Midnight Beauties (Grim Lovelies 2)

“Along with power,” Hunter Black said darkly, “comes more danger.”

“Aaaand there it is.” Beau rolled his eyes. “I was waiting for Hunter Black to say something bleak.” He came up behind Anouk and circled his arms around her waist. He whispered in her ear, “Don’t listen to them. You did what you had to.”

She leaned back into him. “I’m sorry about the wedding, Beau.”

“I’m not.”

She raised her eyebrows in surprise and twisted around to face him.

“To see all those queens kissing your feet? I’d have paid any price for that.” He ran a hand gently through her hair; she’d undone the elaborate chignon. “You know,” he said quietly, “when I turned back in the fountain alleyway on Rue des Amants, there was a second before my memory faded when I was caught somewhere between human and animal. I can’t quite describe it; it was like being in a dream. Like I could sense things I couldn’t when I was human, but I was still human enough to think. And do you know what I thought?”

“What?”

“If I was cursed to spend life as an animal, at least I’d known you.”

She smiled so wide she thought her heart might break.

Cricket started pulling out her knives and arranging them on the billiard table. Then she went around the room plucking various blunt artifacts off the walls and adding them to the pile. Viggo, drink in hand, watched her with a bemused look.

“How exactly are you going to carry all of those weapons?” he said. “Tied to your tail? Hidden in your fur?”

“You’re going to carry them for me.” Her sharp grin bared her teeth. She checked her watch. “We need to leave within the hour. The entrance to the Tunnel sous la Manche is at the Coquelles terminal. It’s a two-hour drive from Paris. We need to arrive when the tunnel shifts change over. With a few tricks, we can get past the guards.”

Beau looked wary until Cricket tossed him a set of keys. “Perk up, Beau. Rennar agreed to lend us his car for the drive.”

His jaw dropped. “The Centenario Roadster?”

“With alligator interior.”

His hands closed around the keys and he pumped his fist in the air.

Anouk shook her head, though she smiled.

“We need to make the potion for the contra-beastie spell,” Luc said. “Petra, what do you need?”

She rattled off a list of herbs and then slid a look to Viggo. “And blood.”

Viggo sighed as he rolled back his sleeve. “Leave me enough so I don’t pass out while I’m dragging these animals from France to England.”

While Luc, Petra, and Viggo worked on the potion, Anouk fought with the billows of her dress. “I’m going to change out of this parachute. I’ll meet you all in the lobby in fifteen minutes.”

She gave Beau a peck on the cheek, kicked off her glass slippers, lifted her skirts to her knees, and made her way to the bedroom she’d been sharing with Beau. She wondered if, assuming they got back from London in one piece, she and Beau would move into a different room. The terms of the marriage allowed her to love someone else, and they didn’t forbid her to share a room with someone else either. Rennar had his own apartments—?a master bedroom fit for, well, a prince. And it wasn’t as though there was any space limitation in Castle Ides. Rennar could take an old broom closet and enchant it into a sprawling master suite for her and Beau. She’d paint the walls a midnight blue with stars on the ceiling. A giant bed big enough for them both to stretch out on and never reach the edges. A whole wall of windows looking out onto the Parisian skyline, and a balcony lined with grimacing gargoyles.

She shuffled into her temporary room and fumbled with the buttons on the dress. She was relieved when she heard Beau’s footsteps behind her. “Would you help me with the buttons?”

She felt his presence at her back along with an odd moment of hesitation. He didn’t touch the buttons. She looked over her shoulder and paled when she saw Rennar standing there.

“Oh! I . . . I just came to change.”

“Do you still want help?”

“Um, sure.” She turned around and lifted her hair for him to unfasten the row of pearl buttons, and then she dragged the heavy dress behind the privacy of a dressing screen. Through the latticework, she could barely make out his shape. She struggled to get the dress over her head.

“You’re leaving.” He said it as a statement, not a question.

“Yes.” They’d already been through this. He knew their plan, uncertain though it was. She bent over, trying to shimmy out of the dress. “The others are waiting for me downstairs. Saint can get through the border spell, so once we’ve left, have Duke Karolinge send him into London. If we have any messages to convey, we’ll send them back through him. I don’t think we’ll be gone longer than a few days. By then, one way or another, this will all have come to an end. We’ll either find a way to defeat the Coven or . . .” She didn’t need to finish the thought.

“Prince Aleksi and I are gathering the senior Royals at midnight to begin drafting the protection spells.”