its brim shadowing the upper half of his face. He was smiling.

“Black Scissors.” Her mouth went dry. Several ebony moths with ghostly markings fluttered around them.

“That is one of my names.”

“I don't think I should be talking to you. What happened to Thomas Luneht?”