Midnight Beauties

by Megan Shepherd

  She drove back toward Big Ben on streets that were almost entirely clear of smoke. A few wisps curled after her, but they were too small to be harmful. She neared a figure standing at the base of the tower.

  She cut the engine and smiled at Cricket. She tumbled off the motorcycle, her legs shaking badly, and let it crash to its side in the street. Beau would be horrified, but scratched paint was the least of her worries.

  “You got rid of the smoke!” Cricket exclaimed. “And you didn’t break your neck. Bravo!”

  Anouk grinned. “And you? The Heart of Alexandrite?”

  “Mission accomplished.” Cricket held up a paper bag from the museum gift shop. Then her expression turned secretive. “Are you sure about this? About . . . the other plan you told me on the rooftop?”

  “As sure as anyone can be.”

  A rustle came from the tower. Big Ben’s lancet windows were now sealed, the smoke contained except for the few harmless wisps slipping out from the cracks.

  Hunter Black jumped into the mountain of clocks at the base, cursing as he made his unsteady way toward them. His hands were bleeding. There were traces of downy moth wings on his lips. Whatever had been involved in sealing the tower’s windows, it had taken magic and a risk of physical impairment. But the assassin only wiped his hands on his dark pants.

  “You scaled the Eiffel Tower faster,” Cricket teased.

  She got a scowl in return.

  Anouk rolled her eyes and pointed toward the east. “The Court of the Woods is almost finished with Islington. And from what I could see, Petra’s cleared all of Chelsea. I think—​incredibly—​we might actually live.”

  Her confidence wavered as she looked at the pyre of clocks and the few remaining wisps of smoke curling around her ankles. The ticking of clocks—​powered by the Noirceur—​was deafening. She wished she could see the rooftop of the British Museum. How much energy did Duke Karolinge have left? Could he keep it snowing much longer?

  “If I tell you something”—​Hunter Black’s voice was uncertain, but he pushed forward, clenching his bleeding hands—​“do you promise to keep it secret?”

  Cricket and Anouk exchanged a surprised look. Hunter Black was known for his secret keeping, but it was usually them he was keeping secrets from.

  “Yes,” Anouk said slowly.

  A muscle jumped in his jaw. “This sounds like something from one of Luc’s stories, but I swear that I’m not making it up. When I was at the top of the tower, looking into the smoke . . . I had a vision.”

  He jerked his head as though he expected them to laugh. But nobody laughed. Anouk and Cricket exchanged another look, and Cricket said in a hollow voice, “It wasn’t your first vision, was it? I bet you had one too when you were turned into a wolf.”

  His eyes snapped to hers. “How did you know that?”

  “Anouk and I had visions too.”

  His tense shoulders eased in visible relief. “The first one happened when Mada Zola turned me into a wolf. I didn’t trust it then. Wasn’t certain exactly what I saw.” His hand anxiously toyed with the buttons on his shirt. “But up there in the tower, I saw it again.”

  Anouk breathed, “What did you see?”

  “Royals. A small contingent. In a forest. Riding horses, not motorcycles. Eating lamb roast over a bonfire, not sushi from Le Petit Japonais. Their lips were dusted with powder that glittered like crystals. They were led by a king and queen dressed in bear pelts. They had an army of enchanted Pretties with them.”

  “The ancient Royals,” Anouk whispered. “King Svatyr and Queen Mid Ruath of the Snowfire Court, just like Jak told us about.”

  Hunter Black nodded. “They ordered their Pretty slaves to pack away their encampment, while the contingent led by the king and queen rode a mile away to a clearing where enormous stones rose from the ground and smoke covered the earth.”

  “Stonehenge,” Cricket said.

  He nodded. “They revered it. I don’t think they or their ancestors built it—​it seemed ancient even to them. They burned hemlock and whispered a kindred spell that drew smoke into the stones. They camped at the stones and celebrated with honey wine.” He paused, uncertain whether to continue, then said, “At midnight, when the others were passed out, Queen Mid Ruath stepped outside of the stones. She sang into the wind. I don’t know if it was a spell or a ballad—​I didn’t understand the words—​but they’re burned into my brain:

  “Baz perrik, baz mare, baz teri,

  en utidrava aedenum sa nav.”

  A chill ran through Anouk. Something scratched at her ankles like the remaining few wisps of smoke had grown fingernails. Hunter Black went moody and quiet.

  A block away, Petra rounded the corner and called to them. She jogged over, marveling at the pile of clocks. “Finished! Hey, I think that cuckoo clock over there was one of mine! You should have seen all the clocks that came out of the primary school on Dover Street. Almost no clocks in the government buildings, which is alarming, don’t you think? Shouldn’t Pretty politicians care about time more than schoolchildren?” She turned back to them and frowned. “Hunter Black, good God, are you feeling okay?”

  Anouk spun to him. He was still fidgeting with his buttons, but his moodiness had shifted. His face was now oddly slack.

  Cricket asked, “Hunter Black?”

  The assassin stood very straight, head tilted up at the illuminated clock face of Big Ben. A tiny curl of smoke—​almost imperceptible—​snaked out of his ear.

  Anouk took a quick step away from him. “Hunter Black!”

  Cricket caught sight of the curl of smoke. “Oh, merde.” She pulled her knives.

  Another curl of smoke twisted from his nostrils. His lips parted. An inhuman growl came from his throat. Anouk’s eyes dropped to the button at his shirt collar that he kept toying with. It was one of the three buttons that Petra had charmed in the Castle Ides billiard room when she’d made his new clothes.

  “Petra, the glass you used to make Hunter Black’s buttons—​where did you get it?”

  “It was a paperweight,” she sputtered. “On the floor. Someone must have knocked it over when we carried Rennar in.”

  Anouk thought back to the lump of glass, how it was raw cut and oddly shaped. At the time, she hadn’t thought twice about it. But now she realized how out of place a paperweight would be on the floor of an impeccably tidy billiard room.

  “The sand,” Anouk whispered. Then: “Cricket, keep your distance from him!” Anouk’s throat tightened as she pulled Cricket back.

  Petra looked at the buttons blankly. “Sand? What sand? I told you I made them out of glass!”

  “Glass is made of sand, Petra! Haven’t you ever read a book on geology? The Noirceur was able to possess King Kaspar and Mia through the sand from the broken hourglass. But when the Royals used magic against the possession, it must have melted some of the sand into glass, like lightning does in nature. We must have accidentally brought the glass to the billiard room with Rennar, not realizing what it was at the time.”

  Petra frowned. “So that means the buttons I made . . . oh.”

  All eyes turned to Hunter Black.

  “Hunter Black, look at me,” Anouk said.

  Her voice trembled, but not because she was afraid of him. She was afraid for him. She was no maid anymore, no pastry chef useful only for making sweet treats. She was the Gargoyle. Magic hummed in her palms. The Faustine jacket covered her skin like battle armor. Its golden threads had protected her before, and now its pockets held owl feathers, her crux. She didn’t want to hurt him, but what if he gave her no choice? He squared himself and faced her. His eyes were threaded with smoke. Ribbons of it poured out of his mouth as he continued to make that awful growling. The sound slowly took the form of the Selentium Vox.

  “Previso . . . rivet . . . morfin . . .”

  It was the same warnings and curses King Kaspar had whispered.

  “Hunter Black, if you’re still in there, give us a sign.”
Anouk eyes darted from him to the pyre of clocks to the knives in Cricket’s hands. Cricket wouldn’t hesitate to strike whether Hunter Black was in possession of his own body or not. Spells scrolled through Anouk’s mind. Containment spells. Defensive spells. Exorcism spells. But the Royals had attempted all of those on King Kaspar and none had worked.

  Hunter Black’s hand moved to draw his knife from the sheath strapped beneath his shirt. His movements were stilted. Anouk plunged her hand in her jacket, whispered open her oubliette pockets, and pulled out a long white feather. Just as he rushed forward with the knife raised, she pushed the feather down her throat and swallowed.

  “Ak ignis bleu!” she whispered. The knife sparked in his hand, burning hot. He dropped it with a hiss.

  “Anouk? Cricket? Petra?” From across the park, someone was calling to them.

  She dared a glance. It was December, hurtling forward on her enchanted roller skates. In the distance, the orange and purple lights had stopped flashing, though the blue and green ones continued. The Royals and Goblins hadn’t finished yet.

  Anouk whipped her head back toward Hunter Black, bristling for an attack, but Hunter Black had fled. December skated up and crashed into Anouk. Her eyes went wide when they explained what had happened.

  “He could be headed anywhere in the city,” Anouk said.

  “Um, or he could be right there.” December pointed in the direction of the Pickwick and Rue’s.

  Chapter 43

  Anouk looked just in time to see Hunter Black disappear through the department store’s revolving glass door. Petra aimed her hands toward him and whispered, “Dorma, sonora precimo!” But she wasn’t fast enough to put him to sleep before the door stopped spinning. If there was any place where it would be nearly impossible to find someone, it was Pickwick and Rue’s.

  Cricket and December grabbed Anouk around the waist and helped her to stand.

  “Wouldn’t the Noirceur compel him to go to Big Ben?” Cricket asked. “Or stop the teams who haven’t finished collecting all the clocks?”

  Petra adjusted her champagne sunglasses. “There must be something in the store that the Noirceur wants.”

  Anouk felt her stomach plummet. “Beau.”

  December gasped, clapping her hands over her mouth. “Wait, why would he go after Beau?”

  Anouk raked her nails over her scalp as she put it together. “Because there are still a few teams out in the city gathering clocks. They’re using Beau’s sight to do it. If they didn’t have the sight, they wouldn’t be able to finish. Hunter Black doesn’t have to stop every one of the Royals—​he only has to kill Beau to stop them all.”

  December gasped again.

  Cricket threw back her jacket to have better access to her knives. “What are we waiting for?”

  Anouk, Cricket, and Petra ran toward the revolving door. December skated ahead of them and slammed into it first. They crammed into the same partition, a tangle of limbs, and pushed their way in. The door spat them out into the lobby with its beautiful spiral staircases and tables laden with delectable treasures. Anouk’s stomach turned at the too-sweet smells. A thick layer of frost covered the perfume cases. The escalators and elevators were frozen too.

  “There!” Cricket spotted movement on the stairs to the second floor. Hunter Black moved like a rippling shadow past racks of men’s suits. Cricket cast a whisper to topple the racks and block his path, but Hunter Black dodged the first rack, leaped over the second, and disappeared deeper into the store.

  “Merde!” Cricket cursed.

  “We have to divide up,” Anouk said in a rush. “Petra, you and I’ll go after Hunter Black. I’ll take the second and third floors, you take the fourth and fifth. Cricket, you look for Viggo—​he doesn’t know Hunter Black is possessed, and he’s likely to do something stupid because, well, he’s Viggo. December . . .” She stopped short, frowning down at the Goblin’s skates. “You can’t go upstairs with those.”

  December groaned. “I know! These awful skates! It takes a special word to unlock them. I wrote it down and then lost it somewhere in Piccadilly Circus.”

  Anouk tried a few unlocking spells, but without the code word, they only sparked off the roller skates.

  “We’re losing time,” Cricket warned.

  “It’s okay,” December said. “I’ll stay on the ground floor and see if I can’t catch him with a few spells from here.”

  Anouk nodded. “Try not to hurt him. He can’t be blamed for his actions when he’s possessed.”

  Cricket looked ready to contradict that but then sighed. “Ugh, fine, you’re right. He’s family. A shunned cousin or something, but still family.” She spun on her heel and disappeared into the department store.

  Petra went to the staircase and climbed to the fourth floor. December clambered down to her hands and knees and looked under the closest display table for spiders to swallow as life-essence.

  Anouk scanned the different balconies. Everything was as perfectly still here as it was outside. There was no sign of movement. All the mannequins and mirrors only tricked her eyes into seeing things that weren’t there.

  She took the stairs to the rear of the second floor, the children’s department. She pushed past prams and weaved between cribs and poked through piles of stuffed animals, but Hunter Black wasn’t hiding in them. She climbed to the third floor, Accessories, and made her way through the handbag department. The only other department store she’d ever been in was Galeries Lafayette back in Paris, and a saleswoman had escorted her the entire time. Now, alone, every shadow made her jump. She caught a flash of movement and spun, raising her hands in a protective gesture, but it was only her own reflection in a mirror. She let out a tight breath, turned, and jumped as her own face again peered at her. Mirrors were everywhere, tracking her sunken eyes and messy hair as she made her way among the handbags.

  Each purse reminded her of a version of Mada Vittora’s oubliette. Balenciaga wallets, Valentino clutches, Diane von Furstenberg purses. A heavy Gucci suitcase suddenly fell from the highest shelf and she ducked as it crashed into a display of wallets. She caught a flash of movement that wasn’t in a mirror. Charcoal hair and a black shirt. Hunter Black! He darted across the handbag department and took cover behind a stack of designer backpacks. Her heart raced. She swallowed a pinch of feather and ran after him, but when she reached the backpacks, he’d vanished. She raced to the end of the shelves and turned the corner just in time to see him disappearing around a display of ties.

  She ran past a row of disembodied wooden torsos wearing silk ties to an enormous display of hats. Hats with feathers, hats with faux flowers, hats with lace and ribbons, hats that looked like they’d swallow a person whole. It was unsettling, seeing all these bodiless mannequin heads.

  Without warning, one of the racks behind her started swaying. She collapsed to her knees and rolled out of the way a second before it would have crushed her. Shaking, she pushed herself back to her feet.

  Another flash of movement came from the New Arrivals section.

  “Hunter Black!”

  He was moving strangely, his steps lurching. Even after downing a full glass of gin, he’d always been sharp. But now something else was moving his body, and Anouk had to hope that the small lag could give her an edge.

  She took a step backward, looking around. A heavy gold bracelet glittered on a mannequin. She tugged it off and threw it across the room. When Hunter Black spun toward the clatter it made, she took advantage of the distraction.

  “Lancae!”

  She threw out a blast of energy from her palms. Two shelves of designer jeans fell on him. He roared as the metal shelving unit smashed against his skull. Pant legs tangled around him, and he struggled to extract himself from the mess. Anouk stepped closer with a spell on her lips to summon wind. “Zefyr traga . . .”

  He was clutching his head, but he managed to throw a purse at her before she got the final words out. Its long strap hooked onto her wrist like a lasso, an
d with a sharp tug, he pulled her over. Before she could scramble back up, he was on top of her. His eyes were threaded with black. Smoke curled from his nostrils. Blood from the cuts on his hands dripped onto her cheek.

  He pulled back and aimed a punch at her head. She blocked it with a shield spell, and his hand glided off into air, but he was an assassin trained by Mada Vittora. He’d killed Royals, Goblins, even other witches. If there was one thing he knew how to fight against, it was magic.

  He curled his hand in the back of her hair, a blade glimmering in his other palm. He was going to slice her throat—​she’d seen him do it before. It was a highly effective move—​if it didn’t kill a witch outright, it at least kept her from whispering spells.

  Pulse racing, she cast out Cricket’s stealing spell but used the word referring to objects. “Ut vol pas rein ut deux!”

  The spell summoned a crystal-studded clutch she’d seen in the handbag department. It materialized in her hand and she threw it in front of his knife; the purse hit it with a shower of sparks, breaking off the blade from the hilt. He gave a hollow grunt as he dived for the broken blade. Anouk pitched forward, pushing herself up to all fours. Her hair was wild in her face; she shoved it back.

  She turned to Hunter Black, swallowed a pinch of feathers, and whispered the stealing spell on him, using the word that referred to people.

  “Ut vol fer rein ut deux!”

  Hunter Black vanished. He was simply there one moment and gone the next, disappearing with only the slightest flicker of surprise on his face. Even using the wording variation that Rennar had described, it wasn’t as easy to transfer a person as it was a purse. The farthest she could cast him was one floor down—​but it was far enough. Anouk rolled back and lay on the floor, breathing hard.

  Dieu, had it really worked?

  She listened for Hunter Black’s heavy footsteps racing back toward her, but there was nothing. She was alone amid the mess of handbags. She took a second to wipe his blood from her cheek. She checked her stash of owl feathers and other life-essences—​dwindling, but if she rationed it, it should last.