Midnight Beauties

by Megan Shepherd

  The sound of multiple sets of alarmingly fast footsteps came from the upper level. The dead had heard them. Anouk and Cricket ran to the basement, pushing aside the crates the others had used as a barricade. Anouk used the last of her eucalyptus to cast a barrier spell to keep the dead from following them, and then they raced down the stairs.

  Had a tornado swept through the basement? Crates were thrown open. Packing straw littered the floor. Viggo was knee-deep in a storage box. Saint was high in the rafters as if he’d been spooked by something. Luc was laid out in one of the sarcophagi, his brow beaded with sweat, his eyelids fluttering.

  “Anouk!” Viggo collapsed onto a pile of packing straw. “Finally! We thought one of the dead had gotten you!”

  “Anouk? Where?” Beau appeared from a back room with a broom in his hand, a layer of dust on his hair and shoulders as though he’d been poking the broom through the rafters looking for her. When he saw her, he dropped the broom and went to wrap her up in bear hug, but then he stopped. A shadow wavered in his eyes.

  “It’s me, Beau,” she said softly. “I know I look different. Jak took me to a place where the Coal Baths occur naturally on midwinter dawns.” Her voice danced. “I did it this time. I survived.”

  He didn’t seem to trust his own eyes until Anouk pushed up her jacket sleeves and showed off her smooth skin, free of bruises. When her skin caught the light, it even glowed with a golden undertone.

  His eyes widened. “Mada Vittora’s skin gleamed like that. I thought it was makeup.”

  “Not makeup. Magic.”

  She knelt next to Luc and touched his burning forehead. “Luc?”

  His lips moved soundlessly. Beneath his fluttering eyelids, his eyes rolled wildly.

  “He’s fading,” Cricket said.

  Anouk stroked Luc’s forehead. Being a witch came with great power, but it didn’t come with obvious answers. She’d thought that once she was a witch, casting spells would be as automatic as breathing. That she’d somehow simply know what life-essence to consume and what words to utter. But as she took Luc’s weak pulse, she felt almost as uncertain as she always had. She knew dozens of spells, but she didn’t know which one would work best, and she didn’t have time to try them all.

  “Anouk?” Beau asked softly.

  She cleared her throat. “Where’s Luc’s stash of herbs?”

  Cricket hunted up Luc’s knapsack, and Anouk dug through his jars of herbs and dried flowers. She thought back on all she’d read in the Cottage library about poison. There was one particular spell that drew out poison like salt drew out moisture, but it required a complicated combination of life-essences.

  Something breathing, something bleeding, something blue.

  It was time to be a witch.

  Chapter 36

  “Viggo, get me a few drops of blood,” Anouk ordered. “Put it in that mug. Beau, there’s a stuffed peacock in the storerooms. Bring me one of its feathers. A blue one. And someone catch one of the flies buzzing around the pizza box.”

  Her friends set to work. Hunter Black searched for something to prick Viggo’s finger with and found a safety pin attached to a nineteenth-century gown. Beau disappeared to the back rooms and returned with the feather; it smelled like a musty sweater, but the iridescent barbs hadn’t lost their blue sheen. Cricket, with her nimble hands, made quick work of trapping one of the flies. She cupped it in her hands. “Do you need it squished or still buzzing around?”

  Anouk felt a flutter of regret. “Squished.”

  Cricket smacked her hands together and then dropped the dead fly in the mug. If they’d been Goblins, they would have poured out a sip of tea in honor of the insect’s sacrifice, but as it was, Beau just let out a small sigh. Viggo added his blood and Anouk mixed it with cherry blossoms, then used one of the long white owl feathers to paint a line of the mixture from Luc’s heart to his left hand, whispering as she went. Finally, she pricked the center of Luc’s palm with the safety pin. A black, putrid-smelling liquid oozed out.

  Slowly, Luc’s fluttering eyes calmed. He blinked hard a few times before turning his unfocused gaze on Anouk. He squinted at her healed arms.

  “Dust Bunny?” A weak smile, followed by a faint knowing laugh. “You brilliant thing. You’re magic.”

  She took in a sharp breath. To the others, it must sound like a simple enough comment, but it went beyond that. Just over a year ago, days after she’d been made human on the floor of Mada Vittora’s attic, she’d found Mada Vittora’s collection of wands in the back of the witch’s closet. The delicate one made of ivory. The heavy one of iron. The wooden ones, some of which still had knots and forked branches. She’d played at being a magic handler herself, pointing the ivory wand at the shoes in need of cobbling, the clothes in need of mending, the dresses in need of washing, pretending that magic would spring forth and do her work for her. Mada Vittora had caught her, of course. Anouk had frozen, terrified. But the witch had only laughed at Anouk’s silly games, stroked her hair, then taken the wand out of Anouk’s hand and replaced it with a feather duster.

  Here’s your wand, my pretty little beastie.

  Luc had been watering the houseplants at the time. He’d overheard it all. That evening, he’d found Anouk dusting the library, took the feather duster out of her hand, and replaced it with one of the books from the shelves.

  What’s this? Anouk had asked.

  You don’t need a wand to cast magic, he’d replied. This is all you need. Books. Stories. Imagination. You’re magic, Dust Bunny, as long as you have those.

  And now here he was, one foot in the grave, and those words meant just as much to her now as they had then.

  She cupped his cheek. “Luc, you’re safe. I drained the poison.”

  He closed his eyes for a long time. A pained look crossed his face before he said, “Of course you did. Of course you did.”

  He opened his eyes and smiled.

  She tried to help him up, but he winced and shook his head. “Wait. Attends. It’s going to take me at least as long to crawl back to life as it did to get so close to death.” He eased himself back into the sarcophagus. His breathing was labored. When she gave him a concerned look, he responded with a weak laugh. “I just need rest.” He eyed her closely. “You’ve got dust on your face. No, don’t wipe it off. I like that you’re still you, even as a witch.”

  She told them about Jak and Stonehenge and enchanting the bathroom door into a portal back and how it felt to be remade top to bottom by magic and how she now understood why Mada Vittora had been so arrogant (the sheer potential at her fingertips) and yet so callous (because no power was limitless, and not even witches were spared from making mistakes).

  “You need a moniker,” Luc said.

  Beau and Cricket and Hunter Black turned to her, interested to hear what she would say. Mada Vittora had been the Diamond Witch of Paris. Mada Zola had been the Lavender Witch of Montélimar.

  Anouk lifted her chin. “The Gargoyle.”

  “The Gargoyle Witch?” asked Hunter Black.

  “No, just the Gargoyle.” She hesitated. She wanted to put in words the complicated feelings in her heart: That she didn’t feel like a witch. There was being a witch in the sense that she could handle magic, which was true, but there was also being a witch in the sense of a cadre of ambitious women, hungry for power, ruthless in their means, whose hearts, in many cases, were quite literally made of stone. She was determined never to be like the latter.

  “Was ‘the Cabbage’ taken?” Beau asked.

  Anouk gave him a shove.

  “Don’t forget about an oubliette,” Cricket said. “You need one of those too.”

  Anouk picked up the Faustine jacket from where she’d laid it at the foot of Luc’s sarcophagus. She stroked the fabric and felt an answering spark of magic.

  “Hunter Black, can you hand me that safety pin?”

  He passed it over wordlessly. Anouk pricked her own finger, then ran a line of blood around the rim of the j
acket’s right pocket, then the left, speaking a spell under her breath.

  “Mada Anouk,” she whispered.

  As soon as the words were spoken, the spots of blood ringing the pockets soaked into the fabric so deeply that they disappeared. Hesitantly, aware of the many sets of eyes on her, Anouk reached a hand into the left pocket. Her arm disappeared up to her armpit.

  “What are you going to keep hidden away in there?” Beau asked.

  “Herbs. Wands, if I ever find one. Maybe a boyfriend, if he gives me any trouble.”

  Beau held up his hands in mock surrender.

  Cricket took the jacket and thrust her own hand in the right pocket. She frowned when her fingers came away with nothing more than lint.

  “It works only for me.” Anouk took the jacket back and slid it on one arm at a time. It fit her body so perfectly, so right. In a way, that was what it felt like to become a witch—​it was like slipping into a set of clothes that had been tailor-made for her.

  She motioned to Sinjin’s body. “We need to find out if he was telling the truth about the Noirceur.” She turned to Luc. “Do you have herbs for astral projection?”

  He was too weak to get up, but he gave Anouk directions, and she and Cricket worked to concoct an elixir. At Anouk’s request, Beau and Hunter Black dragged out one of the Monet paintings. Anouk whispered softly and the painted water began to ripple. She grinned. Beau and Luc and Cricket all looked at her oddly; they couldn’t see what she could through the painting. As she continued to whisper, the water stilled like glass, and she could make out the glow of Big Ben’s clock. She blurred her vision so she could see into the projection. She felt herself floating around the outside of the tower. Construction cones and police barricades surrounded the base. She floated past them, soared like a bird to the glowing clock face, and felt herself perching on one of the giant hands. She peered through the number three into the chamber within, and gasped.

  It was entirely filled with coal-black smoke. It swirled like a slow-moving tornado trapped in a glass ball. She made out the shape of the bell in the center of the smoke. It was turned upside down like a cauldron. Standing around it were murky shapes, but to call them human would be inaccurate. They swirled with the smoke, more like wisps of ash than people. Perhaps the figures had once had faces, but now their features were merely dips and rises of smoke. Sinjin was right—​the witches’ identities were very nearly gone. The Noirceur had been destroying them at the same time that it had been bringing them great power. Anouk continued to whisper into the painting, changing the angle of her view so that she could peer inside the cauldron. It was filled with smoke so thick it was only blackness. The Nothing. The Chaos.

  She whispered again and her projection pulled out of the cauldron, then out of the tower entirely, and then it was all of London she was seeing, sometime in the near future. The city was in complete ruins. Smoke blackened the streets in a deadly fog. The river had overflowed its banks. The ground was littered with bodies of Pretties, blood dripping from their eyes and ears. And then, with a flash, the clock hands met, and with a spectacular crack, Big Ben’s clock face shattered. The clock stopped. A deafening rumble spread through the city as lightning crackled through the unnaturally dark smoke. Bolts came faster and faster until the entire city was on fire. The Pretties were decimated. The streets were fractured, buildings reduced to rubble.

  The ultimate plague: the Noirceur let loose on the city.

  Anouk pulled out of her vision with a gasp. Beau caught her before she stumbled. She blinked hard, her body twitching, as she slowly took in the familiar surroundings of the basement, reassuring herself that what she had seen was only a vision. The city—​for now—​was still standing. She drew in a ragged breath.

  “Is what Sinjin said true?” Hunter Black asked darkly.

  “No,” she whispered. “It’s much worse.”

  She told them about the destruction of the city, which would happen when the clock hands met unless they found a way to stop it.

  Beau gave her a searching look. “What are you thinking, cabbage?”

  Anouk dragged a hand through her hair. “I can’t do this on my own, even as a witch. We need reinforcements.”

  Her eyes settled on Viggo. Determined, she went to him and took the golden hare he held in his arms by the scruff of its neck.

  Chapter 37

  Merci à Dieu, Anouk thought, for magic.

  Instead of waiting for the hare to expel the ruby the natural way—​or, as Viggo crassly put it, waiting for it to démouler un cake—​Anouk consulted with Luc and then gathered a concoction of gorse, owl feathers, a snippet of the rabbit’s fur, and a splash of Viggo’s blood. She swallowed it down and, while Cricket held the hare steady, whispered a spell she’d learned at the Cottage, a version of the one Cricket had cast in the museum restaurant, that could temporarily transmute a substance into water. As soon as she finished the whisper, the hare’s golden fur turned translucent. They could see through its skin like peering through glass: its clear heart beating and clear lungs breathing and, in the pit of the hare’s stomach, a red ruby.

  Fast as she could, Anouk thrust her hand through the enchanted fur—​her fingers sinking into the watery substance, through fur and skin and stomach lining—​grabbed the ruby stud, and pulled her hand back out. The watery substance molded itself back into place as her spell faded, and within seconds, they were looking at fur again. The hare, unharmed, twitched its nose and leaped out of Cricket’s arms.

  “Hey!” Cricket ran after it, but Anouk shook her head.

  “Leave it. We don’t need it for anything else. Anyway, it’ll be safer down here than anywhere else in the city.” She held the ruby in her palm and watched its polished facets catch the light.

  She peered into the empty rafters. “Where’s Saint? We need him.”

  They poked through the back storerooms until Hunter Black found Saint perched on the frame of a Degas painting, a freshly killed mouse in his beak. Cricket and Beau kept their distance but Hunter Black enticed the falcon onto his arm and carried him back to Anouk.

  Saint cocked his head. A drop of blood rolled off the point of his beak.

  “Easy, fellow. Remember me?” He had a new golden bell dangling from a cord around his neck. She thought briefly of how anguished she’d been when the Duke had taken her magic, how desperately she’d wanted it back. Carefully, Anouk unfastened the bell, pried back one of the metal leaves, and inserted the ruby stud inside. She refastened the bell around Saint’s neck and treated him to a scrap of pepperoni. He hopped onto her arm. “Hunter Black.” She called over the assassin and delicately passed him the bird. “Take him and try not to terrorize each other.

  “We need to get to the roof,” she told the others.

  “The floors between here and there are still overrun by reanimated corpses,” Beau said.

  Anouk turned to Luc. “Do you have any more gorse?”

  With a pinch of herbs and a whisper, Anouk enchanted a janitor’s closet door into a portal to the roof. When she twisted the doorknob, mops and buckets had been replaced by the exterior rooftop dome. Frigid air carried in the chaotic sounds of the city. Cars honking. People screaming. Alarms that never ended.

  Anouk held the door open for the others. They filed through, but Anouk grabbed Cricket before she crossed the threshold and motioned for her to hang back.

  “That ruby has me thinking about jewels,” she said. “How good they are at containing spells. Did you see the exhibit for the Heart of Alexandrite downstairs? It’s the rarest jewel in the world. It had every manner of security guarding it. Bars. Cameras. Alarms. It seems like the perfect vessel to contain the Noirceur.”

  Cricket cracked her knuckles. “I’ll just need a few hours and a screwdriver.”

  “There’s . . . something else.”

  Anouk hesitated, and then discussed the situation with Cricket in a quiet voice. Cricket’s eyes went wide, but she nodded.

  They joined the
others on the roof. Beau supported Luc under one arm. Viggo propped open the door with one of the Nutcracker dolls in case they needed to get back into the basement quickly. Anouk walked to the edge of the roof. Beau joined her on one side, Cricket on the other. Hunter Black, with Saint still perched on his wrist, veered dangerously close to the edge, peering down at the tumultuous city with an unreadable expression. Viggo hung back in the warmth of the doorway, blowing into his hands.

  “Merde,” Cricket muttered as she gazed over the rooftops. “It’s gotten even worse.”

  In just a day, the city had become unrecognizable.

  Twin moons shone on roof tiles littered with toads—​some alive, some dead. Wisps of black smoke curled toward the sounds of the city in arcs too perfect to be regular chimney smoke. The time slips had multiplied. Cars drove into them and simply vanished. Pretties running from crazed mobs took wrong turns and disappeared.

  Luc, still weak, sank onto an air-conditioning unit.

  “What happened?” Beau’s voice was halting. His eyes were wide as he took in the Pretties circling, repeating the same motions again and again.

  “The plagues,” Anouk said. “And they’re only going to get worse. I saw it in my vision. The time slips will accelerate until the city is completely consumed by the Noirceur. Once those clock hands reach midnight, it’ll be nothing but smoke.” They looked at the clock face and saw they didn’t have much time.

  Anouk motioned Hunter Black and Saint over.

  “Go to Castle Ides,” Anouk told the bird. “Fast as you can.”

  She nodded a signal. Hunter Black went to the edge and launched the bird off of his wrist. Saint took wing and glided into the air, soaring over rooftops until he’d disappeared into low-lying clouds.

  Cricket peered incredulously down at the city. “How long until Saint gets to Paris?”

  “He’s fast, even without magic, and he’s strong enough to fly high above the time slips. He’ll make it within the hour,” Hunter Black said.