Midnight Beauties (Grim Lovelies 2)

Strangely, Luc hadn’t said a word. She shot him a worried look. He looked awful. She crouched next to him and asked quietly, “Luc? You okay?”

“Yes, it’s—” His gaze flickered to her eyes briefly, then to Hunter Black’s, and he closed his mouth. “Nothing.”

Jak took a silent step forward and Anouk snapped her head around. “No. He was poisoned. He’s still recovering. A kiss from you would kill him immediately.”

Jak gave Luc a long look, and Anouk got the sense she was missing some understanding between them.

“It’s all right,” Luc said quietly. “I’ll do it.”

Hunter Black barked a quick “No.”

Anouk dug her fingers into Luc’s arm. “Luc, you can’t. You know what a kiss means.”

Beneath her fingers, his skin was burning up. Shouldn’t her antidote have worked by now?

“It’s okay, Dust Bunny.” He clapped his hand over hers. Then he faced Jak. “Freeze the city and when all of this is over, I’ll give you what you want.”

Anouk tried to protest again. Cricket pulled out her knives, hurling threats at Jak and the other cold bodies behind him, but the Snow Children only blinked their black eyes languidly.

Jak pivoted toward Anouk. “We can do as you ask, but only if we are present, which means as long as the snow falls. As soon as your snow spell ends, we vanish, and your city returns to chaos. Do you intend to keep whispering forever?”

Anouk felt a moment of panic. But she wasn’t some maid anymore with minor tricks at her fingertips. She was a witch. The Gargoyle. She swallowed a pinch of snow with downy-soft owl feathers and whispered, “Ombra ja.”

She took an exaggerated, theatrical step forward. A copy of herself, nearly translucent, remained behind. A shadow self. She’d never tried this spell before, and she marveled to see her own ghostly double hanging back. She stopped chanting the snow spell, but her shadow self continued. The snowfall continued too.

“That’s amazing!” Cricket said. “How long will it last?”

“Not long, I’m afraid. Shadow selves are unpredictable. A few hours, maybe. Right now it’s the best I can do. We’ll have to work fast.”

Jak turned to the other Snow Children and spoke a few words in a language she’d never heard. They gathered on the dome, clinging like frost. They needed no life-essence to cast magic; it was easy for creatures made of snow to command ice and frost. The glass beneath their hands began to frost over. The doves that were perched at the edge of the museum froze in place as though they’d been encased in glass; not a single movement of their eyes, not a flutter of their feathers. Anouk ran to the edge of the rooftop. The frost rapidly spread down the sides of the museum, stopping leaves from fluttering, pausing birds in midflight and leaving them fixed in the sky, immobile. The frost spread to the next block, where it froze the churning waves of the Thames, froze the pedestrians and the cars, froze billowing coats and scarves, even froze the flickering gas-lamp flames outside of tourist pubs. There were no more screams, no honking cars, no twisting of metal, no deafening flutter of wings. Only the patter of snow.

Anouk pressed a hand to her chest to feel for the rise and fall of her breath, reassuring herself that she was still able to move. Beau stretched and folded his fingers. Cricket tapped her shoe on the rooftop to hear it echo.

“The whole city’s standing still,” Beau breathed.

Hunter Black pointed grimly to the horizon. “Not all of it.”

The black smoke that clouded at the base of Big Ben was still swirling. The clock hands still ticked, echoing in the quiet city, and the smoke vibrated in time with it.

“We cannot freeze what cannot be frozen,” Jak explained. “That tower is commanded by the Noirceur, and the Noirceur is an oblivion, an emptiness. There is nothing to freeze. The city now belongs

to you and to it.” He jerked his chin toward the tower. Then he flashed Luc a grin. “And soon, you will belong to us. We’ll come to collect.”

Hunter Black darted between them in a flash, his fists raised. The wind blew stronger; the snow was so heavy it was hard to see more than a foot or two in any direction. Hunter Black twisted, hanging close to Luc in case the Snow Children tried to grab him. When the wind finally eased, Jak and the rest of the Snow Children were gone. Hunter Black spun in a tight circle, fists high, ready to fight a foe who’d vanished.

Anouk threw her arms around Luc. “You shouldn’t have made that promise!”

The city was eerily quiet. She could hear Luc’s heartbeat, Cricket’s pacing footsteps, Beau’s anxious hands stretching his leather gloves, Viggo spitting over the roof edge onto the motionless Pretties below.

And then there was an odd crackle in the air. The hair on the back of her neck stood up, like it did when electricity was building before a lightning strike. But the clouds overhead weren’t threatening a storm. The crackling sound thunked and whirred like machinery gearing up, and she peered at the air-conditioning units on the museum roof. A half an inch of frost coated the fan blades. They were as frozen as the mummies that had just moments ago been pressing and moaning against the stairwell door.

Suddenly, the crackling noise came from behind her, and she twisted around. Little sparks erupted in the air around the skylight. The others heard it too. They all gathered close. Cricket drew her knives. Hunter Black balled his fists.

With a blinding flash, a figure appeared on the skylight.

Anouk slapped her hands over her eyes. When the spots cleared from her vision, she saw a girl dressed in an enviable black couture coat and champagne-colored sunglasses, holding a box.

Petra.