Briar Queen (24 page)

Outside, they were handed helmets by Sionnach and his two companions and Finn swung onto Sionnach's fox-shaped motorcycle while a Fata girl with red ringlets made room for Moth on hers and Sylvie slid behind a boy in a red velvet coat. Despite their pretty manners and sweet faces, Sionnach Ri and his friends shimmered with power and strangeness. As Finn carefully circled her arms around Sionnach, she said, “Did Jack tell you that you resemble one of my best friends?”

“Christopher Hart. Some of us never get to see the true world when our originals remain there. We're not allowed. Also, most of us don't want to see our beauty mirrored in another.”

“Originals.” Finn thought of Christie's flirty smile and his serious concern and her throat ached. “He might be dead. Your original.”

“He's not.” Sionnach looked over his shoulder. “He's with Jack.”

Her heart jumped as the motorcycle thrummed to life and he began to tell her how they'd found Jack and Christie with the Dragonfly witch.

FINN MUST HAVE DROWSED OFF
,
because when she raised her head from Sionnach Ri's shoulder, she saw stars spilling across the sky and the dusk had gone. As the night air flowed into the helmet, she thought she tasted snow on her tongue.

The three motorcycles curved down a road lined by giant cypress trees. Sionnach called out, “Goblin Market, coming up!”

He raised an arm to his friends. They steered their bikes onto a highway where the cypresses twined through cement ruins. The roadway soon became an avenue leading toward a gathering of high-rises and dingy storefronts that had fallen prey to Mother Nature. Streets and buildings swarmed with ivy. Emerald moss furred rooftops. Wild grapevines spilled from broken windows. There were cars—rusted and grime-smeared shells filled with shadows. The urban decay was made even more disturbing by wistful objects strung on the trees . . . small clocks, bird skulls, toys, an excess of broken jewelry. Shadowy figures moved like velvet and gossamer in the jellyfish light of the streetlamps. The motorcycles' raucous engines seemed to
disturb unseen things, and Finn tried not to look too closely at the phantom city's inhabitants.

The breath left her as the motorcycles cruised down a street toward a tunnel of glowing-white birches, their woven-together branches forming a twisting roof. At the street's end loomed a soot-smudged neoclassical building, its stairway guarded by two gargoyles with lanterns in their mouths. Prehistoric yews surrounded the building, moss-draped branches clawing at the roof, the lit windows. Beyond was the metal dome of a conservatory. Over the entrance, in bas-relief on the triangular pediment, were the words
MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY
. Spray-painted across the doors in glimmering red were other words Finn couldn't quite make out.

Sionnach and his fox knights halted their motorcycles before the tunnel of glowing birches.

“Goblin Market,” Sionnach told Finn as his motorcycle's engine thrummed. “It has everything. True food—there's a changeling who bakes
the
best cupcakes I've ever had. And we'll be able to get the elixir if we're clever. We just need to get past those trees.”

“Goblin Market?” Finn said, wary. “And what's wrong with those tree—” Then she noticed tangles of ivory in the roots of the birches and whispered, “Please tell me those aren't
bones
.”

“Hold on and don't let anything touch you.”

He sped forward. The others followed. As they roared past the birches, Finn, her heart pounding, saw crimson veins glistening in the trees' pale trunks and realized how sharp-edged the silvery leaves were. When something drifted across the back of her neck, she yelped and swatted at a red tendril snaking from one of the branches. She touched her skin, felt a sting, and warmth—blood. The silver leaves drifting around them crackled against her helmet.

Several more tendrils whipped down.

Sionnach's motorcycle shot toward the stairs. Glancing over at Moth and his rider, Finn saw a red vine whip across Moth's hand. Blood spattered—Moth had remembered he was human again, at the worst time. As Sylvie and her rider shot past, Finn ducked her head and held tight to Sionnach.

The motorcycles bumped up the stairs toward the doors spray-painted with the words
Goblin Market
. The doors, their bronze panels engraved with
images of knights fighting monsters, opened before them, onto darkness.

The three motorcycles motored down a vast, gloomy corridor lined on either side by hollow-eyed Renaissance statues. Outside light glimmered through the windows. At the hall's end was another set of doors, opened to reveal a cavernous, crumbling atrium with a pterodactyl skeleton hanging on wires from the vaulted ceiling. The first and second floors of the atrium had flickering, jewel-hued lamps above dark alcoves. Moss covered the concrete, as did fields of toadstools. Ivy rustled on the walls, on pillars, around the balustrades of a stairway. An eerie silence folded around them.

“
This
is Goblin Market?” Finn tried not to sound crushed. “It looks like an abandoned museum.”

“We're early.” Sionnach seemed tense. He raised a hand. “It doesn't wake up until thirteen o'clock.”

“Thirteen o'clock?”

It began as whispers, and giant shadows rippling over the walls. Finn's skin iced and her eardrums vibrated with a buzzing sound that shook her brain. She tasted blood in her mouth.

Then the hissing shadows rushed down into the atrium, followed by hundreds of glowing orbs. Dark figures formed. Light slowly melted across the walls, the newly arrived inhabitants, and the fantastical merchandise of Goblin Market.

Sylvie breathed out, “Wow.”

Faces flickered. Silver eyes cast back the jeweled lights. The ruin remained, but, now, objects were on display in the alcoves: books and bottles, clocks and taxidermy animals, fanciful jewelry and weapons, bizarre fossils and plants. No one would have mistaken it for a human marketplace, with its denizens that resembled the members of several savage and elegant tribes dressed in clothing from different eras. Despite a lack of dramatic mutations—no pointy ears, hooves, bat wings, or butterfly wings—the Fatas here would never be mistaken for mortals.

Three young men in fedoras and suits strode past, tattoos on their hands. A young woman in gladiator sandals and a red tunic leaned in the inner doorway, smoking a cigarette.

Sionnach halted his motorcycle in the outer hallway. There were other motorcycles there, each forged from an organic metal into the forms of beasts or
twining vegetation. As Sionnach and his companions settled their vehicles, Finn hopped off and waited for Moth and Sylvie to join her. She wondered if Sylvie was experiencing the same dreamy acceptance, or if it was just the elixir.

“Christie isn't dead,” she told them with conviction. “He's with Jack.”

“Why would you think Christie's dead?” Moth was watching the fox knights.

“Caliban called on a phone at Orsini's. He said Christie was dead. He lied.”

“Do you really think Christie's all right?” Sylvie sounded so lost and miserable that Finn put an arm around her. She said firmly, “I
know
he is.”

Swaggering, Sionnach led them down a corridor to a pair of glass doors, which he flung wide to reveal a lamp-lit courtyard scattered with the metal sculptures of prehistoric plants. There were no Fatas in sight.

“Wait here. I'd rather not lead you through Goblin Market until I've gotten the elixir. Luce and Merriweather will look after you.” Sionnach strode back toward the market before anyone could object.

“I told you I don't trust him,” Moth muttered.

“Why would he go to all this trouble if he was planning on giving us to Caliban?” Sylvie looked as lost and desperate as Finn felt. And Finn wasn't sure about Sionnach Ri either. They were in another world and clutching at strangers.

As the two fox knights leaned against a sculpture of giant ferns and proceeded to light up cigarettes, Finn sat on a metal toadstool and watched Sylvie wander around. Moth indicated the atrium of Goblin Market, which they could see through the glass doors. “You see that pretty girl, there, the one in pink? That's human blood she's trading in those bottles. The boy with freckles, selling snakes? He lets them bite him and uses their venom in kisses to sicken mortal girls. Those two men in greatcoats and three-cornered hats? They seduce people into doing bad things.”

“How do you know all that?”

“I remember their types.” He pointed at the ones he'd called out. “
Baobhan sith,
ganconer, elf knights.”

“It's the Unseelie stock exchange.” Finn wanted out of this nightmare gathering as soon as possible. A hunger pang ripped through her stomach and she winced.

Moth said, “You think it's a coincidence? Sionnach resembling your friend?”

“When we first met, you thought Sylvie and Christie were other people.” Her eyes widened. “What if the Dragonfly witch looks like Sylvie?”

“I don't remember a Dragonfly witch or . . . him. Perhaps
I
have a Fata double.”

She laid one hand gently over his. “How do you do it, Moth? You were ripped from your life, imprisoned forever in the Wolf's house, changed into a
bug . . .”

“It's surviving, that's all. Anyone can do it, if they're lucky enough.” He had the same feral, striking appeal as Jack, that otherworldly grace. He said, “I fear I've led you to this.”

“Well, Seth Lot also threatened me . . .”

“What if I'm a trap?” His hand tightened.

“You're not a trap. I meant to ask . . . did you want to be called Alexander?”

“I'm not Alexander anymore. Do you want to know what she said to me, your sister, the first time I met her? She said, ‘
He promised to make me his queen
.'”

Finn closed her eyes. “She went with Lot voluntarily.” She opened her eyes and regarded him. “You and Lily—”

“I don't love Lily Rose. I
care
about her. Oddly enough, there
was
a girl, a long time ago, named Rose.” His smile was crooked. “It was Lily and you who woke that memory.”

“What happened to—”

“Seth Lot happened to her. That's when I started blacking out. I had only bits and pieces of my mind left after he murdered Rose.”

She watched him as he bowed his head, a muscle twitching in his jaw. She said, “How does he get away with killing humans when it's against Fata law?”

“Why do you think they all want him dead? Lot keeps mortals around so that he might accomplish things.
Aisling
s and changelings are never kept human for good reasons.”

Finn said gently, “And the girl called Rose?”

“I dream about her. It was the 1700s, in France.” He pronounced “France” as a posh “Fronce.” “I remember she was chopping wood, in the forest. She wore a red coat. I introduced myself and told her I was newly arrived . . .”

Finn pictured Moth in a tricornered hat, greatcoat, and cavalier boots, courting a pretty young woman who held a hatchet.

“I didn't know I was being used as a lure.” His mouth twisted. Then he flashed that rare smile. “I also didn't know Rose was from a family that had hunted dangerous Fatas for centuries.”

“Did she try to kill Seth Lot?”

“She did. And he killed
her
.” His face grew hard. “We must find a way to destroy him.”

Her heart twisted for Moth, taken out of time and cast adrift with no friends or family. They continued to hold hands for a moment, as if to let go would cause the other to fall. Then she carefully released his fingers.

Sionnach returned with a Fata girl in a short dress of gold silk and golden platform sandals, her hair an auburn mane shot through with more gold, a color also painted around her silver-green eyes. She looked Sylvie over disdainfully and demanded a price that made Sylvie pale.

“My
blood
?”

“It's the only way I'll be able to get the elixir made quickly, little dark thing.” The witch didn't smile.

“I don't want a Mean Girl taking any of my blood.”

Sionnach said, “We need to make our way through this market. And we'd like to get some coffee, purchase some things, use the restrooms—”

“You're not even
real people
!” Sylvie's outburst was followed by an uncomfortable silence. The Mean Girl witch smirked. Sionnach seemed dismayed. Sionnach's male comrade drawled, “That wasn't very nice.”

When Finn calmly offered her own blood, the witch became even more disdainful. “Your blood is chaotic.”

“Take mine.” Moth flipped a small blade into his hand and sliced the ball of his thumb. Nothing came out of the wound. Sionnach said, almost gently, “Forgotten what you are again, Alexander?”

Moth stared down at the bloodless cut. “But I bled . . .”

“Here.” Sylvie held out a hand. “Just get it over with.”

SYLVIE TOOK A DROP OF THE WITCH'S ELIXIR
—after Moth sampled it to be sure—and the world changed. As she walked with the fox knights, Finn, and Moth through Goblin Market, she gazed around like the blind given sight.

The giant hanging pterodactyl skeleton was singed as if it had been in a fire. There were blackened marks on the walls, too, and, at the top of the colossal stairway, the stained-glass window depicting a forest from a Grimms' fairy tale was veined with red. They passed a stone slab embedded with the vertebrae of
some giant creature. Nearby, several girls in denim, their brown hair braided with flowers, spoke with a boy in a kilt and tattoos. He was displaying paper fans on which pictures seemed to move.

Sylvie said, “I can't believe we're here. This is the most amazing—”

“Careful, Sylvie Whitethorn. This is a place of Unseelie things.” Moth glanced meaningfully at Sionnach.