Midnight Beauties (Grim Lovelies 2)

They entered the museum cautiously. The dim security lights were still on but coated in thick slabs of ice that gave the rooms strange shadows. They made their way

down a hallway with bathrooms and then turned the corner into the main section of the museum.

Beau, in front, saw a figure and jumped. “Argh!” Instinctively, he threw a punch. Anouk and the others rushed to his side. There was a mummy there, its hollow mouth open in a silent roar, but it was as frozen as everything else. And now there was a fresh dent in its skull where Beau had hit it.

Beau made a face. “Ew. I think I touched brains.” He wiped his hand on his pants.

There were more mummies behind the one that had startled Beau. One had been frozen as it crawled across the carpet. Another one had been frozen while scratching stumpy fingers against a display case. A third one had been frozen while tangled in a velvet rope.

Petra raised an eyebrow in a silent question. “About these mummies . . .”

“Long story,” Anouk told her.

As they made their way through the museum, Anouk filled Petra in on everything that had happened since they’d arrived in London: Sinjin’s confession, the visit to Stonehenge, her vision of the Noirceur and calling upon the Snow Children to freeze the entire city. They made it to the museum’s entry hall, which was perfectly still. The banner proclaiming the upcoming exhibit was frozen mid-flutter. A moth was suspended over the ticket booth, its wings coated with ice. Anouk and the others were silent, as though a single word might break the spell. Luc, wheezing, leaned heavily on the ticket booth. His eyes were unfocused. But when Anouk gave him a worried look, he wiped the sweat off his brow and stood straighter.

“Ready?” Cricket said, hand on the front door.

“Wait,” Viggo said, fumbling in his pockets. “Let me get my camera.” He dug his phone out while Cricket gave him an impatient look. “It’s not every day I’m part of saving the world.”

Cricket mumbled under her breath and shoved open the door. One by one, they stepped across the threshold into London. Other than the light snowfall commanded by Anouk’s shadow self from its position on the roof, the whole city was encased in an unsettling silence. A teenage Pretty girl was frozen as she ducked to avoid a brick another Pretty had hurled at her. Pigeons were frozen midflight above the corpse of a toad. A car had driven halfway into a time slip and was half gone—?the driver and half of the passenger in the back had vanished; the other half of the passenger was frozen. Overhead, perfectly still clouds hung in front of the twin moons. Other than the falling snow, there wasn’t a hint of movement.

“Follow me,” Viggo said. “We should go along the river. It’s a little out of the way, but we’ll get a close view of Big Ben. Better to see what we’re up against.”

“Lead the way,” Anouk said.

As they headed down Bow Street, Petra explained what had been happening back in Paris. Ever since the beasties had left, Rennar’d had his hands full with the other Royals. The Barren Court and the Minaret Court deeply resented that the Nochte Pax bound them. Rennar, along with Queen Violante and Prince Aleksi, had gotten them in line, although any agreements between them were shaky at best. Anouk found herself dangerously curious about Rennar’s safety. What if the other Royals turned on him?

“All the Royals are on standby,” Petra explained as she stepped on a smooshed toad in the middle of the road and grimaced. “As soon as we open a doorway for them, they’re prepared to enter London and fight the Oxford witches.”

“Yeah,” Beau said, swerving to avoid the toad, “except there aren’t any Oxford witches to fight.”

“Um. What?”

Once Anouk had explained the situation to her, Petra gave a heavy sigh and said, “So how do we fight something that has no physical presence?”

Anouk glanced in the direction of Big Ben, though it wasn’t yet visible over the rooftops. “Leave that to me.”

Petra raised an eyebrow but didn’t question her. They continued to make their way through the silent city, past the Opera House and the Strand junction. The snow was light, melting almost as soon as it landed. Hunter Black seemed particularly troubled by the silent city, his dark eyes darting to every shadow, checking every Pretty they passed for signs of breath. Luc moved slowly too, wincing as though in pain, but whenever Beau offered to help, he shook his head. They reached the walkway that followed the Thames River—?the water frozen in motionless waves—?and then passed Victoria Bridge. Viggo stopped at a police officer, pilfered the woman’s pistol, and tucked it into his own waistband.

Cricket shot him a look. “Are you that stupid?”

“It’s not like she’s using it.”

“You can’t use it either. Guns have moving parts. It’ll be frozen like everything else.” She sighed and handed over one of her sheathed knives. “Take this.”

He slid it into his back pocket with an easy grace, looking as though that was what he’d been planning all along. How some Pretty boys got away with such unearned self-assuredness, Anouk would never know.

They passed another bridge and Anouk stopped in the middle of the street. Ahead, through a gap in two Parliament buildings, she could make out the tower of Big Ben. With the two moons hidden now behind clouds, the illuminated clock face glowed bigger and brighter than anything else on the skyline. The pair of elegant clock hands kept moving, unaffected by the Snow Children’s spell. Smoke clumped thickly around the tower as though the entire structure were encased within a thunderstorm, with tendrils of smoke reaching out into the street, settling low over the river, and extending toward the Parliament buildings and a nearby department store, Pickwick and Rue’s, that had banners out front announcing its recent grand opening. Once the snow fell into the smoke, it disappeared.

Petra slid up her sunglasses. “That’s the Noirceur?”

Anouk nodded. The pit of her stomach turned colder just looking at it. The dark ancient magic that conjured that smoke wasn’t so different from the Dark Thing inside her.

Beau rested a hand on her shoulder. “We should keep moving.”

They plunged back into the thick of the city, away from the river, passing government buildings until they reached Piccadilly Circus. An enormous open square, it was normally a boisterous tangle of tourists, vendors, honking cars, and pigeons going after crumbs, just as busy at night as it was during the day. Even now, lights were on in all the shops and restaurants, car headlights blazed, and Pretties congregated in the square, but nothing so much as quivered, all of it encased in ice.

Anouk knew Omen House immediately. It was identical to Castle Ides, down to the brick. The same exterior gate and sign for a private club—?written in English here, naturally—?the same porte-cochère in front that Beau had pulled Mada Vittora’s town car up to countless times in Paris, even the same marble busts on the front lawn, though instead of Prince Rennar, these portrayed a young couple Anouk recognized from portraits as the missing Prince Maxim and Lady Imogen.