Thorn Jack (32 page)

HE'D BEEN BORN IN IRELAND,
his mother, a gypsy; his father, a coachman. When Jack was sixteen, his mother had died because they couldn't afford a doctor. Angry at his father, he had left. As a coachman's son, he'd known how to handle horses and the unwieldy vehicles they pulled. He'd found employment at the house of a wealthy man named Seth Lot. “Your sister's wolf-eyed man,” he gently told her. “A Fata.”

He had thought the beautiful girl in red silk, her black hair in loops and braids, had been Seth Lot's bride.
Reiko Fata.

“I didn't know what they were.” His eyes closed briefly and Finn hurt for him. “If I'd known. If I'd listened to my father . . .”

“Jack . . . when was this?”

“The 1800s.”

She rolled the dice and moved to disguise a shudder.

“Seth Lot and his family were nomads. They'd made their home in Dublin because they'd been driven from country to country by others of their kind. They were criminals—breaking every Fata law they could.”

Finn looked down at the snakes on the board. Jack traced one of them. There were remnants of black around his fingernails, as if he'd wiped dark polish from them. “Reiko's name back then was Vouivre. In French, that's a half serpent, half woman. She was . . . and then she kissed me . . .”

Finn grimly knew it had been more than a kiss. “Do you love her?”

“Once . . . I used to be able to see what she had been. Just a girl.”

Finn felt grubby and graceless and doubted Reiko had ever been “just a girl.” Jack's words made her wonder, though, what the Fatas really were . . . fairies, the offspring of angels, the ancient dead . . .

He looked at her and said, “It was like loving a stone. Or a python. She doesn't have a heart. She cut it out and hid it somewhere.” He leaned forward, desperation in his voice. “
Why
did you remember, Finn? You were
safe
.”

“I wasn't safe. Why do you think she took my memory of you away?”

“I don't know.” He was very still. “Why did she? And she was so easily tricked.”

“Hey!”

His mouth curled. “And Angyll Weaver is dead. It doesn't make sense.”

“Jack . . . do you think she loves you?”
Even though she's a monster,
Finn thought sadly,
does she love you?

His hand tightened on one of the game pieces. “She loves nothing.” He blinked, then looked up at Finn distractedly as he said, “There is a legend.” He sat back, looking thoughtful, tossing the dice and the pieces in an amazing bit of juggling he didn't seem aware of.

She curled up with her arms around her legs, chin on her knees, and watched him. “Tell me.”

“In the seventeenth century, in Virginia, before she settled in Dublin, or Fair Hollow—while she was a nomad, or, more likely, a bloody pirate—she tricked her way into a family called the Tiamats. She was to wed their son.”

“Were they Fatas?”

“The Tiamats were the worst sort of Fatas—clannish, powerful, with roots in a human community. The Tiamat son was killed with cold iron—something went sour there, I've no doubt, between him and Reiko—and a young tailor was accused. He'd been Reiko's lover. He became lawless, that human fool, a highwayman. I suspect Reiko tricked him into murdering the Tiamat.”

“How romantic,” Finn said wryly, trying not to analyze how he'd said “human.”

“Not really. I believe he began killing people for money. One night, the Tiamats, the children of the dragon, laid a trap for him. And cursed him.”

“How?”

He shrugged. “I don't know.”

She leaned forward. “What happened to the tailor-highwayman?”

“He became an outcast, walking between two worlds, an outlaw sorcerer, neither human nor Fata. The
Dubh Deamhais
. He wasn't like the Jacks and Jills . . . He just . . . changed. Naturally, Reiko later found this irresistible when he tracked her down. They were an item for a while.”

“So . . . what happened?”

He dropped the dice and met her gaze. “While with him the second time, she grew a heart.”

“I thought her kind couldn't—”

“They can't. After the highwayman left her”—Jack smiled—“she cut it out of herself and hid it somewhere, because it had the power to make her vulnerable.”

“That's grotesque. How could she even . . .”

He lowered his head and raised one hand to his chest and she remembered what Reiko had done to
him
. She slid forward, cupped his face in her hands, and looked directly into his eyes. “When I first met you, I
felt
your heart. Then, later, you didn't have one. Jack, what did she do to you?” She pressed her brow against his. “Please tell me she didn't make you cut it out.”

He whispered, “Before you, I was nothing.”

“Before you,” she breathed, “I was disappearing.”

They looked down at the dice. Snake eyes. She thought of snakes, serpents, Reiko. Jack's head snapped up and he stood quickly. “I'm leaving.”

She slid to her feet. “Reiko promised she'd leave us alone, but they killed Angyll Weaver.”

“I told you it wasn't your fault—”

“She murdered
you
somehow. She murdered my sister. They're not supposed to kill—”

“Who told you that? And how do you think you can help me? Or Nathan?” His face was white. “Is it because of your sister? Revenge? Because you can't save anyone if revenge is your motive. This isn't a goddamn fairy tale.”

“
Tell
me what I can do to get you away from her!”

He looked at her, disbelieving. Then, he shed his coat. He sauntered to her bed, where he sprawled and stretched out a hand, his smile devastating. “Come here and I'll show you what you can do.”

The air in the room twisted up in her throat. She didn't move.

“Finn, it's going to take a lot more than a kiss to bring me back.” His gaze didn't leave hers as he kept his hand outstretched. “Come on.”

She wanted to throw something at him and fling herself at him all at the same time. She stood her ground, silent, accusing, yearning. “That's not true. If it were that simple, you'd have found someone for that a long time ago.”

Jack moved to his feet and walked toward her, through the light and shadows. And he became another thing, its gaze burning, its skin white. He metamorphosed into Finn's double, a white-skinned corpse with tumbling brunette hair and black eyes—

Finn closed her own eyes. Calmly, she said, “If you think you're scaring me, you're not.
Stop it
. It's just tricks . . .”

She opened her eyes, and Jack stood before her again. He stepped close and she could feel the peril practically materializing in the room as his eyes silvered and he whispered to her, “Do you know what a trick is, to us, Finn-named-after-a-king?”

Smoldering and mutinous, she glared at him.

“It's the worst sort of fate for any mortal. It means we've seduced, corrupted, charmed, deceived you, usually to your death.”

“Stop saying
we
and stop saying
you.
” Her words sounded cracked.

“And it's so easy.” He gently gripped her jaw in one hand as the fingers of his other touched her throat, pausing above the locket he'd given her, the one containing the picture of his friend. “You young ones, with all your damage, your soft skin, your spirits burning for so much more than this world can give you . . .” His lips brushed the line of her jaw as he pressed one hand against her midriff beneath her T-shirt. She felt the coldness of those ancient rings down to her insides. She put her hands between them, against his heart.

“I don't want to kiss you right now,” she lied.

“This isn't,” he whispered in her ear, “about a kiss.”

He stepped back. She let him take her by the hand and lead her toward the bed. She felt drowsy and safe as she reached out to touch the nape of his neck beneath the dark silk of his hair. Her fingertips brushed the black, thorny Celtic cross tattooed there, and the sight of it woke a faint horror within her.

She pulled back. He let her hand slip from his as he turned to face her, his eyes human again, flickering with despair.

“No,” she said, taking a step back. “Not when you're like this.”

“Like what?” Contempt curled his mouth, but she knew it wasn't meant for her. “Someone who'd seduce a chi—”

“If you call me a child, I'm going to hit you.”

“The things I've
done
and you are here, speaking with me as if I'm a schoolmate and not a killer. I've ruined girls like you. I've been her weapon against your kind since she made me one of hers.”

When a lamp bulb shattered, she flinched. His eyes were completely black now. She tried to believe he wouldn't hurt her. “You're not like Caliban.”

“He's older than me. Most Jacks don't last as long as he has.” He smiled, wild and dangerous. “But I'm younger and faster.”

She hated the way he spoke so casually of his life—his unlife. He continued fiercely, “She
knows
you've gotten your memory back, Finn. She hasn't spoken to me or acted against you. That worries me.”

“Angyll Weaver was murdered.
That
was her strike against me. And she might also be distracted by her plans to sacrifice Nathan. They kill an innocent person to keep their precious long lives. Is that what they tried to do to you? Is that why you're the way you are?”

“I'm not going to be able to talk you out of this, am I?”

She clutched his cold hands, careful not to let her iron bracelet touch him. “There's got to be some way to save Nathan.”

He looked at her and the darkness left him as he said, “Only his true love can save him. And she's in hiding.”

“Then let's find her and help her.”

TOGETHER, THEY WENT IN SEARCH
of true love.

Jack led Finn down a street where scraggly trees clawed at run-down brownstones and dogs barked while music thumped from several bars. They were in the warehouse district, which seemed a little too close to Tirnagoth, and it was as if the energy of the neighborhood had been drained by the Fatas, leaving it muted and cold. Jack said, “Nathan told me that there was an angel above her door.”

Finn stepped over a rusted bicycle, her boots leaving deep prints in the mud of someone's yard. She scanned the doorways. “You don't know where, exactly? You people need to get phones.”

Jack stopped walking and turned to her. “Why are you doing this, Finn? For a boy you barely know?”

She looked at him and frowned. “Why wouldn't I?”

“I see.” His voice was soft.

“I mean, they're going to kill him, right?”

“We're not going to find Mary Booke on our own.” He clambered onto the hood of an abandoned car—she hoped it was abandoned—and began to speak quietly in another language.

“What are you doing?” She was trying not to look at the shadows.

“You'll see. Mortal eyes see patterns they expect. Look into the negative spaces, Finn. Look between.”

She didn't want to do that, but she stared at the street before them. Half the lamps had blown out, and rusty shadows dirtied the yellow light, which seemed to haze for a moment. She heard footsteps.

A wiry figure emerged from the air and darkness.

Jack slid down to face a boy in ripped jeans, his torso bare but for a bronze pocket watch on a ribbon around his neck. He was all bones and bruises, his eyes the color of rotting wood.

“Jack.” His teeth gleamed metallic. He seemed made from the neighborhood's decay. “Fancy meeting you here.” He turned to Finn, who pretended not to notice the beetle that skittered across his chest. “Hey.”

“This is Finn.” Jack acted as if vagrant Frankenstein boys with spooky eyes were common. “Finn, this is Wormwood. Wormwood, we need to find a girl named Mary Booke. She lives in your neighborhood.”

“I'll tell you.” Wormwood smiled metal again. “If your girl gives me a kiss.”

Jack's smile glinted like a razor. “How about if
I
give you a kiss?”

“I'm not scared of you.” Wormwood circled them, his bare feet scarcely touching the cement. He smelled like old metal and gasoline. “I'm older than you. I'll settle for a trinket. Finn, you got anything pretty for me?”

Finn took a quick inventory, unclasped the white rabbit medallion from around her neck. She held it out and tried not to stare at him. Her hand shook.

Jack seized the medallion before Wormwood could. “
No
exchanges, Wormwood. Do you remember that kelpie in 1970? He made me very angry.”

The Fata boy sighed. “I've no desire to end up in pieces.”

He closed his eyes, curled one hand into a fist, and opened it. A large, rust-colored moth glided from his palm, down the street. The boy turned and smiled at Finn as he said, “Follow that, pretty girl. And you'd be wise to lose the Jack—you can't ever trust them.”

Jack grabbed Finn's hand before she could answer back, and they ran after the moth, down an alley that seemed to twist more than it should. When the insect fluttered up into a window of a building with a clock tower, Jack and Finn halted. Above the building's door was the face of a sinister angel with wings for hair and stains beneath its eyes. As the moth landed on the hand of the broken clock, Finn moved forward, but Jack slipped past her, up the stairs, and knocked on the door.

A moment later, a boy with black hair and blue eyes opened it. Finn recognized him as one of Jack's vagabond friends. He said, “
Jack?
”

“Hey.” Finn hurried up the stairs and smiled, trying to lessen the effect of Jack's . . . Jackness. “I'm a friend of Mary Booke's. Is she here?”