Briar Queen (33 page)

The two doors shimmered as if the air was a reel of melting film—and faded.

Then she was gazing at her reflection in a large mirror. There were only shadows behind her and a larger shadow among them, spiky and bestial, with silver eyes: Seth Lot.

The mirror glass began to crack. The point of a dagger emerged.

Lot stepped between her and the mirror and closed one hand around her throat. Softly, he said, “I see Jack has made
his
choice.”

Someone came up behind Finn. A wooden knife carved with runes slid over her right shoulder, aimed unwaveringly at Lot's left eye. A familiar voice said, “Let her go.”

“You can't kill me with that.” Seth Lot didn't move.

“No. But it would ruin that mask you wear for a while, and you wouldn't want the pretty things to see what you
really
look like, would you?”

Seth Lot met the gaze of the knife bearer and released Finn, who twisted around. The knife bearer tore his beaked mask away, revealing Moth. He backed toward the enormous mirror, pulling Finn with him.

“Go.” Moth gently shoved her. She turned to face the glass, saw the shadows behind Lot surging forward—

She leaped at the mirror. Moth followed—

She slammed into Jack in the dining hall and he reeled back. She flung her arms around him and kissed him once as Moth strode toward them, saying, “I was invited in by Leander Cyrus and Lily.” He stripped off the fur-lined coat he'd worn to disguise himself and revealed a small arsenal of weapons, including the jackal-headed walking stick strapped across his back. “They're waiting for us.”

Jack set his chained hands on the table. “You have anything to cut through these?”

Finn looked at the mirror, at Eve Avaline's silver dagger quivering in the glass. When something dark loomed behind the dagger in the mirror, she whispered, “
He's coming
.”

As Moth stabbed a bronze knife into the lock of Jack's chains, Finn searched for something to smash the chains with. Moth, unsuccessful, backed away, then turned to face the mirror and said, “We need to leave. You'll have to run in the chains—”

The silver dagger hurtled out of the mirror and clattered at Moth's feet as a dark figure began to emerge from the reflective glass—

Moth snatched up the silver blade and leaped forward.

The figure appearing in the mirror lunged—onto Eve's silver dagger.

Hester Kierney slid from the blade, clutching her bloody midsection and staring at a horrified Moth. Magnolia blossoms spilled from her mouth.

Finn ran to her as Moth dropped the dagger and caught Hester in his arms. Finn cried out, “Why is she bleeding if she's a Jill?”

“Because,” Jack said, “she's fresh-made. She's still mostly mortal.”

Moth, like death in his black clothes and black hoodie, bowed his head as Hester clutched at Finn, who laid trembling hands over the other girl's midriff and sought to stop the blood. She didn't want to look at the other girl, to see her pain, watch her . . . “Hester . . .”

Hester fumbled with something on a chain around her neck. She pressed a metal object into Finn's hand, and her breathing became a terrible, wet rasp. Her eyes widened as bloody petals frothed from her mouth.

Moth cried out, holding her. Finn brought the back of her own blood-streaked hand against her mouth as Hester convulsed, her breathing becoming a liquid gasping that seemed to rattle her bones. She wanted to end Hester's pain . . . didn't know how . . .

Moth reached down. “Look away,” he told Finn softly, and she closed her eyes. She didn't see him snap Hester's neck. But she heard it. And felt as if Hester's pain had moved into her as silent sobs shuddered through her body.

Jack bowed his head.

Hester's skin, glazed like porcelain, cracked apart. White magnolia blossoms drifted away from her bones. Finn could hear Moth and Jack speaking, but she could only stare at Hester's remains. Then she hunched over and was sick on the floor.

Seth Lot stepped out of the mirror.

Moth rose to meet him with two blades in his hands. Lot came at him, swinging his walking stick as serenely as if he was strolling through a park.

“
Finn!
” Jack's voice was urgent.

Finn snatched up the silver dagger and ran to Jack. She stabbed the blade into the lock holding his chains together. As the horror of Hester's death began to
cut through her shock, crippling her ability to think clearly, she heard Moth and Lot fighting, the blades and the walking stick shrieking and clanging against one another.

“The lock won't break,” Jack grimly said. “Run.”

She uncurled her other hand and raised what Hester had given her—a key shaped like a dragonfly. Jack whispered, “
Where did you—
”

She shoved the key into the lock of his chains. The lock clicked.

Moth slid across the floor on his back. Seth Lot was striding toward them, his face cold.

As his chains fell away, Jack grabbed Eve's silver knife from Finn, twirled it, and strode to meet Seth Lot, who slashed at him with his walking stick. Jack dodged. The Wolf grabbed him by the throat and flung him at the mirror. As Jack hit the glass, which shattered spectacularly all around him, a rain of silver, Lot stalked toward him, unsheathing a blade from his walking stick.

Jack had dropped the silver dagger and was painfully climbing to his feet. Finn, backing toward the door, felt her heel strike something and looked down at the jackal walking stick. She shouted to Moth, who dragged himself into a crouch. She shoved the walking stick across the floor. He caught it.

As Jack pushed himself up from the shards of glass, Moth, gripping the walking stick, rose unsteadily and ran at Lot, who turned.

Moth swung the walking stick and hit the Wolf in the skull. Lot dropped to one knee, hair falling over his face.

Finn turned to the door, still holding the dragonfly key, knowing it was the key the Black Scissors had given Sylvie to get her and Christie here. She wondered if that sly and dangerous enemy of the Fatas had suspected they'd end up with his key.

“Please work,” she murmured as she heard Jack and Moth running toward her. She pushed the key into the lock.

Lot flung his sword. It slammed into Jack's shoulder, pinning him to the wall. Finn dropped the key with a cry.

Jack, bleeding from the mirror glass, looked as if he'd collapse any second. Moth grabbed the sword's hilt and frantically attempted to free him as Finn ducked down for the key. She glanced over her shoulder to see Lot had risen to his feet. As she straightened with the key, the Wolf said, “You won't get out.”

Moth yanked the blade from Jack's shoulder—there was more blood—and held him up as Finn turned the dragonfly key in the lock.

As shadows began to swarm around the Wolf, the door opened.

Finn, Jack, and Moth raced down the hall. Darkness howled past them. It clotted before them, sweeping into the shape of Seth Lot, who ran at them with the sword.

Moth stepped between Lot and Finn. He blocked Lot's blade with the jackal walking stick and the force of the blow nearly bent him backward. Then Lot hooked a leg beneath one of his and Moth fell.

Jack had retrieved the silver dagger. As he strode forward, Finn leaped after him and wound one hand around his, around the dagger's hilt. When Lot writhed into darkness, they launched themselves at him, and, together, plunged the dagger toward the Wolf.
For Lily,
Finn thought.

The dagger stabbed into the shadows that had swallowed Seth Lot. The Wolf collapsed in his mortal form, clutching at the hole in his chest as darkness spilled from his mouth, his eyes.

Jack pulled Finn back. They swung around and hauled Moth to his feet and fled down the hall.

A storm of shadows massed behind them.

They pushed through the doors into the courtyard where Leander and Lily waited, looking as if they'd just come from a cocktail party, he in his white suit and she in her black gown. Leander carried Finn's backpack.

Finn flung herself forward and fiercely embraced Lily. “That thing with the butterflies . . . where'd you learn it?”

“Someday I'll tell you.” Lily's attention switched to Moth and she said, “Hey, you.”

Moth smiled. “Lily Rose.”

“We need to fly.” Jack gestured to a door in the wall.

“
That
was your plan?” Finn whispered to Jack as she took her backpack from Leander. “Get caught?”

“As long as Lot believed Leander would betray me.” Jack handed Finn a wooden dagger. “Elder wood. We need to pin this damn house down so we can get out. Would you do the honors?”

As a howl came from within the mansion, Finn gripped the dagger. Then Lily's hands settled over hers and, together, they pushed the wood into the ground. The world shook.

They ran to the door in the courtyard wall. As Jack shoved it open, Moth and Leander swept out first to make sure nothing waited on the other side.

“Jack.”

Finn and Jack slowly turned.

Reiko Fata, in a blood-red dress, stood near the wooden blade in the ground. The courtyard had become a creeper-snarled mess of neglect, the mansion once again a hulking ruin. Black hair whipping across her face, Reiko said, “Do you think another girl is going to free you, Jack? You are mine. Not
hers
. Not
his
. So, run, my Jack, from the Wolf. But
I
will find you.”

With one foot, she shoved the wooden blade all the way into the soil.

A howling, inky void descended upon the Wolf's house.

Finn grabbed Jack's hand and they fled through the door in the wall. They turned to look back as the mansion and the grounds around it disappeared in that whirlwind of darkness and snow until all that remained was an empty clearing in a forest of mammoth oaks and towering yews.

“She pinned it.” Jack sounded stunned.

Finn remembered Hester and felt her legs go wobbly. Jack gripped her elbow to keep her from falling and told her, “We're almost home, beloved.”

Shadows seemed to stir in the forest that surrounded them. Caverns of darkness gaped. Mist crept around trees like monstrous figures, adding to the forest's baneful aspect. Close by, something howled.

Jack said, “He let some of his wolves out.”

They ran, following Moth's, Leander's, and Lily's noisy flight through the black-and-gray world of the forest. Finn heard Lily shout her name, saw Moth racing ahead, leading the way. A strange barking sound echoed in the night around them.

When Jack halted, Finn nearly crashed into him.

“Where are they?” Finn cried. “Lily! Moth!”

“Finn.” Jack's voice silenced her. “He's sent something else after us.”

His fingers lost their grasp on hers.

She yelled as he was dragged away, through the leaves, into the dark. Lunging, she almost fell. She tore after him, into a deeper darkness, where the trees seemed bigger and older, their roots forming bridges and caves. Tiny lights danced in blackberry bushes and crimson toadstools scabbed the trunks. She
flinched when she broke through a glistening spiderweb the size of her torso.

“Ja—” She bit down on his name.

To her right, a dark shape slinked through the forest. The shape was too narrow to be a wolf, its head sleek, with big, pointed ears. As it lifted its head to sniff the air, she fell to her knees in the snow.

She knew what it was.

She scrabbled up and began to run again, crashing through walls of ferns, avoiding low-hanging branches. The forest, a labyrinth of dire shapes and sounds, was now her enemy. Despite the elixir gifting her with litheness and an athlete's lungs, she knew she could not run forever.

When the heavy, muscled shape of the beast collided with her, she fell hard into the leaves.

Then the weight was gone. She sobbed and slid around in the dirt and snow. She kicked out, but couldn't see what had slammed her to the ground.

When a low laugh came from close by, she climbed to her feet.

Jack stepped from the shadows, a black greatcoat sweeping around him, his hair over his face. His eyes were icy silver. She stared at his hands glittering with rings.

This Jack wasn't her Jack or a trick . . . this was a
memory
released from Seth Lot's house with the wolves, before the house had been pinned into a void. This was a Jack of the past.

“You know what I am?” His voice was the hoarse, velvety one she recognized from when he'd hated himself. As he moved toward her with savage grace, she thought of the jackal she'd glimpsed, the beast that had knocked her to the ground. She backed away until she came up against a tree.

“Yes.”

He circled her, his ghost gaze fixed upon her. He halted and moved his head as if scenting something. His brows slashed down. He drew closer and his fingers caressed her cheek. “You don't smell like a mortal girl. Why is that?”

She whispered, “Jack, listen—”

“Yes. I'm a Jack. But what are
you?
Why does Lot want
you
?” His fingers slid along the line of her jaw. “You look familiar, pretty little human.”

“My name is Finn.”

“You should never give your name to anyone.” His eyes darkened. For a second, despite the bitter curl to his mouth, the ragged edge to his voice, she saw
her
Jack—and she wondered how much longer this version would have to suffer before being freed from Reiko and Lot.

She tilted her head up and tenderly brushed her lips against his, felt the mocking curve of his mouth soften as he returned the kiss until it became something lush and desperate—still, a stranger's kiss. His skin was cool, but familiar. She laid one hand over the place where his heart should be, felt nothing.

He tore back as if she'd bitten him. She reached out as if coaxing a skittish animal. “Jack . . . you'll know me again when you see me. But now you have to let me go. And you have to lead the wolves away.”