Her lips parted. His words were a distant buzz in her ears. She remained fixed on the spot. Mada Vittora was face-down. Anouk couldn’t see the lips that had smiled at her so sweetly. The hands that put ribbons in her hair.

She sank to the carpet. “We can’t leave her. She made us. Luc would say—”

“He would say that we were slaves, Anouk.” His hard-edged voice came from the closet, along with the sound of boxes being torn open, coats being pulled from their hangers. “And now we’re not, and our pelts are our own again, and we’re getting the hell out of here.”

She lowered her hand to her mistress’s silken hair and petted it gently. So soft. So pretty. She smelled of rosewater—?she must have whispered a love spell on someone that day. Why hadn’t she done a foresight trick? If she had, would she have seen her own death? Would she be here now, kissing Anouk’s cheek, telling her the house looked so clean and tidy?

“Anouk.”

Beau was shaking her. She realized she was cradling her mistress’s body to her chest, blood soaking through her clothes to her skin. She blinked, still feeling as though time were permanently broken along with the clocks.

Beau shook her again. He had changed clothes and washed his face—?how much time had passed?

“Anouk, find her oubliette. And get clothes and any money you have.”

Money? Bills and coins? That was something she had only read about. Her shaking hand went to Luc’s franc on the gold chain tucked under her dress collar.

The last time Anouk had seen Luc, he’d been working on the coins in the attic—?she hadn’t bothered to ask him then what they were for. She’d been desperate, distracted; a few days before, she’d lain down on the Mada’s bed after a grueling polish of the windows and accidentally fallen asleep. A Goblin named Crumpet had seen her and threatened to tell the Mada unless Anouk stole the witch’s good champagne—?the Armand de Brignac!—?but she couldn’t possibly steal from her mistress. Luc had stopped her frantic pacing. What’s the Goblin’s name? he had asked, and she’d told him about Crumpet. I’ll fix it, Luc had said. Easy. And sure enough, the next day, a gift basket of macaroons showed up at the front door, addressed to Anouk, with an apology from Crumpet.

How had Luc managed it?

“Merde,” Beau cursed. “There’s no time. We’ll have to come back for the oubliette.”

He had an old burlap sack by his side stuffed with something thick and pungent, like fur coats. He shook her again. This time, his voice was more direct, his tone lighter in a forced way. “Listen, everything will be all right. We have to go. We aren’t abandoning her. Viggo will find her here and do what needs to be done. I know she meant a lot to you. And she loved you, that I’m sure of. The rest of us could go to hell, but you were her special one.”

Anouk stroked the silken hair once more. A week ago, a Goblin blackmailing her over a nap had seemed like the end of her world. But this . . . this wasn’t scrapes and bruises, a ruined soufflé or a torn hem in need of mending. There was no mending this.

Then Beau’s hands were on her shoulders, lifting her to her feet. And then she was stumbling down the stairs, and they were running through the entry hall and . . .

He threw open the door and dashed into the night.

She stopped at the threshold.

She’d never set a toe beyond this point in her entire human life. Twelve months and ten days. One year of cleaning and cooking. One year of all the beauty of being human, of happy memories and teasing and Luc and Beau and licking icing out of the bowl. Had she been alive before that? Yes, in a murky, frightening kind of way, but that life was nothing; it was animal, it was instinct, it was just survival.

The cold place. The dark thing.

Her life now—?the bright human one, the only one that mattered—?had always been within these walls.

She took a dee

p breath, stepped across the threshold, pulling herself away from the only home she had ever known, and reached for Beau’s waiting hand.

Chapter 6

She was outside.

Really outside, not just on a rooftop or standing in the mansion’s courtyard. Outside, in the night air, with moonlight on her face and the sidewalk underfoot and a woman in a fur coat across the street staring at her bloodstained apron. Beau was at the rear of the Rolls-Royce, throwing his weight against the bag of pelts—?their pelts—?to stuff it inside the trunk, and there was that sad little tree no one but Luc ever watered, and Luc’s tin watering can forgotten beside it. She stumbled into the street and a cab shot by, swerving with a squeal of brakes, the driver yelling something she didn’t understand, and then a boy on a bicycle flew past her from the other direction, veering sharply so as not to hit her.

She closed her eyes.

Shut out the cars, the lights, the sights of the city. Thought about Mada Vittora’s long fingers tying prim knots in her oxford shoes while teaching her a rhyme about rabbits.

“Anouk!” Beau called.

Her eyes snapped open. He was holding the passenger door for her. Her hand went to the gold chain around her neck, to Luc’s coin. Hot tears finally rushed at her eyes, tears that, once they started, she couldn’t stop.

Beau wrapped a gentle arm around her waist. His voice was softer. “Anouk, we have to go.” He steered her toward the car with urgency.

Tags: Megan Shepherd Grim Lovelies Fantasy
Source: readsnovelonline.net