Thorn Jack (25 page)

“I saw Reiko Fata in San Francisco when I was thirteen. I think my sister knew about them. I found a journal of hers—and it's filled with stories about them.”

Christie wore silver and iron and a sprig of mistletoe behind one ear—he was admired at HallowHeart and could get away with it—and he looked primitive when he said, “What exactly happened to your sister?”

She spoke as if there were razors in her throat. “Lily broke up with her boyfriend. She left for the ballet studio. It was on the third floor of a building downtown. She was wearing her dancing shoes when she threw herself through a window—it was an old building. The glass wasn't shatterproof. She lived for a week after, but she never woke up.”

She felt as if something sharp had been taken out of her. Then, Christie said quietly, “We'll go to the Dead Kings tonight.”

FINN PREPARED FOR BATTLE IN
her room. She'd selected a dress of fig-brown silk that had belonged to Lily Rose and borrowed a pair of Sylvie's platform sandals because they had ribbons of brown satin. She lined her eyes with black kohl. She armed herself only with silver. She didn't want to look afraid or ordinary.

Christie arrived with Sylvie and looked too vulnerable in an Oxford shirt, black trousers, sneakers, and a red plaid tie. Silver rings banded his fingers. He'd laced Emory through his tousled hair. Finn said, “Nice touch.”

“Thanks. So . . . no weapons? 'Cause Sylve has—”

“
No
weapons.”

Like Finn, Sylvie had dressed for war. Her plaid kilt and black T-shirt with a silver spider glittering on the front were fierce. The knee-high boots, the silver hoops in her ears, and her expression announced her intentions. They all wore silver, no iron, because they wanted to be protected, but subtle. Symbols had power, after all.

“Ready?”

The evening smelled of cedarwood and cold as they walked to the nightclub. Finn remembered a line from Lily's journal.
They are bloodless and heartless. They are powerless without us.

They reached the building of gargoyles and shuttered windows and found the street already lined with parked cars. Finn knocked on the metal door, which opened to reveal Mr. Wyatt, glitter dusting his ebony skin and his lion's mane of dreads. He narrowed his eyes. “No.”

Sylvie whispered to Christie, “Don't say anything about his secret life. Don't say—”

Christie smiled. “Mr. Wyatt. How goes border patrol in the land of the weird?”

Finn sighed and Sylvie glared at Christie. Mr. Wyatt merely said, “If I were doing my job properly, I wouldn't let you in. Do you have your IDs?”

Christie held out their IDs.

Mr. Wyatt didn't even glance at the cards. He waved them inside. “Don't drink or eat anything. You haven't been invited.”

They walked down a crimson corridor where fake candles flickered in metal sconces, and portraits of stern, spooky people hung on the walls. A pair of doors was painted with the image of a black-haired knight in green armor, a blood drop gleaming beneath his left eye. Music pulsed from behind him.

“I don't want to go in there,” Christie said grimly. “This'll be like Friday's mad tea party, only in an enclosed space where no one can hear us scream.”

The doors opened, splitting the pretty knight in two, and a hurricane of savage music, dancers, and colored lights washed over them as they stepped forward. The stage was a crimson grotto, where a singer's eerie wailing was accompanied by the beat of drums and a symphony of violins. The fragrances of incense, cinnamon, leaf mold, smoke, and wine tainted the air.

“Keep close,” Christie murmured as they wove among the dancers. “We're in fairy land now.”

“Don't use the ‘f' word.” Sylvie nudged him as they passed a bare-chested boy with ivory antlers tied on his brow, standing before an altar of green candles. Three young women, their white hair in serpentine loops, drifted around a young man whose arms were spiraled with tribal tattoos as he danced with an Asian girl in a school uniform. Scarlet wings were strapped to her back. Her silvery gaze followed Christie with hungry fascination.

“What are we looking for?” Sylvie said into Finn's ear.

“This is terrifying!” Christie yelled, standing among the heathens with his hair in his eyes and his red plaid tie undone. “I'm afraid for my virtue—”

“Hello.” A black-haired girl in a yellow sundress appeared at Christie's side, smiling. She grabbed his hand, his fingers that glinted with
silver
rings.

When she screamed as if burned, Finn felt the nape of her neck prickle.

“Shit.” Christie snatched his hand from the girl, who sank against a pillar. Sylvie clutched one of Finn's wrists as, around them, people stopped dancing. Faces turned toward them—haughty faces, masked faces, faces sprinkled with glitter or tattooed like Maori warriors. The music faded in a discordant jangle. Finn, flanked by her friends, watched a dark figure glide from the still bodies.

Jack Fata, dressed in Victorian-punk black, gazed at her with calm fury.

“Sylvie”—Finn couldn't look away from that face that stopped her breath—“do it. Now.”

Sylvie spoke the words Christie had written, her voice made eerie by the acoustics in the club, “We, as Three, invoke the law of hospitality, which guards our safety and our sanity.”

“You,” Jack spoke idly to Finn, “are an idiot.”

Finn refused to be hurt by his words. “Where is she, Jack?”

He stepped close. Scented with fire and cold, he murmured, “You couldn't have chosen to do this somewhere else?”

“Somewhere else wouldn't have been safe.”

His attention slid to Sylvie and Christie, both of whom looked warily back at him. His gaze returned to Finn. “So your little witch has been reading the proper books, and you've found yourself a mortal knight.”

“Jack,” a young woman said. “Leave them be.”

His eyes dark, Jack stepped away.

Reiko Fata, ravishing in a dress of red silk, was walking toward them, the candle flames glittering in her green eyes. “Finn Sullivan.”

Finn met those green eyes and flinched . . .

. . . she saw the corpse of a drowned boy in old-fashioned clothes . . . a skeletal hand knotted in the roots of an oak . . . crimson butterflies fluttering across a girl's blood-streaked leg—and she realized that Reiko Fata was made of those deaths, those last breaths, the final glimmering of those souls.

Wide-eyed, Christie whispered, “ ‘
Her teeth are red with rust, her breast is green with gall, her tongue suffused with poison, and she never laughs except when watching pain.
' ”

Reiko laughed in delight. “Ovid. An interesting choice for a boy your age.” She didn't sound like a girl when she said, “Do not think, Serafina Sullivan, that I will forget this.”

“Lily Rose.” Finn clenched one hand at her side. Her voice shook.

Reiko turned and scathed the Dead Kings' inhabitants. “All of you—leave.”

Shadows fell, light expanded, and tiny orbs swept through the air like hundreds of fireflies. Whatever doubts Finn had had about the Fatas'
otherness
vanished in a moment of terror followed by calm shock. She heard Christie swear brokenly, but Sylvie was silent.

Finn mightily regretted involving them.

Then the Dead Kings was empty but for Finn, her friends, and those she'd come to challenge, Reiko Fata, Jack, and Caliban, who leaned against a pillar, watching.

Wyatt silently entered the empty club and stood there, arms folded. Reiko frowned at him, but his presence gave Finn the conviction she needed.

“Lily Rose,” she said again, refusing to be distracted by the vanishing of the Dead Kings' inhabitants.

Reiko spoke with soft malice. “Why are you asking me about a dead girl?”

Finn stepped forward. “I invoke the guest law, that no lies are spoken, no promises broken.”

Reiko didn't move, but Caliban stepped forward.

“Caliban,” Reiko said, smiling sweetly, “is not of my family. He is not bound by our laws or your invocation. I charge
him
to answer your questions.”

And so, neatly, Finn was defeated.

“Finn,” Sylvie whispered, “ask him questions with yes or no answers.”

“There are seven of us here.” Reiko gestured as her chauffeur, Phouka, emerged from the shadows. “So.
Seven
questions.”

Finn didn't look directly at Caliban, but her voice was steady, “Did Reiko Fata know my sis—”

Sylvie gripped her hand, hard. Finn changed her wording. “Did Reiko Fata know Lily Rose Sullivan?”

Caliban regarded her from beneath snow-white lashes. “I don't know.”

Finn calmed her ragged breathing. “Has any girl in Fair Hollow died because of Reiko Fata?”

Caliban narrowed his silver eyes. “Yes.”

“Careful, Serafina Sullivan.” Reiko's gaze silvered also. The air began to buzz. “There are some things you might not wish to know.”

Finn recklessly continued, “Who is the wolf-eyed man in San Francisco?”

Jack inhaled sharply, and Caliban smiled. “Got a better description? There are many of us with wolf eyes.”

“Only four more,” Christie murmured. Finn flinched when she saw blood trickling from one of his nostrils, but he didn't take his gaze from Caliban.

She looked back at Reiko and whispered, “How can I free Jack and Nathan from Reiko Fata?”

There was a chilly silence.

Caliban shrugged, the gesture so graceful, it was as if he'd been doing it for ages. “Jack and Nate aren't prisoners, so your definition of ‘free' is spotty.”

“Finn.” Although Jack's voice distracted her, she didn't dare look at him. She whispered, “Are you human, Caliban, you and the Fatas?”

“We are what you see and that question, lambkin, is open to interpretation. Shall I give the poetic answer? We are the children of nothing and night.” His beauty, unlike Jack's, was disturbing, the beauty of something that shouldn't be walking and talking, a thing that dressed itself in skin, leather, and velvet and didn't care whether its alien nature was known.

“How do my friends and I keep ourselves safe from your kind?”

Caliban stared at her. Finn could smell burning things and roses as Jack drew closer. Reiko seemed to become a shadow with luminous eyes, whispering, “
Answer her.
”

Caliban moved one step forward so that only an inch of air separated him from Finn. His hair was like strands of silk. Faint freckles silvered his flawless skin, and he smelled of frost and rust. He whispered something, an old, dark word.

Then Jack slid between them, and Finn was scarcely aware of being gently pushed back as Caliban blithely answered, “Iron and salt. Poetry. Silver. Running water. Church bells. Incense. Mirrors. Blessed ribbons. Rowan wood. Parsley. Various other botanical varieties. These are your defenses.”

“Last question.” Reiko was no longer smiling.

Finn said, softly, “What will happen at the oak tree on Halloween?”

The Fatas went still. Their eyes glistened like moonlight on ice. Caliban said, “A celebration.”

“There now.” Reiko was a girl again, but her smile curved in a promise of ruin and her eyes were electric. “We've answered your questions, Serafina. Caliban and Phouka shall escort you over the threshold.”

Finn didn't like how Reiko had phrased
that
last statement. She searched for a trick. She looked over her shoulder at Jack, who said clearly, “Phouka. Make sure they move
safely
over the threshold of this
building
and into
Fair Hollow
.”

“I'll go with them,” Wyatt said, gesturing. “Come along, children.”

The glee on Caliban's face was replaced by a sullen scowl. He looked at Reiko. “Do we really need to be policed by—”

Reiko's voice belonged to a terrible thing. “
Caliban.
”

He bowed his head.

Outside, autumn smoldered. The night was rich with cedar smoke and the chocolate smell of damp soil.

“We didn't come in a car.” Finn refused to look at the two creatures on either side of them. They were, she thought, bloody nightmares. Wyatt was a steady and reassuring presence behind them.

“Shall we walk you home?” As Caliban pretended concern, Finn felt an insane desire to hit him. Phouka was watching them, the brim of her chauffeur's cap shadowing her face as her lips curved. Her gaze fastened on Christie as he touched his bloody nose, frowning.

Finn said, “We can find our own way home.”

“We do know it.” Sylvie smiled, but her eyes were angry, and she looked pale.

Wyatt placed himself between Finn and her friends and Caliban.

“Come, Caliban.” Phouka sauntered back toward the Dead Kings. “We're not wanted.”

Caliban followed, swaggering.

Wyatt looked at them. “Now you know. Go home.”

Hopelessness bled through Finn as she walked quickly down the street with Christie and Sylvie. “We shouldn't have done this.”

“We learned some things,” Sylvie said, sliding her arm through Finn's, “that we wish we hadn't.”

“They just vanished.” Christie hunched into his coat. “Like they hadn't been alive. Like
ghosts
.” He breathed out.

Finn said quietly, “I think Reiko killed my sister.”

LATE INTO THE NIGHT, FINN
read Lily Rose's journal while candlelight flickered over the symbolic things laid beside her—the moth key, the locket Jack had given her of the Renaissance prince, a red leather book of Grimms' fairy tales. It was a weirdly humid night for autumn in the north, and she'd opened her glass doors. The CD she'd clicked into the stereo played an anguished version of “Greensleeves” by a young singer.