“Anouk, wait!”

The cold enveloped her like a shadow, but she barely felt it. Luc was here. He’d fix all of this. She’d soon see him again, those warm brown eyes, that easy grin that said their problems were only hiccups and scrapes. This? he would say. The Royals after us and time running out? This is nothing.

She ran into the Skull Crypt, where Tenpenny and Cricket were waiting. She clutched the bag close. Beau and December ran up behind her.

“Anouk,” Beau whispered insistently.

She waved him away without glancing at him and turned to Cricket. “Where are Viggo and Hunter Black?”

“I couldn’t find them.” Cricket raised an eyebrow at the smeared pink lipstick on Beau’s mouth. “I see where you’ve been, Beau.”

Beau swore mildly under his breath and scrubbed at his face with his shirttails, glancing anxiously at Anouk.

Tenpenny snatched up the oubliette. “I’ll take that.” He laid it on the sarcophagus with a flourish and rolled up his sleeves for dramatic effect. “Now. There is fine skill involved in breaking into a witch’s oubliette. Each one is locked with a particular spell that can be opened only by the witch who whispered it. Of course, we Goblins are excellent at lock-picking.”

Anouk glanced at Beau out of the corner of her eye. His arms were crossed tightly over his chest, and she couldn’t read the look on his face; anxiousness, certainly, and almost a bit of dread, but she couldn’t be sure how much of it was because she’d caught him with December or how much of it was due to the potion they’d drunk. They were mostly dead, after all.

“Watch this.” Tenpenny shook out a few wriggling worms from a jar, slurped them down, and polished them off with a mug of beer. After a belch, he waggled his fingers over the oubliette.

“Changa, changa, a forma verum et abria.” The burlap fabric started to glisten as it transformed from rough fibers to silk. Anouk caught glimpses of the other bags it had been—?ostrich leather, the Hermès gold buckles—?but it continued to morph until it settled on a well-worn leather sack with primitive stitching.

“The oubliette in its true, original form,” Tenpenny said in a stage whisper, and then he flicked off a piece of worm he’d spat out. “Ugly, isn’t it? Fashion has improved dramatically in the past four hundred years.”

“Just open it!” Cricket cried.

Tenpenny upended the leather sack. All manner of things tumbled out onto the floor: Glass jars packed full with herbs. Old books with titles in a language Anouk had never seen. Oddly shaped wood carvings. And a parrot who squawked and flew away. December chased after it.

“Hey, that’s mine!” Cricket cried, grabbing a well-worn book. “The book about the girl on the magic train! I thought Mada Vittora burned it.” She hugged the book to her chest, grumbling curses about lying witches.

Tenpenny shook the sack once more, and it grew and expanded, and then something enormous tumbled out of it, something with arms and legs that somersaulted over the dusty floor and landed against the tomb with a painful-sounding crack.

“Luc!”

He looked awful. Grime coated his scalp and shoulders. The white gardener’s uniform he usually wore was stained with dirt and long-dried blood. His brown-black skin was more sallow than she’d ever seen it. He didn’t sit up.

Anouk shoved past Tenpenny and knelt by Luc’s side, touching his shoulder.

“Are you all right?”

His eyelids fluttered and he muttered something unintelligible, but he didn’t wake. She shook him. This was wrong. He was supposed to grin at her and

wink and say everything would be all right.

“He’s been in there a long time,” Tenpenny explained. “Cramped space, you know. Not much to eat. I’m surprised he didn’t gobble down that parrot.”

“Shouldn’t he have turned back into an animal?” Cricket asked. “Midnight came and he didn’t drink the potion.”

“Ah, but time doesn’t exist the same way in the oubliette as it does here. He’s been in a state of suspended timelessness.”

Anouk glanced at Beau. He was chewing hard on his lip. Sweat had broken out on his temples. He didn’t say anything. Was this still about the kiss?

“Beau, you don’t look very surprised,” Anouk said. Come to think of it, he’d been fiercely protective of the oubliette ever since they’d fled the townhouse. She narrowed her eyes, but then Luc suddenly coughed back to life and she turned to him and touched his face.

“You’re okay!” she cried.

“Anouk?” Luc’s voice was rusty. He licked some moisture into his dry lips. “Where . . .” His eyes were dazed. “You’re out of the townhouse. How . . .” He started coughing again. Anouk helped him stand. He was so thin, a boy made of sticks. He had spent almost two weeks trapped in whatever strange world lay within the oubliette’s walls.

“I’m so sorry we didn’t get you out earlier. We didn’t know where you were.”

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