A train.
“You’re going to kill us!”
Tenpenny’s only answer was to rev the engine. He leaned forward, driving even faster. The incoming train let out a prolonged honk. A warning. The light was growing even brighter. She felt a scream hurtling up her throat as the train grew closer and closer, almost on them, and then, a moment before impact . . .
Darkness again.
Tenpenny had turned down a side tunnel at the last second. She glanced back, saw the glint of four other motorcycles with relief. They’d all made it. The tunnel wasn’t like the greasy-smelling Métro line. There were no lights, which wasn’t a problem for the Goblins, who could see in the dark. But she couldn’t. She felt rough walls pressing in. A low ceiling. It smelled of stale air and ancient stone. Water trickled from somewhere. The old aqueduct might be nearby. Or, at the least, sewage pipes. A faint light shone at the far end of the tunnel, a warm, flickering orange like fire. As they neared she could make out that the tunnels were of hewn limestone, briny with lichen, twigs and trash pushed to the sides—and bones. She’d never seen a human bone before, but there was no mistaking the length of those femurs, the curve of a cracked skull. They were in the catacombs.
The tunnel spat them out into a large chamber that was lit only by a roaring bonfire. She’d thought the catacombs were all twisting narrow mazes with low ceilings, but this was cavernous. How could such a large space exist beneath the city?
Tenpenny parked next to a structure that, on further inspection, appeared to be an abandoned Métro train. Someone had spray-painted THE BLACK DEATH on it, and the windows had been pushed out to make a bar filled with bottles of colorful liquids; music with a thumping bass pumped out of speakers where the engine had been. Dozens of Goblins were gathered around, most holding teacups, and at the sound of the motorcycles, more poured out of smaller tunnels and tombs and crypts into the cavern.
Tenpenny dismounted with a flourish. “Welcome, dearies, to the Catacomb Club. Let’s get some lights in here for our guests!”
Torches appeared and lit up the cavern. The Goblins crowded around. She felt swept up in a twister of bright colors, bowler hats, glittering makeup, and clinking teacups. The music blasted over the chatter of excited voices. On every wall was graffiti, but not like in the Métro tunnels. This was beautiful but strange: Grinning bared teeth. Sea-monster tentacles. Patterns of neon spider webs. Anatomical hearts.
The Goblins swarmed her. She heard Cricket yell a warning, but the crowd didn’t stop until they had dragged the five of them off the backs of the motorcycles and to the raging bonfire in front of the Black Death railcar. Anouk fought and twisted against the many hands holding her, but the Goblins threw out whispers that made her fingers just slip off them. Their whispers were different than the witches’, not softly murmured but almost spat out. And then more arms were lifting her until she’d been dragged to the top of the Métro car onto a sort of makeshift stage. Cricket and Beau and Viggo and Hunter Black were dragged up beside her. From here she could see the entire cavern of the Catacomb Club. Art deco lanterns had been stolen from abandoned Métro stations to decorate various smaller crypts, and they came on one by one, the light glistening off skulls that lined the ceiling like grinning macabre molding. Someone had made a throne out of bones.
Tenpenny jumped up beside them, grinning proudly. He still had traces of rat blood on his cravat.
“Goblins in exile,” he said. “I promised you a means to return to London. These beasties have agreed to undertake a task against impossible odds. A risk of the deadliest proportions. A quest of untold dangers!”
Beau leaned toward Anouk. “Um, what exactly did we agree to?”
Standing unsteadily on top of the abandoned railcar, she felt tipsy. Hundreds of Goblin faces peered up at her with wide grins and hopeful eyes and slightly pointed ears. Their makeup made them look like people you’d turn away from on a dark street, but they weren’t vicious. Goblins loved little pranks and fabulous clothing; these were the lowest of the Haute, magical only in the most basic ways, just magical enough to do the dirty work for witches. She thought of the Goblin girl whom Mada Vittora had made fall in love with a mail truck. These weren’t their enemies, she knew.
That was a start, at least.
“Now,” Tenpenny said, patting her on the back. “I believe there was talk of a party.” Someone cranked up the music. The whole train car started vibrating to the beat beneath her feet.
“About this dangerous quest . . .” Anouk started.
“Yes, yes, we’re grateful for your selfless sacrifice, all of you, but first let us celebrate. London shall soon be once more the heart and home of the Goblins!”
He shoved Anouk, then Cricket, and then the rest of them off the stage and into the throngs of exuberant Goblin revelers.
Chapter 30
One Hour of Enchantment Remains
Anouk tumbled off the railcar straight into the waiting hands of dozens of Goblins. Hands pressed against her back, holding her up and passing her along through the crowd. Gaudy faces grinned at her. Rats squeaked. The music roared even louder.
“Put me down!” she cried, but they only bobbed her higher. She managed to lift her head enough to see Beau being hoisted onto a heavyset Goblin’s shoulders. She tried to call out to him, but he was being carried in the opposite direction. She couldn’t see Cricket or Hunter Black or Viggo, but judging from the curses and screams coming from the crowd, they were as tangled as she was. For the length of a few throbbing songs, Anouk let herself be carried around the eager crowd, gradually passed farther and farther from the Black Death, until the Goblins lost interest in her and she managed to fight her way to the ground. She dropped down, hid in the midst of dancing boots and stomping feet, and climbed over random bones until she was able to crawl out from the partying mass and into sweet freedom at the edge of the cavern. She collapsed against an empty copper kettle, gulping fresh air.
“Tenpenny!” she called angrily, catching sight of him.
He was standing next to an odd assortment of animal cages made from wired-together rib bones, sipping a cup of tea, tapping his foot to the music. She stormed over, shaking out the dust from her clothes.
“Listen, I don’t know what promise you think we made, but there won’t be any dangerous quests if midnight comes and we turn back into animals.”
He consulted his pocket watch casually. “You worry too much, dearie.”
She felt the push of frustrated tears at the corners of her eyes, and she kicked at a skull. What on earth had made her think she could put her trust in Goblins?
Tenpenny bent to inspect the nearest cage, which was full of rats. “What a lovely coat on that one. Though I’ve always been partial to white.”
She spun on him angrily. “Stop picking out a new pet and help us!”
“But I require another rat.”
“So you can bite its head off too?”
“No, dearie. So you can.”
This shut her up. He returned to inspecting the rats and at last settled on a small black one that he fed a piece of cheese and then set on his shoulder. “I haven’t forgotten my promise. I told you I would help, and, if you’d stop screeching in my ear, that is what I will attempt to do. Now, pick two more rats and follow me.”
She looked around for the others. Beau was still being carted around on someone’s shoulders, and there was no sign of the others in the crowd. She reached toward a rat, but paused. She thought of the small mouse pelt they’d taken from Mada Vittora’s closet.
“Do we have to use rats? It’s a little, um, personal.”
Tenpenny drummed his fingers on the rib-bone bars. “Do you feel a kinship with roaches? No? Good. Come on. We can find some privacy in the Skull Crypt.” He grabbed a jar of cockroaches and thrust it in her hands.
She followed him down a small side tunnel and into an old crypt with a limestone sarcophagus on top of which was someone’s half-finished dinner. Tenpenny swept the plates t
o the ground and started humming as he set down the jar of cockroaches and several messy-looking containers that reeked of rotten, dead things. In the distance, she could still hear the whir of the party.
She took a step back and tripped over a dry, brittle skull. “We’re really running out of time,” she pointed out.
“You can’t rush magic. We’re already working outside the rules as it is. You know about the vitae echo, yes? Magic Is Life; Life Is Magic, and so forth and so on. The witches in their grand estates prefer to take life from flowers and butterflies and rosebuds. Hmph. You’ll find none of those pretty things in the dank holes they’ve relegated us to. Worms, slime, rats. Those are our ingredients.”
Anouk made a face.
“Don’t recoil so, my dear! There is nobility in the rat. Beauty in the moth. Though the rest of the world might not respect the dark creatures of the night, within these catacombs they are prized. Each rat cherished . . . until its death. And if we must sacrifice our crawly friends, we pour out a cup of tea in the deepest tunnel and say prayers for them.”
“And you can keep us human with slime?”
“Absolutely. Doubtlessly.” He bit his lip. “Maybe.”
She dug the beastie spell out of her pocket and fanned the dust from the sarcophagus before laying the paper down reverently and smoothing out the wrinkles. “I hope you’re right. We risked a lot to get this spell.”
He cocked his head curiously, stroking the rat on his shoulder, then pushed the spell back her way. “Ah, perhaps you misunderstand. Such a complex spell is beyond Goblin capabilities.”
Alarm bells went off in her head. “But you said you’d help us!”
“And I shall. I cannot cast the beastie spell, but one thing we Goblins excel at is working around the rules.”
She sighed in frustration as he started pulling down jars and old tea tins from among the bones, humming to himself as he poured it all into a porcelain teakettle.
She turned away while he worked, watching the party, trying to spot the others. Beneath their makeup, the Goblins looked worn and tired. Some had mascara-streaked faces. Almost all had thin, malnourished arms.
It wasn’t anything like the beautiful world of the Haute that the portraits showed, mischievous Goblins peeking around corners. Goblins hadn’t fallen to the bottom of the Haute by chance; it was a system designed to make them powerless.
“Almost ready, dearie,” Tenpenny called. “Fetch the others.”
She made her way back into the heart of the revelry, searching the made-up faces for her friends. She found Beau assessing stores of insects and bitter herbs next to the blond-haired Goblin girl with gold teeth. Cricket was inside the Black Death with two Goblins who were showing her the art of summoning tricks with hand gestures. Hunter Black was in a small crypt, sharpening a bone into a weapon. And Viggo—
“There you are, my love, my soul, my heart.” He pushed through the crowd and smacked into her hard enough to make her shoulder sting. His face was wan and lovesick. She led them all to the Skull Crypt, where Tenpenny was mixing together the final ingredients with a curved rib bone. He gave the concoction a sniff and tossed the bone aside.
“Now then, beastie friends. This won’t cure you, but it will do the next best thing.”
“What’s that?” Beau asked suspiciously.
“Kill you.”
“What?”
At their horrified looks, he added, “Only temporarily.” He poured off four teacupfuls of the potion. “This elixir has a powerful malignant effect that will, by and by, stop your hearts from beating. A stopped heart cannot age, can it? Time will halt for you. And if time stops, so does the countdown to the end of your enchantment.”
“Yes, but we’ll be dead!”
“Technically dead. But that doesn’t mean you have to stop living. You’ll still have use of your bodies, just like always. The elixir works slowly. It will take twenty-four hours to stop your hearts entirely. You can take an antidote before then.”
Cricket stared at the elixir. “So that’s it? You’re giving us poison, and it’ll grant us only one extra day?”
“I told you it wouldn’t be pretty.”
Hunter Black scowled. “You tricked us, Goblin.”
Tenpenny acted offended. “It’s one more day than you would have had without me.”
Anouk sat heavily on the sarcophagus, loose brittle bones skittering at her feet. She coughed at the cloud of dust and tried to brush it off her clothes but gave up. She was always dirty. Always a mess. Was it so surprising that she’d just led them into another mess? Cricket and Hunter Black continued to argue with Tenpenny, while the blond Goblin who had followed at Beau’s heels hung in the doorway, staring at Beau moonily.
“At least Rennar promised us more than twenty-four hours,” Cricket complained.
“Rennar? Bah! Lies! Listen closely, dearies. Rennar and that witch told you only half the story. It’s true that you aren’t affected by the vitae echo, but saviors? Ha! You weren’t made to save anything. You aren’t heroes.”
“Then what are we?” Beau asked.
“Monsters! Oh, come, don’t look surprised. Nothing good is ever created from magic. You were made to be the most terrifying thing in the known world. The vitae echo is a safeguard. It is meant to keep handlers from slaughtering whole villages and from taking lives for their own gain. But you don’t have that safeguard—don’t you get it? Rennar made you as weapons. You can do all the dastardly things that he can’t—but only if he can control you. That’s why the other beasties were destroyed. They were monsters, yes, which was what he wanted. But their mistake was not answering to him.”
“Do we look like bloodthirsty devils to you?” Cricket asked, motioning vaguely to the ribbon in Anouk’s hair, to her own less-than-threatening maid’s costume.
Tenpenny turned to her. “You thirst for magic so you can exact revenge. You want to destroy, to tear down. I see it in your eyes.”
“And what’s wrong with that?”
“Nothing, my dear, as long as you don’t mind living in a broken world.”
Cricket pressed her rosebud lips together tightly.
Anouk glanced at the beastie spell. She felt shaken; in times like this, it was Luc they turned to. What would he do now? Would he trust Goblin poison?
No. He would fix this himself.
She jumped down from the sarcophagus and started digging through Tenpenny’s tea canisters. Milk thistle in this one, sorrel in that one, a jug of some poor creature’s blood that still had fur floating in it. She grabbed a teapot, threw in ingredients.
“Anouk?” Beau asked.
“Just wait.”
Spells—even the most complex ones—didn’t come with recipes. It was up to each magic handler to interpret the requirements of a given situation and develop a custom-made brew. Mada Vittora had been partial to roses and goldenseal; her tonics all held an air of romance, even when the spell had nothing to do with love. Cricket was fond of eucalyptus. What would Anouk’s signature ingredients be? She would have liked to use feather down, but with only Goblin stores to work with, she had to settle for white dandelion fluff.
She sniffed her tonic and then took a sip. It burned deliciously on her tongue, like spices and licorice. She whispered. She didn’t even need to look at the torn folio page; the words were buried deep inside her. They were her. Rennar, Zola, and Tenpenny—the most prominent members of every order of the Haute—had all told her she carried great power. And she could feel it. A tingle from her belly to her toes to her ears. A tickle on her lips.
“Skalla animeux . . .”
“What are you—” Beau said, but Cricket elbowed him.
“Quiet. It’s the beastie spell, you idiot. Tenpenny can’t cast it so she’s going to try.”
Anouk closed her eyes and let the syllables pour out of her. Gone was the throbbing beat of the party in the other room, the chatter of rats from their cages. It was only her and the Silent Tongue, and
she was speaking it, feeling it working beneath her skin; she was no longer the dark thing but a girl, a real human girl . . .
Then, without warning, fire.
She cried out as sharp pain burned down her arms. It spread impossibly fast from her neck to her knees to her toes, replacing that delicious tingle with searing agony that made the spell, not even halfway spoken, die on her tongue and her body crumple on the floor.
Beau was immediately by her side, feeling her forehead, but his touch only burned more, and she cried out and pushed him away.
A shadow fell over her. She squinted open an eye.
“That, my dear, was unbelievably stupid.” Tenpenny stood over her, tsk-tsking. “Only fools attempt magic so far beyond their ability.”
“But . . . you said . . . we’re powerful . . .” She grimaced as another wave of pain radiated through her. “No vitae echo.”
“The pain you’re feeling now? That isn’t the vitae echo. That’s just your body rejecting the change you were trying to put it through. Don’t you understand that there’s a world of difference between talent and skill? When I said you had the ability to be more powerful than the Royals, I meant innate potential. Potential means nothing without training. Do you even know the difference between a trick and a whisper? Don’t answer that. Of course you don’t. Poor dearie. How brave of you—and how absurd—to try.”
He crouched over her, holding out the teacup full of his own poisonous elixir. “We’ve been at this a long time, my friends. Since practically before Pretties could clothe themselves. I don’t care if you’re saints or monsters. You can be whatever you want to be as long as you help us retake London. I believe that was our deal, yes?”
Still shaking, Anouk reluctantly accepted the noxious brew. A dead dragonfly was floating in it. She sighed. What other option did they have now?
He smiled. “Splendid.”
Each of the others also took a teacup, and, wincing, they all drank down the poison. Anouk felt it spread down her throat, coating it like tar. She expected it to sink to her stomach in a heavy way, but it remained eerily in her chest. She rubbed at the skin over her heart. The beats came slower, slower, slower, and then stopped.
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