Midnight Beauties (Grim Lovelies 2)

“The Gargoyle Witch?” asked Hunter Black.

“No, just the Gargoyle.” She hesitated. She wanted to put in words the complicated feelings in her heart: That she didn’t feel like a witch. There was being a witch in the sense that she could handle magic, which was true, but there was also being a witch in the sense of a cadre of ambitious women, hungry for power, ruthless in their means, whose hearts, in many cases, were quite literally made of stone. She was determined never to be like the latter.

“Was ‘the Cabbage’ taken?” Beau asked.

Anouk gave him a shove.

“Don’t forget about an oubliette,” Cricket said. “You need one of those too.”

Anouk picked up the Faustine jacket from where she’d laid it at the foot of Luc’s sarcophagus. She stroked the fabric and felt an answering spark of magic.

“Hunter Black, can you hand me that safety pin?”

He passed it over wordlessly. Anouk pricked her own finger, then ran a line of blood around the rim of the j

acket’s right pocket, then the left, speaking a spell under her breath.

“Mada Anouk,” she whispered.

As soon as the words were spoken, the spots of blood ringing the pockets soaked into the fabric so deeply that they disappeared. Hesitantly, aware of the many sets of eyes on her, Anouk reached a hand into the left pocket. Her arm disappeared up to her armpit.

“What are you going to keep hidden away in there?” Beau asked.

“Herbs. Wands, if I ever find one. Maybe a boyfriend, if he gives me any trouble.”

Beau held up his hands in mock surrender.

Cricket took the jacket and thrust her own hand in the right pocket. She frowned when her fingers came away with nothing more than lint.

“It works only for me.” Anouk took the jacket back and slid it on one arm at a time. It fit her body so perfectly, so right. In a way, that was what it felt like to become a witch—?it was like slipping into a set of clothes that had been tailor-made for her.

She motioned to Sinjin’s body. “We need to find out if he was telling the truth about the Noirceur.” She turned to Luc. “Do you have herbs for astral projection?”

He was too weak to get up, but he gave Anouk directions, and she and Cricket worked to concoct an elixir. At Anouk’s request, Beau and Hunter Black dragged out one of the Monet paintings. Anouk whispered softly and the painted water began to ripple. She grinned. Beau and Luc and Cricket all looked at her oddly; they couldn’t see what she could through the painting. As she continued to whisper, the water stilled like glass, and she could make out the glow of Big Ben’s clock. She blurred her vision so she could see into the projection. She felt herself floating around the outside of the tower. Construction cones and police barricades surrounded the base. She floated past them, soared like a bird to the glowing clock face, and felt herself perching on one of the giant hands. She peered through the number three into the chamber within, and gasped.

It was entirely filled with coal-black smoke. It swirled like a slow-moving tornado trapped in a glass ball. She made out the shape of the bell in the center of the smoke. It was turned upside down like a cauldron. Standing around it were murky shapes, but to call them human would be inaccurate. They swirled with the smoke, more like wisps of ash than people. Perhaps the figures had once had faces, but now their features were merely dips and rises of smoke. Sinjin was right—?the witches’ identities were very nearly gone. The Noirceur had been destroying them at the same time that it had been bringing them great power. Anouk continued to whisper into the painting, changing the angle of her view so that she could peer inside the cauldron. It was filled with smoke so thick it was only blackness. The Nothing. The Chaos.

She whispered again and her projection pulled out of the cauldron, then out of the tower entirely, and then it was all of London she was seeing, sometime in the near future. The city was in complete ruins. Smoke blackened the streets in a deadly fog. The river had overflowed its banks. The ground was littered with bodies of Pretties, blood dripping from their eyes and ears. And then, with a flash, the clock hands met, and with a spectacular crack, Big Ben’s clock face shattered. The clock stopped. A deafening rumble spread through the city as lightning crackled through the unnaturally dark smoke. Bolts came faster and faster until the entire city was on fire. The Pretties were decimated. The streets were fractured, buildings reduced to rubble.

The ultimate plague: the Noirceur let loose on the city.

Anouk pulled out of her vision with a gasp. Beau caught her before she stumbled. She blinked hard, her body twitching, as she slowly took in the familiar surroundings of the basement, reassuring herself that what she had seen was only a vision. The city—?for now—?was still standing. She drew in a ragged breath.

“Is what Sinjin said true?” Hunter Black asked darkly.

“No,” she whispered. “It’s much worse.”

She told them about the destruction of the city, which would happen when the clock hands met unless they found a way to stop it.

Beau gave her a searching look. “What are you thinking, cabbage?”

Anouk dragged a hand through her hair. “I can’t do this on my own, even as a witch. We need reinforcements.”

Her eyes settled on Viggo. Determined, she went to him and took the golden hare he held in his arms by the scruff of its neck.

Chapter 37

Merci à Dieu, Anouk thought, for magic.