Grim Lovelies

by Megan Shepherd

  “Since when is an assassin an expert on carpentry?” Petra demanded.

  “You’d be amazed how many ways there are to kill someone and blame it on faulty workmanship.” He gestured with his free hand. “Anouk. Cricket. Luc. Beau. Come on.”

  Anouk disentangled herself from Cricket’s arm and Countess Quine’s silk dress. Hunter Black extended his free hand to help her up.

  Beau dusted off his clothes and grinned at Hunter Black. “I think that’s the first time I’ve seen you do something vaguely heroic.”

  “It’s like you’re actually almost human,” Luc teased.

  “Yeah, our hero!” Cricket taunted, ruffling Hunter Black’s hair, which elicited the expected growl, though there were no teeth in it this time.

  Trapped in the cellar with the countess, Petra scowled at Hunter Black. “You’re not a Pretty. You can’t fire that gun.”

  “You don’t know what we can do,” he answered. “Nobody does. Until two days ago, even I would have laughed if you’d told me we could cast whispers.” He cocked the rifle. “Do you want to risk it?”

  Petra’s expression turned very serious as she faced Anouk. “Listen—​you’re going to get yourselves killed unless you give this up. There are other ways to stay human.” Her voice wasn’t unkind.

  “By siding with Rennar?” Anouk shook her head. “We’re no one’s pawns.”

  Luc and Beau leaned against the heavy wine-cellar door until it slammed shut, and they locked Petra and the countess in. Petra didn’t resist, but Countess Quine hurled herself against the door, though the lock mechanism had long ago been secured with Mada Zola’s own magic, and no amount of whispering could open it.

  Anouk tossed one last look to Petra behind the bars. The witch’s girl sat against the wall, legs folded under her, a nasty look on her face—​but it was aimed at the countess, as if Quine was the last person she wanted to be imprisoned with. Her eyes shifted to Anouk and softened.

  “Good luck, then.”

  Returning to the kitchen required more than a little skillful shimmying to scale a staircase with no stairs. Once they had made it, Anouk hurried to the kitchen window and stood on tiptoe. Outside, remnants of smoke hung over the gardens. The battle was still raging. Sparks of magic, wielded by the lesser Royals stationed at various windows, sizzled across the gardens. Despite the awful sight of slain Goblins in the grass, it looked like the Goblins might be getting the upper hand. The remaining ones had formed a stronghold near the potting shed and magicked a swarm of termites to go after the wooden soldiers.

  Anouk and the others started for the rear hallway, but they hadn’t gone three steps before a shadow crossed their path. Lady Metham materialized by the kitchen door. Her fingers sparked with magic; her lips were stained with powder. Anouk and the others scrambled backward.

  “My eucalyptus supply is down to dust,” Cricket whispered in a rush. “Hunter Black? Your borage?”

  “Lost with my coat.”

  Viggo’s blood throbbed in Anouk’s body, but she didn’t dare use it up on anyone other than Zola or Rennar. “Right. Then run!” she commanded.

  The five of them bolted down the central hall. Lady Metham followed. She didn’t deign to run; she simply swallowed powder and then projected herself twenty feet ahead, cutting off the beasties. Anouk skittered to a stop just as Lady Metham swiped a silver dagger at her throat, missing by only a hair. Luc grabbed Anouk and they ran down a side hall, but Lady Metham projected herself there too, blocking the exit.

  “Don’t you know when you’ve lost, beasties?” Lady Metham taunted.

  “Tell the blade in your shoulder that we’ve lost,” Cricket spat.

  Lady Metham looked down at her pristine dress with a frown. “What blade—”

  Even before she’d finished speaking, Cricket had drawn and thrown a blade. It sank into Lady Metham’s left shoulder with perfect precision, and she released a strained cry. Blood poured down the side of her dress, staining the gossamer fabric. She reached for her powder. Anouk got a dark premonition.

  “Changa, changa,” Lady Metham spat in Cricket’s direction with eyes that were blazing with fury, “a forma verum.”

  Anouk recognized the spell with a gasp.

  “No—​Cricket, run!”

  But it was too late. Cricket had nowhere to go. They were penned in by walls on three sides and Lady Metham on the fourth. With a whisper and a twist of her hands, Lady Metham cast out an aura of sparking magic, which floated to surround Cricket. Cricket swatted at the magic glimmers as if they were gnats, clawing at the places where they hit her. But the magic clung to her. Wherever the sparks touched her skin, it rippled and puckered. Her left arm contorted, and she screamed and clutched at it. Long white hairs sprang up from the scratch marks she carved into her own skin. More white hairs sprouted around her neck and spread down her chest. Her curly brown hair was now threaded with white, and her chest contorted too, folding in on itself. Her screams changed to yowls.

  Anouk couldn’t watch. Clammy sweat poured over her brow, and her mouth was suddenly dry. Her greatest fears—​the things she’d not even dared to think about in midnight hours—​were happening before her eyes. And she couldn’t stop it. With every yowl, she felt an equal pain in her own chest, as though it were her changing too.

  And then the crackling magic stopped. Anouk dared to open her eyes, and her stomach plummeted. There it was—​the white cat from the painting. Long pearl-white hair, a fluffy tail with a crook at the tip. Her knees buckled. The cat . . . it wasn’t Cricket. Not anymore. There was nothing of Cricket’s wit or love of Pretty candy. Nothing of her twinkling eyes. At least death was final: This felt somehow worse, a body that continued existing in this awful, twisted form.

  Beau caught Anouk in his arms, tried to turn her face away, but her gaze was fixed on the cat. It started to lick one paw. Back in the oubliette, one of the five pelts would be gone now, dissipated into the ether, magically returned to the flesh and bones of its original owner.

  Anouk turned on Lady Metham sharply. “You putain!”

  The lady was slumped against the wall. Her face was pale; there was a light sheen of sweat across her forehead. It had taken much for her to perform such a complex spell—​Anouk suspected that somewhere beneath that dress a kidney or her liver had turned to stone—​but she wore a grimly satisfied smile.

  “That’s one little kitty. Soon to be four more animals once Rennar gets hold of you.”

  Anouk felt a sort of madness come over her as she stared at the cat. In her entire life, short as it had been, she had never experienced such rage, this crackling heat that flushed up her chest and made her whole body shake . . .

  “I hope you have some other trick up your sleeve,” Luc whispered to Hunter Black.

  “He doesn’t have to,” Anouk answered in a deathly low voice. “I do.”

  Her anger drew together, concentrating itself somewhere deep within her unbeating heart. She murmured under her breath.

  “Anouk, you can’t use up Viggo’s blood yet,” Luc warned.

  But she was too angry to stop herself. “Just a few drops,” she hissed. “For Cricket.”

  She whispered, low and fierce.

  In the next second, Toblerone came charging down the hallway from the foyer, summoned by Anouk’s spell. Lady Metham barely had time to register surprise before the bear barreled into her like she was a bowling pin. Lady Metham, already weakened, collapsed, her head knocking against the stone floor with a deadly crack. Blood seeped out. Her eyes were glassy and unmoving. It didn’t stop the bear—​he began tearing her body with wooden claws until she was nothing but a pile of crimson rags.

  “I can’t watch this,” Beau moaned.

  Anouk stared at the blood pooling on the floor, at the bear that tore at Lady Metham’s body, and she whispered a quick end to the spell.

  Both Beau and Luc looked slightly ill, but Hunter Black gave Anouk an approving nod. “Now there are more of us than there are of
them. Good.”

  Clinking footsteps came from down the hall, interrupting their victory.

  “Those are glass shoes. Countess Quine is coming,” Luc warned. “She must have gotten out of the cellar.”

  They took off. Their footsteps were drowned out by the sound of her ragged breath. Anouk darted down a hallway that led past rooms full of more portraits. In and out of interconnecting chambers. Up and down dark staircases where she could barley see her own hands and her mind whirled as though she were trapped in a maze. When she finally reached a quiet alcove near the chapel, she dared a glance behind her. Luc was there, but Beau and Hunter Black were gone. She skidded to a stop.

  “The others. We got separated—”

  A sound in the distance interrupted her, something between a howl and a yell.

  “Did you hear that?” she asked Luc. The howl came again. It was less like a yell now, more of a growl. “That’s an animal.” She gasped. “Not the cat. Something bigger . . .”

  Luc’s face turned grim as he grabbed her shoulders and prodded her forward. “Keep going.”

  They ran down more hallways until they reached a spiral staircase. The steps were narrow and ancient, worn down from countless footsteps.

  “This is it.” She gasped. “The bell tower.”

  Luc rested a hand on her arm before she could climb the stairs. He peered up at the turret as though he knew where—​and to whom—​it led. “Anouk, are you sure about this?”

  “It’s what we came here to do.”

  He nodded gravely. “Then let’s do it.”

  “No.” She laid a hand on his chest. “There’s nothing you can help me with there, but you can help Beau and Hunter Black. Quine must have trapped one of them.” She paused. “That howl . . .”

  “I know.” His tone was somber. He paused a beat before answering the question she hadn’t asked. “It came from a wolf.”

  She closed her eyes, fearing the worst. Not Beau. Not Beau. Not Beau . . .

  “It’s Hunter Black,” he said.

  Her eyes snapped open. “How do you know that?”

  “Three years ago, Goblins dragged in a wolf caught in the Black Forest, and two days later Hunter Black walked out of the attic.” He glanced over his shoulder. “Countess Quine must have turned him back.”

  She felt a stab of anguish. Hunter Black was family, after all, and in some crazy way, she had actually come to care for the sulking assassin.

  A wolf.

  Cricket had been right. That was two of them turned now. She kept expecting to wake up from this nightmare and be in her bedroom back in the townhouse, tucked snugly beneath a quilt, a book fallen open by her side.

  But this was no dream.

  “Go,” she said. “Find Beau. And Tenpenny and December.”

  Luc kissed the twin hearts painted on her cheeks and squeezed her tight. “Stay safe, dust bunny.”

  “You too, Luc.”

  She climbed one stair, then another, trying to move quietly but deafened by her own raspy breath. She ran her shirtsleeve over her face and it came away with sweat and smeared red lipstick from her cheeks. It made her think of Tenpenny and how the night before, she’d told him that it was their choices that made them human, not their bodies, and he had said that tails had something to do with it too. She almost let out a delirious laugh. Cricket, a cat. Hunter Black, a wolf. No choices they could make now would keep them human.

  But she still had choices.

  “Des forma humana, fiska et skalla animeux,” she whispered to herself, rehearsing the words of the contra-beastie spell. She wouldn’t let Rennar catch her unprepared this time.

  The door to the chamber at the top of the bell tower was made of plain wood, not ornate wrought iron over mahogany like the ones downstairs. There wasn’t even a lock, just a simple latch. Press it, and the door would open.

  She knew what waited on the other side.

  Mada Zola and Prince Rennar, of course, but something else.

  She could feel it—​that dark thing that she feared looking at too closely, the animal inside her that was always hungry, always awake. For as long as she’d been alive, she’d kept that other self at a distance. But once she stepped across this threshold, she’d have no choice but to embrace it.

  She pressed the latch and opened the bell-tower door.

  Chapter 37

  Eight Hours of (New) Enchantment Remain

  They were waiting for her.

  They stood in the round turret in front of open windows that looked down over the château’s gardens where the battle was still being fought. The bell loomed from a ceiling joist, nearly as tall as she was and ten times her weight. Wire cages for Mada Zola’s crows, empty now, hung on hooks from the ceiling. The cries of the battle below sounded distant, as though it were happening in some other world. This must be how the Royals always felt in their elevated homes, far removed from the suffering of their people.

  Mada Zola had always been beautiful, and she and Rennar together looked like gods out of one of Luc’s stories. Those tapeta eyes of Rennar’s were swallowing Anouk up once more, regarding her the same way that Luc’s had when he’d been freed from the oubliette, as though she had changed in the short time they’d been apart and he was trying to put his finger on exactly what was different about her. She wasn’t sure if Rennar liked what he saw—​messy hearts painted on her cheeks, the Faustine jacket, wearing determination on her face like the Goblins wore makeup—​but he didn’t take his eyes off her.

  “Where are your friends, little beastie?” Mada Zola asked. “You’re all alone.”

  “I don’t need them. Not for this.”

  The witch smirked. “You were clever to extend your enchantment for an extra day, but you can’t buy yourself any more time. Not unless you surrender to us, and then perhaps we can discuss how much each hour of humanity is worth to you.”

  “I don’t want hours,” Anouk said. “I don’t want days. I want a lifetime, and I’m going to have it.”

  Rennar folded his arms, looking perplexed. “I cannot understand why someone so bold would refuse to serve her creator. We are the same, you and I.”

  “You didn’t create me,” she spat. “Mada Vittora did. And she learned too late what happens when you mistreat a beastie.” She took the spell out of her pocket and held it up.

  Mada Zola laughed at the scrap of paper—​she didn’t seem to know what it was, and paper didn’t seem like much of a threat.

  But Rennar didn’t laugh.

  “I told you,” he said hoarsely. “That spell is useless without one of us to cast it for you. You haven’t the Selentium Vox fluency necessary for such a complex spell.”

  “Not for the beastie spell, that’s true,” Anouk admitted, “but I’m talking about the spell on the back. The one that is simple enough even for me.”

  A flicker of confusion crossed Mada Zola’s face. She looked for guidance from Rennar, but he ignored her, every ounce of his attention focused on Anouk and the spell.

  “What is she talking about?” Mada Zola whispered.

  Anouk brandished the spell like a weapon. “One of you is going to cast the beastie spell and keep us human—​that is, if you want to stay human too. This is a contra-spell. It will turn anyone, even a witch or a Royal, into an animal. I can’t say which animal. The spell chooses, not the caster, just as we had no choice what type of humans we’d become.” She paced in a slow circle around the bell tower. “If you don’t recast the beastie spell on the five of us permanently, I will cast this spell on the two of you.”

  “You haven’t the skill,” the witch said simply.

  Rennar, however, remained quiet.

  “I haven’t trained at one of the witch academies, no,” Anouk said. “I wasn’t born into magic, like the Royals. All I’ve learned are spells overheard from Mada Vittora and a few Goblin tricks. But this spell is simple. It requires nothing but a tremendous amount of life-essence.”

  Now Mada Zola really wa
sn’t smiling. “You would have to take a human life to acquire that much blood. You wouldn’t do that. You’re too tenderhearted.”

  Anouk thought of Viggo and said softly, “Not all life-magic has to be taken by force.”

  A commotion came from the stairs. Anouk whipped around. Someone was coming. For a second her confidence faltered. Countess Quine appeared with Luc in tow, her hair mussed as though they’d been in a struggle. Luc’s hands were bound with twine. A bruise marred his dark cheek.

  Anouk sucked in a breath. “Luc, are you all right?”

  But he wasn’t. Anyone could see.

  Mada Zola smirked again, her confidence restored. “Good, he can be a witness to this. Quine, our little dust mop says she’s going to turn us into animals if we don’t obey her. Go ahead, dust mop. Show us how you’d do that.”

  Anouk loathed the smirk on the witch’s face. It itched at her with blade-sharp claws, just like the sounds of the battle outside.

  Rennar grabbed Luc and jerked his head at Quine. “Go. Handle the driver. He’s the only one left.”

  Beau.

  Anouk turned and gripped the window ledge, searching the battle. She caught sight of Tenpenny’s top hat—​he was crouched behind a garden wall near the Goblins’ potting-shed stronghold. A dozen or so more Goblins huddled with him, trying to break the spell that locked the shed door. And then a sandy-haired boy in a white chauffeur shirt and black trousers sprinted toward the Goblins, jumped over a fallen wooden soldier, and joined them behind the wall.

  A streak of magic tore across the garden, turning the kilted Goblin that Cricket had danced with to stone. Anouk whipped her head around. It was Quine—​she was below now, in the shelter of the porte-cochère, eating powder and casting spells.

  “Beau, watch out!” Anouk yelled.

  He couldn’t hear her. He was so far away. He was slamming his umbrella against the lock, unaware that his back was exposed and that Countess Quine was swallowing more powder . . .