Grim Lovelies

by Megan Shepherd

  The sound of approaching footsteps came from down the hall.

  “Merde,” Beau cursed. “The other Royals are coming.”

  It was too late to run for the elevator, so Anouk and Beau started to hustle the other way but stopped when a voice called out: “Wait! It’s us!”

  They turned as Cricket and Hunter Black came around the corner with Viggo hobbling between them.

  The five of them clasped hands, delighted at their small reunion, but then they heard more footsteps. The smile fell off Cricket’s face.

  “About two dozen duchesses are right behind us,” she said.

  “Let’s not make it easy for them.” Anouk raised the broom. She remembered how, in the salon, Hunter Black had used the broken shards of the teapot to deflect Countess Quine’s magic. And there were a lot of glass cases. She swung the broom against the nearest case.

  “Smashy!” Cricket said. “I love it!”

  She leaned hard on a case until it toppled over. Anouk slammed the broomstick into another case and then started on another as a fleet of Royals rounded the corner.

  “Right,” Beau said. “Time to go, cabbage!”

  Anouk pulled the beastie spell from the broomstick’s handle, put it in her pocket, and then tossed the broom aside. They ran. Anouk could hear the shushing sounds of whispers behind them, but she didn’t dare glance back. The clinking of broken glass meant the duchesses were close. They charged through the maze of hallways. Rain pelted the windows. Crows flapped their wings just beyond the glass, cawing and screeching.

  “Which way?” Anouk cried.

  Cricket held up her forearm as they ran, consulting the map, trying to figure out the calculations based on the shifting rooms. “Left. No, right!”

  They skittered around a corner, dragging Viggo with them as fast as they could.

  “There,” Anouk cried in relief. “The elevator’s just ahead!”

  But she heard the start of a whisper behind her. Not just any whisper, but one she recognized. One to shut doors—​permanently. And ahead, the wide-open doors of the elevator gave a sudden shudder and began to close. No. Her muscles burned. Her face felt hot. She ran as fast as she could, Cricket on her heels, Beau and Hunter Black practically carrying Viggo between them, but it was too late. The doors were closing.

  Nearly shut.

  They wouldn’t reach it in time.

  “No!”

  Then a shadow moved in the elevator. Someone was there. Inside. She couldn’t see who—​but whoever it was, that person was their last chance.

  “Hold the elevator!” she cried.

  The doors continued to close. All that remained was four inches.

  Three.

  Two.

  “Please! Hold the elevator!”

  At the last possible second, a hand shot into the narrow space between the doors. A hand with black fingernail polish and a tattoo of a broken heart on the back. A bell dinged. The elevator doors paused. Then, slowly, they began to open again.

  It was the Goblin, Tenpenny, his rat still on his shoulder. He grinned at them with his maniacal smile, but then his eyes shifted to the army of Royals pursuing them and he frowned. Anouk crashed against the half-opened elevator doors and shoved her way between them enough to slip in. Cricket pushed the doors open wide enough for Hunter Black and Beau to help Viggo hobble inside.

  “Close it, close it!” Cricket yelled once they were all on board.

  Anouk threw herself against the buttons, pounding on anything that would ding or light up, but the doors didn’t close. No lights came on. She felt panic clawing beneath her skin. The Royals were almost on them. Close enough that she could see the smeared blue powder on Countess Quine’s scowling lips.

  Tenpenny inserted his master key in the controls. “Going down, I assume?”

  “Yes! Dieu, yes!”

  He twisted the key and at last the doors began to close.

  Chapter 29

  Six Hours of Enchantment Remain

  Anouk slumped against the closed doors, her flushed face reflected in endless succession in the mirrored walls. She’d never been so thankful for a brief moment of peace. The elevator descended slowly, rumbling beneath her. Beau rested his head against the mirror, face tipped toward the lights that illuminated the bruise across his face, which was turning a nasty shade of plum.

  “Look, man,” Viggo said to the Goblin. “I know you wanted us to go to your party and all, but—”

  Tenpenny grabbed Viggo by the collar and jerked him downward until they were eye to eye. “Look, boy. You can’t possibly be stupid enough to think this is about a party. I wouldn’t risk incurring the ire of the Royals so that you could cut a rug.” He released Viggo’s crumpled collar before smoothing a hand over his own blue cravat. “We’ve had our bright little eyes on you, beasties. Wondering, like everyone else in the Haute, if you’re as powerful as the rumors say.”

  Bright little eyes . . .

  Anouk gasped as she remembered where she’d seen him before, though his hair had been covering the tips of his ears. “You were the waiter at the café in Saint-Désirat. You’ve been following us!”

  “Naturally.” Tenpenny replaced the golden key in his left breast pocket, then sorted through his dozen or so other pocket-watch chains, muttering to himself, until he found the one he was looking for. It connected to a monocle, which he cleaned with his cravat and held to his eye. The swipe of gold eyeliner on his upper lid glittered beneath the magnification. “We had to be certain of two things. First, that you could indeed do magic. Second, that you weren’t a puppet of the Royals.”

  “We’re nobody’s puppets,” Cricket asserted. “And the Royals can va se faire foutre.”

  Tenpenny turned his monocle on Cricket and inspected her from head to toe. “What positively foul words from such a beautiful mouth. I’m of a mind to fall in love with you, my dear.” He put away the monocle and consulted the elevator’s floor dial. Its brass arrow dropped to the fifth floor. “Time is short. As soon as we disembark, the elevator will return to the penthouse to collect the Royals. We have only a few minutes’ head start on them. I can get you to safety, but there is a cost for my assistance.”

  The elevator dial’s arm dropped to the fourth floor. Then the third. The more distance between them and the Royals, the more Anouk felt the tightness in her chest ease, but they were far from being out of harm’s way yet.

  “We’ll pay whatever it takes,” she said, “if you can keep us human.”

  Tenpenny stroked the pet rat perched on his shoulder, considering this. “I have a few ideas. None of them pretty, mind you, none of them guaranteed. But there’s a chance.”

  “We only have until midnight.”

  “Oh, then it’ll certainly not be pretty.” He waggled a finger at them. “Listen closely, my beastie friends. For the past three years, the five grandest witches of Britain have been clearing London of Goblins. They call themselves the Coven of Oxford. Chasing us out or slaughtering us—​they don’t care. A few months ago they succeeded in ridding the city of the last of us, and we came here to Paris in exile. We need you to help us retake our city.”

  The elevator reached the bottom floor with a sudden lurch. Anouk’s heart leaped; she grabbed a brass sconce to steady herself.

  “Well, beasties? Do we have a deal?”

  Ding.

  Anouk, thinking of the vicious Marble Ladies, sputtered out, desperately, “Yes.”

  Tenpenny danced eagerly from one foot to the other. The pet rat mirrored him, scampering from one of his shoulders to the other. The doors opened to the foyer, and Anouk took everything in: The gleaming white walls. The ivory desk. The wall of glass with the single turnstile. And the Marble Ladies. Not immobile now.

  Four alabaster faces turned like clockwork when the elevator rumbled open. All too fast, they came striding toward the elevator, arms raised, stone hands reaching.

  “They’re coming!” Anouk cried.

  The Marble Lady in the fr
ont slammed one stone hand against the doorjamb, holding the elevator open. Another behind her swiveled her head toward Anouk. Her features remained motionless, but her hands curled into fists. Anouk shrieked and scrambled as far back into the elevator as she could.

  “Tenpenny!”

  The Goblin unlatched his pet rat’s collar and held the creature up so they were nose to nose. With a great sigh, he said, “I’m sorry, old friend, but we both knew it would come to this.”

  Just as Anouk was about to yell again for him to do something, the rat made a heart-wrenching final squeak and Tenpenny bit its head off. A revolting crunch as the spine snapped. Someone—​one of the boys—​screamed. Blood sprayed from the rat’s neck, decorating the elevator’s mirrored walls with garlands of red. Anouk couldn’t get away in time. Blood speckled her apron. A vile-tasting bubble pushed up her throat as she pressed a hand to her mouth, staggering backward into the corner of the elevator. Viggo tried to go to her, but a Marble Lady grabbed him by the back of his shirt. Hunter Black hurled himself against her arm, but he might as well have been fighting iron bars. The Marble Lady didn’t flinch.

  Tenpenny spat the rat head on the gleaming floor and then tipped the little furry body over and gurgled down its blood.

  “Transfixa petrifie,” he whispered. “Transfixa . . .”

  The third Marble Lady stepped into the elevator. Cricket dodged her just as the lady’s fist smashed into the mirror, sending broken bits of glass raining down. It happened so fast that Anouk wasn’t sure if she’d been cut or not. All she could feel was shockingly solid fingers clamp down on the back of her skull, gripping her painfully by the hair.

  The Marble Lady had her.

  It’s too late, Anouk thought.

  But then Tenpenny dabbed blood from the corner of his mouth with a handkerchief and pronounced the final word of the whisper.

  “. . . Petrifie.”

  The Marble Lady clutching Anouk’s hair froze.

  All four of the Marble Ladies were as still as the statues they should have been. Except, of course, that Anouk had never heard of statues that were posed for a fight with clenched fists. She winced; even frozen, the statue’s fingers coiled painfully around her ponytail. She disentangled herself with care, tugging the last few strands out by force, and rubbed her stinging scalp.

  The other beasties looked equally stunned and equally spattered with blood.

  It was perfectly quiet in the foyer, with the Marble Ladies suspended in time like a drawing in a book, never to break their poses, until Anouk exclaimed to Tenpenny, “You killed your rat!”

  “Yes, my dear, that’s what Goblins do.”

  Beau started for the exit, but Tenpenny tsked. “Not so fast. It’s raining.”

  “So?” Beau said.

  “These boots are suede!” The Goblin poked at a collection of black umbrellas in a stand by the door until he found the one he was looking for and pointed the end toward Beau. “Now, dear boy, we make our escape.”

  Beau rolled his eyes as he shouldered open the door. The rain was coming down in sheets against the pavement. It seemed impossibly dark—​too dark. The streetlights are all out, Anouk thought, until she heard a sharp caw.

  “Crows,” Beau said.

  There were hundreds of them. On each awning. On every branch. Perched so thick on the streetlights that they blocked the light.

  “Never mind them,” Tenpenny said. “Hop on, beasties!”

  Five motorcycles stood in the driveway. Four were manned by Goblin drivers in rain slickers and galoshes, each clutching a large black umbrella identical to Tenpenny’s. Tenpenny mounted the fifth motorcycle, not letting go of his umbrella, and revved the engine with one hand.

  Anouk gasped. “Wait, we forgot about the oubliette! We left it in the car . . . our pelts . . .”

  The driveway was empty; no sign of the Rolls-Royce. Anouk’s thoughts were a storm. Who had the pelts? What if they were destroyed? How could they uphold the spell without them?

  “No, we didn’t.” Beau ducked through the rain toward the bust of Prince Rennar and rummaged through the bushes until he extracted a few objects.

  “The oubliette,” Anouk cried. “And my jacket!”

  Beau grinned. “I’d never let that bag fall into the wrong hands. I stashed it in the bushes as soon as we arrived.”

  Anouk pressed the Faustine jacket to her face. A ticking sound came from somewhere, and she rooted through the pockets until she found the black-cat clock. Her stomach dropped as she saw the time. Five hours until midnight.

  As though he sensed time slipping away too, Tenpenny called through the rain, “Quickly now, beasties.”

  Cricket leaned toward Anouk. “Are we seriously trusting Goblins?”

  “Do we have a choice?”

  “Maybe not,” Hunter Black growled, “but I’m driving.” He jerked his thumb at a driver, indicating that the Goblin should scoot to the passenger’s place, and climbed in front.

  Cricket threw her hands up, exasperated. “I’ll take Blondie.” She climbed on behind a Goblin girl with long blond pigtails who flashed her a golden-toothed smile. Beau and Anouk helped Viggo climb onto the third motorcycle behind a boy with spiky green hair, and Beau joined a driver wearing a top hat.

  “Now you, dearie. Hold on tight.” Tenpenny patted the empty place behind him. Anouk hiked up the torn hems of her maid’s costume to climb on. What exactly was she supposed to hold on to? This was even more terrifying than riding in a car for the first time. She gripped a metal bar behind the seat, searching for a place to rest her feet, when suddenly Tenpenny peeled out and she shrieked, nearly tumbling off.

  “I said hold on,” he called back to her.

  The tires squealed in the rain and threw up sheets of water behind them. She wrapped her arms around his middle. This was not like flying. This felt more like dying. Tenpenny accelerated down Boulevard Saint-Germain at breakneck speed, still clasping the umbrella in one hand. She dared a look behind her: five motorcycles in all—​and four umbrellas; Hunter Black scoffed at the idea of rain protection—​roaring through the stormy streets of Paris. Crows took off from every street lamp as they passed, causing each light to glow brightly, illuminating their path as though to say, Here they are, Rennar, they’re right here! The din of wings was deafening, louder even than the peals of thunder and the honks of cars as the line of motorcycles weaved through traffic. Ahead, two delivery trucks drove impossibly close together, but Tenpenny revved the engine and aimed for the narrow space between. Anouk shut her eyes. Then instantly changed her mind and opened them. The weaving motion made her even queasier when she wasn’t watching the road. She squeezed Tenpenny tighter.

  “Where are you taking us?” she shouted into his ear.

  “Where the crows can’t follow!” He cackled.

  She pressed her forehead into his back. His suit had threads of metallic gold woven in it, and she thought of her hastily sewn maid’s uniform, practically in tatters now. Large patches of skin on her back and shoulder were visible through the seams, barely held together by garden wire. She thought briefly of Petra giving her the wire. And Mada Zola. She had thought she could be happy at the Château des Mille Fleurs. What a fool she’d been. Beau and Cricket had warned her, and yet once more she had fallen for a witch’s promises.

  Never again, she vowed.

  Petra, at least, had helped them. Because of her, Rennar had decided to keep them alive. She felt a stab of affection for the witch’s girl. It couldn’t have been easy to go behind her mistress’s back to share information with Rennar. Did Zola know of what she’d done? Had Petra been punished?

  She looked over her shoulder again. Cricket was holding the umbrella for her Goblin driver, who was using her free hand to take a swig of something from a flask. Hunter Black brought up the tail end, weaving through the traffic just as skillfully as the Goblins. Beau caught her eye and shook his head as though to say, What in the world are we doing? Riding on the back of motorcycles,
teamed up with Viggo and Hunter Black—​and Goblins!—​with only hours left before their spell wore off.

  Rain streaked down his hair, matting it to his face, and he looked scared—​terrified—​but, even more than that, determined. They were in a serious mess, yes. It was doubtful they could trust the Goblins, true. But they were alive. They’d escaped Castle Ides, eluded the most powerful members of the Haute, and they were still human. They could still feel rain on their faces, could still yell overhead at the crows, “Go se faire foutre.”

  It wasn’t over yet.

  And then, suddenly, she was falling forward. She gasped and clung hard to Tenpenny. The world had gone darker. The rain abruptly stopped. She was bouncing wildly, her teeth chattering in her head. Thunk-thunk-thunk-thunk-thunk. It took her a second to realize that they had plunged down the stairs into a Métro station. People shrieked and jumped out of the way as the procession of motorcycles jostled down the steep stairs. Signs flashed by her. Belvédère station. At last they reached the platform and she no longer felt like her teeth were being jostled loose, but then more screams rang out as Tenpenny roared straight through the crowd of passengers awaiting the next train. The platform ended ahead in tiled wall.

  Where were they going to go?

  A second before they would have crashed spectacularly into the tile wall, Tenpenny jerked the bike to the left and jumped it straight off the platform and into the Métro tunnel. Bum-bum-bum-bum-bum​—the bars of the Métro track beneath them. If the motorcycle had a headlight, Tenpenny didn’t turn it on, and they plunged into pure blackness. A rumble from somewhere deep. The whine of the other engines behind them. She tightened her hold, biting her lip. And then, at last, she saw a light up ahead. She could see graffiti covering the walls, names and phrases: Bye-bye, Paris. L’amour est mort.

  The light grew brighter. She had to shade her eyes.

  Something big rumbled and squealed. Something headed for them.