Midnight Beauties (Grim Lovelies 2)

Beau threw the car in gear and stomped on the gas. He roared down the narrow streets, throwing up puddles of icy slush. The windshield wipers fought against the snow.

Anouk gazed at the city. Leaving France altogether, even leaving the continent! She’d never traveled through a tunnel before, especially one that ran thirty kilometers beneath the English Channel. What would London be like? In Germany she’d wandered into fairy-tale land: Black Forests, Snow Children, eternal winters. Would London be a fairy tale too? All Anouk knew of London was what she’d read in books and seen from the enchanted windows of the fourth floor of Castle Ides, which looked down on Piccadilly Circus. She wondered if the bakeries would rival Paris’s patisseries. If there were wishing fountains down secret alleyways. If there were Saturday bird markets and poets by the riverbanks.

“I don’t suppose we’ll have time for shopping?” Cricket said as though reading her mind. “There’s Debenhams. And Fenwick of Bond Street.”

“Harrods is better,” Hunter Black muttered.

Beau gave the assassin a questioning look in the rearview mirror.

Luc laughed. “Let’s focus on, first, getting into London. Second, hoping Sinjin can turn us human with that amethyst chess piece that Rennar enchanted. Do you have it, Viggo? Good. Third, recovering from the change. And fourth, stopping a coven of evil witches who can wield technology that we can’t.”

This plunged everyone into a thoughtful silence for the remainder of the drive. Night came early in winter, and the roads between the city and the coast were cast in murky darkness. Streetlights lit up orbs of falling snow, but beyond that, the world was black. After some time Beau pulled off the highway at a sign for the Coquelles train terminal and followed the arrows to a nearly empty parking lot. Snow was still coming down heavily. The train station itself had a small lobby, ticket booth, and coffee shop. The station was mostly quiet. According to Cricket’s timetable, they were in the lull between departures. Passengers for the next train to England wouldn’t start to arrive for at least a half an hour.

The seven of them stared through the windshield at the train yard behind the station.

“That’s it?” Beau asked.

Luc pulled out the guidebook he’d taken from Castle Ides. “?‘The Chunnel is thirty kilometers long,’?” he read. “It’ll take us most of the night to walk that far.”

“Longer,” Petra added, “if one of you decides to go chasing another one’s tail instead of following Viggo.”

Viggo dug around in his backpack and proudly held up a fistful of leashes. “Already thought of that.”

Luc eyed the leashes, then sighed and rubbed the bridge of his nose.

“Just try to put one of those things on me,” Cricket said to Viggo.

“It’s that or stuffing you in one of the boxes in the trunk. I don’t have time to go chasing after a white cat.”

She sulked in the front seat. “Fine, but I can’t help it if I claw you to shreds while you’re trying to put it on.”

“Well, you’d do that as a human, too.”

She smirked. “Good point.”

“Okay, look.” Petra, who’d been watching out the side window, pointed to the guard station. “There. Only one guard on duty.” She swallowed a sip of her elixir and began to whisper. “Latinka, latinka . . .”

The guard put down the paperback he was reading, stood, hopped awkwardly from one foot to the other, then ran toward the terminal to what Anouk assumed was a badly needed bathroom. Petra whispered again and, one by one, the floodlights shining on the train yard turned off. With another whisper, all of the CCTV security cameras slowly panned upward, filming only the night sky.

Petra dusted off her hands. “I’m getting good at this witch thing.”

They climbed out of the car and crept from parked car to parked car to the chain-link fence surrounding the train yard. Petra whispered and the lock fell off the gate. She held the gate open and they dashed across the long expanse of rail and gravel until they reached the rear of the station. A single light shone down on an access door.

“Now watch,” Petra said. “I’ll put out that light.” She hunted through her black leather oubliette for whatever life-essence she intended to use. “Merde, where is—”

Her head jerked up at the sound of glass shattering. Hunter Black was no longer in their midst. In just a few seconds, the assassin had crept across the train tracks and thrown a perfectly aimed rock at the light bulb. He was now waiting for them in front of the door.

Petra muttered a curse.

They crossed the train tracks quickly and joined him.

“Okay,” Petra snarled, “but you can’t unlock that door with a rock, can you?” She went to the door and wiggled the deadbolt for proof. Then she made a big show of consuming some aspen leaves from her oubliette and enchanted the deadbolt. When she twisted the knob, the door swung open. She gave Hunter Black a toothy smile.

They passed through the doorway into a dimly lit cinder-block room with nothing but a staircase and a bulletin board filled with train timetables and a pinned note telling someone named Jacques to stop stealing lunches from the break room. Anouk hugged her arms across her jacket. The access rooms were dank, and she didn’t like the odd clicking sounds and smell of standing water. Not all of Paris was glittering lights.

“Down the stairs,” Luc said.

They followed him down three flights of service stairs and through a few more locked doors. It was loud down here. Machinery rumbled in unseen rooms. The trains overhead squealed. At last Luc opened a door marked No Access and they were out of the station. An enormous subterranean tunnel stretched as far as Anouk could see and then disappeared into darkness. Her footsteps echoed. The ground began to tremble. Dust rained down from the pipes overhead and she steadied herself.