Thorn Jack (28 page)

His eyes glinted as she took from her red coat the ring she'd bought with carefully hoarded money. It was made of bronze, the shape of two lions clasping a heart. She stepped forward. One candle fell, was extinguished. The circle broke—

—and Jack reached out and grasped her wrist, dragging her toward him.

“Let her go!” Christie lunged.

Jack yanked Finn into the circle, released her, and whirled on Christie like a striking snake. He grabbed Christie by the collar. When Sylvie flew forward and clutched at Jack's arm, he caught her by the wrist.

Finn recovered as Jack effortlessly held her struggling friends and turned his head to smile at her. His eyes were black. “They broke the circle, Finn.”

She whispered, “It was
I
who summoned you. Come get
me
.”

Jack set Sylvie aside and shoved Christie away, watching as Finn backed up against the tree. Never taking his gaze from hers, he crouched and set the fallen candle into place. He rose and stepped close to her, bracing both arms against the tree on either side of her. He leaned toward her and whispered, “So. What now? How will you appease a vengeful spirit?”

She could feel the coolness breathing from his skin, see the unholy silver glow in his eyes. All she wanted to do was kiss him and bring him back into the world of sunlight and sorrow. “Stop it. You're not—”

Sylvie ran toward them, then fell back as if she'd hit an invisible wall. She yelled, but Finn couldn't hear her voice.

“Jack.” Finn didn't drop her gaze from his. “
I bind thee—
”

“Use that knife”—his hand dove into her coat and pulled out the cross-hilted dagger—“against me. Or, Finn, I promise, I'll
ruin
you.”

He pressed her fingers around the hilt.

“Jack.” She kept her voice steady. “I'm not—”

He gripped her hand. She winced as he made her slice his palm with the blade. The skin parted, but there was no blood. She looked into his eyes. “
I'm not afraid of you.
”

“But,” his voice was raw, “you should be.”

“
Should
be? I won't be. So you can stop
this.
”

Outside the circle of candles, Christie looked terrified as he struck at the transparent barrier, pushing at the air like a mime. Sylvie was hunkered on the ground, staring intently at the candles she couldn't touch.

Jack told Finn, “They can't get into the circle. Circles will only hold two souls—summoner and summoned.”

“Then you
do
have a soul, Jack.” She grabbed his hand and shoved the bronze ring onto his only naked finger. “With this ring, dark spirit, I bind thee.”

His voice broke as his eyes flooded with anguish. “
Finn.
”

He vanished into the dark. The candle flames flared, then were extinguished. Christie and Sylvie fell into the circle. As they scrambled up, Finn sagged against the tree and whispered, “Let's go home.”

BACK IN HER ROOM, FINN
picked up Lily's phone from where she'd set it on the floor near the outlet. She began to scroll through the images: the ones of her and Lily at the beach, in Shakespeare's Garden, on the carousel at Fishermen's Wharf. There were a lot of her sister and Leander, looking perfect for each other.

Then she came to Muir Woods.

The Muir Woods was a nature preserve of giant redwoods in California, mysterious and ancient, and a hike their da had insisted on at least once a year. The photographs had been taken just before sunset, before the park closed . . . images of trees and shadows and willowy strands of light. Some of the shadows looked like figures . . .

Finn peered closely at one image that looked as if a large, dark animal was slinking between the trees. She shuddered and set down the phone. She remembered Dead Bird drinking her blood and the shadows bleeding into Jack's eyes.

I am going to end up in a mental hospital. I just know it.

She lifted the phone again and returned to the Muir Woods pictures.

Another photo came up, startling her, because it was black-and-white. In it, her sister stood facing the lens, her skin luminous, her sleeveless black gown swirling like gauze, her eyes black as ink. She had become a phantom, caught forever between the world of the dark and the world of the light.

Like Jack.

Finn set down the phone and opened Lily Rose's journal. These were not fairy tales, Lily's stories. Reading them made Finn hurt, because, although they were disguised in fantasy, she knew they were truth.
Their names are Dandelion, Wormwood . . .

He is the Black Scissors,
the Dubh Deamhais,
and he is a faery doctor, a force of nature, neither good nor bad . . .

The girl who had been born without arms was a friend to owls because she had been one . . .

She riffled to the beginning.
They call us things with teeth because they don't have true forms, no real biology . . .

In the beginning was nothing. From nothing emerged night. Then came the children of nothing and night . . .

Lily Rose, her sensible sister, had known about them. And they had tricked her. And she had died.

Finn flinched as branches rattled against the window. Had the Fatas always been here, in Fair Hollow? And why had Reiko Fata been in San Francisco? And the wolf-eyed man flickering at the edge of her childhood recollections . . . what was he?

When a book fell from the shelf, she froze.

Another book slid to the floor. She couldn't move, couldn't breathe.

Four more books swept from the shelves.

The Tempest
had fallen open to one of Caliban's speeches.
Wuthering Heights
lay nearby, displaying a description of Heathcliff. A volume of stories by Edgar Allan Poe revealed the first page of “The Fall of the House of Usher.” A book of Hans Christian Andersen's stories had been flung beneath the window and Rackham's Snow Queen glittered cruelly on the page.

From downstairs, her father yelled. She ran.

He stood in the parlor, rubbing his head, a slim book in one hand. He looked bewildered. “The bloody book
flew
off the shelf . . .”

“What book is it?” She tried to sound casual, not panicked.

He looked at it. “Scottish poems.”

She took the book from him and dropped it on the floor. As he stared, the pages fell open. She said, “
Tam Lin.
I don't remember
Tam Lin.
”

He strode toward the shelves and began checking them, intent on finding a fault. “It's a ballad about a young woman who rescues her beloved from the Queen of the Faeries. There must be something wrong with this bloody shelf. It must be coming undone.”

Finn stared down at the book and felt that
she
was coming undone.

SOMETHING WAS TRYING TO WARN
her. And it was in the house.

Finn lay on the floor of her bedroom, in a pool of lamplight, surrounded by the books that had fallen from her shelves, and she thought of Jack.
Please come to me.

She folded one arm across her face, but sleep was impossible. A strange longing and despair had begun to gnaw at her. Her fists clenched as she curled up on her side. In binding Jack to her, what had she done to herself?

A breeze threaded through the room, warm and summery, scented with Nag Champa incense and tangerines, fragrances that reminded her of San Francisco and—

She sat up, her breath leaving her in a gasp. “
Lily?
”

JACK WALKED IN THE NIGHT,
not daring to return to Tirnagoth yet, not with the binding spell just placed on him by a reckless girl. He paused once, to gaze down at the ring she'd bound him with, the two lions holding a heart between them.
Lionheart
, he thought, and almost smiled.

He changed direction and pushed through the woods, toward the park. He came to the street with LeafStruck Mansion rising at its end and was drawn toward a flickering dot of light on the stairs.

The light came from a cigarette, and the cigarette was held by Nathan Clare, who slouched on the steps midway to LeafStruck. Jack sprawled beside him. “You look like a delinquent.”

“I'm entitled.” Nathan glanced at him, frowned. He breathed out, “
Jack
. . . what happened to you?”

“It's that obvious? You think she'll notice?”

“It's like a beacon.” Nathan's gaze fell to Jack's hands. The ivory scars were clearer now that he'd gotten rid of the ancient rings—all but for that one. “Was it Finn Sullivan? How could she possibly know a binding—”

“Someone”—Jack said savagely—“told her how to do it. One of her friends has witch blood.”

Nathan regarded his cigarette. His voice was almost a whisper. “Do you understand now?”

“Why are you
here
?”

Nathan's gaze lifted to a second-floor window that glowed with lamplight. “You don't remember things very well, do you? Well, I do. I remember when we lived here, when we were happy.”

“Nate, I was a different person then.”

Nathan bowed his head. His cigarette was burning to a nub, but he barely noticed it. “I'm sorry, Jack.”

When Jack thought of Nathan and All Hallows' Eve, he didn't like the heavy, twisting sensation in his chest. “What are you going to do?”

“Only be with Booke . . . until then.”

“And what does Booke think of that?” Jack, also using the girl's Fata name, gazed into the night.

“She understands.”

Jack thought of Finn and laughed softly. “You can't possibly believe that.”

“I'll do what needs to be done, Jack, don't worry.”

Jack looked at him. “That's not what I'm worried about.”

The lit end of Nathan's cigarette reflected pinpoints of red in his eyes. “Is it so terrible? The . . . final moments?”

“More than you can imagine. And when you've lived so long, it gets harder to die.”

 

C
HAPTER
F
OURTEEN

A man or woman or child will suddenly take to the bed, and from then on, perhaps for a few weeks, perhaps for a lifetime, will be at times unconscious . . . these persons are, during these times, with the faeries.

—
V
ISIONS
AND
B
ELIEFS IN THE
W
EST OF
I
RELAND,
L
ADY
G
REGORY

The Redcap prince named Heartsblood has neither a heart, nor blood. Though red-haired, he isn't one of the Dragon clan. He is cruel, a love-talker. He was the first ganconer, the creator of the Red Thorn spell, which turns people into green things.

—
F
ROM THE
JOURNAL OF
L
ILY
R
OSE

A
fter Mr. Wyatt's appearance at the Dead Kings and Professor Avaline's rescue of Christie from a possession, Finn had come to the conclusion that most of HallowHeart's professors were more than they seemed. Professor Fairchild always wore cuff links with images of stags on them, and Miss Perangelo, the art teacher, had an amulet engraved with the same animal. Hobson, Finn's math professor, with his red hair and beard, was grim and stocky, and always talking about the mysticism of arithmetic.

When Jane Emory caught Finn looking at her bracelet with its charms of crows, she smiled. “Do you like it? It was my granna's.”

“What does the crow mean?”

Jane Emory's short hair, haloed by the afternoon sun, shone golden. “It means life after—” She hesitated. “Finn. I'm sorry . . . about your mother and your sister.”

Finn felt a flash of anger toward her father as she realized he had told this woman about their personal family business. She wanted to ask about the Fatas, just to see her expression.

“Why? You had nothing to do with their deaths.” She strode away before Jane Emory could reply.

AS NIGHT FELL, FINN SAT
on her back porch reading the book of Scottish poetry that had been flung at her father by an invisible hand. Troubled by the lyrical menace of
Tam Lin
, she set the book aside and looked at the tin box Sylvie had let her borrow. A geisha was painted on the lid, and inside were tiny tiles inked with words like
Forbidden Door
,
Lavish Menace
,
Ivory Tongue
. She didn't know what they meant, and neither did Sylvie, who suspected the tiles were either a fortune-telling device or a compilation of erotic acts.

Finn shook the tin. Opening the lid, she chose seven tiles and set them down.

“Don't look at them.” Suddenly Jack was on the steps beside her. In jeans and a black shirt with dragon cuff links, he didn't seem to notice the cold.

“You shouldn't have spoken to me that night at the concert.”

“No. I shouldn't have. I'm apologizing. I can't keep away from you, it seems. You've tamed me.”

“You're not mad at me?”

“I'm not mad at you.”

She turned up a tile.
Bestial Prince
. “How can I pretend you're ordinary?”

“What are you reading?”

She slid the
Tam Lin
book beneath the tin box. “Poetry. The sort your kind likes. Or is afraid of—I forgot which.”

“That wouldn't happen to be a poem about a girl who challenges a fairy queen, would it?”

“Are they going to kill Nathan?”

He looked away, and that was her answer.

“How can . . . you can't let it
happen
—”

“I can't stop it . . . only Nathan's true love can do that.”

“Does he have a true—”

“She's hidden away. I don't want to discuss this, Finn.”

The silence was chilly. She decided they would have to pretend tonight. “What are your favorite movies?”

“I liked them when they first came out. Especially the ones with Mary Pickford.”

“We were going to pretend you're ordinary. So why did you come to me?” She poked at another tile.
Bitten Kiss
. “Aren't I supposed to magically summon you?”

“I'm inviting you for a walk.”

“It's raining.”

“It's just rain.”

“Let me tell my da. And I'll change.”

WHEN SHE STEPPED BACK OUT,
the expression on Jack's face made her look down at her red raincoat and boots and the yellow dress she'd been saving for her birthday on Halloween. Maybe he didn't like primary colors.

He smiled and held out a hand bare of rings but for the one with which she'd bound him. “Come on then.”

They walked to Rose Tree Street, which had bistros and kitschy shops that sold everything from old records to homemade candles and retro lunchboxes. They wandered into a record store, where Jack bought a Robert Johnson vinyl and gazed admiringly at it as they walked out. “He was a blues singer—he also made a deal with the devil.”

“Speaking of the devil, you play the violin. Who taught you?”

“My mother. She was an actress, but she'd learned to play as a child—most gypsies then had a talent for entertaining.”

“And your dad?”

“A coachman, and someone who helped people with a particular problem.”

“Spirit problems.”

He leaned forward and said, his voice low, “Do you know why I'm answering these questions? Because, Finn Sullivan, you bound me to you.”

“I didn't know what else to do after you left me.”

“How did you do it? That concerns me, as in ‘I'm concerned that you made a big mistake.' ”

“Absalom Askew,” she said, “told Sylvie how to do it.”

“Why Sylvie?”

“Reiko told Sylvie she was a witch.”

“So. Absalom told Sylvie about Tirnagoth's yew. I believe that particular place has a guardian.”

“Yes, Jack. There was a guardian and his name was Dead Bird.”

“He's dangerous. He's more elemental than Fata.
And
an outlaw.”

“Look, it's done. Can we talk about other things?”

“What shall we talk about?”

“Normal things. Like . . . what was your first toy?”

He raised his eyebrows and she muttered, “No. Never mind. What were your parents like?”

“Finn,” he gently reminded, “they've been dead for a long time.”

She attempted several more questions, but became frustrated as each innocent inquiry was thwarted by his impossible existence of two hundred years. There would be no normal or ordinary between them, not even with words.

“Let me try. What was your favorite thing to do as a kid?”

“Taking circus classes because I wanted to be an acrobat.” This was much better.

“I can picture you, flipping around.”

“Can you? Lily and I took karate . . . she was better than I was. I've got no balance.”

“And where was your first home?”

“Vermont,” she said wistfully. “It was pretty there. Especially at Christmas. Do you celebrate the holidays?”

“Christmas? Well, I get a tree, and I decorate it. I watch old movies and then I put on holiday music.”

She wondered if he was making fun of her, but when he lifted his gaze, she saw a desolate sorrow there. She reached out, clasped his hand, and felt the ring she'd given him warm between their twined fingers.

“Well, we tried, didn't we?” He spoke ruefully. “Being ordinary isn't as easy as it looks.”

When he bought her coffee, she wondered if his money would turn to leaves, like the fairy currency in stories. As they continued walking, they kept the conversation to music and books, which seemed safe. She found herself gazing at his mouth, noting the way his lashes made shadows beneath his eyes. “So, Jack. What now?”

“This way.” He led her down a street where office buildings and department stores had closed for the evening and become as silent as pyramids. On the corner was a brick warehouse with a neon sign flickering “Arcade.”

“It looks closed.” She drew back.

“It is.” He rapped at the door. After a few minutes, an irritated man wrapped in a plaid robe answered, squinting at Jack while raking a hand through a mane of graying hair. “Hell, it's you.” His voice had a strong Scottish burr. “Did you get the elephant?”

“I did not get the elephant, Murray. May we come in?”

“It's closed, Jack. Come back during business hours—”

Jack held up what looked like a one-hundred-dollar bill. “I'm trying to impress a girl.”

The older man quickly accepted it and jerked his head. “Go 'round the back, you and—?”

“Finn.” Finn smiled.

“Murray.” He nodded once and shut the door.

As Finn followed Jack into the alley, she whispered, “Was that real money?”

“Of course it was.”

“Does he
know
?”

Jack turned as they came to another door of streaky metal. “He knows enough. But he's way past the age for being able to see my . . . family.”

“What was that about an elephant?”

“You'll see.”

The door opened and Murray beckoned them into the arcade, which glittered and glowed as if he'd just flung on a power switch. The clamor of the electronic games, accompanied by a melody from a giant carousel in the center, was extraordinary.

“It's all yours.” Murray beckoned proudly. “That carousel is one of a kind, Finn. Knock when you're done. I'll be in my apartment.”

“Thanks, Murray.”

“One hour,” Murray said and shut the door.

“You have tokens?” Finn headed for the carousel, and Jack sauntered after.

“I don't need tokens.”

The carousel animals were unusual, among them a reindeer, an ostrich, and a unicorn. Each was obviously an antique, lovingly restored with new paint. Finn swung up onto a tiger as Jack walked among the animals, checking them. She knew he was trying to distract her, to keep her from asking about his terrible family and what they planned. She would, she decided, get it out of him somehow.

“It needs a bear.” He leaned against Finn's tiger. “Maybe I can find him a bear instead of an elephant.”

“
You
found all of these for him?”

“Each one, from a different place.”

“Have you been to many different places?”

“Many.”

She slid from the tiger and into his arms. He held her carefully, before stepping from the carousel. He reached up and swung her down.

“
No
fortune-teller, thank you.” She strolled past the creepy automaton in its booth painted with Zodiac symbols. “Pac-Man. I bet you're an expert at Pac-Man.”

“Now I feel old.”

“Pinball?” She turned to face him with a mischievous smile, walking backward. “How about pinball?”

The hour went too quickly, and it was probably the best sixty minutes of her new life. When Murray eventually returned, he allowed Finn to choose a prize from the gift shop before pointing to the exit.

AS THEY STROLLED TOWARD THE
park, Jack said, “I thought you'd pick one of the stuffed animals.”

She twisted the ornate, fake sword she'd chosen in the gift shop. “Why? Look, the hilt is shaped into a dragon. Maybe you could collect a dragon for Murray's carousel.”

“He does pay me well to collect things for him.”

“Does he?” She saw a rise in the pavement between the trees, a glitter of water—a bridge. She halted. “Is there some other way?”

He turned to her and looked wary. “Why?”

“I don't like bridges.”

“I'll walk over it with you.”

She drew in a deep breath, as if she were already struggling in the water, and her heart began to slam against her rib cage. “Okay.”

They moved forward, toward the little bridge and the night-blackened pond, which seemed all sloping earth and choking weeds. As she set one foot on the bridge, she felt his hand slip from hers. She turned. “Jack?”

He was staring at her as if he'd just recognized her. Softly, he said, “Why did you choose that dress? That coat? Those colors?”

She frowned, gripping the sword, its point on the ground. “What are you
talk
—”

“I know why you don't like bridges.” His voice was filled with a wondering fear—he was remembering something. “You were walking over one when you first saw Reiko. When she first saw
you
.”

She forgot about the bridge behind her.

“It was just after your mother's funeral. You were walking on a—”

—bridge that arched over the cemetery pond. She'd been straggling after her grieving da and her sister and her grandparents while trying to open her umbrella against the rain. She'd looked up to see a beautiful girl in boots and a coat of scarlet fur crossing the bridge with three companions. And Finn, a little girl in a yellow sundress and a ladybug-red raincoat, had been in their way. Angry, stubborn, and hurting, she'd said to the tall girl, “You're not a real person.”

Reiko Fata in her scarlet fur had crouched down, her black hair swirling, her voice as viciously sweet as her smile. “And you'll never become one, little mayfly.”

In the present, Finn whispered, “Jack . . .”

Ten-year-old Finn had stood very still as the tall, unreal girl and her elegant companions had breezed past. A blast of wind had tugged the umbrella from her hand, into the water . . . her favorite umbrella, the one with the mermaids on it, the one her mother had given her. She'd flung herself down and, reaching between the railings of the little bridge, had tried to grasp the handle of the umbrella twirling like an upside-down sunflower in the water. She'd reached too far—

—and lost her balance in an instant of horror and dismay that became a desperate struggle against icy water and weeds, until strong hands banded with rings had caught hold of her and lifted her to the surface. She'd opened her eyes to see a young man's face veiled by wet, dark hair . . .