Midnight Beauties (Grim Lovelies 2)

She narrowed her eyes. “You have two minutes before I slam this door.”

“They closed the city,” he said in a rush. “The Coven of Oxford. The same witches who evicted your Goblin friends. They put up border spells to prevent any living magical thing from passing into or out of London.”

“You seem to have made it out in one piece.”

He barked a laugh before the look in his eyes turned nasty. “Two pieces, as a matter of fact. They cast the spell as I was crossing into the elevator portal. Have you ever seen a person cut down the middle? I can’t say I’ve quite experienced such pain. It wasn’t easy to put myself back together again.” He touched that odd sheen running down his neck again.

She stared at him in disbelief. “They cut you in half?”

He dismissed that with a flick of his fingers. “The important thing is, most of me ended up on the right side of the elevator, back in Paris. But the things I saw, Anouk. Surely you’ve noticed the increase in technology over the past few weeks. The city is crawling with it. Every Pretty in Paris has his head bowed over some new device and another one beeping in his pocket.”

Anouk looked back at their Goblin audience fogging up the window. Little Beau had joined them, his wet nose against the glass. For weeks she’d been sitting at that window, watching for a break in the crows. She’d heard the usual dinging of bicycle bells and scuffing of shoes through autumn leaves, but more and more often, she’d also heard the chatter of mobile-phone conversations. Podcasts. Teenagers tapping away on tablets. The whir of the drones that photographers used to capture the city from above.

“I suppose so, yes. Mobile phones, that kind of thing?”

“Oh, far more than that. The witches have unleashed technologies that the Haute agreed should remain undiscovered. Advanced cloning. Macro-robotics. Time relativity. That’s just to name a few. Magic and technology do not mix well, as I’m sure you know. The Coven witches knew this too. They anticipated that a sharp spike in technology would throw the magic in London into chaos and that they could use the distraction to steal power from the Court of Isles. But they haven’t been able to reel back in the chaos they unleashed. Playing with relativity has splintered pockets of the city into time loops. Cloned toads are raining from the sky. Advanced optics caused a glitch that created two moons. All the coal waste from the robotics industry is making black rainbows.”

She could only stare at him. Black rainbows? Double moons?

“I watched British Pretties step into a time loop and never come out again,” he added quietly, his eyes flashing. “Entire families choked by black smoke. Schoolchildren driven mad by the two moons. I’m not the only one torn apart by what the witches are doing; I’m just the only one able to put myself back together again.”

Anouk thought of a fairy tale that Luc had told her, “White to Red.” Once, in a kingdom by salt-encrusted cliffs called the White Coast, there was a string of prosperous cities that traded with one another in a spirit of innovation and equity. A handsome king ruled the northernmost cit

y, Kosu. One day a sea witch emerged from the waves and fell in love with him, but when he told her his heart belonged to another, the witch cursed his city with a plague. The rulers of the other cities on the White Coast, fearing her wrath, did nothing to help, and everyone in Kosu fell ill and died. But then the illness spread to all of the cities. One by one they fell, and for centuries the kingdom was known as the Red Coast. Hundreds of years later, children’s rhymes still held warnings:

Cities falling one by one

White to Red

White to Red

A coughing girl, a bleeding son

Love the witch or you’ll be dead.

That was why Rennar had come to her door. London had fallen, and they didn’t have the luxury of watching the tragedy from a distance. Tragedy, like evil, had a way of spreading.

“Do you understand?” Rennar asked.

“We’ve scrambled for our lives,” she said softly. “Now we have to scramble for our world.”

He nodded gravely. “I can’t defeat the Coven of Oxford on my own. Neither can you.” An almost regretful look wavered in his eyes. “Wearing the crown means making difficult decisions. Knowing when to hold on to power and when to give it up. I’m tired, Anouk. Tired of these silent wars over magic. Tired of feuds with witches and the other Courts. It’s time for all that to end. For too long, power has been in the wrong hands. We want the same thing now, you and I. It will be a scramble for both of us.”

She blinked in surprise. Tired of ruling?

She’d never much wondered what life was like for someone like him, someone with all the world’s power at his fingertips. He might have been alive for centuries, but now he was only a young man alone on her doorstep without any shoes on, asking for help, admitting that his power was unearned, that it belonged in the hands of the Goblins, the beasties, even the Pretties.

She leaned against the railing, wondering whether or not to believe him. She could think of worse things than a prince needing her help. To be honest, she would enjoy watching him beg.

Chapter 3

Anouk tilted her chin high. “Do you mean that? That power should change hands and you’ll do what you must to make that happen?”

“I swear it,” Rennar said.

She raised an eyebrow. She wasn’t foolish enough to believe that a Royal would willingly give up power, but she would play along if it freed her from the townhouse. “I can’t help you like this. Trapped here, starving to death.”

“Shall I summon you a feast?”