Midnight Beauties (Grim Lovelies 2)

Instead of waiting for the hare to expel the ruby the natural way—?or, as Viggo crassly put it, waiting for it to démouler un cake—?Anouk consulted with Luc and then gathered a concoction of gorse, owl feathers, a snippet of the rabbit’s fur, and a splash of Viggo’s blood. She swallowed it down and, while Cricket held the hare steady, whispered a spell she’d learned at the Cottage, a version of the one Cricket had cast in the museum restaurant, that could temporarily transmute a substance into water. As soon as she finished the whisper, the hare’s golden fur turned translucent. They could see through its skin like peering through glass: its clear heart beating and clear lungs breathing and, in the pit of the hare’s stomach, a red ruby.

Fast as she could, Anouk thrust her hand through the enchanted fur—?her fingers sinking into the watery substance, through fur and skin and stomach lining—?grabbed the ruby stud, and pulled her hand back out. The watery substance molded itself back into place as her spell faded, and within seconds, they were looking at fur again. The hare, unharmed, twitched its nose and leaped out of Cricket’s arms.

“Hey!” Cricket ran after it, but Anouk shook her head.

“Leave it. We don’t need it for anything else. Anyway, it’ll be safer down here than anywhere else in the city.” She held the ruby in her palm and watched its polished facets catch the light.

She peered into the empty rafters. “Where’s Saint? We need him.”

They poked through the back storerooms until Hunter Black found Saint perched on the frame of a Degas painting, a freshly killed mouse in his beak. Cricket and Beau kept their distance but Hunter Black enticed the falcon onto his arm and carried him back to Anouk.

Saint cocked his head. A drop of blood rolled off the point of his beak.

“Easy, fellow. Remember me?” He had a new golden bell dangling from a cord around his neck. She thought briefly of how anguished she’d been when the Duke had taken her magic, how desperately she’d wanted it back. Carefully, Anouk unfastened the bell, pried back one of the metal leaves, and inserted the ruby stud inside. She refastened the bell around Saint’s neck and treated him to a scrap of pepperoni. He hopped onto her arm. “Hunter Black.” She called over the assassin and delicately passed him the bird. “Take him and try not to terrorize each other.

“We need to get to the roof,” she told the others.

“The floors between here and there are still overrun by reanimated corpses,” Beau said.

Anouk turned to Luc. “Do you have any more gorse?”

With a pinch of herbs and a whisper, Anouk enchanted a janitor’s closet door into a portal to the roof. When she twisted the doorknob, mops and buckets had been replaced by the exterior rooftop dome. Frigid air carried in the chaotic sounds of the city. Cars honking. People screaming. Alarms that never ended.

Anouk held the door open for the others. They filed through, but Anouk grabbed Cricket before she crossed the threshold and motioned for her to hang back.

“That ruby has me thinking about jewels,” she said. “How good they are at containing spells. Did you see the exhibit for the Heart of Alexandrite downstairs? It’s the rarest jewel in the world. It had every manner of security guarding it. Bars. Cameras. Alarms. It seems like the perfect vessel to contain the Noirceur.”

Cricket cracked her knuckles. “I’ll just need a few hours and a screwdriver.”

“There’s . . . something else.”

Anouk hesitated, and then discussed the situation with Cricket in a quiet voice. Cricket’s eyes went wide, but she nodded.

They joined the

others on the roof. Beau supported Luc under one arm. Viggo propped open the door with one of the Nutcracker dolls in case they needed to get back into the basement quickly. Anouk walked to the edge of the roof. Beau joined her on one side, Cricket on the other. Hunter Black, with Saint still perched on his wrist, veered dangerously close to the edge, peering down at the tumultuous city with an unreadable expression. Viggo hung back in the warmth of the doorway, blowing into his hands.

“Merde,” Cricket muttered as she gazed over the rooftops. “It’s gotten even worse.”

In just a day, the city had become unrecognizable.

Twin moons shone on roof tiles littered with toads—?some alive, some dead. Wisps of black smoke curled toward the sounds of the city in arcs too perfect to be regular chimney smoke. The time slips had multiplied. Cars drove into them and simply vanished. Pretties running from crazed mobs took wrong turns and disappeared.

Luc, still weak, sank onto an air-conditioning unit.

“What happened?” Beau’s voice was halting. His eyes were wide as he took in the Pretties circling, repeating the same motions again and again.

“The plagues,” Anouk said. “And they’re only going to get worse. I saw it in my vision. The time slips will accelerate until the city is completely consumed by the Noirceur. Once those clock hands reach midnight, it’ll be nothing but smoke.” They looked at the clock face and saw they didn’t have much time.

Anouk motioned Hunter Black and Saint over.

“Go to Castle Ides,” Anouk told the bird. “Fast as you can.”

She nodded a signal. Hunter Black went to the edge and launched the bird off of his wrist. Saint took wing and glided into the air, soaring over rooftops until he’d disappeared into low-lying clouds.

Cricket peered incredulously down at the city. “How long until Saint gets to Paris?”

“He’s fast, even without magic, and he’s strong enough to fly high above the time slips. He’ll make it within the hour,” Hunter Black said.