Briar Queen (35 page)

“Are they pixies? Will-o'-the-wisps?”

“Those are the souls of the dead passing through the Ghostlands. Don't ask me where they're going, but that's what they are.”

“They're beautiful.” She watched them and wondered if she knew any of them.

“You wouldn't think a river of human blood ran beneath that beautiful world out there, would you? Or that a beast disguised as a man stitches up the young with magic. Finn, the train we're going to take . . . to get back to the true world, we'll be passing along the border.”

“What border?”

“The one between the land of the living and the land of the dead.”

“Oh.” She didn't say anything else because she figured the two of them had been walking that border for some time now.

As Jack kept his gaze on the forest outside the window, she studied his profile and felt a shiver of fear for him, the uncertainty of his place in her world. His fingers tightened around hers as he said, “A few days ago, I wondered if I'd lost you forever. There is silver in your eyes, Finn Sullivan, and your shadow hasn't returned. What's with the outfit?”

He flicked the fur hunter's cap she wore, and she snugged the flaps over her ears. “It was a gift from Rowan Cruithnear. My ears were cold. The dress belonged to a lady friend of his. And what about you, rocking the gangster look at the Mockingbirds?”

“I was trying to play the role.” He sprawled back on the bed, propped up on his elbows. “You know, that dress kind of looks like something Phouka would wear.”

“You think Cruithnear and Phouka . . . ?” She raised her eyebrows. “How scandalous. What about the young menswear he has on hand?”

“To each his own. You look very fetching.”

“Oh. Here.” She unclasped the phoenix pendant from around her neck.

He sat up and tugged her onto his lap and she fastened the pendant's leather thong around his neck. She twined her fingers in his hair as her lips sought his in a sensual, openmouthed kiss. He twisted and she was beneath him, cradled by him, protected by him.

“I'm a Jack again, Finn.” His eyes were dark, troubled.

But his skin was warm. She drew him down against her, and his sinewy strength and the softness of the bed became the safest place in the world. He slid
the coat from her, his beautiful eyes hidden by his lashes. She arched, pressed her face between his neck and shoulder, tasted his skin. His mouth found hers again, hungrily. For a moment, her existence was only skin and heat and tangled limbs and breath. He groaned as she slipped her hands beneath his black jersey. When she touched his shoulder where Lot's sword had gone through, she felt only a rough seam.
It's safer for him this way,
she thought sadly.
Not being like me
.

He yanked the jersey off over his head and curved above her with a vinelike grace, the golden phoenix brushing against her lips as he whispered, “I
missed
you—”

She dragged him down against her again, sighing as his skin kissed hers, as his mouth touched her throat, as his fingertips drifted across her thigh. She felt as fragile as glass containing fiery butterflies. He reminded her of what he'd been transformed into at the Teind: an eagle, a python, fire, water—

Her foot knocked her backpack from the bed. Things clattered across the floor. Remembering one object in particular, she scrambled up in a panic.

Jack saw it before she could lunge for it. He moved with inhuman grace as she jumped to her feet. He was already crouched at the foot of the bed, holding the wooden box gilded with the shapes of jackals, staring at its contents strewn across the floor. He said, his voice ragged, “I remember this . . .”

“
Don't
.” She knelt helplessly amid the scattered contents of the box.

“Where did you find this?”

“Orsini's Books.”

He dropped the box, shoved his hands through his hair. “Did you think that these were
innocent
things I had collected? Finn?”

“Some of them.” Her voice was faint.

“The box was my mother's.” He reached out and traced the golden jackals on the lid. “She was Romany before she was Irish. And it was brought, by her ancestors, from Egypt. She gave it to my father, so that he could keep his amulets and talismans in it.”

His father had been a coachman from Hungary, but also an exorcist. She watched as Jack picked up a ring shaped like a serpent. He said, “Most of these are trophies.”

“Were they Fatas?” She carefully coaxed him back from the past. “The ones you took these things from?”

“Seven.” He closed his fist over the ring. “I got away with each kill here.
They were Reiko's enemies. Some were Lot's. Not all of them were bad.”

Finn watched him set the serpent ring on the floor.

“This ring belonged to a Fata named Evan-on-the-Hill. He was a Redcap but hadn't yet begun to turn poisonous. I prevented him from becoming anything.”

She reluctantly lifted a fan of ivory parchment painted with images that seemed to move. “And this?”

“She was called
Ban Beache,
the White Bee. She fed on mortals as they dreamed.”

Finn lifted another object, and another, and, in this way, lanced an infection that had been festering within him for far too long. He told the story of each trophy. As he spoke each Fata name, Finn flung the objects into the fire. When it was done, she handed the jackal box back to him. Silently, they watched the flames. He said in a raw, quiet way, “Have you thought of finding someone real?”

“Real? What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

His gaze didn't leave the fire. “I'm old, Finn.”

“Two hundred years of arrested development isn't old.”

“Bloody
Peter Pan
. It's influenced all you bookish girls.”

“I'm not book—well, a little. Anyway, this conversation is over, because it's a waste of time.” She pushed to her feet and walked to stand before the open terrace doors.

He came to her side, settling her fur jacket back over her shoulders, and she whispered, “I don't see your shadow anymore.”

“That's the least of our worries, beloved.”

“No, Jack. Not the least of mine.”

“Finn . . . Lot knew the Mockingbirds would try for us, to recruit us. He
expected
us to do to the Mockingbirds what we did to Reiko. He used you and me to eliminate an enemy. He isn't underestimating us.”

“He'll come after us.”

“Yes. I had to tell Rowan about Hester Kierney. He says that'll end it between the Fatas and the blessed—it'll leak out, to other places where the Fatas have lodged themselves. It's not good for either side.”

“They won't even have a body to bury. Her family.” Finn felt fatigue creeping up on her.
Hester . . .

“What are the odds,” Jack said darkly, “that that key would end up just where we needed it, in Lot's house? In Hester's hand?”

Finn closed her eyes.

“Christie said he and Sylvie were swept through the Way when they came here, that the key was left behind in StarDust Studios. What made Hester find it and step through into the arms of Seth Lot? Someone set her up, Finn.”

Finn pressed a fist against her midriff. “Someone sacrificed Hester, to save us.”

“Yes.”

They were quiet then, watching the snow and the shimmering orbs of the dead drift over the forest.

JACK SLID FROM THE BED
where he and Finn had fallen asleep—regretfully, their passion had been somewhat subdued by the realization that Hester's death might have been the result of an ally's manipulations. He moved out into the hall, down the stairs. With the exception of a grandfather clock ticking, the house was silent.

As he slipped out the back door and into the garden, he heard a voice. “What are you doing, Jack?”

He turned. Moth was hunched forward in a chair on the back veranda, his face shadowed.

A chill swept through the garden, which had transformed from Mediterranean Zen to a wintery, English courtyard of red roses and blackberry bushes. Jack said, “I'm making certain Lily Rose is able to accompany us back to the world.”

Moth's voice was hard. “I know what you're going to do. I
know
what Lily Rose is. You can't. It'll
break
Finn.”

Jack looked toward the darkest part of the garden. “There's no other way. And you've got to admit”—he smiled as his heart began to beat faster—“it's a perfect way to set things right.”

Moth said nothing.

Jack walked deeper into the garden, toward the dark figure waiting for him, the one Rowan Cruithnear had reluctantly summoned, the one whose shadow stilled the air around it and withered any living thing close by.

FINN WOKE IN DARKNESS,
an image from her last dream still vivid in her head—a white umbrella planted in the snowy ground, its stem blossoming with mistletoe.

Jack was gone.

She rose from the bed, then grabbed her coat and Doc Martens. Hopping into the hall while pulling them on, she glanced at Lily and Leander's door, heard them talking, and was reassured.

Finn hurried down the stairs. A blue lamp glowed in the parlor redolent of leather-bound books and burnt wood. Their backpacks and equipment had been placed against a wall. She knelt down and carefully sorted some of their belongings: the jackal-handled walking stick with the sword; the Grindylow's compass heart; the dragonfly key; the
Tamasgi'po
in its vial shaped like a sphinx; Eve Avaline's silver dagger.

Poisoning, pinning, and decapitation
.

“What,” she whispered to the air, “will really kill the Wolf?”

She rose as Moth entered the parlor. When he saw her, he halted, looking as if he'd been caught at something. “Finn.”

“Have you seen Jack?”

“He's in the garden, I believe.”

“What's he doing in the garden?” She began to move past him, but Moth gently caught her arm and said, “Don't go out there . . . he needs to put his mind together.”

The grave look in Moth's eyes made her sink onto the sofa instead. Finn said, “He knows he's turning back. Into a Jack.”

He sat beside her. “He does.”

She'd rescued her sister from the Wolf, but she was helpless against Jack's transformation. “If we hadn't come here—”

“You wouldn't have your sister.”

“He'll hate himself again.”

“He has you.”

What can
I
do?
she thought.
Love him enough to keep him with blood, heart, and breath?

“Finn, I want to show you something.”

He rose. She watched as he closed his eyes. He began to shimmer. “Moth—”

When he burst into sheets of gossamer light, she gasped and scrambled back. A luna moth spiraled from the glow. She jumped up.

The moth shimmered again, changing into a mass of light and shadow, and
Moth crouched in the middle of the room. He raised his head, triumphant. “I've been practicing.”

It hadn't shaken her, what had just transpired. It should have. She smiled. “You might be our best chance against the Wolf.”

DUSK BLED ACROSS THE SKY
as Jack drove Cruithnear's Lincoln town car down a crooked road lined with graffiti-painted warehouses and giant, lightning-blasted oaks. Finn sat in the back with Lily, who had her head on Leander's shoulder. Moth was in the passenger seat up front, glaring out the window as if expecting an army to descend.

Jack had been suspiciously optimistic at the breakfast Cruithnear had made for them. As they'd sat in the blue-and-white kitchen, surrounded by porcelain painted with ethereal blue shepherdesses and windmills, Cruithnear, pouring coffee, had informed them he'd soon return to Fair Hollow after he cleared up some things here.

Finn, watching the Ghostlands pass by, realized that she was going to miss it. Maybe it was the elixir. Maybe it was Stockholm syndrome.

“So what's wrong with this station?” Finn could tell Moth was scowling even though she could only see the back of him.

“The MossHeart Station. It's old. It's broken. Something bad happened there a long time ago.” It was Lily who spoke.

Warily, Finn asked, “What bad something?”

“A love story.” Lily gazed out the window.

“And how did you learn about this story?” Jack sounded interested.

“I had my sources. People wanted favors in Lot's court—I took information in exchange.”

Finn stared at her sister. So did Leander. Moth slowly turned his head to regard Lily with wary respect. Jack didn't take his attention from the road. Lily straightened. “The guardian of MossHeart Station was a
Lham Dearg,
a Bloody Hand—a Fata who feeds off murders.”

“So far, I
don't
like this story.” Finn's brows pinched.

“He fell in love with a mortal girl, a girl who could speak with the dead. She came close to his territory in the true world and he noticed her. He became curious and began following her. She was in love with a mortal boy. So he sent
his spies to watch them, to
learn
. He began to neglect his duties as a spirit who shadowed murderers. He worked for Seth Lot.”

Lily continued blithely, “The Bloody Hand, BatSong, appeared to the mortal girl, spoke to her, pretended to be harmless. But she saw what he was—she was an oracle. And she wasn't afraid. She felt sorry for him. That was her downfall. One evening, as she and her boy were kissing in a field filled with dragonflies, they were set upon by bats, who became the
Lham Dearg
. He ordered the girl to come with him or he would kill her lover. But her mortal lover was from one of the blessed families, and this caused a conflict between Seth Lot and the Fata queen who looked after the boy's family. Seth Lot didn't like that the girl
knew
things. He gave the
Lham Dearg
a choice: murder the mortal girl or Lot would do it himself—and you can imagine how
that
fucking bastard would have done it. BatSong couldn't do it, so, instead, he turned the girl into a tree, because he had Redcap blood and he thought that was the only way to keep her safe . . . until he could find a way to destroy Seth Lot.”