A smile flickered at her lips. “And you’re worried for my safety?”
“Hmm.”
She smiled wider at his obvious discomfort. “And you care if I live or die?”
He scowled again. “Don’t mock me.” But then he tipped up his chin. “All things considered, your survival would be . . . preferable to your death.”
“Hunter Black! How sweet.”
He turned and went down the stairs so quickly that for a moment she thought she’d imagined their conversation. Hunter Black, caring about whether they all lived or died? She’d never have believed it. He was right, though—?the beasties were family. The thought made her feel both tender toward and fiercely protective of the others.
She climbed the rest of the stairs to the museum. She ducked and dashed her way up four floors, dodging undead hands, running from hollow undead eyes, and finally reached the roof. She went through the doors and thrust a flashlight through the door handles behind her, barring it against the mummies trying to get through. Moans came from the other side. She was breathing heavily. She dusted bits of desiccated fabric and skin and an errant tooth off her clothes with a shudder.
“Damn it, Sinjin,” she muttered, even though it was bad luck to curse the dead.
The roof of the British Museum was largely taken up by a glass dome. She extended her arms for balance and carefully stepped across the glass tiles toward the cupola. Clouds had moved in, darkening the skies, and the double moons threw strange light over the city. Anouk’s heart drummed wildly. From this high, she could see all of London. The churning waves of the river Thames. Entire buildings flickering in and out of time. A Ferris wheel that rose like the blackened bones of the city. To the right of the Ferris wheel rose a tower with a glowing clock face.
Big Ben.
The clouds hung low around it. Black fog swirled at its base. It was roped off for construction, but in the chaos of the plagues, Pretties staggered straight past the barricades and disappeared into time loops.
She shivered. The wind was savage this high.
A snowflake bit at her face, and she looked up at heavy clouds. Alone on the rooftop, Anouk felt topsy-turvy, as though she were standing on a frozen lake high over the city, and she thought of the Schwarzwald and the Cottage. The snow began to fall more heavily. The wind blew in an odd circle with a whistling sound and then, just as she knew he would, Jak materialized.
He crouched like a gargoyle, perched effortlessly on the glass tiles.
“Jak.” It was darker now, the city skyline lit only by headlights and streetlights. “Take me to Stonehenge.”
The smile he gave her was sweet, not like his usual sharp-toothed grin, and it made him look suddenly like an impish boy who’d only ever wanted someone to play with.
“You figured out my other riddle.” His voice brimmed with cheerfulness, but then he seemed to think of something grave, and he said more seriously, “Do you know what waits for you there?”
She nodded. “I do.”
“You failed once. What makes you think it will be different this time?”
She paused. Heart-pounding feelings of failure flared up again. But courage, she’d decided, was forging ahead when things went wrong, not when they went right. “I’ve been thinking about what Petra said after the trials,” she said carefully. “She said she felt like she never belonged anywhere—?at the Cottage or anywhere else—?but that she’d accepted it. The rest of us were searching for our connection to magic as if we were looking for the place we belonged. But I think that’s why Petra succeeded when we all failed. Because you never find the place where you belong. Duke Karolinge said it himself—?the cruxes are only symbols. There’s nothing inherently magical about, say, leaves or moths. The trick is to accept the hole in yourself. Accept that it will never be filled, not with flowers or herbs or anything. Like Petra accepted herself.”
Jak cocked his head. “So you think you’ve learned the morality of magic? That the Coals will honor you now when they didn’t before? If cruxes don’t matter, will you walk in empty-handed?”
“I didn’t say that cruxes don’t matter. Even symbols have power. I won’t be empty-handed.”
She felt certain this time, but she’d felt certain before. She could fail again, and this time Rennar wouldn’t be there to save her. “I think that sometimes it takes a spectacular failure before you can rise to incredible heights. I think that I’ve never accepted the fact that I’m not like the Pretties out there. That I have a hole in my heart shaped like an owl. That no matter what I do, that hole will never be filled. I’ll never be a Pretty. I’ll never be normal. And that’s okay.”
She reached into her pocket and pulled out one of the long white feathers she’d taken from the museum basement. “This is my crux. I should have known from the start. I was blind to my own soul.”
The glint of mischief returned to his eyes. “Take my hand.”
The wind swirled around her, pushing her toward Jak. This time, there was no magic mirror in her pocket, no Rennar to save her, no Petra and Luc to catch her if she fell.
She stepped onto one of the dome’s glass panels.
And she was falling. Falling. Falling.
But Jak caught her hand, and they were falling together.
* * *