Midnight Beauties (Grim Lovelies 2)

Luc winced. “Ah, the paintings really are quite delicate—”

Beau elbowed him quiet.

Sinjin rubbed absently at the line of tattoos spanning the back of his neck. “They were witches, once. Women who, decades ago, were turned away from Oxford University, back when women weren’t allowed to be students. One of them found a reference to the Coal Baths in a book that a Royal had left behind in the university library. She saw it for what it was: a chance to learn more than they ever would at Oxford. She convinced the others to go to the Black Forest. Close to a hundred went; only five survived and came out witches. They named themselves the Coven of Oxford. One of them was Mada White, my mistress. She stole me as a baby and raised me as her own until I turned twenty-five. Then she found a younger boy and kept me on as a spy.”

“You hated her,” Anouk concluded.

His eyes flashed. “I loved her. If she were alive, I’d be at her side. But she’s gone. All of them are. It’s the Noirceur, don’t you get it? They woke up something they couldn’t control. It destroyed all five of them. Women who had shaped the world, gone like that.” His snap echoed. “The Noirceur destroyed the entire Court of Isles too, and King Kaspar.” He pointed in the direction of Big Ben. “Anyone who’s gone up against the Noirceur is now part of it. You aren’t fighting people, you’re fighting that smoke. It can’t be stabbed with knives. It can’t be poisoned. It can’t be bribed or reasoned with—?it doesn’t want anything. It’s simply a force. A void. And it’ll destroy you too.”

Anouk’s heart thundered in her chest. She thought of the glimpses she’d gotten of London, the escalating chaos, the plagues that were getting worse. Most of all, the black smoke that had sunk into the streets, dirtying everything it touched with soot, swarming toward the vibrations of screams.

She stood and paced by the ballet set. “This changes everything. I thought we were up against witches. Women we could bargain with or, if it came down to it, kill. But how do we stop chaos?”

“We round it up,” Luc said. “Jak said the only way to stop it is to transfer it to a new vessel. The first step is to collect every clock in the city.”

“That’s impossible,” Beau argued.

“Not if we had reinforcements,” Luc said. “Not if we had teams in every borough of the city that could use tricks and whispers to gather every clock, street by street.”

“It would take hundreds of magic handlers,” Anouk said. “We would need every Royal in the near realms.”

Luc nodded. “And every Goblin and every witch too.”

“We’d have to break the border spell to get them into London.”

“Exactly, Dust Bunny.”

“I lost my magic—?I can’t do it. And Cricket isn’t powerful enough.”

He sighed. “Well, I didn’t promise a perfect answer. And then there’s the question of what the new vessel would be.”

Anouk’s mind raced. She paced through the artificial snow on the Nutcracker set, thinking. Luc said the vessel needed to be something unique, something secure. The original Royals had placed it in an abstract concept—?time—?before they knew how ubiquitous clocks would become. She tapped her chin. If only she hadn’t failed in the Black Forest. If only she could get a second chance. She knew so many spells, but none of them could help her now.

She gasped softly. “I might know a good vessel—”

But as she turned, Luc cried out. He’d stepped too close to the art locker. Sinjin had reached between the wires and grabbed him, and he now held one of Cricket’s poisoned knives to his neck, the one Cricket had stabbed him with earlier, that Luc had thrown to the floor.

“Sinjin!” Anouk felt the blood drain from her face. “Let him go.”

“Let me go.”

“I’ve got your rabbit. I won’t hesitate to hurt it.”

He shook his head. “You might be partial to things that creep and crawl, but I am not. Go ahead. Kill it.” He pressed the blade to Luc’s neck. “I have to get out of London. That darkness is growing and it’s going to kill us all. Plagues, smoke—?one way or another, anything breathing in this city will be gone soon. I have to get out.”

“Easy, Sinjin.” Anouk held out one hand. She could feel the desperation rolling off him like cold sweat. “Easy . . .”

“I have to get out!” A mad sort of fever overtook him. He jerked the knife. Luc dodged the full impact, but the blade scratched his neck.

“No!” Anouk cried.

Luc staggered away from Sinjin, one hand pressed to the scratch on his neck. A small scratch, barely bleeding. But . . .

“The nightrose poison!” Cricket breathed.

Anouk gave the hare to Viggo and knelt next to Luc. Her hands were shaking. Her lips felt so cold. She tapped her fingers against them, wishing for that fizzy warm spark of magic, but they didn’t warm. Hunter Black, brooding over by the dinosaur fossils, had been so silent that Anouk had almost forgotten he was there. But in a few steps, he threw open the bolt of the locker, grabbed Sinjin by the shoulder, twisted his head, and, with a sickening crack, broke his neck.

“Hunter Black!” she cried.