Midnight Beauties (Grim Lovelies 2)

She massaged her calves, hoping to revive them. Had Mada Vittora come here? And Mada Zola? She couldn’t imagine either witch ever deigning to toil in such a miserable place.

Jak pointed to the bridge ahead. “This is where I leave you, lovely. For now.”

“For now?”

“I go where the snow goes. You’ll see more of me.”

The blizzard picked up and snow swirled around him. In the darkness she wasn’t able to tell where the storm began and where he ended, and by the time the wind settled, he was gone, leaving Anouk alone on the switchback with Little Beau.

The cold was savage. The dog looked up at her and gave a soft whine.

“I know. I’m almost frozen too.”

They made their way along the narrow steps toward the bridge. With no trees for windbreaks, the storm bit at her cheeks and lips, threatening to blow her off the mountain. Her boot slipped and she only just caught herself on the post of a gas lamp. Snow had collected an inch deep in Little Beau’s fur, making him look more like a polar bear than a dog.

The Cottage loomed as they approached. Gas lamps lit the way to the front door, though the lights were mostly obscured by the storm. Shivering, Anouk hurried across the bridge. She squinted up through the swirling snow at two enormous iron doors. A knocker in the shape of a falcon’s head peered back at her. With one last look at Little Beau, she drew in a deep breath and knocked.

Chapter 6

No one answered.

Anouk hugged herself against the wind. She tugged off her mitten so she could get a better grip on the knocker and pounded again. Her fingers felt like they belonged to a stranger. The skin around her nails was swollen and had a black sheen. Frostbite, she thought. She plunged her hand into her pocket and felt with numb fingers for dried cayenne, the best life-essence for warming spells. Her teeth wouldn’t stop chattering. At her side, Little Beau was so buried under snow that he was nearly indistinguishable from a snowdrift.

She couldn’t find any cayenne. She dragged out instead a wilted stem of mint and a jar of seeds. The wrong kind of life-essence for a warming spell. Frustrated, she chucked them into the snow.

“Let us in!” She pounded on the door. “You have to let us in!”

She paced up and down the front stairs. She leaned over the bridge railing, looking for another entrance, but the ravine plunged on both sides. The only way to reach the abbey was from the bridge. Somehow, she and Little Beau had to get inside. If she froze to death, where would the rest of the beasties be? Trapped forever in animal form. She forced her stiff fingers to hunt through her pockets until she found Rennar’s mirror, and she pulled it out, breathed on it, and cleaned it with her sleeve. In the faint light reflecting off the snow, she could just make out three cages. The cat. The wolf. The mouse. Rennar, that salaud! Why hadn’t he changed L

uc from a mouse as he’d promised? Surely Viggo and the Goblins had moved into their captive luxury at Castle Ides by now.

She shivered, and the mirror slipped from her hand into the snow, landing next to the jar of seeds. Anouk considered her situation. Her options were bleak. She’d sooner kiss a Snow Child than summon Rennar for help. There was no other way into the Cottage except the front door. There was a stained-glass window above it, but it had to be fifteen feet up.

She squinted into the door lock. Cricket had taught her a lock-picking spell, but it was finicky. Without knowing if the door was deadbolted, chain-locked, or barricaded, she might end up casting the wrong spell and seal her own mouth shut instead. Little Beau shook off his pelt of snow and went to the door, whining. He looked plaintively back at Anouk.

“I know. I know.”

She squinted up into the snow. The front of the abbey was made of massive stone bricks worn smooth from wind and rain. She tried to climb them, but her frostbitten fingers slipped right off. Still, that window was her only option.

She dropped to her knees, shoved the mirror back in her pocket, and grabbed the jar holding the seeds. They were flat and brown, each as big as her thumb. Mada Vittora used these seeds when she wanted to summon a vine strong enough to string up a Goblin by the ankles.

Clutching the jar, she crawled to the base of the abbey and dug through the snow until she hit frozen soil. She chipped away at it until her fingernails were torn and bloody and she had a hole just large enough for one of the seeds. She buried it beneath the ground. She placed another on her tongue along with the wilted mint and a few strands of hair from her own scalp. The sweet taste of mint took her back to summertime, to warmth and Luc’s garden, and she swallowed the life-essence with a handful of snow and whispered: “Jermis-s-s . . .”

Her teeth chattered so violently that she couldn’t get the whisper out. She cupped her hands over her lips, puffed warm air into them.

“Jermis!”

A spark of magic flared to life in her throat, spreading a ripple of warmth through her lips. The soil beneath her hands trembled and parted. A sprout rose so fast that Anouk had to jerk back to avoid being smacked in the face by a leaf. The vine rose two feet, then four, then six, and kept going. It was as thick around as her wrist and forked into alternate branches every foot or so, branches that found weaknesses in the grout and fastened themselves on. Anouk grabbed the hairy vine and tugged it as hard as she could to test its strength. It could have been hammered in with nails. It climbed all the way to the roof and might have kept going—?she couldn’t see that far with the snowstorm.

She shrugged off her fur coat and twisted the sleeves into a makeshift sling that she slid around her shoulder. Beneath it she wore the Faustine jacket over a few layers of sweaters. Snow caught in the beautiful colored threads. “Come on, Little Beau. You’ll have to climb on my back.”

It wasn’t easy to get a hundred-pound dog on her back. After some shuffling, she hoisted his wet paws onto her shoulders and secured him there in the sling. His panting was strained. He was shivering uncontrollably.

She began to climb.

It was slow going, but she made it up inch by inch. Before, the only ladder she’d climbed had been the one that led from Mada Vittora’s attic to the rooftop. How long ago had she and Beau climbed to the roof and marveled at the beauty of Paris? The glittering lights of Paris were far away now.

Don’t look down, she told herself. The vine rose straight up the abbey face; if she slipped and the wind caught her, she might fall beyond the bridge into the ravine.