Briar Queen (27 page)

And he strode alone toward the grand, ruined nest of the Mockingbirds, the old darkness beginning to fracture the fragile identity given to him by a girl with tawny hair and caramel eyes.

THE MOCKINGBIRDS HADN'T EVEN BOTHERED
to conceal the fossilized hotel with glamour; they didn't expect visitors. As Jack pushed through the nettles that had mated with kudzu and overtaken what had once been impressive landscaping, he could smell decay and mildew. He made himself smile as he ascended the massive stairway of moss-slimed marble.

The doors with their patina of old bone opened. From the shadows came a young woman, or something that resembled a young woman. A gossamer cloak billowed like an enormous butterfly around her lily-white gown. Hair the color of moonlight on pewter cascaded to her hips. She was crowned with a wreath of blackthorn and old roses, her lovely face marred by black spirals inked beneath pale eyes lined with red cochineal.

“Jack Daw, as I live and breathe.” Her voice was as honeyed as a southern belle's, and venomous. “What brings you all dark and handsome to my doorstep?”

“Have we met before? I've forgotten.”

“I am Amaranthus.” Her feet were bare and dirty. There was a smear of red on her mouth, and he doubted very much that it was lipstick. “We've met. I visited Reiko once.”

He said, remembering, “‘Love-Lies-Bleeding.'”

“That's my name. We left an invitation for you and your charming companion at the
Ban Gorm
's.” She took a slithering step down. “And you ignored it.”

Grateful for the darkness within him now, he placed a hand glittering with rings on the balustrade. “You should be careful what you invite into your home, Amaranthus.” He advanced up one step. “I believe you've got something of mine.”

“Are they
all
yours, sugar? You've got fine taste. Two pretty girls and one
lovely
boy. Come on in.” Love-Lies-Bleeding turned and moved back toward the entrance. Jack followed. As he passed over the threshold, he felt the dark snake through him.

Leaving footprints on the dusty floor, Amaranthus led Jack into a dingy hall where baroque velvet paper peeled in purple swaths from unhealthy-looking walls. The air was bitter with a smell that reminded him of blood, burned sugar, and the dusty corpses of animals. She pushed open a set of glass doors frosted with the images of lilies and bird skulls, and they entered a large conservatory scattered with Fatas and antique furniture. A creature as gray and insubstantial as cobwebs sat at a grand piano of toad-belly white, fingering a jangling tune from the keys. Some of the Mockingbirds were playing a game similar to croquet, with ivory sticks and a glass ball containing fire.

“Welcome”—Amaranthus looked over her shoulder—“to Mockingbird Court.”

A young man, milk-white hair dyed red at the tips, straightened from where he'd been leaning against a headless statue. His gaze was flat. “
You
.”

“Narcissus,” Amaranthus chided, “be sociable.”

Jack looked at Narcissus and flashed a razor smile. “You were on the train.”

Narcissus growled, “You should have put him in chains, instead of letting him run loose. He threatened me.”

“Well, he's
Jack Daw
. He threatens a lot of people.” Jack heard Amaranthus rustling beside him and sensed, again, that the beautiful girl was merely a cocoon over a thing of contorted bones, moldering feathers, and malice.

Carefully, Jack said, “Finn Sullivan was one of my finest tricks. She was my key to escaping Reiko. I want her back.”

“Reiko,” Amaranthus said sweetly, “whom you murdered, with your pretty schoolgirl. The girl who made you bleed, who made you mortal. Tell me, sugar: How is it you're a Jack again?”

“Because I prefer it. Now, do you want the Wolf dead or not?”

Her lips were red, her looks were free,

Her locks were yellow as gold,

Her skin was white as leprosy
.

The nightmare Life-in-Death was she,

Who thicks men's blood with cold
.

                
—
T
HE
R
IME OF THE
A
NCIENT
M
ARINER
,
S
AMUEL
T
AYLOR
C
OLERIDGE

W
hen Finn opened her eyes and found herself seated at one end of a long table, her head resting against the back of a chair, she was confused. As the nausea and brain fog subsided, she began to focus on an ivory wall stained with mold and hung with a large, peculiar painting of little girls in bonnets, their catlike faces peering at the viewer. Beneath the painting was a hearth filled with flaming candles the color of corpses. Her gaze drifted down.

At the other end of the table, sprawled with one leg draped over the arm of his chair, was Jack.

“Jack.” She tried to move, but her limbs felt as if they were tangled in an invisible web. Jack wasn't looking at her, but at the tangerine he was neatly peeling. He wore an elegant, dark suit and his hair was pulled back, emphasizing the sharp bones of his face.

“It's been a great trick,” he said, focused on the tangerine as Finn followed the
light that gilded his mouth, the pulse in his throat, “to watch you—a shrewd girl, a
smart
girl—fall for a thing like me.”

The air hummed slightly—she felt a trickle from her nose and dabbed the back of one hand against her nostrils, looked, and saw blood. Only Fata magic caused such symptoms.

That's not Jack
.

Terror gave way to anger. She curled her hands against the table. “
Where are Sylvie and Moth?
”

He set the peeled tangerine on the table and rolled it toward her. She could smell its sweet tartness; her mouth watered. He said, “You freed me. For that, I'm grateful. But I don't want you anymore.”

Her nails dug into the wood of the table. For a mad moment, she almost believed him.

“You're bleeding.” He slid to his feet and walked to her, crouched beside her chair, and offered her a black handkerchief. She didn't take it. She studied his face for flaws in the mask. “Where is your ring, Jack?”

“I've a lot of rings.”

Cold slid through the chamber. Feathers and leaves sticky with cobwebs drifted across the floor as she stared into the eyes of the thing wearing Jack's face. She said, “Why is it you remember what you said to me on Halloween night,
Jack
—what you told Sionnach Ri to tell me, to get me here—but you can't remember which ring I gave you?”

He spoke as if addressing a crazy person, with pity. “The ring wasn't important to me. I'm sorry I used you to be free of Reiko.”

“What did you give me before we left,
Jack
?” Leaning toward him, she felt like the predator now. “And what did I give
you
?”

He smiled and sat back on his heels. “You
are
clever.”

And Jack's likeness ghosted away from a Fata with the face of a cruel prince and pale hair streaked red at the tips. It was the Fata Jack had threatened on the train, the one called Narcissus, the one she'd seen at Goblin Market.

“I remember you,” she whispered.

“Want to know my name?” His voice had a southern lilt. He wore a cream-colored suit with an ivory cameo pinned to his silver tie and he was barefoot. The pupils of his eyes were rectangular, like a goat's.

“It won't be your real name. But I know you're called Narcissus.”

“It's Narcissus Mockingbird. Since you refused the invitation we left at the Blue Lady's house, we had to devise another way to bring you and Jack to our doorstep. And dealing with that damn fox knight and giving him his heart back was one of our ways.”

“Is
that
what you gave Sionnach Ri?” Finn remembered the black stone Sionnach had pocketed in Goblin Market. She glanced sidelong at the door, white and carved with images of twining lilies. She told herself she'd
chosen
to come here. “You murdered the Blue Lady.”

“We left an invitation.”

“You left a
piece
of her in a
box
.”

“She was going to give you and your Jack to the Wolf, so don't you think she deserved it?”

“Where are Sylvie and Moth?”

“Safe. You should know, child, that Reiko Fata and Amaranthus were practically sisters. I'm just warning you.”

“Who is Amaranthus?” Finn didn't believe him—none of the Fatas she'd met had had warm feelings for one another.

“Amaranthus is my sister and the ruler of us. She knows you were the cause of Reiko's death. But she's willing to overlook that, if you'll do her a good turn.” He stood and moved to the door. “You did well not to eat the Goblin fruit. It would have made you believe everything I told you.”

“What does she
want
from me?”

“A favor only a queen killer can grant her.” The door shut behind him.

Finn stared at the tangerine, the Goblin fruit, as it slowly unfurled, puffed out, and became a toadstool shaded a poisonous orange.

She jumped up and ran to the door, grabbed the handle, yanked. She braced herself and pulled with a mighty effort. She slammed herself against the wood, banged her fists against it, kicked it. The room had no windows. She wanted to claw at the walls.

She sank against the door and huddled there. They had taken her coat, her backpack, her friends.

AFTER WHAT SEEMED AN ETERNITY LATER,
a girl in a porcelain mask came for Finn and led her down a hallway to another decaying chamber. “There are new clothes on the bed. Make yourself presentable.”

Finn brushed past her. “Thanks. Go away.”

“Don't you want to know what's going to happen to you—”

Finn turned and slammed the door in her face.

She wandered around what had once been a pretty room. It had the same pale, ancient colors as the rest of the hotel, but kudzu tumbled through the windows and the giant bed was hazed with cobwebs and dust. There was a bird's nest in the fireplace and an electric lamp that flickered unreliably. She grimaced when she saw what had been laid out for her on the bed.

She put on the dress of crumpled, parchment-thin cotton the color of fresh blood, but kept her Doc Martens and tossed the red shoes out the window. She brushed the leaves from her hair in front of a tarnished mirror and scowled at the makeup left for her in a glass case. She grimly applied the lip stain and eye shadow. Her hands shook, but there was a core of ice within her that made her suspect the elixir had done more than change her scent. She would play their game, if only to convince them they'd broken her.

She searched for a weapon, found only a shard of glass. She flung it away and walked to a window, leaned out of it, saw a starlit tangle of garden, far below.

A familiar head stuck out of the window below hers.

“
Sylv!
” Finn gripped the sill. There was no sane way to climb down.

Sylvie leaned farther out, clutching the window frame, her dark hair swirling in the wind. “Are you okay?”

“Yes,” Finn lied. “Are you really Sylvie?”

“Oh, Finn. What're they doing to you?”

Moth leaned out beside Sylvie. Finn smiled to see him back in human form. He said, “Are you all right? I'm coming up.”

“No—”

But he gripped the window frame below and hauled himself onto a narrow molding that Finn hadn't even considered as a foothold. She watched anxiously as he pushed himself up, as he clambered over the sill. His white, button-down shirt, silver tie, and trousers were smudged with dust. He looked disapprovingly around the room. “I don't know what they're dressing us up for.”

“You said they were ghouls.”

“Yes.” He prowled around, tried the door. “And they're all bat-shit crazy.” He
held up one wrist banded by what looked like barbed wire. “This keeps me from changing. The witch put it on me.”

“The . . . witch?”

“Amaranthus Mockingbird. An old thing.” Moth sat on the windowsill and glanced down. “This is my fault. Because I wronged Sionnach Ri. I wonder how many people I've done awful things to?” He looked up with a sudden smile that startled Finn. “I didn't know I was so popular here.”

“Do you remember what you did? To Sionnach?”

His smile faded. “Now I do. A while ago, Lot gave me back my mortal shape and sent me after Sionnach Ri and a witch called Dragonfly. He wanted me to steal something from each of them.”

Finn waited and he continued softly, “The heart of a fox knight and the heart of a witch are powerful things. Fatas who grow hearts make them into objects of power, which they hide, because such objects can be used to drain a Fata's power, or kill them.”

“I know,” Finn whispered.

“
I
didn't. When I learned, I tried to steal the hearts back. Lot turned me into a moth until your sister kissed me.”

Finn sat on the windowsill beside him. She glanced down at Sylvie, who was perched on the sill below and gazing anxiously up. “It's me the Mockingbirds want, Moth. If you get the chance, take Sylvie and run.”

“Now, you know Sylvie won't do that. And your sister sent me to protect you. You've got shadows in your eyes and none at your feet. You need to leave the Ghostlands soon, Finn, or you won't be able to. Don't take any more of that elixir the Goblin Market witch made for Sylvie.” One of his hands rested against hers on the sill. “The elixir will change you into something that is not good. You'll be fearless, but . . . not you.”

She didn't want to withdraw her hand from beside his. “Moth . . . will Lily be different?”

“She's still your sister.” His voice was gentle.

“Has Seth Lot . . . has he . . .” She couldn't finish. Moth gripped her hand and said nothing, which was her answer. She wanted to vomit. She thought of cutting off Seth Lot's handsome head.

“Lily Rose is like you.” Moth's gaze held hers. “She is not breakable. She said to me, once, that she would give
them
what they want . . . a queen. And she is a queen in that house of wolves and briars.”

Someone rapped at the door. They both flinched.

“I'll see you later, fearless girl.” Moth slid out the window to the ledge below, where Sylvie helped pull him back in. She looked up at Finn and winked, before vanishing from view.

A female voice called from behind Finn's door, “Are you decent, sugar?”

“Yes.” A primitive terror flashed through Finn. She straightened and pretended to be stone.

The door whispered open, white paint crumbling from its mildewed wood. The air began to hum as darkness ribboned into the room, becoming a young woman in a gown of pale silk, her hair a knee-length cascade of pewter white, her eyes lined with crimson spirals. She looked so much like a real fairy as she moved across the room, bare feet peeking from beneath the ivory gown's dirty hem, that Finn felt her fear become wonder. “Serafina Sullivan, who conquered the white serpent, kissed a Jack back from the dead, and has now come to challenge the Big Bad Wolf.”

“Amaranthus?”

“Pleased to make your acquaintance.” The girl dropped into a chair and slung her legs over one of its arms as if to imitate Narcissus's earlier pose as Jack. There were scratches on her legs. “That dress you're wearing is Dolce and Gabbana. Do you like it?”

Finn lifted her chin. “Did you buy it? Or did it belong to a
guest
?”

Amaranthus smiled slyly and twisted a finger in her shining hair. “A guest left it. You're prettier than I expected. But, then, Jack Daw always was one for choosing the finer ones of your kind.” The girl-thing examined her silvery nails and spoke with idle malice. “He wanted so badly to be a real boy, Jack did.”

“Well.” Finn felt the cold, distantly. “Now, he is.”

“Oh, sugar.” Amaranthus's eyes glinted. “Did you ever think that maybe he was sorry he got what he asked for? I mean, he tricked three other girls into loving him just so he could grow one of them whatchamacallits . . . a
heart
. But it seemed he only grew one for you.”

Finn became still and tense. “Whatever you think you're doing, you can
stop
it.”

“You ever have doubts?” Amaranthus slid into a crouch on the chair. “Ever wonder if he
used
you?”

“Never.”

Amaranthus glided to her feet, the fabric of her gown whispering. Her gossamer cloak billowed as she moved toward Finn. “Do you know why Jack Daw is famous in the Ghostlands—or infamous, rather? He was Reiko's assassin. Oh, he might not have killed those three mortal girls with his own hands, but they died
because
of him. Here, in the
Taibhse na Tir,
he killed her enemies, and don't think it wasn't something he enjoyed, slaughtering Fatas.”