Thorn Jack (10 page)

JACK DROVE AN OLD SEDAN,
which surprised her. A tiny angel of black wood, its arms broken off, hung from his rearview mirror. She gazed at the armless angel as the young man she scarcely knew drove up a wooded road, toward the warehouse district, where brownstones and old cars were splashed with orange lights and she could see plastic jack-o'-lanterns and cardboard cutouts of witches in apartment windows. They drove past a warehouse with Emory clinging to its roof, the painted words
Greenwald Foundry
faded on its bricks.

He parked the sedan in the weedy lot of an abandoned movie theater with boards across its windows and doors. Above the doors was a stone face spewing leaves and a shattered marquee with three letters remaining.

“You're kidding?” Finn clutched at the car seat, thinking of the idiot victims in horror movies and how she might be about to become one.

He didn't look at her. The streetlights made his profile very white. “Here.”

She studied him, realizing then that he was tense and almost ashamed. Quickly, she said, “Who owns the building?”

“The Fatas own it.”

“I want to see it.”

“Reckless girl.”

She wanted to tell him she wasn't reckless . . . she just wasn't going to be afraid anymore.

They got out of the car, and he led her around to the back of the abandoned cinema, to a fire escape.

“Careful,” he told her as she followed him up to a second-floor window. He pushed it open and helped her over the sill. As he moved around, turning on lamps, she gazed in awe at a narrow, high-ceilinged room painted black and decorated with cinema posters in plastic frames. A chandelier of red beads glittered over a sleigh bed with rumpled covers. There were hundreds of books, in stacks, on tables, crowding the shelves along one wall. She gravitated toward the shelves. Nearly everything was hardcover. History books. Classics. Greek classics. Encyclopedias. Biographies. Literature. Poetry. She was impressed and intimidated.

“Don't you have any paperbacks?” She shed his coat over a chair. “Beach reads? Suspense novels?”

“I'm old-fashioned.”

She took down a volume of Angela Carter's
The Bloody Chamber
and opened it. “Is this a boy's book?”

He leaned against an antique chair—all his furniture seemed to be wrecked antiques. “It's an interesting one.”

She read, “ ‘
Now we are at the place of annihilation
.' Do you have a kitchen?”

“I eat out.”

“Okay.” She touched an armillary sphere set on a table and watched the rings lazily rotate around the metal ball. “You've got a lot of . . . interesting things here.”

He moved to her and circled one hand around her wrist. She didn't look at him, fascinated by the rings on his fingers—and how cool and strong those fingers were.

“What happened to you,” he said gently, “that makes you so careless?”

“I'm not careless.” She had gone very still.

“You are. You're like some mad child flinging itself at things just to feel something.”

“
Me?
” Her gaze flicked up to his. “What about the stuff you're not telling me? Those scars you've got, and don't think I haven't noticed how you twist up sometimes.”

He released her wrist and looked slightly bewildered. “Twist up?”

“You've got secrets, Jack.” She lifted her chin.

“And you'll be lucky if you never meet them.”

“See? You say things like that. Like about SatyrNight not being a house, and you live in an
abandoned movie theater
.”

His eyes were dark and wide. When his lashes flicked down, she realized she'd lost him and slumped against a bookcase.

“Jack.” She took a deep breath and stepped toward him, reached out, and slid her fingers around his, catching
him
this time. He didn't move, but he pressed a thumb against the thrumming pulse in her wrist as he looked down at their clasped hands. When he met her gaze, the anguish in his almost made her step back. He said hoarsely, “I didn't know . . .”

“Didn't know what?”

“Never mind.” He slid the fingers of his other hand across her other wrist, up her arm, to her collarbones. His sudden smile made her breath catch. As drowsy desire moved through her, she heard him whisper against her ear, “You smell like sunlight.”

His lips brushed the skin there, but his body hadn't come any closer. She curled her hands against his chest—

He stepped back, and she blinked as he said, “Not such a good idea.”

She bit back the urge to ask him if he was bipolar as he turned away. She drifted back on slightly unsteady legs and bumped into a chair. Glancing down, she saw a violin case. “Do you play?”

“I go through phases.” He sank down onto the sofa and hunched forward. “You can open it.”

She unbuckled the case, cautiously raising the lid to gaze at the sleek, dark instrument in its nest of red suede. “That's an expensive one, isn't it?”

“It's a Stradivarius. Now, tell me what
you
love to do, Finn Sullivan.”

She gently closed the lid of the violin case and turned, trying to think of something interesting. “I don't know yet. I like science, but I'm not technical. I like English, but I'm not very good at making up stories . . . so, I'm not sure. I liked photography once. But that was before . . . before.” She noticed a cat watching her from the mantelpiece of the fireplace. “What's the cat's name?”

“BlackJack Slade.”

The cat stretched and jumped to the floor, walked to Jack, and sniffed his boots. He reached out to stroke its head, and Finn, frustrated, moved to crouch near. She held out a hand, smiling when BlackJack Slade meowed at her and climbed into her lap.

“Well, you've bewitched
him,
” Jack spoke with approval.

As she stroked the cat, it batted at the moth key around her neck—

—and yowled as if it had gotten a shock, scrambling from her lap and lashing out at Jack's hand before diving under the bed.

“I'm sorry!” Finn pushed to her feet.

Jack sounded stunned. “I'm bleeding . . .”

“He scratched you? Do you have water? Band-Aids?”

He moved to his feet, his face striped with shadow. “I'm taking you home. Now.”

“Okay, but, seriously, I'm not afraid of blood—”

“Finn.” He looked at her, and his expression had become cool. “You should never have come here.”

She was unable to prevent revealing the hurt she felt. She whirled and stalked to the window, shoved it open, and slung one leg over the sill. “Let's go then. Take me home.”

“Finn . . .”

She hesitated, sitting on the windowsill, not looking at him. “I won't visit again.”

And she slid out.

WHEN JACK RETURNED TO THE
autumn revel, it had become wild, as his family's revels inevitably did. Shadows and pumpkin light splashed across his face as he slouched in a chair and thought of Finn Sullivan.

As sharp pain pierced him, he clenched his scratched hand, hidden by the cuff of his shirt. Another pain in his chest tore his breath away. He sat up, opening his shirt. He pressed a hand against his chest and the black tattoo of a serpent biting its tail.

When he saw Reiko weaving toward him through the dancing bodies, her face shadowy, he dropped his hand and looked bored.

“Jack.” She knelt and placed her hands on his knees. “Do you still love me?”

“Always. From the bottom of my black heart.”

“But, Jack”—she stretched up and whispered against his mouth—“you don't have a heart.”

“That's right. You cut it out of me.”

She didn't smile. “If that little mayfly makes you grow another one, I'll take that one too.”

Then she kissed him.

JACK WOKE ON A BED
draped with pomegranate silk, in a chamber where candlelight danced over the belongings of a primitive queen: a black cradle carved from elderwood; an ivory box containing wooden charms from Laplander shamans and Haitian priests . . . trophies, from those who had tried, and failed, to evict her.

Reiko stood at the window. Without turning her head, she murmured, “You're different.”

Lazily, without revealing any alarm, he said, “How am I different?”

Her voice held a fragile note. “This is not the same. She is not like the other three. I warned you that this time would be different.”

“Reiko.” He kept his voice low. The sting in his chest had faded. “She's just a girl. And what other three girls are you talking about?”

Reiko laughed softly. “It doesn't matter. You are stronger. You are wicked. You are mine. And I will not lose you. Have her, if you like.”

Jack stared at the curve of her back. Shadows snaked through the chamber as the candles flared a malevolent blue, and he heard wild laughter in the distance, a burst of fiddle music. To divert her, he stretched lithely and slid a hand across his scar-laced body. “I'm the same as always. If she changes me, it will only be for a while.”

He slid to his feet and walked to Reiko, folding his arms around her from behind, and whispered, “You haven't told me why you're interested in this girl.”

“Her family has been a bane to us before. While we gather for All Hallows' Eve, I'm going to indulge myself.”

He stilled, his mouth against her temple. “Is that wise?”

“Am I sensing something, Jack? Concern for a mayfly?” She turned to him, the irises around her pupils flaring poison green. “Remember what we are. We cannot return. We can never return.
And you are one of us
.”

He smiled as if he didn't care. He whispered in her ear and led her back to the bed as he thought,
I will end you
.

 

C
HAPTER
S
IX

Monster, your fairy, which you say is a harmless fairy, has done little better than play the Jack with us.

—
T
HE
T
EMPEST,
W
ILLIAM
S
HAKESPEAR
E

He kissed the girls and stole their breath

Kissed them 'til there was nothing left.

Now they are lilies, white of skin,

sown by the lips of a prince of sin.

—
F
ROM THE JOURNAL OF
L
ILY
R
OSE

Lily Rose's bedroom window overlooked the avenue sloping toward the distant sea. It was always bright in her room, the red walls patterned with posters of Vasilov Nijinsky and Anna Pavlova, photographs of friends and trips, Lily's sketches of beautiful waifs.

Finn was fifteen years old. She was sprawled on Lily Rose's bed, watching her sister pace before the mirror. Lily Rose was moody. She was always moody. Breathing in the room's scents of fresh laundry and patchouli, Finn listened to her talk.

“ . . . so I told Leander. ‘Fine. I won't see you anymore.' ”

“Boys”—Finn kicked one bare foot in the air—“are a waste of space.”

Lily Rose glanced at Finn. She didn't look like a ballerina in her peasant blouse and denim cutoffs, her fingers glittering with skull and serpent rings. “Finn. You don't know what I've done.”

The sun vanished. The bedroom became drenched in gory red. Lily Rose was in shadow now. “I hid it, Finn . . . find it—you brought it with you.”

Finn sat up. The room was very cold. The posters of ballet dancers had been replaced by paintings of Gothic ruins. “Lily. What are you talking about?”

But she was alone.

When Finn woke, she slid out of bed, crossed the room, and flipped open the lid to Lily Rose's trunk. She pulled out everything and stared at the bottom—it had been Lily's place to hide things, but she'd found out about it when she'd been twelve. Her heart slamming, Finn tugged at the lining on the trunk's bottom. The lining slid up, revealing the compartment beneath.

She sat back on her heels. With shaking hands, she reached in and lifted out a book, its black velvet decorated with crescent moons and silver ribbons. Carefully, she unwound the ribbons, opening the book to find pages scrawled with sketches and her sister's handwriting. She turned to the beginning. The first words were:
They call us things with teeth
 . . .

Finn curled beneath a window with the book and became lost in a land of whispering leaves and toadstools blossoming from black earth, of dark kings, and fairy witches. She became so caught up in the words and images, she didn't notice the shadows branching across her walls, the wind rattling at the glass doors to the terrace. The stories that her sister had written were bizarre and bewildering: tales of twiggy boggarts who lived in trees; flower-wreathed creatures called nisses whose teeth were like thorns. She read about the pale Mockingbird clan and the Alder people, the court of Wyvern, and the Dragonfly tribe.
Be careful of the grindylow, which creep in the shadows. And the Anubi, hounds who patrol the borders.

She traced the sketch of a wolfish bogie with slanting eyes and spiky hair and wondered why her sister had made this book, if it had been a process of years, or weeks. These stories were a part of Lily Rose that Finn had never known, and they were amazing. What other secrets had her sister kept? It made her throat ache, that she'd found this . . . after.

She leafed through the journal, seeking any sentence, any scribbled entry, that would reveal the reason why Lily Rose had killed herself. But they were just stories, just a world invented by a girl.

Finn had never been able to speak to any of Lily's friends after, not even Lily's boyfriend, Leander Cyrus. She'd looked up “schizophrenia,” which had led to the definition of “hebephrenia,” a mental illness specific to teenagers. She'd come to realize that it had been an unseen thing, something that could not be fought physically, that had danced her sister through a plateglass window.

Suddenly, there was a crash in the hall below. Finn scrambled up and hurried down the stairs.

Crouched in the hall, her da was carefully picking up the pieces of a Buddha statue Lily Rose had given him. He stopped gathering the broken bits and stared at the floor. Finn couldn't move. She just gaped at the glittering porcelain, which looked like glass.

She snapped out of it. “Da?”

“It's broken. I've broken it.”

“I'll glue it.”

He was quiet, his head bowed, ink-stained hands folded on his knees. It hurt her to see him so lost. “I should have known. I should have
seen
it.”

“How could we know?” She put her arms around him and gazed down at the face of the broken Buddha, which blurred.

“It was the same thing as . . .” He drew in a deep breath, shaking his head, and Finn felt he'd been about to tell her something important. “Her mood swings . . . I should have gotten her help . . .”

“Da.” She crouched down, gripped his hands. A fierce protectiveness for him and a frightening anger toward Lily rushed through her. “
She
left
us
.”

FINN WATCHED SYLVIE BURROW THROUGH
her closet as the setting sun rippled over strings of crystals hung across the windows. Three days had passed since the party at SatyrNight, and she hadn't told Sylvie or Christie about Jack; she had only texted Sylvie that night to say she'd taken a cab home because she'd gotten sick. She hated lying, but
she
couldn't understand why she'd left with Jack Fata.

“Finn.” Sylvie's voice was muffled. “I can't find the shoes I wanted to give you.”

“Never mind.” Finn took in the Rackham illustrations on the pink walls. The willowy people in those paintings always made her sad. They seemed so delicate, victims of sinister creatures disguised as trees or shadows.

Sylvie sat back on her heels. Then she opened a box beside her. “Want to see the mask I made for my Mask in Theater class? We're doing Balinese.” She raised it and Finn breathed out, amazed by the crimson, papier-mâché face with its fangs and bulging eyes. Sylvie said, “It's a female demon called Rangda, a leader of witches, a creature of darkness and death.”

“I know.” Finn looked away from the mask and uneasily wondered why it reminded her of Reiko Fata. Just because it was red, her color . . .

Sylvie chatted on. “So it's my birthday today. Christie and me are going out to a Caribbean place. Want to come?”

Finn's mind instantly scanned the room for any ideas as to what kind of present Sylvie would like. “You don't mind?”

“You
do
know Christie and I aren't a couple, right?”

Finn said wryly, “I got that.”

“We were going to go out with some friends, but I'm tired of lots of people. I just want something small and fun, and without any Fatas.”

THE LAST OF THE LIGHT
was draining through the leaves when Finn arrived at the bookstore. Before stepping inside, she glanced at the building across the street—the Dead Kings didn't look like a nightclub now, with its windows shuttered and its silence ominous.

She found the perfect gift for Sylvie on her break. Mrs. Browning even sold gift wrap and cards.

As Finn was struggling to knot the fancy ribbon, she looked up and saw the street lined with cars as music pulsed from beneath the Dead Kings' shutters. She was impressed.

Later that evening, she was rearranging the cooking section when she heard the bell above the door tinkle and the scent of wild roses and burning slid through the air. Cold and hot all at once, she dropped a misplaced paperback with a sexy guy in a kilt on the cover.

A hand gleaming with antique rings caught the book and returned it to her and a voice said, “Not my type of read, but kilts are irresistibly hot.”

“Jack.” She shoved the book onto a shelf.

He wore a black hoodie and jeans. The Chinese dragon writhing across his long-sleeved shirt was crimson and blue. She wished she wasn't wearing jeans and an old baseball jersey and her red Converses that were fading to pink.

“Did you know,” he said, “that this used to be an apothecary shop in the 1800s?”

She faked casualness, ignoring his question as she said, “Are you going to the Dead Kings?”

“Not tonight.” He began walking down the aisle, his heavy boots making the floorboards creak. Another lovely aroma drifted through the store as she followed him.

“Did you bring
food
?”

He nodded. “It's my apology for the other night.”

He'd indeed brought food, cartons of the finest from Lulu's Emporium. Finn's mouth watered as he set the chopsticks on the counter. “For you. I've already eaten.”

She greedily opened a carton of noodles
.
“I'm going out to dinner tonight, with my friends, but thank you. I forgot a snack.”

“Are you alone here?”

“I've got the cats. Mrs. Browning's gone out for a while. Did I thank you for the food?”

“
I
didn't make it.” Jack pulled two stools up to the glass counter, which held fancy bookmarks and book lights, and he shed his coat. She wasn't so preoccupied by the food that she didn't notice the way he moved.

Glancing out the window, she saw an ivory Rolls-Royce glide to a spot in front of the Dead Kings. Behind the car's tinted windows, a pair of eyes glinted. The occupants glided out, all in white, and the Rolls moved away. The license plate read “Mockingbird.”

Jack murmured, “There are some bad people out tonight.”

“Are you going to tell me who the bad people are?”

“No.”

“Ah, you're going to be mysterious.” She slid a fortune cookie to him and broke open hers.
You will find true love, and lose it, and walk the dark path to find it again
. She didn't read it out loud; the fortunes from Lulu's Emporium were always bizarre. She eyed the bookstore cats, who were winding themselves around Jack's legs.

“They're expecting me back soon,” he said—he was watching the Dead Kings.

“Oh.” It seemed odd that he had a curfew.

“What book are you reading?” Jack asked, glancing at her book on the counter.

“
Gormenghast,
by Mervyn Peake.”

“It's good. The third book doesn't seem to belong though.” He bent to stroke the cats.

“Why don't you live with the Fatas?”

He didn't look up from the cats. “These cats don't scratch, do they?”

“Are you avoiding my question?”

“I don't like their house. It's old and drafty.”

“My new house is like that.”

He looked at her. “You came from San Francisco. It's quite a change.”

Finn tried not to withdraw from his unspoken question:
Why did you move here?
“My da used to live here. He got a job at St. John's University, teaching mythology.”

“Mythology?”

“Mm-hmm.”

“Is that something you like?”

“Well, my mom was a biologist, but I don't want to be a scientist—although I was interested in physics once, because it's crazy. My sister—” She stopped. “My sister liked mythology. When we were little, she was interested in Nordic legends, Odin and Loki and the Valkyries. She called her imaginary friend Norn.”

He narrowed his eyes. “After the goddesses of fate?”

“Fate.” Finn's mouth twisted.

He spoke gently, “Your sister died, didn't she?”

Her fingers clenched on the counter. “Yeah, she died.”

His hand, strong, fine, and decorated with antique rings, settled over hers, and a sweet warmth blossomed within her.

“Finn.” He looked away, a muscle twitching in his jaw. “My family . . . they're not good people.”

She didn't want to move her hand from beneath his because the breathless ache that choked her whenever she thought of Lily didn't come this time. She felt concerned for Jack, though, because that statement—it made her think of secrets that rotted people from the inside out.

“It's not like they're the Mafia, right?” She watched him for a response. “No one has a perfect family.”

His mouth curved, and he looked back at her, laughter glittering in his dark eyes. “Right. Not a perfect family, but a lot like the Mafia.”

She wanted to ask him about his parents but decided that might be too much prying. There was one thing she was determined to clarify, however. As she looked down at the rings on his fingers, she said, “Reiko isn't your sister, is she?”

“Not even a distant cousin.”

“You're adopted, like Nathan Clare.”

“Somewhat.”

A horn blared outside, making Finn jump. Jack slid his hand from hers and rose. “I think that's for me.”

He was leaving her for the glamour of Fata civilization. She said lightly, “Thank you for dinner.”

He sauntered toward the door. The bell didn't chime as he stepped out and dead leaves webbed with smoke and cold swirled in. “Don't look out the window so much, Finn Sullivan.”

When he had gone, she shoved her food cartons into the trash before looking for the tiny paper with
his
fortune on it, only to find one of the cats eating it.

CHRISTIE CAME IN AS FINN
was switching off the electric jack-o'-lantern in the bookstore window.

“I couldn't park nearby.” He shoved his hands into his pockets and frowned at the Dead Kings. “Annoying.”

“You're jealous you're not in there, aren't you?” She reached for her coat.

“My soul bleeds whenever I can't mingle with the jaded and the obnoxious.”