Grim Lovelies (Grim Lovelies 1)

“Quick,” Anouk said. “Get ready. Put your veil back on.”

“Don’t I get an ‘Amazing work, Cricket, congratulations on doing magic’?”

Anouk granted her a nod. “Amazing work, Cricket. Now, as soon as the doors open, everyone keep your heads down, your eyes low. Viggo, you distract the escorts so that Cricket and I can slip away and join the other servants.”

“Yes, but first, my love, a kiss before we take this risk.”

He leaned in with lips pursed and she sputtered and pushed him away. “Viggo, gross! We don’t have time for this.”

“I must have one—”

“You heard her,” Cricket roared. “Hands off.” She shoved Viggo, and he fell back against the wall. A low ding sounded. Everyone froze.

“What was that?” Hunter Black snapped.

Viggo’s face went slack. He straightened, fixing his knit cap sheepishly, and turned toward the elevator controls.

The fourth-floor button was lit.

“Merde,” he cursed. “It’s Cricket’s fault. She pushed me, and you get only one try, only one floor, you can’t just bounce around from one floor to another.”

“What do you mean?” Anouk said.

“Wrong button,” Viggo said. “We wanted the penthouse.”

The round button for the fourth floor glowed brightly.

“What’s on the fourth floor?” Anouk asked with dread.

The elevator stopped. Another ding sounded, and the fourth-floor light turned off, indicating that they had arrived.

“The fourth floor?” Viggo said. “That’s London.”

“Oh, va te faire foutre,” Cricket cursed. “London? That means Goblins.”

Chapter 23

Ten Hours of Enchantment Remain

Even before the doors opened, Anouk heard music. It was a blaring mix of heavy metal and accordion and English lyrics, and the tempo kept slowing down and then rapidly speeding up, making Anouk’s head spin.

The elevator opened.

The fourth floor of Castle Ides was a boardroom with twenty-foot-high ceilings and vast windows along the southern side; chandeliers hung from the ceiling, and tall bookshelves spanned the walls. It was filled with overstuffed antique furniture, mahogany tables, and velvet fainting couches in front of roaring fireplaces. But the richness of the room was eclipsed by the apparent circus happening within. One Goblin, dressed in a three-piece suit with a magenta bowler hat, was hanging upside down from a chandelier, his hat knotted to his head with a necktie to keep it from falling off. Expensive-looking furniture was stacked haphazardly around the room, and two Goblins were using chairs as tables and tables as chairs, with a hodgepodge of teacups between them. Another Goblin very seriously chased moths with a butterfly net. He had a cup of tea in one hand that he seemed reluctant to set down, which made catching the moths nearly impossible and sent tea sloshing everywhere.

“Wrong floor,” Cricket said. “Definitely wrong floor.”

Anouk heard a bus honking. On the other side of the tall windows, a double-decker red bus circled Piccadilly Circus. London was just a single magical breath away. London was where the Goblins had consolidated what remained of their society centuries ago, when witches had launched a bloody campaign to round up the good-natured creatures and force them into servitude. Those few Goblins left had hunkered down in London basements and sewers and other places where it came in handy that they could see in the dark. Even the Goblins Anouk had known in Paris, who likely had never set foot in England, had been almost violently Anglophilic in their devotion to London. She’d seen Goblin girls with their fingernails painted like the British flag, and Goblin boys wearing neon cravats with patterns of Big Ben, and every time a David Bowie song came on the radio, they all stopped and saluted.

“We shouldn’t be here,” Hunter Black warned.

He banged on the penthouse button, but the elevator didn’t budge. Cricket pounded on the other buttons uselessly.

“There must be an emergency staircase, right?” Anouk said.

“If there was,” Cricket muttered, “I’d be afraid it would lead to Antarctica.”

“They’ve noticed us,” Viggo announced, seemingly amused.