Midnight Beauties (Grim Lovelies 2)

Petra peered down and let out a groan. She swallowed a pinch of her lavender ash and, faster than Anouk could track, leaped over the railing.

“Petra, wait, no!” Anouk squeezed her eyes shut.

Petra was four stories up. No Pretty could jump from that distance and survive. But Petra wasn’t a Pretty anymore.

Hesitantly, Anouk opened one eye.

Petra plunged four stories down and landed primly on a table full of chocolate truffles. The truffles were ruined, but Petra was in one piece. She stood up, dusted chocolate off her boots, and stretched her neck.

“Did you just . . . did you fly?” Anouk shook her head—?after everything she’d seen, sometimes the Haute could still surprise her.

“More like graceful falling.” Petra leaped off the truffle table and swallowed more ash.

Anouk looked back up to the fifth floor. “Beau,” she whispered.

She raced through the Accessories department until she reached the stairs. Her breath came ragged as she climbed from the third floor to the fourth, then started up to the fifth. A few steps from the top, a dark shape came hurtling through the air in her direction. Saint! What was the falcon doing here? His eyes were piercingly black. He was aiming straight for her. She barely had time to wonder why the falcon wasn’t with Duke Karolinge before it slammed into her.

“Saint, stop!”

She shielded her face from his talons. His wings pummeled the air. He let out a sharp cry as he aimed for her eyes. She stumbled back until her hips hit the railing. She couldn’t retreat any farther.

“Saint, no!”

She tried to reach into her pocket for another owl feather, but the falcon’s talons sliced at her wrist. Had Duke Karolinge commanded Saint to attack her? Why? Something was rattling around in the falcon’s bell—?something bigger than a brass ball. She caught a glimpse of something glass.

“Oh no.” Hunter Black must have slipped the third of his glass buttons into the bird’s bell, possessing him just like he had with December. If she couldn’t reach her oubliette pockets, she couldn’t swallow life-essence and stop him. His talons kept tearing at her wrists. She pushed away, shielding herself, but the bird came at her harder. He was going to slice her apart. She had to think . . .

On an impulse, she stopped pushing the bird away. Maybe it was crazy, but she grabbed a fistful of his feathers and pulled him closer. She hugged the bird so hard against her chest that she pinned his wings and talons. For a second, she was safe. She could think. Her mind raced. Struggling to hold the bird tightly, she leaned over the railing. Below, Cricket and Petra were on opposite sides of December, casting out whispers. Petra was subject to the vitae echo, but Cricket wasn’t, so theoretically she could kill the Goblin. But it was clear that, like with Hunter Black, they didn’t want to hurt someone who wasn’t in possession of her own body.

Footsteps sounded across the atrium and one floor up. The ground suddenly rumbled like an enormous truck had driven by. Shards of frost broke off the ceiling and rained down. Anouk’s head whipped around. Hunter Black wasn’t the most skilled with magic, but somehow, he’d managed to cast a spell to separate the top of the staircase from the upper floor. A ten-foot-wide chasm now blocked her access to the top level.

If she moved her hands even an inch to get her crux, Saint would get free and claw out her eyes—?but without life-essence, how could she span the chasm to stop Hunter Black?

A nauseating idea came to her.

Tenpenny had bitten off his own pet rat’s head and drunk the blood to save them from the Marble Ladies. She couldn’t bring herself to bite anything’s head off, even to save Beau, but maybe she could handle something slightly less grisly.

“I’m sorry, Saint.”

She forced herself to grab the bird by the throat. Mada Vittora had been fond of baked-crow cassoulet, so it wasn’t the first time Anouk had slaughtered a bird, but it never got easier. She gritted her teeth and twisted the bird’s head until she heard a crack. It ripped something in her heart too, but she forced herself to ignore her feelings. Saint, dead, fell heavily to the stairs. Wisps of feathers floated in the air, wrenched out from when she’d twisted his neck. The stairs were slick with her blood, dripping from where his talons had sliced her.

The worse part was, she wasn’t done.

The vitae echo kept magic in check because handlers couldn’t take an entire life—?that much life-essence would double back and kill the handler too. But Anouk wasn’t subject to the vitae echo. She grimaced as she crouched on the stairs, working fast. She pulled a knife and a bottle from her oubliette pockets and made quick work of draining Saint’s blood.

In a few seconds she’d gagged down half of the bird’s still-warm blood. She could feel it spreading through her body, giving her power. She had an idea for how to get around Hunter Black’s chasm. Petra hadn’t exactly flown, but then again, wasn’t gravity just another fairy tale?

“Volart kael.”

She climbed over the stair railing and, sucking in a breath, jumped. She didn’t think. Fear shot through her heart but . . . she didn’t fall. She hovered four stories up. She was floating toward the fifth story like a leaf caught in an updraft. Her feet kicked at air. She felt that awful terrifying moment of having nothing beneath her and she knew that she should be plunging down four stories—?but she wasn’t. She reached out her hands like a trapeze artist and grabbed hold of the fifth-floor balcony.

“Aha!”

The rail was solid beneath her palms. She was so shocked that it worked that she nearly let go, but the spell was fading and gravity was quickly rushing back. She scrambled to climb up and over the railing into the shoe department.

It was a wreck. Shoes were scattered all over the floor, tables were overturned, and shoeboxes were stacked into makeshift barricades. At the end of the department, by the domed window,

Beau sat immobile in the armchair.