Grim Lovelies

by Megan Shepherd

  “Try it, Anouk,” Cricket urged. “I’ve barely mastered three words, but you’re fluent in the Selentium Vox.”

  “No, I’m not. I’ve only read some books,” she quickly corrected. But she did know the spell—​even without looking at the words in Cricket’s notebook. Mada Vittora had cast it so often that Anouk could have whispered it in her sleep.

  She watched the flame steadily, thought about the light going out, and it spurred a warmth in her body. Her pulse increased. The words took shape in her mouth . . .

  “Dreflamos.” She murmured so softly that the others leaned forward, uncertain she’d spoken at all.

  The flame flickered—​just for a second—​and then strengthened again.

  “See?” Cricket cried. “It worked! Well, sort of.”

  Beau raised a doubtful eyebrow. “The window is open, you know.”

  “Breeze or not, it doesn’t matter,” Anouk interjected. “It wouldn’t have truly worked unless I’d consumed some life-essence.”

  Cricket blew out the candle and dropped it back in the drawer. Her gaze was both defiant and hopeful at the same time. “I’m not saying I’m the next great Witch of Paris, or that you are, or any of us. I’m just saying that it’s been on my mind.” She jerked her head toward the window. “As much as we look like the Pretties out there, we aren’t them. We’ve more in common with the Goblins. We were born of magic too, weren’t we? Just like the rest of the Haute? So why shouldn’t we be able to cast a whisper? Why shouldn’t we learn to give those Royals and witches a taste of their own medicine, cut off their toes, burn off their fingerprints?”

  “It’s dangerous. The vitae echo . . .”

  Cricket paced, stretching and flexing her long fingers. “I know the limits of the Haute. But imagine if we could do even a fraction of what they can. We could stop them from keeping all of us under their thumbs. You’ve spent more time with Mada Vittora than the rest of us combined, Anouk. You know all her tricks and whispers. If you could work them, you’d be as strong as any witch. No one would ever enslave you again. Or any of us.”

  Anouk looked down at her hands. Torn, broken nails. Short fingers that didn’t look suited to do anything but hold a mop.

  “If that was true,” Beau said, “then it would mean Mada Vittora had been lying to us our whole lives.”

  Cricket gave him a hard look. “Sounds like her, doesn’t it?”

  Beau conceded that with a nod.

  Anouk kept her eyes on the snaking smoke that, even with the candle put away, didn’t quite dissipate. “So what do we do?”

  Cricket grabbed her keys and a wad of crumpled bills from a jar on the desk. She pulled on her jacket. Shoved a stick of gum in her mouth.

  “We get the hell out of Paris.” She took a knife from the kitchen and wrapped the blade in a towel. She held it out to Anouk. “Take this. I’ve seen you in the kitchen—​your skills would give even Hunter Black pause, never mind that the only things you’ve ever stabbed are vegetables.”

  Hesitantly, Anouk took it. It was a chef’s knife, heavy and solid. The wooden handle nestled in her palm as though it had been molded to fit there. She wrapped her fingers around it and wondered, with a sudden lurch of her pulse, if slicing flesh felt like piercing an eggplant.

  Cricket grunted her approval. “Now let’s go find someone who will tell us the truth.”

  “Where?” Beau asked.

  Anouk spoke first, surprising all of them. “Montélimar.”

  Chapter 11

  Both Cricket and Beau were very silent, until Cricket leaned over the sink and spat out her gum. “I’m sorry,” she said. “But have you gone insane?”

  “Montélimar is where the Lavender Witch lives,” Beau said. “Mada Zola.”

  Anouk thrust her hand in her jacket pocket, rolled the rough sprig of mint between her fingers. “I know.”

  “Mada. Zola. Is. Our. Enemy,” Cricket enunciated as though Anouk had suddenly gone deaf. “Mada Vittora hated her, and the feeling was mutual. Because of their feud, Zola lost all her holdings in central France. She’s banished out there to her wilted garden, left to rot like a sack of winter potatoes. Forbidden to have anything to do with the Haute.” She reached for another stick of gum as though she needed something to calm her nerves.

  “Maybe that’s a good thing,” Anouk argued. “The enemy of my enemy is my friend, right? If we can convince the Lavender Witch that we served Vittora only because we were enchanted, she might help us.”

  Neither Cricket nor Beau appeared convinced.

  Anouk rested her hands on the table. “Before Luc disappeared, he started spending more time on the scryboard. Yesterday afternoon, I went through his log. He’d been spying on Mada Zola. Even contacted her for help, though it didn’t look as though he ever got a response.”

  Beau raised his eyebrows. “Did Mada Vittora know about this?”

  Anouk shook her head.

  “Why would Luc want another witch’s help?” Cricket said. “Help with what?”

  “I don’t know, but whatever his aim, he thought he could trust Mada Zola, and I trust him. We should go to Montélimar unless you know a good reason not to.”

  “Just one? We have every reason not to go!” Cricket counted off on her fingers. “One: As far as Mada Zola’s concerned, we’ve always been loyal servants for the witch who orchestrated her downfall. Two: Word has probably reached her that we’re potential witch murderers, which I doubt will reassure her when we show up at her door. Three: Even if she does extend the spell, we’ll just be trading one mistress for another. Which brings me to four: Have you heard the rumors about what she does to Goblins? And five: Montélimar is more than halfway across the country. That’s, what, Beau, six hours from here?”

  “Seven.”

  “See? It’s almost noon, which means we have only two and a half days left to find a way out of this. We can’t spend seven of our last hours on a tour of the countryside.” She shook her head. “No. We stay in Paris and go to the bird-market broker.”

  Anouk turned to Beau for help. “We need a witch, not some Pretty broker. Luc contacted Zola for a reason.”

  Beau relented. “If Luc trusted her, then it might be worth the risk. I say Montélimar. Sorry, Cricket. You’re outvoted.”

  “Zola is dangerous,” Cricket insisted.

  “I don’t doubt it.” He glanced at the black-cat clock ticking away on Cricket’s toaster. “Her estate is called the Château des Mille Fleurs. The House of a Thousand Flowers. I drove Mada Vittora there last winter. We could make it before sundown. If we get there and it looks too dangerous, we leave. Come back to Paris and go to the bird-market broker. We’d still have about”—​he quickly counted—​“forty-five hours.”

  Cricket didn’t answer. She chewed her gum anxiously, and then, grumbling, grabbed a backpack and started stuffing things into it. The yellow headphones. A handful of candy. The cat clock. She slung the backpack over her shoulder and rooted around in a pile of coats by the front door until she found three umbrellas, two of which she tossed to them, saying, “Fine, but take these.”

  “It isn’t raining,” Anouk said.

  “It isn’t for that. It’s for the crows. To get us from here to the car without them seeing us.”

  Cricket didn’t bother to lock her door, though she did give the room one final look. Tiny as it was, the apartment was as much freedom as Cricket had ever had in her short life. Cricket turned away sharply, and they descended the stairs into the foyer that smelled stronger now, like curried fish.

  Cricket peered through the peephole. “It looks clear. No motorcycles or idiots in slouchy hats.” She rested her hand on the doorknob. “Eyes wide. Umbrellas up. Remember, we’re in this together.”

  She shoved open the door and they were awash in daylight. Anouk took shelter beneath her umbrella, ignoring the Pretties on the sunny street who gave their umbrellas odd glances. They rushed to the car, Anouk’s heart slipping and sliding around in her chest. S
he kept expecting to hear the roar of Hunter Black’s motorcycle. The flapping of wings. She dared a peek toward the skies and saw hundreds of dark outlines circling overhead. She dived into the passenger seat and slammed the door.

  “The crows are everywhere!”

  Cricket was already in the back seat. “The crows aren’t our real enemy.” She dug around in the backpack until she pulled out the black-cat clock. “This is. Time.” She spat her gum into her hand, mushed it onto the clock’s base, and then leaned forward between the front seats and affixed it to the dashboard.

  Tick.

  Tick.

  Tick.

  Beau climbed in and shot the black-cat clock a doubting look but said nothing as he threw the car into drive, then whipped them through the maze of narrow lanes of the Latin Quarter into the Marais. Eventually, tall buildings bled into countryside: Vast fields of dying grass, dotted with sheep. Villages that clustered together as though for warmth. A train barreled past them in the other direction, and Anouk smooshed her face against the window and watched it grow smaller until it was gone.

  “So what exactly do we know about Mada Zola?” Beau asked.

  “What’s to know?” Cricket leaned forward between the seats. “She’s a witch like all the rest. She’ll have a houseful of servants, an insufferable brat for a witch’s boy, and skin stretched too tight over creaky old bones. If we’re lucky, maybe she won’t do to us what she did to the Goblins.”

  “What did she do to the Goblins?” Beau asked, though he sounded as though he dreaded the answer.

  “Goblins are an old order but an unambitious one; they’d be content living their quiet, bizarre little lives and never amassing an ounce of power. It was easy for witches to exploit them. Last summer, there was an ugly rumor going around that Zola lured Goblins to her estate with the promise of fantastic tea parties, but the ones who attended kept disappearing. And then the ones who went looking for them disappeared. Speculation started that she’d been poisoning their tea and burying their bodies in her flower beds. She thought her lavender grew better in blood. More potent. For her tricks and whispers.”

  Beau looked sideways at Anouk. “This is where you want us to go? An estate with chopped-up Goblins mixed in with the potting soil?”

  “It’s only a rumor,” Anouk offered, though her toes had curled tightly in her shoes.

  Cricket snorted. “You still have that knife I gave you, right, Anouk?”

  Anouk took it out of the jacket and unwound the towel, wincing at the glimpse of her reflection in the blade. Sunken eyes. Messy hair. Mada Vittora would have had a fit. The thought triggered the memory of blood on her mistress’s cream-colored blouse, and Anouk leaned forward, head between her knees.

  Cricket rubbed her gently on the back.

  “It’ll be okay,” she said, mistaking Anouk’s reaction. “I’ve got my knives too. And Beau can fight, and—”

  “Hang on,” Beau interjected. “Me? Fight?”

  “You train with Viggo all the time.”

  “Yeah, as his punching bag.”

  Cricket dismissed this with a wave. “You know how to fight, even if you’re usually on the receiving end. This might be your chance to actually throw the punches.”

  “Let’s hope not,” Beau said. “Let’s hope rumors are just rumors, and when we get to Montélimar we won’t need knives or fists or anything else that could get us killed.”

  Anouk sat up. Cricket squeezed her shoulder in reassurance and then started going through the blades she had hidden in the folds of her clothing, testing the sharpness of each one. On the dashboard, the black-cat clock kept ticking, the tail moving in quick little stabs. Anouk hoped she’d done the right thing in convincing them to come.

  Why hadn’t Luc told her about trying to contact Mada Zola? Anouk wasn’t used to having to guess his logic—​she’d always simply trusted him and he’d never let her down. Even Cricket, normally so bold, was chewing her gum anxiously. Luc and Cricket had been around longer than Anouk and Beau and Hunter Black, and from what Anouk had gathered, Mada Vittora had been especially severe with them. She’d let thirteen-year-old Viggo use Cricket as a guinea pig during his phase experimenting with mild poisons until Luc volunteered to take her place. And she’d done worse things. No one ever spoke of it outright, but she’d heard rumors about Mada Vittora long ago forcing Luc into dark tasks that had nothing to do with gardening: late-night massages, having him bring her midnight drinks in bed and not letting him leave until morning. Tasks that she hadn’t tried forcing on any of the others—​Luc had taken the brunt of the abuse to spare the rest of them.

  “We need to stop for gas,” Beau said somewhere near Lyon, breaking the silence.

  Cricket grabbed a folded map from the seat pocket and wrestled it into submission, then traced her finger along an autoroute. “There’s a village called Saint-Désirat ahead. It’s tiny. Too small for any scrying crows, you think?”

  “I hope,” Beau mumbled. “I don’t feel like having my eyes plucked out today.”

  Someone’s stomach growled. Someone else’s answered.

  “Maybe there will be a café too,” Cricket continued. “I mean, we can’t very well show up at Mada Zola’s asking for her to save our lives and cook us lunch.”

  They followed signs to a single-lane road that wound in lazy switchbacks up a hill, past small cottages and vineyards. The narrow road changed to cobblestone as it took them to a mismatch of clustered buildings perched close together. A young man swept the steps of a whitewashed building whose sign indicated it was a café.

  Beau pulled up to a gas station and checked the sky. “It looks clear. Go on to the café and order. Anouk, you’ll be safe with Cricket. I’ll get the gas and meet you there. Keep your eyes open. If anything looks off, leave your pastries and run for the car.”

  “Hey, now, no one’s desperate enough to abandon pastries,” Cricket said. “Not yet.”

  Anouk climbed out, thrusting her hands into her jacket pockets. Her fingers worked anxiously at the mint. Were those two women with a stroller staring at her? Had she missed a spot of blood on her skin? She couldn’t shake the feeling that the Pretties sensed the three of them didn’t belong.

  Cricket slid on sunglasses and glanced at Anouk. “Got any cash?”

  Anouk shook her head.

  “No problem. I got this.”

  It was a narrow sidewalk, and Cricket swerved to avoid a parking meter, bumping into one of the mothers with a stroller. She made a quick apology and walked faster. Once they were a block away, she pulled the woman’s wallet from inside her jacket, took out a handful of cash, then dumped the empty wallet in a potted bush as they walked up to the café.

  Cricket grabbed a couple of menus and they picked a table on the patio half hidden by wisteria vines. Cricket snapped her fingers at the waiter, a young man with gold eyeliner and a broken-heart tattoo on the back of his hand—​another Pretty taken with Goblin fashion. “Beignets for me, and coffee for both of us. Anouk?”

  “Nothing. I’m sorry. I’m not sure I can eat.”

  A crow landed on the patio railing. Small. Inquisitive. Just a regular crow. But on instinct, Anouk cringed, and at the same time, the oddly dressed waiter flung a plate at it with such unexpected vehemence that she gave him a closer look, perplexed. The plate shattered in the bushes and the crow took flight. The waiter straightened his bow tie and offered no explanation.

  Beau appeared on the patio, wiping his hands on his pants, and slid into the seat next to Anouk.

  The waiter smiled. “Monsieur?”

  “A crepe. Wait, make it two. Three. Okay, four.”

  “You should order something too, Anouk,” Cricket insisted. “Hell, order everything. We might as well enjoy what we can while we can.”

  “Don’t be bleak,” Beau said. “I’m sure everything will be fine.” He gave Anouk’s hand a reassuring squeeze, but she didn’t feel reassured. She took her hand back and reached for a napkin.

 
“It’s realistic. We have to be honest with ourselves.” Cricket lowered her voice. “What happens if Mada Zola can’t help us? Or won’t? Then we’ll have only two days left as we are. To drive, to wear clothes, to eat pastries. After that . . . well, you know what it was like.” Her face soured at the thought, but then she pushed the menu toward Anouk tenderly. “I’m just saying that if there’s anything you’ve ever wanted to say or do, then you’d better say it or do it soon. Because we might not have much time left.”

  An uncomfortable silence fell over the table. Anouk realized she’d torn the paper napkin into shreds. When the waiter came back, she ordered a chocolate croissant. It came, flaky and buttery and delicious, and something tugged in her chest.

  “NASCAR.” Beau coughed.

  “Are you choking on your crepe?” Cricket asked.

  “No, it’s a car race in America. That’s my dream. To drive in it.” He spread jam on his crepe, thinking. “And watch a movie in a cinema. There are so many things I haven’t done.”

  “Ride a train through every country in the world,” Cricket said. “That’s what I’d do.”

  “See the northern lights,” Anouk added.

  “Get a tattoo.”

  “Oh! Go to a drive-in theater. Movies and cars.”

  “Sing karaoke.”

  “Eat pasta in Italy.”

  “Run through a sprinkler.”

  “Win at Clue.”

  “Eat sausage in Germany.”

  “Kiss a boy.”

  “Kiss a girl.”

  For a few minutes there was only the sound of clinking plates, of scraping forks and anxious chewing as they all thought of what they’d lose if the worst happened.

  Anouk wasn’t ready for it to end, the beautiful dream of being human. She wanted to experience everything. See all the places she’d only read about. Sail on a boat. Fly in an airplane. And read—​read everything. Fairy tales. Romance novels. Only humans could write such pain and love, could make her swoon one minute and cry the next over something that had never really happened to people who’d never really existed.