Thorn Jack (9 page)

His hand flew up and gripped her wrist. She widened her eyes. “Is it dyed?”

“Is yours?”

“No. Let go of my hand please.”

His gaze held hers as he tilted her wrist up and brushed his lips across it. He whispered against her pulse, “Why don't you tell me your name?”

“No.” What had made her step so close to him? “I don't think I should do that.”

She reached up with her other hand and snatched the mask from his face.

The ghost from the wake shook his head and caught her other hand, yanking her closer. He looked like something out of a church window, but his eyes reflected the light in a cold shimmer that she found disturbing. He bent his head and whispered in her ear, “What if I told you you could be as you are now, forever. Never change. Never decay. Only lose your mind a little, now and then, but it comes back.”

“Let me go.” Sylvie's voice was shaking.

“Ah, you'd be such a pretty one.” Close to her ear, he said, “What's your favorite flower?”

She was so cold and she'd begun to shiver—

A voice whispered through the air, and Caliban released Sylvie. His mouth twisted and his eyes narrowed. She turned to see what he was glaring at; then she stared as the revelers seemed to part, revealing a shadow beneath a tree. Light brushed against a bare arm, a bare foot, and revealed the hint of a T-shirt and jeans, long black hair . . .

The orchestra burst into a cover of Creedence Clearwater Revival's “Bad Moon Rising,” and the shadow vanished in a swirl of icy wind and ragged leaves that swept over Sylvie and the silver-eyed Caliban.

“
Sluagh,
” Caliban spat and backed away from her. He turned and vanished into the crowd.

Sylvie slowly turned and frowned at the tree beneath which that unsettling figure had stood and told herself she had
not
seen dead Thomas Luneht.

CHRISTIE REALIZED HE WAS DEFINITELY
drugged when the three girls sauntered toward him from an arch of Emory hung with little birdcages. Macbeth's witches, he thought, because their eyes were rimmed with black and their gowns were tattered, their skin smudged with dirt. They were bravely barefoot.

“Ladies.” He glanced warily at the dark-haired one, who did not slink up to him like the other two. “I'm Christie.”

“I'm Beatrice.” The girl with red hair laid cold hands on him. Her green eyes reminded him of a pond covered by lichen. He couldn't move away from her though, and the girl with the pale hair and crown of flowers had set her hands and chin on his shoulder and was gazing at him with blue eyes that had, painted beneath each, a red tear.

“I'm Abigail, Christie.” Her lithe body was cold against him, and she wasn't wearing anything beneath the dress. “And that's Eve.”

The black-haired girl was silent. He forced a smile this time. “I've got friends who are looking for me—”

“Girlfriends?” Beatrice's smile was a curve of malice.

Christie really couldn't move, as if they held him there, and they stood on a shadowy part of the lawn, near the woods. The dark-haired girl was whispering and a wind had picked up, swirling her hair around her head. She looked, he thought with alarm, a little like Sophia Avaline the history professor—if Sophia Avaline were white as snow with eyes like hollows in her face—

“Ladies.” A cool female voice snapped Christie from the trance. The two girls stepped back from him, and, with the dark-haired one leading, they all vanished into the night.

Reiko Fata's best friend/chauffeur/cousin walked toward him. “Don't you know not to give your name to anyone?”

“
What
are they
on
?” He tried to peer into the shadows after the three girls. “They were hot, but ice-cold . . . I'm Christie.”

“I know who you are.” She spoke to him as if he were a moron. Her skin seemed to glisten and her red hair was in knots on her head, like two small horns. She wore black leather jeans and a black T-shirt with a skull on it.

“I know who you are. You're a girl Hamlet.”

She shook her head, her gray eyes incredulous in their black liner. “It was the sugar skulls, wasn't it? Who gave them to you?”

“I don't know.” He frowned now and didn't like the confusion he felt. “Phouka, right? That's your name.” He pronounced her name the way he'd heard Reiko say it, an elegant
fuua.

“Why don't I walk you back to your friends?” The punk-elegant girl held out a hand. For a moment, her eyes glinted silver and he was almost more afraid of her than he'd been of Macbeth's witches.

Don't,
something in his mind whispered,
take her hand
.

“Christie Hart.” Her smile, so sudden and so charming, made him reach out and take her hand.

AS FINN AND NATHAN WOVE
through the Shakespearean maidens and strutting boys, she glimpsed herself in a mirror hanging from a tree and saw a fey girl with flowery hair and gypsy eyes. She looked through an Emory arch where Reiko Fata held court in a blood-red Elizabethan gown, surrounded by girls in black gossamer.

Jack Fata, a gangster Macbeth in a fur coat and striped suit, leaned against Reiko's chair. When he raised his head, Finn looked quickly away.

Someone began speaking Shakespeare with an Irish lilt. “ ‘
. . . will lead them up and down. I am fear'd in field and town. Goblin, lead them up and down.
' ”

She was about to ask Nathan about the coffee when a platinum-haired young man moved to Reiko and whispered in her ear.

As Reiko turned her head and focused on Finn, the blood red of her gown made her resemble a queen of hell, and her eyes seemed to reflect the light, mesmerizing Finn. She felt Nathan's hand close around hers, pulling her away. She remembered the coffee. Reluctantly, she followed him to a table where coffee and tea steamed in pots. He chose coffee. After a moment, she did the same, hoping it'd dull the effects of the sugar skulls. She said, “Have you seen my friends? Christie and Sylvie?”

“I thought I saw them heading back down the path.”

“They're leaving already?” She quickly turned and ran across the lawn.

“Finn!” Nathan's voice faded behind her as she pushed through a scrim of hedges and saw Christie's Mustang.

The platinum-haired youth, the angel-faced ghost from the field, waited on the hood of Christie's car. He raised his head and looked at her with pure, savage joy.

“What are you doing,
girl
?”

“My name is Finn.” She began moving back, step by step.

“Is it,
leannan
? But that's not your
true
name.” He slid from the car, and she stumbled as he came toward her.

But he continued past her, his pale hair swaying, and said, with contempt, “Your friends are in the house. In SatyrNight.”

Finn stood very still. Her nose was bleeding again, as if some unnatural pressure had passed over her, rupturing delicate membranes.

Dabbing one hand against her nose, she flung herself around and strode toward the house called SatyrNight, the dark, silent centerpiece of the party. When she got to the front, she saw the paper on the door was a legal notice of foreclosure. There were cracks in the windows, and the second-floor was boarded up.

Someone stood behind her, breathing so quietly that she hadn't even heard a step. She was alone out here, with the party seeming so distant, and the wind stirring the creepers and leaves that veiled the house.

Frightened, Finn shoved at the door and, as it opened, lunged into the hall. She spun to face whoever had stood behind her. There was nothing on the stairs but windswept shadows thrown by the moon and trees and the stone fauns in their draperies of withered Emory. The dance of light and dark made the fauns' faces, turned toward the house, malevolent.

Sternly telling herself to grow a spine, Finn turned and saw a corridor lit with a red lamp. At the end, in the center of a circular room, was a giant statue of black marble, ram horns curving from its hair, hooved feet glinting against a midnight floor. The museum silence within the house was unnerving.

Then someone whispered,
Uninvited . . .

Light glanced across the black eyes of the statue. The world wavered. Finn felt dizzy, stumbled back—

Suddenly, someone yanked her out of the house.

She yelped and slammed into another body as the door was kicked shut by a booted foot.

“What are you
doing
?” She staggered back, staring at Jack Fata. His face was in shadow. He glinted with things, bits of jewelry and spikes of menace, but she suspected the menace was not directed toward her. He said, “What were
you
doing?”

“I was looking for Christie and Sylvie.”

“In there? Who told you they were in there?” Something in his voice made her scared then, because he acted as if she'd been in real danger. She wanted to tell him about the platinum-haired young man who looked like an angel but didn't talk like one, but her tongue locked.

“Never mind.” He swung around and stared at the revel. “I know.”

She edged away from SatyrNight. “What is this house?”

“This house?” He didn't turn as he led her back to the party. A leaf-crackling wind lifted his hair from the nape of his neck, revealing a tattoo, a black cross of Celtic knotwork. Something about that design made Finn's throat close. Christie had one like it, but not as intricate or as barbed or as darkly significant. Jack Fata's tattoo seemed to be more of a battle scar than a decoration. He said, “It's not a house. It looks like a house. It acts like a house. But it's not a house.”

“Well, what is it then? Are you going to tell me? No, you're not, are you, because you want to be—”

“I can't tell you.” His voice was cool. “Because you wouldn't believe me.”

“I—” Then Finn saw the platinum-haired young man standing among the revelers, speaking with an arrogant Ophelia in a gown of black silk and a crown of flowers. She whispered, “Angyll Weaver.”

Jack turned and followed her gaze. Idly, he said, “
She
wasn't invited.”

Angyll was her enemy. But she was also Anna Weaver's sister and that young man with the white hair was bad news. Finn pushed through the crowd toward them, Jack calling out to her as she left him behind.

She lost sight of Angyll and the pale young man. As Finn stood still, looking left and right for them, a girl in a gauzy mask ran, laughing, past her as a hooded figure on stilts lurched around a tree hung with tiny mirrors. A group of wild boys carrying antlered staffs parted around her, and she saw a figure in a leaf mask playing a flute as a woman in black danced, dark flowers falling from her hair. Finn swayed on her feet and wondered what, exactly, had been in that sugar skull. She thought of SatyrNight and shivered. Wasn't Pan, the satyr, a god of wild revels and fear?

“All the world is a stage,” she heard someone say and glimpsed orange hair beneath a jester's cap; passing her, the boy murmured, “A stage for what?”

Someone was playing a violin, low and mournful. A girl's laughter sounded like a sob. There were too many people. Finn felt the terrible sleep falling over her—

Someone placed a fur-lined coat over her shoulders, and she smelled evergreen, burning things, wild roses. She turned her head. Jack, coatless, clasped her face in his hands. His rings were cold, but his fingers burned and his eyes were dark. “You need to go home.”

“This will help her, Jack.” A female hand gleaming with antique rings held half of a fruit to Finn's lips. Finn, struggling with nausea and chills, met the green gaze of Reiko Fata.

“Pomegranate.” The beautiful girl's voice was sweet. “It'll get some sugar into your blood.”

Finn accepted the halved fruit even though the ruby seeds reminded her of blood. As another wave of dizziness shook her, she bit into the fruit. The seeds burst tartly between her teeth. When Reiko offered her water in a goblet, she gratefully drank it down. “Thank you.”

Reiko looked at Jack. “You'd best let Jack take you home now. I'll tell your friends that you've gone.”

As Reiko glided away in a flare of crimson, Finn murmured, “This has been a strange night.”

“Is it your first?”

“No, I—” Irritated by his way of speaking with hidden meaning, she narrowed her eyes. “What do you do?”

“For kicks?”

“I mean, do you go to college or live on a trust fund or cook meth—”

He contemplated her with amusement. “Do I look like I do any of those things?”

“No.”

“Then there's your answer.”

“Not really.” She tasted a bead of pomegranate on her tongue as she studied him. The tiny ruby glinting in the side of his nose matched the ones on two of his rings. There was a fine ivory scar across the arch of his nose and she wondered how he'd gotten it. His eyes weren't dark—one was a deep blue, the other more gray, and the candlelight emphasized the difference. “Where do you live? Don't be funny about it either.”

“I told you, I live on my own.”

“Not with the Fatas?”

“Sometimes.”

He was being funny about it. Frustrated, because she was trying to find out things about him and was too socially awkward to go about it with grace, Finn tucked her arms into the coat and frowned at him. The fur collar brushed her chin. The unsettling atmosphere was still affecting her judgment. “Show me where you live?”

He looked at her and something like fear flicked across his face, but it was gone in an instant. Softly, he said, “You won't let it go, will you? All right then. I'll show you.”

He held out a hand.

Beware,
the rustling leaves seemed to whisper.

Finn clasped Jack's hand as her own self whispered,
Be brave.