Briar Queen (7 page)

“Wyatt.” Jack inclined his head. The metalsmith did the same—they were like two samurai about to unsheathe their swords. Jack continued, “A wrong was done to Finn Sullivan on Halloween night. Phouka says she is to be given what she wants.”

“Well, if the
Banríon
says . . .” Mr. Wyatt pushed open the door and mockingly ushered them through.

As they strode down the crimson hall toward the inner doors painted with an image of a fairy knight, Jack, without looking at Finn, said, “I'm asking now.”

“I saw my sister's boyfriend come in here with a Fata girl.”

“Leander Cyrus.” His mouth a grim line, Jack shoved open the doors.

“Yeah. You remembered his name.”

Dub music with a Celtic influence pulsed around them as they stepped into the crowded club, where blue-green light smeared the faces of dancers and the skin of those lingering at the glass bar. Lining a wall painted with a mural of an art nouveau king and queen were shelves of exotic liqueurs in fantastically shaped bottles. Finn kept close to Jack, her face shadowed by the cowl of her Renaissance-styled hoodie. She said in his ear, “You don't know what Leander looks like.”

“I've seen photos of him, in your room.” He scanned the crowd. “There are some bad people here tonight.”

Finn ducked her head as a young man in black moved past them. His eyes glinted white, not silver. A girl with blue hair and a blue band painted around the bottom half of her face glided past Jack, her lips parting as she looked him
over. On the stage set up for live music, a bare-chested youth with cropped hair and spirals painted beneath his eyes grabbed the microphone. Accompanied by drums and an electric guitar, his voice was a howl that sent splinters into Finn's already raw nerves.

“The Unseelie,” Jack said. “No wonder Wyatt didn't want us in here.”

“
Leander
is here. There!” She'd caught sight of a flash of golden hair in the eerie light near the stage. She grabbed Jack's hand and pulled him with her.

One of the dancers jostled her and she lost her grip on Jack, then turned to see him gazing after a female figure in a hooded coat of crimson velvet. Finn remembered the girl Leander had come with and pushed toward her, glimpsing the girl's face, strangely familiar—

Someone seized Finn's other hand. She whirled to face a grinning young man with bleached hair and ram horns strapped to his head. His bare chest glistened with green spirals. “Well, hello, pretty pretty. However did a thing like you get past the guard dog?”

“Let go of me.” She tugged, but his grip was like steel. His nails, painted green, were sharp. She looked up into silver eyes with rectangular pupils and began to feel that strange buzzing in her ears . . .

Then Jack was between them like a slice of dark murder and the Fata had let go of her hand and was backing away, saying, “Sorry. I didn't know . . .”

Finn had spotted the golden-haired figure in the pale suit moving up a flight of stairs. She broke free from Jack and wove through the Fatas, heard Jack swear violently as he plunged after her. She ran up the stairs and he followed. Pushing through a stained-glass door, she stepped onto the roof.

The figure in the pale suit stood with his back to them, his head bowed. Hoarsely, he said, “Why are you following me?”

“Leander.” Finn moved forward. “It's me . . . Finn.”

Jack stood in the doorway. In a voice like a knife, he said, “Cyrus. Turn around, face her, and tell her what you are.”

Leander Cyrus shuddered and turned, shoving his hands through his hair. When Finn saw all the rings he wore, a slow horror crawled through her. She walked across the rooftop and reached out to touch his wrist, carefully wrapping her fingers around it. She breathed out in relief when she felt his pulse. “Leander—”

“Why,” he whispered, lifting a dark gaze to hers, “why are you
here
? With
him
?”

Jack. He meant Jack. As if he knew what Jack had been. She said, “My da and I moved here a few months ago. Why are
you
here?”

His hand in hers was cold and his fingernails were dirty. His hair didn't look too clean either. His suit was expensive, but threadbare. He whispered, “I came here to kill a wolf.”

He raised his head, and she stepped back with a small cry—his eyes glinted the mercury silver of a Fata's and the scent of oceans and flowers came so strongly from him, it made her choke. She recognized the flower smell, spicy and delicate—morning glories, which had once grown outside of her window in San Francisco.

“Finn.” Jack's voice was soft. “I hoped I would never have to tell you.”

“You knew? You
knew
what happened to him?
Jack
.”

“I recognized the name when you first spoke it.”

“Recognized the . . .”

She looked back at Leander, the kind, familiar young man who had been an older brother to her younger self, the one who'd taught her how to use a camera, who had taken her to old movies, and who'd comforted her whenever she'd cried over a cruel remark from Lily.

Leander Cyrus was a Jack. He had always been a Jack.

“You never saw him in the day, Finn. You never noticed because you were a child, and to a child, a Jack's habits would not seem so odd.”

Leander stepped back. “I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, Finn.”

She flew at him, pummeling him, and he didn't try to defend himself as she shouted, “
What did you do to my sister!
What did you
do
?”

Then Jack's arms were around her, pulling her away.

“Finn,” Jack said calmly, “he's bleeding.”

She saw the blood on Leander's mouth where one of her flailing fists had struck. Her eyes wide, she whispered, “Leander . . .”

He backed away.

“Why are you bleeding if you're a Jack?” She reached out, gripping his hand—

—and was knocked out of herself . . . as if someone had snatched her soul from her body and flung it above a winter forest from which rose a mansion of leprous
marble, with stone wolves on the cloven stairway and shadows moving behind windows that were nothing more than shards of glass. It was a phantom house and, as the sun set, it glowed with light, transforming . . .

Then she was
inside
the house and knew she could never leave it as she walked its corridors, a gown of smoke and belladonna petals billowing around her legs. When she halted before a colossal mirror of tarnished glass, she saw a ghost, its dark hair snarled with lilies, its face in shadow. Soon,
he
would come, to lay his fine, jeweled hands upon her—

She was jarred back to herself, on her knees, with Jack crouched before her, gripping her shoulders, speaking her name over and over again. She retched, gasped, “I'm okay.”

“You didn't tell her?” Leander's voice was wild.

“Tell her what?” Jack snarled.

Leander shook his head. “Just keep her away from
them . . .”

He turned and stepped up onto the low wall of the roof. Finn screamed, “Leander!”

He jumped.

She staggered up and ran to the wall with Jack. There was no sign of anyone in the alley below.

“I recognized him in the photographs you showed me, the ones of your sister.” Jack slid down, his back against the wall, and sat there. She dropped down beside him as he continued, “I should have told you. I just couldn't.”

She tracked her memories of Leander, of day-bright San Francisco, of carp in sun-drenched water, of bicycling through hilly streets, of walks in Golden Gate Park . . . she couldn't place Leander in a single one of those sunlit memories. Why had she never noticed how strange it was that Lily only saw him at night? “All that time with Lily, he was a Jack. How could I not
know
?”

He twined his fingers around her wrists, pressed his thumbs gently against her pulse points. “You were a child.”

“You said you recognized him. From where? Who does he belong to?”

Jack hesitated. “Seth Lot.”

She closed her eyes as her stomach heaved. She saw the ghost girl walking barefoot in the hall of a house with stone wolves guarding a split stairway. “Leander was bleeding. Why do Jacks bleed?”

Warily, he said, “Finn . . .”

“He had a
pulse
.” She pulled herself to her feet.

“Finn.” Jack stood up, alarm in his voice. “I know what you're thinking. Don't. Please don't.”

“He's
in love
. If the person a Jack loves dies, does a Jack return to what he was? Or does the heart and blood remain? Why is he still bleeding, Jack, if Lily is dead?”

“I don't know.” His voice was ragged.

“It
wouldn't
remain.” She was amazed by her own calm. “When I left you, you began to go all hollow again. Whatever Leander was”—she gripped the low wall as a terrifying hope soared through her—“he loved my sister and loves her still.”

“Finn.
Stop
.”

“They take people and put dead things in their place, all fixed up to look like the ones they stole away.” She remembered what Reiko had said on Halloween:
I can bring back your sister
.

“Finn, please don't think like this.”

Reiko had said,
Do you want this world of absolutes and accidents? Of hopelessness and ugly deaths?
“Jack . . .”

He looked away and said nothing more.

FINN CLAMBERED UP JACK'S FIRE ESCAPE,
following him. Not once on the drive here had she mentioned Lily Rose.

As they climbed into his apartment, he paused as if listening to a distant sound. He bent to draw a knife from one boot, then glided toward the bathroom, yanked the door open.

Moth was crouched between the sink and the toilet, his arms over his head. He still wore the clothes Jack had given him, but he was barefoot, surrounded by pieces of glass from the mirror that had hung over the sink. He whispered, “I've no reflection. I'm not real. I'm not really here.”

Finn knelt before him. “Of course you're here. I'm speaking to you, aren't I? Why did you try to kill Jack?”

“The dark-haired girl,” he said faintly, “told me to.”

Finn pressed on, “Does the name Reiko Fata mean anything to you?”

He continued, “‘
If she be made of white and red, her faults will ne'er be known
.'”

“This,” Jack said, crouching beside Finn, “is getting weird.”

Finn took out her phone and tapped at it. Jack said, “What are you doing?”

“Calling for reinforcements.”

CHRISTIE AND SYLVIE ARRIVED
dressed for battle in silver and holly. As they hauled themselves over the windowsill into Jack's apartment, Moth rose from his place on the bathroom floor and stared at them.

“Is
that
Moth?” Sylvie was apple cheeked from the chill. A Laplander hat was snug on her braided hair.

Moth backed away until he came up against the sink. Finn winced as glass crunched beneath his bare feet. He whispered again, this time in English, “
Dragonfly
. Why would you let
her
into your house?” He pointed at Christie. “And I remember
you
now, the one who found me . . . the
Sionnach Ri . . .
trickster . . .”

“They're not whoever you're mistaking them for.” Jack leaned in the doorway of his kitchen. “What a hell of a night. I'm going to make tea. Moth, you're probably bleeding all over my floor. Sit down. Hello, Christopher. Sylvie.”

Moth walked to the sofa. As he sat, warily watching Christie and Sylvie, Finn didn't see any blood on his feet. She said, “You're lucky. You didn't get cut. You've met Christie and that's Sylvie.”

“I thought . . .” Moth shook his head and hunched over again, his thumbs pressed to his temples. “I have misremembered . . . what were those names I said?”

“You forgot them already?”

“Great.” Christie stared at Moth. “Someone else who's lost his mind.”

An hour later, Christie and Sylvie had learned all about Leander Cyrus, Moth, and Seth Lot. Moth listened without speaking, his hands clenched together.

“So,” Christie spoke carefully, hunched up, “your sister's boyfriend, all this time, was a Frankenstein?”

Sylvie was watching Moth. She whispered, “And Leander worked for this Seth Lot? What does that mean?”

“It means”—Christie sounded desolate—“the Big Bad Wolf knows about Finn. I wonder if he knows we all helped perish his ex-girlfriend?”

The silence that followed was broken by Moth. “I don't remember a man who is a wolf. Why can't I remember him?”

Christie asked Jack, “How is the fairy mob handling this grim turn of events?”

“Christopher,” Jack spoke idly, “that fairy mob might be the only thing standing between you and the
Madadh aillaid
.”

“Is that the Big Bad Wolf's fancy name?”

Jack looked at Moth. “You don't remember the Wolf king, Moth, only a dark-haired girl. You tried to kill me because the dark-haired girl told you to. You protected Finn from the
crom cu
. So my guess is that you have left Seth Lot's services and now work for another—only you don't remember who that is. You've been enchanted. Or cursed.”

Moth's bracelet of silver charms caught the light and Finn could make out the charms' individual shapes—a bee, a seahorse, an owl . . . an octopus with a tentacle missing. Her stomach somersaulted. “Moth, where did you get that bracelet?”

He stared at it as if he'd never seen it before. He took it off, held it out to her. “It was hers . . . the dark-haired girl's.”

With one trembling hand, she accepted the charm bracelet. There was the butterfly she had bought at a thrift shop in San Francisco, the skull with garnet eyes, the guitar, the octopus . . . The air in the room seemed to crack. She met Moth's green gaze and whispered, “Who is the dark-haired girl who sent you?”