Midnight Beauties (Grim Lovelies 2)

Viggo leaped up to pour another cup of tea. Cricket sat up with a jolt, reaching instinctively for the knives she kept tucked in the folds of her clothes. But her hands came up empty. Viggo must have taken the blades. She gave a growl.

Viggo held up the tea.

“Hi, Cricket. Welcome back. You’ll find your knives on that table over there. Forgive me for taking them from you, but you did enough damage to my skin as a cat.”

She looked disoriented until her eyes settled on Anouk and a little of her panic faded. Anouk swallowed a mouthful of pizza, tossed aside the plate, and threw her arms around Cricket.

“It’s okay. We made it.”

“Is this hell?” Cricket was staring at the threadbare taxidermied lion. “We died, didn’t we? This has to be hell.”

“Not quite, but it is a basement.”

Cricket’s gaze caught on a collection of pearl-handled boxes that looked valuable and immensely stealable, and the worry lines around her mouth disappeared. She straightened, her fingers already stretching toward the treasures.

Sinjin went to check on the status of things outside while Anouk explained to Cricket what Viggo had told her. Cricket scarfed down some pizza and then went snooping through the museum’s collection of shiny treasures with a glint in her eye, and then Luc jolted awake, and Hunter Black a few minutes after him; an hour later, Beau started snoring loudly. Anouk couldn’t wait any longer. She poked him in the side until he sputtered awake.

Once they had all eaten and cleared their heads, Sinjin returned. His face was grave.

“You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” Luc said.

“Close enough.” Sinjin jerked his chin toward the ceiling. “It’s gotten worse out there.”

“How could it possibly get worse?”

“You know about the plagues? The black rainbows?

Double moons?”

“We’ve heard the rumors,” Luc said.

Anouk got a sudden shiver. Here in the basement, amid all the artwork and artifacts, at least they were protected. Bolted doors, security systems, locks. She scanned the ceiling, wondering what was happening outside.

“It’s a nightmare out there. Pretties coughing up blood and black smoke and dying in the streets. Car accidents everywhere. Madmen on lawless sprees, driven wild by the double moons. Time slips so big that entire buildings have disappeared into the past.”

“Why would the witches do that?” Luc asked.

“They wouldn’t,” Sinjin said, stroking his hare. “The plagues are as much a problem for the witches as they are for us. They’re an unintended consequence of dabbling in magic they shouldn’t.”

Anouk asked, “Why didn’t anyone try to stop the witches when they first took over?”

His hand went absently to the ruby stud in his left ear. “They did. Prince Maxim fought them, but it was a battle he could never win; the witches were only projections. Kill one, it didn’t matter—?it was only smoke and magic. Lady Imogen knew better. She sent a fleet of lesser Royals to search for their den, the source of their magic. But those Royals disappeared. If they found the den, that knowledge died with them.”

The air conditioning turned on overhead with that whoosh like flapping wings. Prince Maxim and Lady Imogen had been looking for the same thing she was—?the answer to Jak’s riddle. The object that bound the Noirceur.

Her eyes fell to the clock-repair table where she’d drawn Jak’s riddle in the dust, the circle with what might be a nose and mouth but no eyes.

A face with no eyes.

Hesitantly, she stretched her hands out over the drawing. A small thrill ran up her limbs as she realized the shapes on either side of the circle weren’t meant to be sunrays—?they were more like fingers. Ten in all, though the hands lacked arms.

Hands with no arms.

She pressed a palm to her mouth.

“I know it.” She could hardly believe her own words. “I know the answer to Jak’s riddle.”

Chapter 30