Thorn Jack (17 page)

“Goddamn it, Christie.” Sylvie's voice was sharp. “Stop quoting Yeats.”

AS SOON AS CHRISTIE DROPPED
her off, Finn thought of calling the police. She sat on the floor of her room, gripping her cell phone, as something within her whispered,
Don't
.

When someone tapped on the glass doors, her heart wrenched beneath her rib cage. She looked up and saw the silhouette on her terrace.
Jack.

She slid to her feet and unlocked the doors. It was raining. He leaned against the stone railing, his head down and his hair hanging around his face. Beneath the coat, his black shirt and pin-striped trousers were splotched with dirt. His voice was blurry. “That was bad.”

She lurched forward and took him by the wrists, pulled him in, and seated him in the red plush chair. He kept his head bowed, his booted feet braced, hands loose between his knees. She said as calmly as she could, “Did he hurt you?”

“A bit.”

“You're so
cold.
” She was still clasping his wrists.

“That's not unusual.”

His hair dripped into his eyes, and she felt that jarring sense of familiarity that had pricked her when she'd first met him. He was soaked and shivering, his eyelashes shimmering with raindrops. “You're bleeding. I'll be right back.”

In the hall bathroom, she rummaged for supplies. She returned to examine the cut on his brow, the bloody scrapes on his knuckles. As he held a washcloth to his face, she poured alcohol onto cotton. “I only have pink Band-Aids. Like, neon pink.”

He smiled. “No, thank you.”

She sat back and gazed at him. The bruises and cuts made him seem vulnerable, and she didn't know why that suddenly scared her more than the Tirnagoth Hotel's spooks.

“He's seen me bleed,” Jack quietly told her.

“You mean Caliban. So he knows you're vulnerable, so what?”

“That's not what I mean.” His smile wasn't vulnerable at all. It reminded her that he might not be all that sane.

“Jack . . .”

“Why were you there?”

“I was curious.”

“Curious?” He rose, astonished. “You wandered through a condemned building because you were
curious
?”

She scrambled up to face him. “I wanted to know where your family lived. All that you showed me was that crazy owl girl.”

“She's part of the family you're so
fascinated
by.”

His scorn made her temper flare. “Why were
you
there? Why was
Caliban
there? I saw the hotel lobby when the sun set . . . it was all new . . . I
heard
you say my name.”

“Finn. You're getting hysterical.”

“Tirnagoth can't be where your family lives. We saw things—”

“I'm leaving.” He rose, and the shadows in the room seemed to ribbon around him.

She was losing him. She hated the panic in her voice. “I won't ask anymore. Just stay.”

He stood at the glass doors, his back turned to her. He didn't look at her as he said, “Don't go to Tirnagoth again. Promise me. Please.”

She wanted so badly to know about Tirnagoth and its ghosts, but she didn't dare ask now. “Okay. Sit down. You're hurt.”

He laughed, gazing into the rain-swept night. “Not for long.”

She walked to him, twined her fingers around his wrist, and led him back to the chair. As he sat, she knelt beside him to dab at the blood on his mouth. She had to brace herself against him to do so. She felt his heartbeat, strong and quick, beneath her hand. She breathed in his scent of fire and wild roses. “That bastard made you bleed.”

“Finn”—his voice was soft with anguish—“it's you.
You
made me bleed.”

“I'm sorry.” She sat back on her heels. “You're right. It's my fault you got in that fight. You're all patched up now.”

He reached to touch her face, his eyes dark. “Finn—”

She leaned toward him.

Something clattered to the floor behind her. She twisted around and stared at the silver knife that had fallen from the coat she'd draped on the bed.

“Where,” Jack whispered, “did you get
that
?”

She began tentatively, “There was a girl named Eve—”

His eyes seemed to reflect the light, silvering, widening . . . as if
she'd
wounded him.

He whipped up and was gone in a flurry of shadows and raindrops. The glass doors clattered shut.

Finn was stunned. She curled up, her knees beneath her chin, and watched rain pelt the glass. She whispered, “That wasn't even a question.”

JACK RETURNED TO HIS APARTMENT,
weary and battered, wishing he'd ripped Caliban's spine out instead of leaving him on the ground and going after Finn. Without removing his coat, he sprawled across his bed. His eyelashes flickered, and his body, always coiled for movement, relaxed. As BlackJack Slade curled beside him, he closed his eyes.
But I don't sle—

The dream was of a street splashed with neon green, its shop windows marked with bloody handprints. Behind one window, violins glistened, mournful as coffins.

The window shattered. The sable beasts that had been disguised as violins came at him, ivory teeth bared. The flying glass bit into his hands—

Jack woke in moonlight and found that blood now flecked the sheets because the cut on his brow had opened. The fight with Caliban had exhausted him, and it shouldn't have.

I fell asleep. At night. And I dreamed. I bleed. What is happening to me?

He crawled from the bed and switched on the lights because he liked their normalcy—despite the theater's neglected state, the Fatas owned the building and still paid the electric and water. He gazed at the starry dark outside. It was three o'clock in the morning.

Caliban,
he thought, and almost snarled.

He clawed one of the cinema posters from the wall on his way out of the apartment.

He prowled past the condemned building where the body of a murderer was buried. He strode down a railroad track, through a mobile home park where two monsters lived. Warehouses loomed on the riverside path he chose.

As Jack arrived at Tirnagoth, his boot heels crushing broken glass and withered leaves, he thought of Finn and knew he should not.

While crossing the courtyard, he noticed a girl in green gingham crouched on a gargoyle. She was reading a book of poetry by Baudelaire. She looked up as he passed. “Careful, Jack,
he's
here.”

Jack had seen the tawny roadster outside of the gates. He knew what had come to Tirnagoth.

“I know.” He heard familiar voices. “I suppose he's here for his girl.”

He followed the voices up a spiral stair, his soldier's coat sweeping outward.

A slim boy stood in the hallway—Nathan Clare—and Caliban was circling him, speaking in a voice that was all mock and threat. “Are you having one of your moments, darling? Do you think it's going to hurt? I think it will . . . almost like your first time. Too bad it's not with me.”

“Ariel'Pan.” Jack slid forward, dissecting Caliban from his prey. He grabbed Nathan's wrist, which was enviably warm and fragile, and resisted an urge to break the bones.

“Go.” He released the boy who had once been his friend.

The boy backed away, turned, and pushed through a set of doors.

Caliban laughed softly. “You should be more careful, Jack. Love can make you
bleed.
And it's not Nathan you love, is it?”

Jack remained silent as Caliban prowled forward and whispered, “Are those rubies decorating your hands, Jack? Because they look like scabs. It's disgusting. Has the schoolgirl infected you with their grue and gore?”

“What were you intending to do to Finn Sullivan and her friends?”

“Reiko's possessive of her things, Jack. You're one of her things. So is Tirnagoth. I was attempting to put the fear of
us
into them.”

Jack leaned against a pillar. “Don't do anything like that again.”

Caliban yawned. “Which one are you swooning over? The schoolgirl or the little crow girl? Or is it the pretty fox boy?”

“Ariel'Pan.” Jack lifted a gaze that had gone black. “
Stay away from her.
”

“It
is
the schoolgirl. Do you remember when I was like your big brother?”

Jack bared his teeth. “You were
never
—”

“Who was the Jack who took you under his wing, the one who was a prince during the Renaissance . . . a long time for a
sluagh
to exist.” Caliban smiled malevolently. “Ambrose . . . ah,
that
was his name.”

“His name,” Jack growled, “was Jack. All of us are Jack.”

“He got sentimental, didn't he?
Jack.
And Seth Lot had to gut him, hyacinths and all, right in front of you. That schoolgirl of yours looks a lot like Ambrose . . . She a descendant of his? Was he watching over his family like some bloody ancestral spirit?” Caliban paused. “She is a lovely piece of flesh—do you remember what happened to the last girl you kissed?”

Jack didn't remember, and he didn't want to. He moved close to Caliban, threatening, and said through gritted teeth, “Why are you interested in her?”

“If I told you”—Caliban's smile curled as darkness bled into his eyes—“you'd kill me.” He stepped back. “You've done something,
sluagh
. I'll find out what you're up to.”

Jack lunged and grabbed Caliban by the throat. Sinuous and difficult to hold, Caliban slipped free, laughing, and swaggered away. He called back, “The last girl you kissed was named Eve. You killed her.”

Jack slouched against the wall, his hands clenched, his head bowed.
Eve,
he thought, and almost remembered, before he banished it.

He'd been dead. Finn Sullivan had woken him. For that, he would never forgive her. And he might very well be the death of her.

He turned and Reiko appeared before him, sleek in a gown like fire and blood. “Jack. David Ryder wants to speak with you.”

“No, thank you.” He was aware of what waited in the rooms at the top of the stair. He could smell the visitor, a chill fragrance of forests, musk, and stone. It made his teeth clench. David Ryder was an arrogant bastard with pretensions of civility . . . like that ridiculous wake he'd insisted upon for the girl Caliban had brought him, the one now stuffed with flowers and stitched together. The Jill.

Reiko moved up the stairs. “I
insist,
Jack.”

If he disobeyed, she'd begin to suspect what was happening to him. He began to climb the stairs.

He followed Reiko into a room with baroque furnishings and crimson lamps splashing light onto scarlet walls. Near the window, the shadows stirred. A man emerged, wearing a fur-lined coat over an expensive brown suit. His tawny hair was sleeked back from a handsome face.

David Ryder looked at Jack as if he were a derelict who had just stumbled into a fancy home. “I see you're still with us.”

Jack leaned against the door frame. “I'm hard to get rid of.”

David Ryder's coat brushed Jack as he moved past. “I want to speak to you,
sluagh
. If you'll please come with me.”

David Ryder had been Reiko's lover, yet, somehow, his gentlemanly manners had remained intact. He was an exile from the English court, but Jack had never learned why—he suspected Reiko the outlaw had lured him away.

In Reiko's salon, Jack insolently selected the best chair. Ryder sat on the heart-shaped divan like a king. “You realize Seth Lot wants you gone.”

Seth Lot. The Wolf—Madadh allaid.
“Then why am I still here?”

David Ryder leaned forward, hands folded. “Because of Reiko. That is why you are still here.”

“Shall I thank her?”

“You make her weak.”

“I'm not the first. At least she hasn't grown a heart with
me
.”

He had the pleasure of seeing David Ryder leash his fury with an effort. “That is a vile rumor. She was never infected with that.”

“No?” Jack rested his arms on the back of the chair, stretched out his legs. “Her human lover, the Black Scissors, is just a fiction then?”

“Yes.”

“A figment of our imaginations. Our bogeyman.”

“You mock because you have
nothing
. You respect
nothing
. You are
nothing
.”

“And who made me that way?”

“It makes you dangerous.”

“Are we done?” Jack pushed to his feet.

“She's told me about your schoolgirl.”

Jack froze.

“I do not harm innocents,
sluagh
. But if I need to use her to keep you from ruining this Teind, I will.”

“Why”—Jack smiled as if his teeth were in Ryder's throat—“would I interfere with this Teind?”

“Because Nathan Clare used to be your friend.”

“You said I cared about nothing. So there is no reason to threaten me. Because you are right. Go kiss your white serpent and pretend she loves you.”

He strode out of the room, leaving David Ryder to simmer.

In the hall, Reiko confronted Jack, her sweet demeanor vanished. “Now
we
shall speak, Jack.”

“Shall we?” He desperately didn't want her to see how exhausted he was.

She whispered, furious, “Those three children came
here
.”

“Others have come.”

“Others were turned away by fear. Your schoolgirl and her friends
entered
my domain. It took more than one trick to turn them away.”

“They came before dusk. We weren't here, technically.” Gently, he continued, “And we were nothing.”