Briar Queen (30 page)

She rose to face the ice-blue Rolls-Royce gliding toward her, mist drifting away from a pewter hood ornament that was not a wolf, but a ballerina.

The Rolls-Royce halted, waited.

Finn walked toward the car on rubbery legs. The rear passenger door clicked open. She slid into the dark interior and sat with her hands in her lap and faced the Wolf.

Seth Lot was sprawled in the opposite seat. He wasn't smiling. Shadows and light moved across a face that might have belonged to a young saint, one who had decided that wearing Tom Ford suits and corrupting innocents was more to his liking. As the Rolls-Royce glided forward, the chauffeur a silhouette, Finn defiantly met the Wolf's black-rimmed, blue gaze.

“Well.” His voice was gentle, his hands folded on the wolf-head handle of a walking stick. “I apologize, Serafina Sullivan, for that rather elaborate and cruel trick that dumped you here. The revenants are seldom subtle and not very intelligent. Did the bitch hurt you?”

“No,” Finn whispered. There was snow in the mahogany-colored hair falling to Seth Lot's shoulders and on his coat's fur collar. There was no weather here, Moth had once told her, no rain or snow—so why did the Wolf smell like winter as well as expensive cologne?

Although she was instinctively afraid, her body sang with adrenaline. She felt as if someone older and calmer and darker was speaking when she said, “Where is my sister?”

“In my house.”

“You knew I'd get Lily away from the Mockingbirds. That's why you replaced her with that
thing
.”

“You're a resourceful young woman. Tenacious. I wasn't about to take any chances. I see you've taken a stronger dose of the elixir than is recommended.” Seth Lot's mouth curved with wry humor. “That's unfortunate.” He unfolded one hand and his eyes grew cold. “Give it to me.”

She took the nearly empty vial of Goblin Market elixir from her pocket and dropped it into his palm. She gripped the edges of the leather seat. “Why is it unfortunate?”

“Because, Serafina”—he spoke as if he was capable of kindness—“the elixir burning through you is rewriting your—what do your people call it?—your DNA, your very essence. If you don't return to the true world soon, you'll never be able to. You will be one of us. Do you know the penalty for murdering a king or queen of our kind?”

“I didn't murder Reiko.” Her voice shook.

“The penalty is stitchery, Serafina. So, I'll ask you, child, what the wolf asked Red Riding Hood: Which path do you prefer—the path of pins or the path of needles?”

That question, with its hint of ancient rituals and primitive evil, stripped away all the false valor the elixir had given her. When one of the Wolf's cool strong hands, heavy with rings, landed atop hers, Finn flinched and her stomach heaved.

“No,” Lot gently said, “don't be ill. That's ugly.”

“My sister . . .” She could scarcely speak past the bile clogging her throat.

“Don't worry about your sister. She chose her path.” His jeweled fingers encircled her wrist and caressed the bracelet of silver charms that had been Lily's. The silver didn't burn him. He smiled and it reminded her of a dark winter road glittering with blood and broken glass. Softly, he said, “And where did you get this pretty charm?”

She pulled her hand from his. “You know.”

He settled back into the shadows. She gazed out the window and wondered what it would be like to die.

JACK AND MOTH HAD MANAGED
to steal two motorcycles—antlered bikes of green-sheened brass taken from the parking lot of a coffeehouse with an eye of bioluminescent glass as its sign. Jack was able to start his engine, but it took Moth a few attempts to get the ignition working on his. As they roared away, Jack glanced at Moth—whatever Moth was, he was far more than an
aisling
.

As they followed the Grindylow compass toward the house of the Wolf, Jack whispered Finn's name as if it could become a living thing and travel to her upon the air.

SETH LOT HAD CEASED SPEAKING TO HER
and sat in the shadows. Finn preferred it when he spoke, because at least, then, he was pretending to be human. She huddled against the door and watched the Ghostlands glide past and thought,
I can't die. Not now
.

As the Rolls swerved around a corner, he called out, “Easy, Hester.”

The name sent an icy blade of dread into Finn's heart. When she glimpsed the chauffeur's reflection in the rearview mirror, she thought at first that it was another betrayal.

Hester Kierney, her silver eyes making her an alien thing, met Finn's gaze in the mirror. Her hair had gone diamond white; her skin was alabaster, as if all the blood had been drained from her.
She's one of the dead now,
Finn thought as Hester whispered, “Finn . . . I had to.”

Rigid with rage, Finn turned to Seth Lot. “She's one of the
blessed
.”

“She wanted immortality. Didn't you, Hester? She was quite frightened and alone when I found her. Oh, she didn't betray you. She stumbled into the Ghostlands by accident. She chose the path of needles, so I filled her with her favorite flower and stitched her up. She had to hurt first. But she's not afraid any longer, are you, Hester?”

Watching the back of Hester's head, remembering her as gracious and sweet and
alive,
Finn dug her nails into the seat leather and managed to speak past a violent urge to be sick. “I don't think that's what she meant when you forced her to make that choice.”

Hester spoke as if each word were a link to sanity. “He helped me. I didn't want to die, Finn. I was
alone
.”

You're dead now
. Finn wanted to scream as Seth Lot placed his beautiful hands on the wolf head of his walking stick and smiled and said, “And that is why you should be careful what you wish for. I could have fed her her own heart, which I used to do with my Jacks and Jills. Or twisted her into a thing that kills. Here we are.”

Finn dragged her gaze to the house that appeared as the Rolls-Royce rounded a forested curve in the road. The Wolf's mansion was as forbidding as she'd imagined it, a Gothic chateau, spiny and crooked, a deformed creature looming in caverns of briars and cradled by black alders like the broken bones of giants. Two stone wolves guarded a cracked stair leading up to a pair of medieval-looking doors. The house's leprous-white marble and blanched stone were stained nearly black by a sludge of dead leaves and moss.

The Rolls-Royce halted in the weed-choked driveway. Hester got out and opened the back door. Seth Lot exited the car and began strolling up the lane.

Standing with Hester, Finn studied the ruined house. Her vision was suddenly blurred by tears she furiously blinked back. “Why aren't there guards?”

“He doesn't need any. Who'd be crazy enough to break in?”

“
Hester
.” Finn turned to her, but Hester looked away.

“No worries, Finn. The number-one law of nature is adapt or die. Give me your backpack.”

With a shaking hand, Finn held the backpack out to Hester, who took it and began moving down the lane, the heels of her boots clicking against a pavement clotted with toadstools and lined at intervals with rusty metal poles holding empty birdcages. Finn followed. The house was worse close up, decrepit and dark, its windows shattered. The exterior walls were streaked with reddish stains. The miasma of rot and mold drifted in a clammy vapor from the shadows beyond the gaping windows. As they walked through an evil-looking garden scattered with headless statues and debris that seemed to have come from the destruction of other houses, Finn stepped over a porcelain sink and avoided a broken rocking chair.

Lily was in that awful place.

Whatever alchemy the elixir was working on Finn's body, heightening her adrenaline, alerting her to any movement around her, it also kept her from breaking.

Seth Lot moved up the split stairs and touched the doors. As they opened, the house shimmered into a gorgeous, lamp-lit mansion of snowy marble and pale granite with friezes of briar roses around stained-glass windows and a garden that bloomed around Finn into a winter-touched fairyland of white roses and statues with the beautiful faces of remorseless angels.

“Come along, Serafina.” The Wolf, a shadow now, turned in the light from the house and extended one hand.

HE LED HER, WITH HESTER
,
down a starkly elegant hall and paused in front of a scarlet door. He took a key from his pocket. Finn scarcely noticed the key, waiting for that door to open and reveal her sister.

The door clicked inward. He gestured to her. “The house wants to welcome you.”

She stepped past him—

—and into a birch forest. She staggered. There was snow beneath her boots. A road. The sky was gray. The elixir hummed through her like thousands of dragonfly wings.

A twitching, girlish shadow stood at the road's end. It was . . .
wrong
.

Finn whirled, to run—

—and came face-to-face with her silver-eyed double.

It was an alabaster creature wearing the same ruffled dress, only in black. Her—its—hair was tangled with tiny bones and red berries. Black spirals were painted beneath eyes as inhuman as moonlight on mirrors. It exuded harm and
malice
.

Finn stepped back, clutching at a tree for balance. She whispered, “Don't—”

“
Don't
.” It mimicked her voice exactly.

Finn choked out, “What are you?”

“
What are you?
” The thing smiled at her, its teeth small and sharp.

“I'm not afraid of you,” Finn lied. “
What are you?
”

“Your future.”

Finn shook her head. In folk tales, meeting one's double was
never
a good thing. Carefully, she said, “I'm Finn Sullivan.
You
are nothing.”

The creature hissed and vanished.

Finn now stood in an enormous hall, its stone walls hung with threadbare tapestries and ancient weapons. A black velvet chair was draped with a fur-lined coat. Before her was a door of gray wood carved with images of snarling wolves. She strode forward and gripped the doorknob, tried to twist it. When it didn't turn, she slammed both fists against the wood. “Stop playing games! I don't like your damn house and
where is Lily
?”

The door opened.

Finn peered into a girly, Victorian bedroom that was all creams and ivories, the large bed veiled by gossamer curtains patterned with butterflies, the open windows revealing a Ghostlands night. A girl sat on a sofa of white velvet, her head bowed, long dark hair concealing her face.

“
Lily?
” Finn stepped in, hope tearing at her.

The girl raised her head—and it was Reiko Fata who smiled at her.

The door slammed shut behind Finn. She backed against it, slid down. Reiko laughed, rising with serpentine grace. “Oh, he
said
it would be entertaining, your reaction. Who do you think I am?”

Finn wanted to push herself through the door's wood as Reiko sauntered toward her, speaking. “You're the queen killer, a little thing like you . . . He won't tell me which queen you've slain. Did you do it alone, little mayfly?”

Finn couldn't believe how vivid this trick was. “You can't . . .
be
here . . .”

Reiko leaned close. “Seth said you did it to save a lover. A
Jack
.”

As the Fata queen stepped back, Finn understood what was happening . . . Absalom had said Seth Lot had stolen this house from a creature of dreams, so it held memories, phantoms. This was a Reiko from
the past,
a memory, trapped here . . . This Reiko wouldn't remember the child Finn she'd nearly drowned, because they hadn't met. This Reiko hadn't yet decided to sacrifice eighteen-year-old Finn at the Teind.

“
I
have a Jack.” Reiko fixed Finn with a playful look. “And I would murder kings and queens for
him
. You do seem familiar.” Reiko approached again. Her green eyes glinted as she reached out—

—and gently pulled Finn away from the door to open it. “I don't know what you are, little mayfly, but you belong to the Wolf now. You may roam the house. But you will never leave it.”

As the door closed, Finn sank down onto the sofa and began to scheme.

JACK AND MOTH LEFT THEIR MOTORCYCLES
in the forest surrounding Lot's house, a looming, hollowed wreck that stank of toadstools and the iron taint of blood that meant mortals had died there. As they slipped closer to the house, reaching the border of the sinister garden, a figure in a grimy, white suit moved from the darkness.

Although Jack had his
kris
at Leander Cyrus's throat in a heartbeat and Moth had drawn a dagger, Leander calmly said, “You can't take Lily Rose out of the Ghostlands.”

“And why is that, Leander?”

“This house, Jack . . . the Wolf's house . . . it once belonged to someone else. This house is a tomb for memories and parts of the past. Ghosts.”

A cold despair cut through Jack. “I know that.”

“Do you understand why Lily can leave the Wolf's house, but not the Ghostlands?”

“What is he saying?” Moth demanded of Jack. “Lily isn't a
ghost
. She's real—”

“Listen,” Leander's voice broke. “Lily isn't ali—”

“Stop.” Jack felt as if everything was collapsing around him. What they had
risked
to come here . . . He stepped close to Leander. “You are not to tell Finn.
And if you betray us, I'll rip out your flower stuffing. Do you understand?”

“I understand”—Leander was somber—“that you are truly Jack Daw again.”

“Jack,” Moth said quietly, “shall we stick to the plan?”

Jack sheathed his
kris
and said to Leander, “So Jill Scarlet got my message to you, did she?”