Thorn Jack (13 page)

“On the
ground
.” She pointed her mallet at Jack. “Keep it on the
ground.
This isn't hockey.”

As Jack lithely avoided the ball that cracked toward him from Christie's mallet, Finn, standing next to Nathan, murmured, “Did you and Jack make up?”

“When he found out I was coming here, he decided to accompany us.”

More whoops and hollers followed as they dove and ran, ignoring slight injuries and leaves in their hair from the surrounding shrubbery.

“They're winning.” Christie looked grim, his dark red hair sticking up in twists. “I really don't want them to win.”

Finn pushed him aside, smiled at Jack, and raised her mallet to strike her ball.

A black ball sliced hers from beneath her.

Jack lifted his chin and stood with his hands on the top of his mallet as she turned away, silently vowing revenge.

The defeat came as Nathan deflected Christie's ball and knocked Phouka's through three wickets.

Like the bad-guy gunslingers from a spaghetti western, the three Fatas strolled toward Finn and her allies, the glow of new evening settling across their pale skin and silvering their eyes. Nathan shyly claimed his kiss from Sylvie, who was not so shy, and stood on tiptoe to return it. Christie smiled when Phouka, who was as tall as he, clasped his face in her hands and kissed him until his eyes closed.

Then Jack stood before Finn. She didn't know what to say. She whispered, “Are you a gentleman?”

He leaned close. She shut her eyes, her face burning, as his lips brushed her cheek. She kept her hands on top of the mallet, but his hands rose to cup her face. Only an inch away from him, she could smell evergreen, roses, wood smoke. Those photographs in the museum told her he and Reiko were from an old family, with ancestors who had been here since the town's beginning, but they had also made her wonder . . .

He leaned close, his fingertips moving along her neck, to her collarbones. She remained still as a hunted thing. His mouth only a breath from hers, he whispered, “Finn Sullivan, you shouldn't have invited us.”

“Jack.” Phouka's voice dragged him back.

Without taking his kiss, he spun away from Finn and swaggered after his companions, calling, “Good night, Greensleeves.”

“Good night.” Nathan glanced wistfully over one shoulder. “It was fun.”

Watching them walk into the night, Finn drew a deep breath and realized that her safe world of schoolwork and breakfast and television was now being compromised by
their
strange, not-so-safe reality of abandoned mansions and revels after dusk.

Defeated—Jack's and Phouka's presences had made it impossible for her to interrogate Nathan—Finn turned back to Christie and Sylvie.

“That wasn't weird at all.”

FINN SPENT AN ENTIRE LATE
afternoon hunched over her laptop researching the Fatas and pretending she might be able to use the results in Avaline's history class. She was soon surrounded by images printed from Fair Hollow's historical archives.

Lady Valentine Fata had been Reiko Fata's grandmother, but Finn couldn't find the name of the Jack-like coachman in the Victorian pictures. She went to another site called Victoriana and typed in
Coachmen. Fair Hollow,
with no luck. She tried simply,
Fata.

The face of Lady Valentine Fata appeared, raven hair cascading over her shoulders. The caption read
Actress playing Aphrodite. 1827.
Finn returned to Fair Hollow's historical archives and searched every male face in the Fata family photographs.

She found him leaning against a silver Rolls-Royce, his dark hair tucked beneath a chauffeur's cap, one ungloved hand, resting on the car, gleaming with antique rings. The fine features and curving mouth were Jack's. The caption read
LeafStruck Mansion, 1927
.

Unearthly cold now tainted the air of her bedroom. A draft scattered the printed photos over the floor.
LeafStruck Mansion
. Phouka had said that's where the Fatas lived.

When a wind kissed her skin, she looked up to find the doors to her terrace had fallen open. Sharp fear twisted through her.

She set aside the laptop and rose to face the figure who stood there, dark hair swept over his face. He didn't wear a coat now, only jeans and a buttoned shirt of gauzy linen. A wreath of roses circled his brow—he looked as if he'd just come from some pagan ritual. His gaze flickered over the prints on the floor and his eyes narrowed. Softly, he said, “May I come in?”

“Jack.” Her voice shook. “Could you maybe use the front door next time?” She glanced down at the printed photographs and sighed. “You can come in.”

Jack stepped in, then crouched down to gaze at one of the images. He lifted his gaze to hers. “Why do you have pictures of my ancestors all over your floor?”

She felt as if he was really saying,
What did curiosity do to the cat?
She blushed and felt like a stalker herself. She sat on the floor, her arms on her knees, her toes curled. Her heart was racing. “It's a project.”

Calmly, he continued, “It's a small town. It's an
old
town. People sometimes resemble their ancestors.”

“Stop,” she whispered. “How come I've never seen you
in the day
?”

“Finn,” he said, sitting back on his heels, “I didn't think you were the type to get paranoid.”

While she huddled, he reached out and picked up one of the prints. He had a new tattoo on the back of his hand, a black Celtic cross. She slid another print toward him. “This is from the 1800s. And this, from the twenties . . . they all look like you.”

He crouched before her and she waited for a sensible explanation. Then he spoke, his voice hoarse: “I won't hurt you. I would never hurt you.”

She looked away from him, down at the picture of the Victorian coachman with
his
face. She closed her eyes. What she was thinking wasn't possible. Her hands were shaking, and she knotted them together to keep him from seeing her steadily growing panic as a horrifying theory began to form. “Jack . . . why won't you ever tell me about yourself? Like,
real
things?”

When she opened her eyes, she was alone in the cold room, with the papers swirling around her like discarded memories.

Finn had gone often to Golden Gate Park with Lily Rose and Leander Cyrus, her sister's boyfriend. She would feed the red carp in the pond near the pagoda while Leander photographed people. One day, when Leander hadn't been with them, she'd watched Lily Rose speaking with a well-dressed stranger whose hair had been the color of autumn leaves and whose eyes had been as blue as a wolf's. As she gazed at the scattered printouts of Jack's and Reiko's look-alikes, she experienced the same feeling of
otherness
she'd had that day.

Who are you, Jack Fata?

Phouka had told her where the Fatas lived. She grabbed her laptop and googled
LeafStruck Mansion.

IT WASN'T FAR. BUT IT
was seven thirty and it was dark and Finn had to bike because she'd never learned to drive in San Francisco.

LeafStruck was a large, old house covered in Emory, with extravagant stone carvings peeking from the leaves. Its windows were shuttered, its doors of heavy timber wreathed with moss, its towers and walkway clotted with wild clover and gloom. Behind it, she saw a crumbling carriage house floating in a sea of Emory and oaks. There was no way the Fatas, privileged and glamorous, could be living in this wreck.

She left her bike and moved up the steep stairs.
All she had to do was push the doorbell.

“What are you doing?”

She flinched and swore with delicate ferocity. “Jack.”

“Finn.” His voice shouldn't have caused a conflict of warmth and dread within her, but it did. She turned and decided to be defiant instead of defensive. “Isn't this where your family lives?”

He was seated on the porch railing, in the shadows . . . as if he'd been waiting for her. “Not anymore.”

“Why're you being so evasive about where your family—”

“Only one person lives here.” He rose then and pushed the door open. The flicker of scorn she'd noticed earlier had returned. “Would you like to meet her?”

“I'm not going into another strange place with you. You yelled at me about SatyrN—”

“I'm inviting you. Go on. I should think your curiosity is rabid, now that you think I'm some kind of vampire.”

She scowled because he was right. “You're trying to scare me. Well, it won't work.”

Defiantly, cautiously, she stepped into the shadows of LeafStruck.

It took her eyes a moment to adjust to the moonlight frosting decayed furniture and a floor littered with leaves. As a rancid, animal scent drowned the sweetish fragrance of clover, she turned in place and watched Jack's shadow flock over the peeling wallpaper. She said, “Your ancestors lived here?”

“Once.”

“Why'd they leave?” Red toadstools covered a moisture-warped wardrobe. A sapling had rooted through one wall.

“They had bad luck—” He flinched from a wooden rocking horse he'd touched. “Splinter.” His next words were quiet, “I'm bleeding again.”

She moved toward him. “It's only blood.”

He stared down at the drop of red on his finger. Then he smiled, but his eyes were dark, almost scared. “You don't even know what you've done.”

“What have I done?” She stepped back.

He moved forward, quick, and bent his head toward hers. His scent of green things and wild roses made her dizzy. She could feel warmth radiating from his usually cool skin. “You've bewitched me. It was supposed to be the other way 'round.”

When he turned away, she felt abandoned. To cover her disappointment, she said, “So are you going to tell me who lives here?”

His hair glistened in blackberry tendrils as he tilted his head. “The caretaker. Come.”

Hands clenched in her coat pockets, Finn followed Jack into a hall gloomy with stuttering electric light. At the hall's end, she saw a room with a glistening piano and leaves and dead moths covering the floor.

“She's upstairs.” He led her up a stairway, its banister carved to resemble vines. Portraits were hung on the ascending wall, pictures of stern, yellow-eyed people. She glimpsed the age-darkened painting of a brown-haired girl in white, her arms cradling an infant in feathers. The painting reminded her of her mother's mysterious figures in watercolor.

“So”—Jack sounded casual as they continued up the stairs—“who told you about LeafStruck?”

“Phouka. But I saw it referred to in a caption on a photograph at the Fair Hollow museum, and it was mentioned in a caption in those old photos I found online.”

“Those photographs of my ancestors?”

“Yes. So Phouka lied about your family living here now. Why?”

“She's a contrary sort of person.”

Finn wanted to growl at him. The stairs creaked beneath her sneakers, but Jack was soundless before her even though he wore boots. He led her down another hall cascading with the Emory that had grown through cracks in the boarded-up windows and over arthritic furniture. It did occur to her that he really
might
be crazy, that this might be the lair where he placed the bodies of dead girls, like Bluebeard in the fairy tale. She remembered the ghostly girl near Drake's Chapel and hoped she hadn't really been a ghost.

He looked back at her as if sensing her thoughts and grinned. “I'm not going to devour you.”

“Jack—”

“Hush.” He knocked on a door. Light flickered beneath it. Her apprehension began to crest when she heard a rustling from within. He said, politely, “
Cailleach Oidche.
” Finn, remembering the old Gaelic her father had taught her, thought,
The owl.

The door clicked open, releasing stale air like a sigh. As Jack stepped forward, Finn reluctantly followed him into a room that seemed constructed of ancient wood and gray gossamer, with a fire burning in a hearth of old brick. A table near the window was scattered with dozens of ornamental eggs—painted, jeweled, or carved from wood, some with illustrations of Russian folklore. Only one lamp was lit.

The chamber's occupant was tall and skinny, and she wore a filmy white dress and a wide-brimmed hat. The hat's veil, covering her face, was stained brown over the mouth. Gloved hands held a porcelain teacup. Finn didn't want to look at her—a sense of
wrongness,
of danger, crawled across her skin.

The woman tilted her veiled head. Her voice was faint, “Jack Daw. Have you anything for me?”

“Not this time,” he spoke gently. “Colleen Olive. I need a favor.”

“No gift? No mice? No sparrow in a wicker cage? The last time, it was a rabbit.”

“Colleen, this is Finn.” To Finn, he said, “She's not right in the head. Whatever she says—”

“
Finn
.” The veiled head turned toward Finn, who had listened to the strange list and hoped the woman was only revealing a gruesome sense of humor. When the woman extended one gloved hand and said, “Come,
caileag,
let me have a look at you,” Finn walked across the room, almost stepping on a tiny bird skeleton in a heap of leaves. She shuddered. The woman beckoned her closer. Finn delicately clasped her hand, pretending the glove wasn't speckled with stains. “Pleased to meet you, Miss Olive.”

“Oh. A
polite
child. Have
you
brought anything for me?”

Finn took a quick, personal inventory. Carefully, she slid from her finger the ring of tiny pink hearts her father had given her. “Could you tell me where the Fatas live—”

Jack was suddenly at her side, his fingers closing around her hand. “No exchanges.
I'm
asking the favor.”