Thorn Jack (12 page)

“Christie. Sylvie.” Finn found her voice. “It's okay.”

“Christie.” The stranger murmured the name as if memorizing it. Then he smiled at Sylvie. “Sylvie.”

He turned and sauntered away. Rings flashed on his hands as he pushed open the door and slipped into the night.

Finn looked down at her menu, no longer in the mood for something new and delicious.

Christie said, “
What
was
that
?”

“That was a Fata.” Sylvie sat down. “I met him at the Fata revel. He's the one we saw at the wake.”

“He was at the party the other night,” Finn murmured, “talking to Angyll Weaver.”

“Well, he deserves whatever he gets then.” Christie sat back, but his gaze remained on Finn. “What did he say to you?”

Finn had never felt true malevolence directed at her before—the platinum-haired Fata had
threatened
her. “He doesn't want me to speak to Nathan Clare.”

“Oh. Maybe they're a couple.” Christie flipped open his menu.

“Is that all?” Sylvie glared at the door as if expecting the menacing Fata to return.

“That's all.” Finn's hands shook a little.

“Finn . . . you're not going to talk to Nathan again, are you?”

“Oh hell,” Christie said, eyes narrowing. “She is.”

They ordered quickly. Finn managed the spicy food, the plantains and rice, the jerked chicken. But, afterward, she excused herself from the table and hurried into the dimly lit restroom, where she ran cold water over her wrists, dabbed her face with water, and noticed how her artfully smudged mascara made her eyes look shadowy.

The pale-haired Fata had terrified her.

When something skittered across the wall, she whirled, staring into the corners. Nausea suddenly burned in her throat, and she hunched over the sink, glimpsing out of the corner of one eye something like a black, furry hand retreating into the darkness of one stall.

She dashed out of the bathroom and halted to wipe clammy hands on her sleeves. Either the pale-haired Fata was making good on his threat, or she was losing her mind.

SHE DIDN'T TELL HER FRIENDS
what she'd seen as Christie drove them home and Sylvie thanked them for the gifts—an illustrated book about mythical witches from Finn and the gorgeous skateboard from Christie. As Christie pulled up in front of her apartment, Sylvie got out and said, “
Sayonara
. It was a fabulous night. Finn,
don't go near Nathan Clare
.”

As soon as they'd pulled away, Christie looked at Finn. “He's dangerous.”

“Who?”

“That white-haired gangster. Just do as he says. Nathan's got plenty of friends.”

She laid her head against the window and thought about Jack Fata, not Nathan. “Don't worry about it, Christie.”

After a beat, Christie said, “So you've been seeing Jack Fata.”

She glanced at him. “Okay.”

“And tonight you found out what the Fatas are like—not all that money came from them prostituting their kids as models and actors.”

“Christie—that pale-haired Fata doesn't like Jack.”

“We've got something in common then.”

“You haven't even
met
him—”

“Do I need to?” They'd reached her house. He stopped the car and looked at her. “I could meet him a hundred times and still not like him.”

“Thanks for the ride.” She got out of the car, angry.

“Finn—”

She slammed the door. Surrounded by neighborhood silence, she stalked toward her house.

JACK FATA SLID INTO HIS
apartment and lifted BlackJack Slade into his arms, setting the cat on a table to feed him mouse blood and milk in a teacup. Moonlight striped scattered books and broken things as he let his coat fall and pushed the button on his stereo. As violin music wavered through the apartment, he lay on his bed and touched his hip, his ribs, his collarbone, all of the scars beneath his fine clothes. He counted each year he'd been in the world. There were many.

What would she think of these marks, that girl with the tawny eyes? The one who reminded him of a long-dead friend?

He rose to his feet and left his nest to visit the oracle.

ANNA WEAVER DIDN'T LOOK UP
as Jack entered Hecate's Attic. She continued sorting dried herbs and flowers into velvet pouches.

He sat on the table and said, “Your folks really shouldn't leave you alone.”

“Why? Because I'm only fourteen?” She shrugged. Straight golden hair made her face seem elfin as she brushed leaves from her clothes and folded her hands on the table. “My mom's in the stockroom. What do you want?”

He smiled, but she was immune to his charm. The blackbird cuff links glinted on his sleeves as he tapped the table. “I want to know my future.”

“I've told you.” She was solemn. “I can't. You have no future. The bells over the door didn't even ring when you came in.”

He bowed his head, the red fringes of his dark hair sweeping against his neck. “Then tell me about love.”

“No—”

He reached for her Tarot deck, slid out a card, and turned it faceup, revealing the image of three swords sticking out of an androgynous body. “That tells me everything, doesn't it? Thank you, Anna.”

As he stood, he set a fossilized ruby shell on the table. Anna watched him leave the shop, his long coat snapping in the wind as the door closed behind him. She curled her hand over the shell.

LIKE JACK'S PALE SHADOW, A
young man walked into Hecate's Attic just before closing. Again, the bells above the door didn't ring, but clanked instead, as if dull with cold. The stranger inhaled, fixed his silvery gaze on the golden girl behind the counter, and used the voice that had lured so many others into his jaws. “Hello.”

Anna Weaver stared at the young man in the dark coat and pin-striped suit and immediately knew what he was. She wanted to call for her mother, but didn't dare.

“Hello, oracle.” He sauntered toward her, casting her a bauble—his sweetest smile. “Tell me my fortune.”

“Get out.”

“You've been speaking to dead people, little girl. We don't like that. They tell all sorts of stories.”

She gazed sullenly at him.

“Tell me my fortune, and I'll tell Reiko to wait until you're sixteen to recruit you.”

The child walked to a round table and sat. She drew large, colorful cards from an ivory box. He took a chair opposite, his head tilted. “Go on,
seanchaidh.
”

As she laid a cruciform pattern of cards on the table, she watched him from beneath her lashes. Her voice was cool. “I see a black beast in thorns. I see a grinning crescent moon that draws blood. I see . . .” Her gaze flicked up. “I think you should leave.”

“Make me, Anna Weaver.”

“Go away.” She kicked at him beneath the table.

“All right, all right. If you're going to be that way . . .” Revealing a bit of otherworldly grace, he rose. “What happens to the black beast? Tell me.”

She looked at him. “The crescent moon, the laughing god, kills it.”

“Good little oracle. Is your sister around? The leggy blonde? No? Pity.” Caliban tossed her a coin from a dead queen's tomb and casually walked out of Hecate's Attic.

It had been a long time since he'd been called a god. He found he missed it.

 

C
HAPTER
S
EVEN

Here once dwelt

A high idol of many fights.

The cromm cruaich by name,

And deprived every tribe of peace.

—
B
OOK OF
L
EINS
TER

The crom cu, the crooked dog, runs by the light of the moon. Once, he was a brave and virtuous Celtic prince. Now, when the moon is a crescent, he kills for blood. That is his nature. Beware the crom cu.

—
F
ROM THE JOUR
NAL OF
L
ILY
R
OSE

C
ollege life, veiled in flame-colored leaves, had become a welcome pattern for Finn, whose favorite class was Gothic Literature and not just because Professor Fairchild reminded her of a young poet from a turn-of-the-century novel. It was the way he spoke of the books, as if he knew secret things about the people who had written them. In her other classes, it was how Professor Avaline referred to historical figures, or how Miss Perangelo talked about Frida Kahlo and Dorothea Tanning in Women in Surrealism.

“The imagination is unexplored terrain.” Fairchild looked even more tousled than usual. “Coleridge's poems . . . were they the product of opium or the writings of a man under the influence of something else? And what of Edgar Allan Poe's gaslit nightmares? Goethe's Erl King? Christina Rossetti's Goblin Market? Emily Brontë's changeling Heathcliff? These writers lived in a time when nature and night, the greatest landscapes of the imagination, had not yet been illuminated by the advent of electricity. Science had only begun to explain things.”

“You forgot Mary Shelley's
Frankenstein
.”

Finn looked at Nathan Clare, who had spoken and was frowning down at his hands. Fairchild nodded. “And
Frankenstein
. The first work in which the otherworldly was—not quite—explained by science. What do these writings have in common? What theme do they share?”

Finn, who'd read most of those writers but didn't want to be a show-off, spoke carefully: “The heroes were taken by violent supernatural forces, by creatures of the dark.”

Fairchild's gaze seemed troubled. “Exactly, Miss Sullivan. And all these dark forces—monsters, witches, changelings—
loved.
And, eventually, destroyed what they loved.”

Why,
Finn thought uneasily,
is he looking at me?

PROFESSOR AVALINE, WHO RESEMBLED A
model from Italian
Vogue
in her sleek dress and heels, led Finn's class through Fair Hollow's only museum, located in a neat and sprawling mansion by the river, a house once owned by the town's mayor.

As they passed the re-creation of a Native American feast straight out of a Thanksgiving storybook, someone asked, “How come there are no arrows in the pilgrims?”

Avaline's gaze skewered the speaker, and there were no more remarks.

They came to a room filled with displays of unusual artifacts the settlers had brought from their countries of origin: a dragon-shaped helmet; a painting of a scarlet-haired knight; an eerie, life-size wax doll; a sword with an ivory hilt shaped into a wolf. Avaline indicated a display of birds' nests. “These were found by the settlers. The natives said they were created by the spirits, who have always been here.”

Finn stepped closer to the display. The knots of branches and straw were not birds' nests, but miniature houses or dolls with clay faces. Each was exquisitely made, strung with wooden beads and bits of stone. She thought uneasily that some of the beads looked like human teeth . . .

They call us things with teeth.

They entered the mock-up of a pub, the town's first gathering place, its wooden beams carved into naked fairies and leafy faces, the walls covered with black-and-white photographs of the past, each framed in ornate wood. As Finn walked along the rows of pictures, she thought of Sylvie, who collected old photographs because she loved to discover people's histories.

Finn saw grim people in Victorian clothing standing in front of shacks. Next to a blurry picture of the Ogun Metalworking plant was the photo of a horse-drawn coach. A young man in a long coat stood near the coach, dark hair spilling from a stovepipe hat that shadowed his face. The next photograph was from the 1920s. Poised on the stairs of a large house were a beautiful girl in a flapper's dress and a young man in an elegant suit. Finn read the caption beneath:
Lady Valentine and her husband, Lord Ryder, LeafStruck Mansion, 1922
. She looked carefully at Lady Valentine—who resembled Reiko Fata—an ancestor, then. The next photo was another of the young coachman who stood before the mansion, without his hat.

Gazing at her from the 1900s was Jack Fata.

OF COURSE IT COULDN'T HAVE
been Jack.

Finn stayed late at HallowHeart's library, located in the atrium-like part of Armitrage. The floorboards creaked beneath her feet as she wandered the aisles, searching for books on Fair Hollow's history. There were none. There were plenty on New York history, with little paragraphs on Fair Hollow, but that was all.

The sun was already beginning to set as she left. When someone called her name across the leaf-scattered lawn, she turned to see Nathan Clare coming toward her. “Hi, Finn.”

“Nathan.” She regarded him warily, remembering the creepy, platinum-haired Fata's warning.

Nathan looked solemn, his gaze veiled by his lashes. “Sorry to bother you. But I've been in England for a while and I don't know anyone, other than my family and their friends, so I guess I just wanted to say hello.”

She wondered why he was telling her this. She couldn't help thinking about what it must have been like for him, finding out both of his parents were gone. That they'd died in a fire was all the more horrifying.

“Would you like to go for coffee?” He rubbed the back of his neck. “I really need to get away from Aubrey Drake and his crew.”

“Coffee. Sure.” The hell with the platinum-haired Fata. “So who's the guy with the pale hair and gray eyes? A cousin? Something else?”

Nathan's mouth turned down. “Caliban.”

“That's what he calls himself?”

“Yeah . . . Avoid him.” As they began walking, he seemed to concentrate on his sneakered feet. Changing the subject, he asked, “What do you think of HallowHeart?”

“I think it's unique.”

“Unique.” He nodded, and his wounded look vanished into a bright smile. As she decided the Fatas must actively seek out orphaned hotties for their tribe, he continued, “That's a good term. I would say ‘bizarre and old-fashioned.' ”

“Well, it's not ordinary.”

He looked down at his battered sneakers again. “Sometimes, it's nice to be ordinary, to just pretend you're who you're supposed to be.”

“Are you pretending to be someone, Nathan?” She cast him a guarded look.

He met her gaze. “No.”

“Good. Because, for a second there, I was worried.”

As they continued making their way across the campus, he murmured, “You're friends with Jack.”

“I know Jack, a little. He's not easy to know. Did you grow up together? I mean . . . after . . .”

“I came to the Fatas when I was younger.” He shrugged. “It was a long time ago. Jack and I had a falling-out. We haven't spoken in all the time I was away. You'll be good for him.”

“Will he be good for me?”

He was suspiciously silent, gazing at her. Carefully, he said, “Jack thinks he's not good for anyone.”

He was being evasive, and he wasn't as practiced at it as Jack was. She would have to find a way around that.
Here,
Finn thought
, is a perfect source of Fata information.

Nathan hefted one strap of his backpack farther onto his shoulder. “Do you know about the party on Halloween night?”

Her heart jumped as she remembered what Anna Weaver had said about Halloween and her death. “No.”

“It's a masque—a costume party.”

“Oh.”

His attention was suddenly diverted by something behind her. Tracking his gaze, she saw a red Mercedes at the curb in front of Laurel Hall. He waved to the girl who had emerged from the car, her auburn hair tumbling from beneath a chauffeur's cap. Phouka, Reiko Fata's minion.

“I'll be right there,” Nathan called to her. He looked pleadingly back at Finn. “Listen, would you like to go to the party? I need to go with another person on Halloween. I don't want my family to know I've got someone. You and I would just be attending as friends . . .”

She was a little worried about the way his fingers kept knotting and unknotting around the straps of his backpack. His fragile desperation made her determined to help as she wondered who the “someone” was he didn't want his family to know about.

“Okay.” Impulsively, she continued, “Why don't you come over to my house tonight? Sylvie and Christie'll be there and I have coffee.”

The girl driver, walking up to them, heard Finn's invitation and smiled at her. “I'll drive him.”

Finn looked frantically at Nathan, who wouldn't meet her gaze. She glared at Phouka. “That's okay. We can pick him up—where do you live, Nathan?”

Phouka answered, sliding an arm through the crook of Nathan's, “LeafStruck Mansion. Seventy-seven Squire Road. I'll drive him, don't worry. Where do
you
live?”

Finn didn't look at Nathan this time. Reluctantly, she told Phouka her address.

“We'll see you tonight.” Phouka smiled, and, as they strolled away, Finn wondered what she'd just invited to her house.

AS THE SUN BEGAN TO
drop behind the Blackbird Mountains and the yard lights clicked on, Finn, Sylvie, and Christie set up a croquet game on the lawn of Finn's house. Sylvie's father, who owned a salvage shop, had cleaned and painted the old mallets, balls, and wickets free of charge. The croquet equipment was now decorated with chessboard patterns, painted flamingo pink, and lavished with red hearts—an homage to
Alice in Wonderland
.

“Amazing.” Christie crouched on the steps, examining one of the black-and-white mallets. “I hope you appreciate Samuel Whitethorn's work, Finn.”

Finn, who had forgiven him for his words about Jack Fata, was trying not to look agitated. “Where are they?”

“I can't believe you invited Nate Clare after that Caliban psycho threatened you.” Christie toed a ball. “Do you like living on the edge?”

She didn't know what had possessed her to invite Nathan, other than the desire to get information from him about Jack and the Fatas—also, she really didn't like being bullied by Caliban.

Sylvie, experimentally swinging a mallet, paused and looked wistful. “Here they come.”

Three figures emerged from the leafy shadows down the street; Nathan and Phouka had arrived—and Jack was with them. Finn felt a bewildering mix of dismay and delight. Phouka didn't seem quite so intimidating in a jacket of crimson fur and embroidered jeans. Nathan wore a short coat and gray corduroys. Jack was all dark hues, as usual.

As he came near, Finn murmured, “Hey.”

Then she saw his expression.

“You don't mind that I've come?” he said, his gaze scornful. “We were
invited,
after all.”

She glanced at Sylvie and Christie, who looked like the innocents in a fairy tale, as the wolves circled and chose their mallets with careful and cunning skill. She strode toward her friends, her voice low with determination: “We can do this.”

“What are the stakes? We won't play without a prize.” Jack twirled his mallet and Finn wanted to run from him, hit him, and kiss him all at the same time. He leveled a look at her as he continued, “And invitations don't come without a price.”

“You want
money
?” Christie's easygoing manner had vanished—he was watching Jack with hostility. “For
associating
with us?”

“A kiss.” Phouka's smile was devilish. Her auburn hair was loose, knotted into braids at the front. She was as pretty as one of those fresh-faced models from the 1960s.

“From each. If we win.”

“I'll do it,” Christie murmured. To Finn, he said, “But I'm only kissing the girl . . . maybe Nathan. But not
him
.”

“What do
we
get?” Sylvie was watching Nathan, who looked guarded, his hands wrapped around a mallet with familiar ease.

“We'll give each of you something precious.” Phouka flashed an antique bracelet. “We've all brought nice things.”

Finn parted her lips to question them further, but Sylvie said, “Deal. Let's get to it.”

Annoyed by her friends' recklessness, Finn accepted her mallet from Christie, who was watching Phouka. He said, as if to himself, “ ‘
She seemed, at once, some penanced lady elf, some demon's mistress, or the demon's self
.' ”

“Why are you quoting Keats?” demanded Sylvie, a red leaf tangled in her hair. A ball shot past her, through two hoops, and struck a tree with enough force to splinter the bark. Finn, Christie, and Sylvie looked hard at their opponents. Phouka politely clapped her hands.

Jack twirled his mallet and stepped aside. Finn narrowed her eyes at him.

Christie hefted his mallet as if it were a sword. “Let's begin already.”

It was a lunatic game, played with ferocious glee by their opponents—as if Phouka was the Red Queen teamed up with Jack's Mad Hatter and Nathan's gallant White Knight. When Nathan's ball slid through seven hoops, he seemed almost apologetic. Christie knocked his ball through one hoop. As another whistled past his head, he ducked and swore. Finn hadn't thought croquet could be so combative.