Grim Lovelies (Grim Lovelies 1)

In the glen, Cricket lifted her knives and started in on another sapling.

Inside, Anouk and Petra found Beau guarding the cellar door, sitting on a stool with the plate of cookies on his lap. Beau still looked grumpy about Anouk’s plan, but at least he was licking crumbs off his fingers while sulking.

“Have they caused any problems?” Anouk said.

“Viggo’s toasted,” he said. “He was singing Céline Dion.”

“Who’s that?”

“You don’t want me to try to sing her stuff. You’ll go deaf.”

They took lanterns and the cookies and went downstairs. Viggo’s singing abruptly stopped. Hunter Black appeared at the window. If he’d had any of the wine, he held it better than Viggo. His eyes found Anouk’s. He was all glares and a charcoal smear of hair. “If you hurt him, I’ll kill you.”

Viggo pushed Hunter Black aside and smooshed his own face against the bars. “Anouksh. Good, you’re back—?hey, are those cookies?”

Petra grudgingly shoved a cookie between the bars.

He wolfed it down and dusted crumbs off his shirt. “Thanks. Anouk, you know, when I knew this charming girl years ago, she went by a very different name. You’re looking good these days, my friend. New haircut? I can’t quite put my finger on it . . .”

Petra smiled tightly. “Don’t be an ass.”

“Can I have another cookie, Petra?”

“Enough cookies,” Anouk interrupted. She held up the bottle of elixir and a single short hair from her pocket. She dropped the hair into the elixir and swirled it gently. “Drink this.”

The smirk disappeared off Viggo’s face. “Is that one of Cricket’s hairs? Is that how this works?” He’d sobered up fast.

“You have to drink every last drop,” Anouk said.

Viggo’s hungry eyes devoured the bottle. Anouk almost felt sorry for him until she remembered his unwanted hands all over Cricket, and then she didn’t feel bad at all.

“You’ll have to unlock the door,” Hunter Black murmured darkly. “That bottle won’t fit through the bars.”

“Not a chance.” With a flourish, Beau produced a curly blue drinking straw. When the others threw him odd looks, he shrugged. “I found it in the kitchen drawer next to birthday candles.”

He stuck the straw in the bottle and Anouk held it close enough for Viggo to reach it.

Viggo grimaced at the taste but kept slurping until he reached the ssss-ssss of an empty glass. He wiped his mouth. “Doesn’t Cricket need to be here?”

“I’m sure she’s falling passionately in love with you as we speak,” Anouk said. “In fact, Beau, will you go get her? She’s in the garden. Careful. Don’t sneak up on her.”

Hunter Black continued to scowl from the shadows’ edge. If he was the wolf, as Cricket suspected, would he be so devoted to one person? Weren’t wolves lone hunters? Or else loyal to a whole pack?

“How long does it take?” Petra’s fingernails drummed on the cookie tray. “Is this an instant thing or should I make tea?”

Foots

teps came from the stairs. The glow of another lamp. Anouk heard Beau’s voice explaining something to Cricket, telling her to wait, that everything would be fine.

At the bottom of the stairs, Cricket wiped sweat off her brow from her fighting practice and threw Viggo a glare. “You’re still alive? That’s a shame.”

Viggo didn’t answer, his eyes glassy but not from the wine.

“Well?” Hunter Black’s arms were folded stiffly. “Go ahead, Cricket. Tell him that you love him. That you’d do anything for him.”

“Ha!” Cricket clapped her hands together. “Exactly how much wine have you had?”

The temperature grew colder, as though the cellar stones were sucking up all the heat. Beau looked uneasily between Cricket and Viggo. But Anouk only waited. She felt Viggo’s eyes shift from Cricket and slide across the room past Petra, past Beau, to stop on her. She shivered. She’d seen that particular glassiness in a person’s eyes. Once, a Goblin girl tasked with delivering charmed necklaces to a jewelry shop had misplaced the package. To punish her, Mada Vittora had enchanted the girl to fall desperately in love with the small yellow postal van that delivered their mail. The Goblin girl was still probably walking up and down the streets of Paris following a hunk of wheeled metal that could never love her back.