Beau shook his head. “That’s how Viggo got in last time. I saw Mada Zola cast a spell to prevent it ever happening again.”
“If we set up a ramp,” Cricket offered, “the Goblins could jump it with their motorcycles.”
“The spell blocks us from going over too,” Beau said.
A sudden scream interrupted them. The Goblin who’d wandered too close to the hedge was flat on the ground with vines wrapped around his ankles. He tried to sit up, but two more vines reached from the hedge and clamped onto his arms. All too fast, the vines dragged him inward.
“Kingsley!” Tenpenny cried.
In a few strides, Hunter Black was by the Goblin’s side with his knife drawn. He slashed at the vines, but there were too many of them. For every one he cut, three more appeared. The Goblin cried out, his voice rising in pitch, silenced only when the vines swallowed him into the hedge.
Only a blue bowler hat was left behind.
A stunned silence overtook the crowd.
Tenpenny ran up, breathless, with eyes even wider than usual. He picked up the fallen hat with shaking hands. A vine curled around Hunter Black’s wrist, but he sliced it off and stepped out of reach. Tenpenny and the rest of the Goblins took a few steps backward too.
Worry rippled through the crowd. Anouk turned to the trash bins and kicked one over with a frustrated cry. Champagne bottles tumbled out amid a messy tangle of sticks.
She stopped moving.
At first, the sticks looked like any hedge trimmings, but a certain twist of one branch caught her eye. The branch curved almost like a jaw with a row of thorns rising up like teeth.
“Toblerone,” she whispered.
“Now is no time to think about chocolate,” Tenpenny said sharply.
“No, it’s Toblerone!” She held up the jaw branch. “These sticks used to make up an enchanted topiary bear. The branches were his bones. He died—in a sense. He was cut up and pulled apart. Petra must have dumped him out here with the trash.”
Luc, still weak from his time in the oubliette, looked aghast. “Who would do that to an innocent shrubbery bear?”
Both Anouk and Cricket looked pointedly at Hunter Black, who scowled. “That was a long time ago.”
“It was the day before yesterday!” Cricket yelled.
“Well, a day and a half ago I was trying to tear you apart too, Cricket. And look at us now. One big happy family whose members haven’t attempted to murder one another in at least a few hours.”
Anouk gathered the branches of the bear and laid them out like puzzle pieces on the gravel lane. “If we can resurrect him, there’s a chance he could get through the hedge. He’s made of hedge. And he’s outside the estate borders, which means Zola can’t control him.”
She put down the final branch and stepped back. She could feel the magic flowing within her, and it felt right. Creating, not destroying. But as much as she wanted to resurrect the bear herself, she didn’t dare use up any of Viggo’s blood. It was a finite supply, enough for only a single big spell, one burst of magic. If she used it now, she wouldn’t have enough left to cast the contra-beastie spell on Mada Zola.
“Tenpenny, can you resurrect him?”
The Goblin tenderly handed his fallen friend’s bowler hat to December, who tucked it into her motorcycle bag. He fished a worm out of his pocket, swallowed it, and then held his hands over the wooden bones and whispered.
“Vitae. Vitae ahhora.”
It happened slowly. First there was a flutter of leaves. Then a twig fluttered too, moving a little too much to have been caused by breeze alone, and then an even bigger branch rolled onto another. The branches began to graft themselves back together at the places where they’d been cut, forming a wooden skeleton with limbs and a backbone and a heavy skull with thorny teeth. And then it all came together in one beautiful shiver, and Anouk was looking not at a pile of hedge clippings but at a living topiary bear. Toblerone pushed himself up on his trunklike legs, shook out his leafy green pelt, and then swiveled his head to Tenpenny.
“Command him to tear through the hedge,” Anouk said.
After swallowing more worms, Tenpenny whispered another spell. Slowly the bear’s head swung to face the hedge. He lumbered forward on heavy limbs, swiped at the nearest branches with a massive paw, and shredded them with his sharp thorn-claws like they were made of crepe paper. No vines darted out to snag him; no branches fought back. Beneath his woody paws, the hedge gave way as he tossed branches aside, snapped sticks, and cleared a path wide enough for them to pass through.
“Bravo!” Anouk said.
Tenpenny turned to his Goblin army. “Prepare for entry.”
The Goblins dismounted from their motorcycles and checked their belongings one more time, making sure each was safely secured by its brass pocket-watch chain. A few knives glinted in the sunlight, and even an antique sword or two. The air filled with the smell of bitter herbs, rue and horehound and wormwood, and the tang of blood as the Goblins consumed the life-essence they needed for the battle. Anouk winced at the squeals of rats that were dispatched for the cause. A murmuring spread through the crowd as the Goblins thanked their deceased animal companions for the sacrifice they had made.
“Do not forget the dark truth about this place,” Tenpenny announced to the crowd. “Beneath the witch’s fields are the flesh and bones of our brothers and sisters, Goblins lured here and used to strengthen the witch’s powers. We do this as much for their memory as for ourselves!”
With a roar of engines, the Goblin army mounted their motorcycles and swarmed into the Château des Mille Fleurs’ outer fields. There were hundreds of them, top hats tumbling off their heads, a fleet of exiled Londoners far from home. Motorcycles zipped and weaved around Anouk and the others, and the danger of it caught in her throat, the roar of engines making her breath quicken. Her hair flew around her head as the last Goblin motorcycles disappeared through the break in the hedge. She ran a short ways after them, stopping at the first fields, watching the dust rise in their wake as they rode toward the château.
Cricket joined her, breathless.
“This is it.” Anouk glanced at her friend. “You finally get a chance to tear the world apart.”
There had been a time when Cricket would have smiled grimly at the idea of slashing through the highest members of the Haute, but she didn’t smile now.
“Cricket?”
Cricket shook her head. “That damn Goblin is right. It can’t just be about destruction. After all this is finished, if we succeed in tearing down the Haute, you and I are going to have to put it back together again. Better.”
Two more motorcycles roared. Beau and Hunter Black pulled up on either side of them. Luc rode on the back of Hunter Black’s motorcycle. He was sweating badly in the sun, blinking with eyes that still weren’t quite used to bright daylight.
“Are you sure you’ve recovered enough for this, Luc?” Anouk asked.
“I am, if you’re sure it’s worth the risk.”
She shoved her fists in her jacket pockets. “There’s no turning back now.”
She and Cricket climbed onto Beau’s motorcycle, and the five of them brought up the rear of the army. As the engines revved, she felt Viggo’s blood quicken in her limbs. It made for a heady feeling—almost like having a secret. No Royal or witch had ever consumed this much human blood and lived.
She tried to imagine the look on Mada Zola’s face when a simple maid overpowered her. Then, maybe, the Haute would understand that they couldn’t play with humans or animals or anyone. Living things weren’t toys for their pleasure.
But her determination wavered as they approached the château. The beautiful stillness that had enveloped them on their first visit was gone now. There was smoke everywhere. Goblins were screaming. They were fighting against some sort of army that Anouk couldn’t make out in the smoke. But what army? It was supposed to be only Zola and Petra and a handful of lesser Royals.
Beau cut the engine and she
jumped off, coughing. The smoke was clearing and she wasn’t certain what she was looking at. It was a scene from a nightmare. Giant soldiers made of wood were stalking the garden in pursuit of Goblins. They towered ten feet high. Their bodies were formed of spindly branches, their legs powerful trunks, their hands like many-fingered roots. Smoke rose from their wooden shoulders.
She spotted one that was only half burned. His arms and head were bare wooden branches, but his lower half was covered in manicured leafy green.
“It’s the topiaries.” Her voice was a stunned gargle. “The Royals enchanted them to fight.”
“And the Goblins are using fire spells against them,” Luc said. “But it doesn’t look like it’s working.”
The burned wooden skeletons left behind were hideous things. They couldn’t be stabbed or shot with arrows—there was no flesh to them. She watched, stunned, as one lumbering wooden soldier snatched up a Goblin in a neon dress and twisted her body in a terrible way. Her screams died along with her. As the smoke continued to clear, the horror grew. More bodies on the ground, bleeding out into the soil. Crushed like autumn leaves. Broken Goblins. Dead Goblins.
Beau looked stricken. “What about the vitae echo?”
“The Royals aren’t doing the killing,” Luc said tensely. “The wooden soldiers are killing on their behalf. The right spell could reverse someone turned to stone, but not even the greatest spell can bring back the dead.”
“Look!” Beau pointed out a team of Goblins who were fighting back by one of the fountains. They had surrounded one topiary soldier and were throwing out rotting spells to wither its branches. It was working, but slowly.
Without warning, a hiss of magic came from every direction at once. Anouk felt it sizzle in the air and spun around. A chubby Goblin twenty paces away had been turned to stone. One minute he was flesh and blood and gold eyeliner, and then he was an awful granite statue, immobile, a perpetual scream frozen on his lips. She had to blink to make sure she was seeing straight.
Anouk felt a shiver as another wave of magic shot by them. A few paces to their left, another Goblin turned to stone. That was powerful magic. Witch magic. “She’s close. The Mada.”
She followed the direction of the magic to the château’s bell tower. A figure with long black hair wearing a billowing white blouse stood in its open window next to a young man in frost gray.
Zola and Rennar.
“We have to get into the château,” she said. More sparking streaks of magic shot out from various high windows. Beautiful faces loomed there: a handful of lesser Royals, counts and duchesses, eager to impress their prince. They wouldn’t make it easy.
And then Anouk’s eyes caught on the bear. Toblerone. He had followed Tenpenny down the path through the fields and was now standing at attention by a crumbling stone wall, awaiting another order. “The bear,” she called to the beasties. “Climb on his back!”
They ran through the battlefield. Cricket whispered her cutting spell to chop off wooden arms before the soldiers could grab them. Hunter Black hung back to hiss the blue-flame spell and set one giant’s leg on fire, while the others reached Toblerone and used his branches like a ladder to climb onto his back. Anouk helped Luc climb up and straddle the trunk that formed his spine.
The bear started lumbering toward the château. Anouk wove her fingers into his twiggy bones, holding on with one hand. Toblerone barged straight through the battle, through Goblins casting whispers and wooden soldiers that exploded in flurries of splinters. Anouk tipped her head up, squinting at the bell tower. She was too far away to see Zola’s and Rennar’s faces, but she hoped they could see hers.
The most dangerous thing in all of France, she thought, is me.
“Hunter Black, come on!” Cricket called.
As Toblerone neared the house, Hunter Black climbed up the fountain, frigid water soaking his clothes, and leaped onto the side of the bear next to Anouk. He started to slip but she grabbed his hand, catching him at the last minute. He was soaked. There was a terrible moment when she felt his hand slide out of hers . . . until Luc suddenly clutched him too and pulled him out of his coat, which fell to the ground. Together they helped him climb onto the bear’s back.
“Nice of you to join us,” Luc said breathlessly.
He only growled, “I liked that coat.”
At last Toblerone reached the heavy wooden door of the château. His claws tore at the wood, splintering and shredding it. Behind them, the battle raged on. Every scream made her cringe. She could stop this. Save all the Goblins, put an end to the topiaries. Didn’t she owe the Goblins that? But the victory would be short-lived. She had to save her magic for Rennar and Zola. Toblerone reared up on his hind legs and threw his full weight at the door. The boards gave way beneath him. Splintered wood flew everywhere. He fell to his feet, and the whole earth seemed to vibrate.
Petra stood in the entryway as if she’d been waiting for them.
She was casually smoking a cigarette as though enchanted shrubbery often crashed through her front door. But Anouk could see beyond the act. The hand that held the cigarette was trembling.
“You shouldn’t have come back,” Petra said.
“She’s nothing,” Hunter Black growled. “A witch’s girl. A Pretty. She can’t do magic.”
Petra put out the cigarette with her boot and then took a rifle from behind her back. “Maybe not, but I can use a gun.”
Chapter 36
Nine Hours of (New) Enchantment Remain
“Petra.” Anouk gasped. “Put down therifle. We’re not your enemies.”
“And yet you’ve broken into my house and brought an army of Goblins with you. I’d expect something different from a friend. Say, cake.” She aimed the rifle. “Now climb down from there.”
They descended the topiary bear with no sudden movements.
Anouk dropped to the floor. “I was loyal to a witch too, once,” she told her. “I loved her. But she was rotten somewhere deep. The vitae echo eats them away inside. It destroys their minds. It makes them power hungry. They think the Pretties are like livestock, theirs to command, and the same with us and with the Goblins. Do you think you’re any different?”
Petra cocked the rifle. “You’re the one making this black and white, not me. I helped you before because I like you. And believe it or not, I’m helping you still. I’ve been around these people my whole life. Zola. Rennar. I know what they’re capable of. You have to believe me: there’s no way out of this that doesn’t end in you begging Rennar for your life.”
“You want us to surrender.”
“I want you to survive.”
Footsteps sounded behind them, and they turned to find Countess Quine coming down the hallway, lips freshly stained with powder, dressed in an ornate snow-white gown as though to flaunt the fact that capturing them would be so easy that she could do it in formalwear.
“I can handle it from here,” she purred. “Petra, go and tell the prince they’ve been captured. He’ll want the lesser Royals to tie them up.”
But Petra didn’t lower the rifle. “Not until we get them locked in the cellar. They’re smarter than you think.”
Countess Quine’s expression indicated she doubted that.
Cricket looked at Anouk with a question on her face. They were utterly trapped—Quine behind them, Petra in front. Anouk’s mind scrolled through all of Vittora’s spells, searching for something small that wouldn’t use up much of Viggo’s blood . . .
Then, to her surprise, Hunter Black raised his hands in surrender.
Anouk gaped.
Beau elbowed the assassin and hissed, “Did that ice-cold water freeze your brain?”
“You heard her,” Hunter Black growled back. “She said she’s going to lock us in the cellar.”
He winked.
Hunter Black never winked.
Countess Quine hadn’t seen it, but Anouk had, and though she had no idea what plan was tumbling around in his brain, she raised her hands too.
Beau and Cricket stared at her like she’d gone mad, but then Luc raised his hands, following her lead with a trusting nod, and Beau and Cricket warily did the same.
“Excellent.” The countess smirked as she herded them down the hallway, with Petra bringing up the rear with the rifle.
Through the narrow windows, Anouk could hear the sounds of the battle outside. Cries for help. Clanking metal. Her stomach revolted as if she’d eaten rotten eggs. How many Goblins were wounded? Dead? Every step she took toward the cellar, she felt more and more despair.
And then, without warning, she didn’t feel anything at all.
The cellar stairs had just . . . vanished, as though by magic. There was nothing beneath her feet, and suddenly she was falling. She crashed into Beau in front of her, and Luc slammed into her from behind. She kept sliding, kicking her feet, trying to grab hold of something, but her fingers glanced off every stone, and the whole group tumbled out of the stairwell and through the wine-cellar door to collapse in a messy, painful heap.
Someone moaned. Someone else cursed. She caught a glimpse of a glass shoe attached to a petite foot that must have been Countess Quine’s. Saw Luc’s face smooshed into Beau’s stomach. Smelled cigarette smoke on Petra’s breath, just inches from her. Heard the scrape of metal—the rifle!
She and Petra scrambled for it at the same time, but Hunter Black reached it first.
He was standing outside the cell. Standing. Not a part of their tumbled mess.
“What did you do to the stairs?” Petra cried.
Hunter Black aimed the rifle in the general direction of the knot of bodies, unable to get a clear shot at either Petra or Countess Quine. “The last time I was locked in this cell I had a lot of time to think, and those wooden stairs are only for scenery. It’s an old form of carpentry, constructed with rope and joinery. The rope was all but disintegrated, which meant the only thing holding the entire staircase together was this piece of wood.” He held up a wooden pin the length of his thumb. “Pull it out, the rope snaps, it all comes crashing down.”
Grim Lovelies Page 27