Midnight Beauties

by Megan Shepherd

  Anouk didn’t know what kind of gem or jewel could smell like that, but it couldn’t be good. She could feel magic spreading through the room, warm bilious clouds of the reeking smell floating toward the vents. Something groaned high up in the upper floors of the museum, as though the entire building were waking from a long slumber.

  “Don’t follow me,” Sinjin warned. “They aren’t human anymore—​and they haven’t eaten in a thousand years.”

  He ran out the door before anyone could stop him.

  Chapter 31

  “They?” Beau asked. “Who are they?”

  Everyone’s head tilted upward as the building groaned again. A fine dust rained down. There was the sound of stone scraping. Luc consulted the map. “That sound’s coming from the Egyptian Wing.”

  Jak, reclining in the throne, clapped his hands together in delight. “Ah! Frankincense. It has the ability to hold necromancy spells, but I haven’t seen it used in centuries.”

  Anouk whirled to face him. “Sinjin woke the dead?”

  “He didn’t, but the spell stored within the frankincense did, yes.”

  Cricket, in shock, stopped whispering again. The last flakes fluttered to the ground. A second before they landed, Jak turned to Anouk with a flash of urgency in his eyes.

  “It’s snowing in Wiltshire, lovely.”

  Then he was gone.

  The fallen snow blanketed the Nutcracker set as though a ballet production had just ended and janitors would soon come sweep it away. But it was real snow, not cotton, and it melted into a puddle that soaked the presents and other props.

  She turned to Beau. “What’s in Wiltshire?”

  Beau shrugged, and before she could puzzle out the meaning of Jak’s final words, another one of Cricket’s blades whizzed just over Anouk’s head. She ducked. The blade sank into the leather of Viggo’s jacket sleeve. He let out a wail. “You stabbed me!”

  “Cricket, be careful!” Anouk cried.

  “I was aiming for the rabbit! I just woke up in a sarcophagus and now there are dead Egyptian kings after us. Sorry if my aim is off!”

  “It’s fine.” Viggo staggered backward and collapsed on the ottoman. “I deserve it. I deserve this and more. Impale me again, Cricket!”

  Anouk grabbed him by his jacket collar, looked at the wound, rolled her eyes, and tossed the knife to the floor. “It barely scratched you. You’ll live. Now knock it off!”

  Viggo whimpered, cradling his bleeding arm.

  She sighed, knelt in front of him, took his face in her hands, and said kindly, “You can help us, Viggo. You’re a witch’s boy too. You must know something. That ruby earring—​what was it? One of the jewels that can store magic?”

  He blinked fiercely. “The ruby. Yes, it’s enchanted. Gems like that are extremely rare. Londoner witches particularly favor gems. Rubies are for . . . merde, I forget. Oh! Safe passage!” He seemed very pleased with himself.

  “Why would a rabbit need safe passage?” Anouk asked.

  “The ruby isn’t for the rabbit.” Viggo was so excited by the fact that he had valuable information that he had temporarily forgotten about the bleeding scratch on his arm. “It’s an old Goblin trick. They’ve been known to feed their pet rats talismans that they want to hide. They get the talisman back eventually. You know.” He raised his eyebrows suggestively.

  Cricket made a face.

  “When it craps it out,” Viggo finished.

  “Yes, we all got it without you having to explain,” Anouk said dryly.

  “Anyway,” Viggo continued. “The rubies work only for witches. He must be safeguarding them for the Coven.”

  “Then we can’t let the witches get them.” Anouk started after the hare, but Cricket grabbed her sleeve.

  “We need to stop Sinjin first, before he goes to Big Ben to warn them!” She tugged Anouk in the direction of the loading-dock door, and Anouk dug in her heels.

  Luc shoved between them. “Listen, we’ll split up. Beau, Hunter Black, you two go after Sinjin. Cricket, Anouk, catch the hare. I’ll stay here and stitch up Viggo.”

  Beau’s eyes lit up with an idea. “Hunter Black, remember how we stopped that Pretty who tried to steal the Benz on the trip to Lisbon?”

  Hunter Black’s mouth drew back in a grim smile. “Let’s go.”

  The two of them disappeared in the same direction as Sinjin. Cricket prodded Anouk’s shoulder and handed her a bag of eucalyptus. “Take this.”

  Anouk bristled. “I can’t use it. I lost my magic, remember?” It pained her to put it into words.

  “Just hold it for me, okay? In case I lose my supply. Grab some of those white feathers too.”

  Anouk shrugged off her jacket and hung it on the back of the throne for safekeeping, then followed Cricket as she weaved around the crates that formed a maze through the basement. It had only been a few hours since they’d woken up in the sarcophagi, and her limbs still felt stiff. The pizza was a lump of grease in her stomach. They darted past workrooms filled with specimens and half-constructed exhibits. They peered in boxes of dinosaur bones and checked behind ancient tapestries brought to the basement for cleaning. There was no sign of the hare. Cricket ran past a roped-off staircase, but Anouk grabbed her sleeve.

  “Wait!” Anouk picked up a clump of fur that was stuck in a crack in the stairs. It shimmered with golden strands. “The rabbit must have gone up the stairs.”

  “Good thing you have a knack for spotting dust.”

  “Thanks. I think.”

  They climbed over the velvet rope and up the stairs, then through a door that opened into the museum’s main entry. The overhead lights were off, and with the eternal night outside, not much light came through the glazed windows. A round ticket counter sat in the center, flanked by two curving staircases. An enormous banner hung from the ceiling and proclaimed: Special Exhibit Coming Soon: The Original Nutcracker Set Comes to London! Anouk grabbed a pamphlet that included a map.

  Something creaked in another room.

  “That was too loud to be a hare,” Anouk said darkly.

  Cricket grimaced. “The dead?”

  “I don’t want to find out.” Anouk bolted the basement door behind them, and they ran in the opposite direction, past a giant stone head and into the Early Greece wing. Shards of pottery and replicas of mosaic artwork were encased in glass displays, forming a maze that they navigated as fast as they could, searching under exhibits for the rabbit. They checked the World of Alexander, the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus, the Nereid Monument.

  Another creak came from an adjacent room; it was followed by a scrape of stone, then a dry, hollow moan.

  Cricket shuddered. “Let’s head upstairs. Hurry.”

  They carefully checked around corners until they found a staircase and made their way to the second floor. Here were artifacts from Iran and ancient Mesopotamia, Anatolian and Assyrian tablets and pottery. A hum of magic emanated from some of the objects. Cricket eyed a carved bowl covetously, her long fingers twitching, but then something else caught her eye.

  “Over there!”

  She pointed to the entrance to an exhibit on the Heart of Alexandrite, a forty-five-carat color-changing gemstone rumored to be the most valuable jewel in the world. Anouk looked just in time to see a flash of gold fur. They chased the hare into the special-­collections room, where the walls were painted in all the hues that alexandrite could take on: purple, blue, yellow, green, pink. Heavy iron bars surrounded the glittering jewel. Security cameras pointed at it from every direction. They darted between informative panels after the hare.

  “Rapi blok,” Cricket whispered.

  The hare leaped into the next exhibit, the history of illuminated manuscripts, before her trapping spell could grab it. Cricket and Anouk raced to the end of the darkened room and then froze.

  A few steps ahead of them, a shadow stretched across the floor in the light of the moon. It moved haltingly, dragging its feet like the flesh had long ago worn off the bones. The s
mell of decay was thick in the air. The figure loomed in the doorway. Anouk held in a scream. Desiccated flesh. Rotted brown teeth. Tatters of fabric and a bead necklace tangled in exposed ribs. Anouk felt another scream building in her throat.

  Cricket shoved her hand against Anouk’s mouth to keep her quiet.

  “Come on,” Cricket whispered. She yanked Anouk toward the Mesopotamian exhibits. They ran through the displays of Assyrian tablets but stopped short when another figure lunged in the darkness ahead. Cricket pressed a hand to her nose against the stink of rot and sulfur.

  “It’s another one,” Anouk whispered.

  “Damn Sinjin.” Cricket shuddered. “How many mummified bodies does this museum have?”

  Anouk fumbled to read the pamphlet in the faint light. “Counting the ones on display and the ones in storage . . . one hundred and twenty.” She looked up from the pamphlet, feeling sick. “And one mummified bird and one mummified cat.”

  “Oh, great. Our distant cousins. Well, let’s not join them in the afterlife.”

  They ran into the next room and hid behind the curtains of a tall window, trying not to make a sound. Cricket swallowed a few eucalyptus leaves and whispered a spell to make them as unnoticeable as possible. Anouk’s heart drummed in her chest.

  Cricket adjusted something in her pocket—​one of the carved bowls from the Assyrian exhibit, Anouk saw.

  “You stole that,” Anouk whispered.

  Cricket shoved the bowl farther down in her pocket. “Forget it.”

  Anouk gave her a suspicious look. Cricket took pride in her thievery, but why risk it now?“What do you want with some bowl? And the parchments from the basement? It’s just old junk.”

  “Shh!” Cricket nodded toward the sounds of more footsteps, and Anouk shut her mouth reluctantly. Cricket had been snooping through the artifacts at Castle Ides back in Paris too. What was Cricket looking for? After the siege of the Château des Mille Fleurs, Cricket had talked about tearing down the Haute, throwing the whole system into chaos so that the four orders might start afresh, with Royals and witches and Goblins and beasties on a more even playing field. Maybe that’s why she’d been snooping around Castle Ides—​maybe she intended to whisper a spell on Rennar’s shoes so that he’d slip on the stairs and break his neck. Anouk had to admit she’d had similar thoughts. That arrogant look in his eye. His insistence that there would come a time when she’d beg him to kiss her.

  She realized she was toying with her wedding ring again.

  Anouk shifted so that she could look out the window. Nightmare was the word Sinjin had used, and he was right. She could barely make sense of what she was seeing. Fallen toads and the bodies of cats and dogs that had choked to death from the black smoke curling out of sewer grates littered the streets. Traffic was a mess; cars were bumper-to-bumper, blocking the roads. The convenience store on the corner kept flickering in and out of reality, trapped in a time loop. The Noirceur had driven the whole city mad.

  Hunter Black and Beau were out there in the chaos.

  Cricket tapped her shoulder and whispered, “Um, Anouk?”

  Anouk thought she saw Sinjin’s white coat below and she pushed the curtain back farther—​but no, it was just a Pretty running in terror. “Yes?”

  Cricket ripped the curtain from her hands. “Run!”

  Chapter 32

  A dozen dead were coming for them. The pale light of the double moons shone on their hollow eye sockets, rotted teeth, and desiccated fabric.

  Anouk screamed before she could stop herself. The dead roused themselves at the sound. They lurched in her direction with snapping jaws and outstretched fingers. Their steps grew more certain. They began to move faster.

  “They’re remembering how to run,” Cricket moaned.

  Cricket and Anouk took off. The pamphlet’s map was useless—​Anouk’s vision had gone blurry from terror. Cricket grabbed her hand and they tore past exhibits of Iron Age tools and Celtic jewelry, a twenty-foot-high statue of the Buddha and tiny jade figurines. They ran over benches and under velvet ropes. It seemed that around every corner, they could hear the dragging of desiccated feet on museum tile.

  “I’m going to kill Sinjin!” Cricket yelled as they sprinted toward signs for the museum restaurant. “I’m going to kill him, bring him back with his own necromancy crystals, and then kill him all over again!”

  They reached the restaurant and threw open the glass doors. Anouk grabbed a tablecloth and used it to tie the door handles together to buy them a few extra minutes. They ran between the tables, knocking over glassware in their haste.

  “Hey, wait!” Anouk grabbed Cricket a second before she darted into the kitchen. “Look!”

  The golden hare was just on the other side of the glass wall that separated the restaurant from the rest of the museum. Its nose was twitching and its eyes rolled anxiously, as though it could sense the unholy magic that had taken hold of the museum.

  “We can’t go out there,” Cricket said. “We’d have to go back through the restaurant doors. There are dead people out there wanting to eat us!”

  “We don’t need doors. You can cast magic, Cricket!”

  Anouk plucked a fistful of petals from a wilting arrangement of spider mums, pulled out one of the long white owl feathers, and shoved all of it over to Cricket. Cricket grabbed the supplies and swallowed them whole.

  “What do I say? I mostly only know cutting and stealing spells.”

  “Try Ax aguis.”

  “Ax aguis,” Cricket repeated in a whisper in the direction of the glass wall. The right intonation didn’t come naturally to her, but she’d been practicing diligently, and it sounded correct to Anouk’s ears. The spell was one to make the nature of glass waver briefly—​

  “Now! Grab the hare,” Anouk said breathlessly.

  Cricket looked hesitant but thrust her hands toward the glass wall, giving a yelp of surprise when her hands passed through it like water. She swiped at the hare. It lunged away and hopped toward the curving stairs to the ground floor.

  “Merde! So close!”

  Behind them the restaurant doors shook violently. Anouk whirled around. Rotted bodies pressed against the glass doors three and four rows deep. The tablecloth wasn’t going to hold for long.

  “Quick,” Anouk said. “Let’s go through the glass.”

  Cricket grimaced. “What if my spell doesn’t last? We’ll be sliced in two.”

  “We don’t have a choice . . . sorry about this!”

  She shoved Cricket. Cricket tumbled through the wall as easily as her hands had gone through it, and then Anouk thrust herself through after. She patted her head and chest and hips to reassure herself that she was whole. A crash came from inside the restaurant as dozens of the dead stumbled in through the doors. They picked themselves back up with alarming speed.

  “Down the stairs!” Anouk cried. “Hurry!”

  She and Cricket scrambled toward the staircase. Anouk caught a flash of golden fur again—​the hare. It was scampering down the stairs, as anxious to get away from the dead horde as they were. Did she have time to catch it? The dead were already sprinting through the enchanted glass wall behind them. The spell ended abruptly and the glass returned to glass, trapping half the horde in the restaurant, but two dozen were still headed for them.

  Cricket threw a leg over the banister. Anouk got the idea and did the same on the other side. They slid on their stomachs down the banisters, rushing so fast that Anouk squeezed her eyes shut. But that was even scarier, so she opened them again as she hurtled toward the ground floor. She passed the hare, still hopping down the stairs. The end of the banister came all too fast and her shoulder and then her bottom connected hard with the tiles. She winced.

  The hare hopped down the last step. Anouk lunged for it on her hands and knees, gasping when her hands closed around its foot. But it kicked hard and slipped from her grasp. It hopped toward the main entrance, which someone—​Sinjin or Beau or Hunter Black—​had left aja
r. It hopped straight out of the museum.

  “No!”

  “That rabbit has the right idea, if you ask me.” Cricket grabbed Anouk’s arm and dragged her to her feet. The dead were almost at the bottom of the stairs. “We’re getting out of here!”

  “We can’t! It’s a mess out there!”

  “It’s a mess in here.”

  They dashed across the cavernous entryway. The moans and shuffling feet of the horde echoed from the high ceilings. The Nutcracker banner rippled in the breeze from the slightly open door. Cricket threw the door wide open and they shot out into the city, then heaved their weight against the heavy door to close it.

  Cricket ran, dodging a police officer on a motorcycle weaving in and out of stopped traffic. Horns blared wildly. Screams and sobbing filled the city.

  Dizzy, Anouk looked up at the double moons. The shift in gravity had caused waves to rise on the normally placid river Thames. It looked like a churning ocean, splashing over the banks, pulling in Pretties and drowning their screams. Across the street a fight erupted between two well-dressed women; they clawed at each other, drawing blood, driven mad. Something hurtled out of the sky and slammed into a boy running away from the two women: a toad. He fell to the ground, smacking his head.

  “Cricket, get out of the street!” she yelled.

  If they didn’t stop this plague, Paris was next.

  Cities falling one by one, White to Red, White to Red . . .

  Anouk started to run after Cricket but a flash of gold caught her attention. The golden hare was at the crosswalk on the corner. Its attention was fixed on the lettuce in a half-eaten hamburger by a trashcan.

  A man with blood pouring from his ears started toward Cricket. Her blades appeared in her hands, flashing in the moonlight. Anouk tiptoed closer to the hare until she was right behind it, partially hidden by the trashcan. She held her breath.

  A car’s horn blared. Brakes squealed. A woman screamed and a man cried out—​he’d been hit. There was a terrible smash of metal, followed by a long string of cursing.