Thorn Jack (7 page)

“You looked cold.”

“Did I? I'm used to being cold, believe me.” And she saw the bitterness like a shadow to the lightness of his words.

“Jack . . .”

He straightened as if shrugging off the shadows, then bent his head to her as he passed. “Don't invite anyone into your house again unless you know them well.”

She turned as he flung the back door open. “Hey. What kind of conversation was this?”

“A telling one.” He stepped into a swirl of leaves and was gone.

JACK FATA LEFT FINN SULLIVAN
to visit his friend Absalom for advice.

Tonight, Absalom seemed all that he pretended to be. His orange hair was pinned up, his slim body camouflaged in skater jeans and a red T-shirt with a lotus emblem. He lived in a one-room apartment with an old television, and '60s rock band prints on the walls.

Slouched in a big chair, his head tilted back as he listened to Bob Marley on Absalom's monster stereo, Jack said, “I've a terrible broken heart, Absalom.”

Absalom nodded as he lounged on a chaise of red velvet, a lollipop between his teeth. “And who's broken your nonexistent heart?”

Jack tapped inky fingernails against a Hula girl lamp. “A girl. I don't think I can convince her that I'm harmless.”

“Maybe you should try not wearing black.”

“I like black.” Jack opened the lid of a porcelain teapot. “It hides things and looks clean no matter what you do.” He paused. “Unless it's something to do with chalk. Or white paint.”

Absalom sighed, exhaling through his nose. “You are no gentleman.”

“You've got experience.” Jack raised his head. “Tell me how to court her. Properly.”

“Jack . . .” Absalom slid forward. “D'you remember the others? The three girls before this one?”

Jack tilted his head.

Absalom frowned. “You don't. Well, those three girls pissed off Reiko and, for some reason, she's got her sights set on this one now.”

Jack slung one booted leg across the chair arm. “What are you going on about? Reiko wanted me to smile at this girl. I decided to scare her instead. But she didn't scare easy, and now I'm interested.”

“Interesting. Now, did you do that because you like being contrary to Reiko or because you knew that smiling at that girl would be the end of her?”

Jack stretched out his booted legs. “I never get to have nice things. I want her.”

“My advice, Jack. If you like this girl, keep away from her. In our family, the fairy tale never ends happily for the pretty maiden. The prince is always mad, or pervy, or a beast.”

Jack had found a book and was scrawling in it with a red pen. “Are you calling me a beast, Salome?”

Absalom's sweet face became a mask over something burning and bright, and flames shimmered in his feral topaz eyes. “Don't call me that.” He curled up, an innocent boy again. “Or I won't talk to you anymore.”

“How do you manage to convince people you're not older than the hills?”

“I don't know what you're talking about.”

Jack tossed Absalom the book. Across the pages he'd scrawled
Will Scarlet, Crimson Fool, Puck.

“I'm just a boy.” Absalom shut the book. “And you just defaced Coleridge.”

“A real boy wouldn't care about that.”

“Jack—” Now Absalom looked guarded, and Jack sensed a grim piece of news about to be slammed in his direction. “Nathan Clare has returned.”

Jack pretended indifference. “Has he?”

“He wanted to know if you were still here.”

“Shouldn't he be more concerned with why
he's
here?”

“You should talk to him.”

“And why should I do that?”

“I realize your falling-out with him was quite spectacular, but he deserves our respect. He is going to die, Jack.”

“Then he's one of the lucky ones.” Jack rose, his smile bitter, his eyes dark. He pulled something out of his coat and tossed it onto Absalom's table. “Payment for your advice, Absalom.”

“Jack. Caliban's the one who brought David Ryder's girl, the one we had the wake for.”

Jack halted and the air practically growled around him. “He's
here
?”

“Caliban or David?”

“
Caliban
.”

“As I said,
Caliban
brought the girl—”

“From Lot.” Jack didn't turn. “With her insides scraped out and filled with flowers. Caliban. So now we've got that bloody lunatic to deal with.”

The door slammed as he left. Absalom picked up the object Jack had discarded as payment.

A nice, human tooth. It didn't even have any cavities. Absalom smiled.

 

C
HAPTER
F
IVE

This night, they dance with the ghosts, and the pooka is abroad, and witches make their spells.

—
I
RISH
F
AIRY AND
F
OLK
T
ALE
S,
W
. 
B
.
Y
EATS

They mingle with the dead, who become their servants and who are mostly their victims. I don't think that they can murder or affect the true world unless they have a mortal companion. But they've found ways around that.

—
F
R
OM THE JOURNAL OF
L
I
LY
R
OSE

F
inn didn't have her last class until later in the day and it was Math for Life, so she slept until eleven, then slouched downstairs in her pajamas and ate pancakes while watching cartoons. When she passed the glossy red invitation she'd placed on the dining room table cluttered with the miniature glass animals she and Lily had used to buy their mom on her birthdays, she paused.

The autumn revel was tonight. She expected majestic weirdness.

SYLVIE WAS PERCHED ON THE
stone fountain in Origen's courtyard when Finn met her after her Basic Photography class. “Christie told me about Reiko Fata's last-minute invitations.”

Finn leaned against the fountain shaped into a girl with butterfly wings. “Why d'you look so grim?”

“There'll be hell to pay. You got an invite. Angyll Weaver didn't get one.”

The revel, Sylvie explained, was flung by the Fata family every year. The invitations were exclusive—now other HallowHeart students had discovered Finn, a newcomer, had gotten one and were being stupid about it. Finn, who wasn't used to being envied, touched the invitation she'd tucked into her backpack, along with the moth key left beneath her window. She carried that key with her all the time now, because someone unknown had left it for her in a fairy circle and the mystery of it made her feel the world was a bit more full of possibilities. Maybe that's why she'd never asked Christie or Sylvie about it.

“I'm more concerned with English Comp . . . I didn't think it would be so detail-oriented. Does Professor Misaki really want us to read all of Strunk and White?”

“I believe so.” Sylvie looked grim again.

“Hey.” Christie swung around the fountain and tucked the third invitation into Sylvie's black bag. “For you.”

“Reiko Fata just
gave
them to you?” Sylvie pulled the envelope out, holding it between two fingers as if it contained anthrax. “Maybe you should let the Rooks beat up on you more often.”

“I think Reiko's got a thing for me and she set them on me, just to ‘meet cute.' You know, like in the movies.”

Sylvie looked at him with pity. “Do you really think that, Christie? Do you?”

The smile left his face, and as Finn followed his gaze, she felt her whole body heave in a resigned sigh. “Goddamn.”

Angyll Weaver and her cabal were moving across the lawn. Sylvie began to whistle the Wicked Witch theme from
The Wizard of Oz.

Angyll halted a safe distance away and stared at Finn. “
You.
You're nothing. At least he's pretty and the Goth girl is interesting in a strange way, but
you—
”

“I'm not a Goth—” Sylvie began.

“
You.
” Angyll's gaze was venomous. “Sullivan, you're just trash.”

Finn was mute. She couldn't hit Angyll again, not without the anger that had fueled her the last time. As she remained silent, it was Sylvie who rose and glared ferociously at the golden girl. “I've seen trash and it looks a lot like—”

“Ladies.” Christie slid in front of Sylvie and said to Angyll, “Get gone. We don't like you and your perfume is making me gag.”

Angyll and her two companions flung themselves around and stomped away. Angyll looked back once, a glance promising vengeance.

“She's a spiteful beast,” Christie said lightly. “Crazy's only hot for a while. Would you believe she's an economics major?”

Finn gazed after Angyll. “I feel sorry for her sister.”

FINN REALIZED CHRISTIE AND SYLVIE
had their own lives apart from her own, but she still felt a little neglected when she had to walk home alone later that day. She chose the shortcut through the tame woods, her landmark the Ogun Metalworking plant, a fortress of towers and chimneys on a slate hill. As she walked, she thought about how old Fair Hollow must be. San Francisco's Wild West history had been glamorized by a modern edge, and Vermont had been quaint, like an old-timey Christmas card. But this place . . . this place not only seemed haunted by its past, but occasionally still living it.

The sun was already setting, its pale light bleeding through the trees, when a violin solo suddenly twisted through the air, the music so beautiful, it didn't seem human-wrought. Finn halted, intrigued and wary; then she saw lights twinkling through the trees—more fireflies.

She followed the music to a place thick with berry bushes as tall as she was. She saw beyond them a group of people seated around a small bonfire. She was glad she'd been quiet in her approach, because they hadn't seen her.

A man with long silver-black hair sat, shirtless, on a tilted stone, a live python around his neck. A girl in a black dress and tattoos, golden braids shimmering around her face, chatted with a boy who held a staff topped with the head of a porcelain doll and wore his tawny hair in loops. A shadowy figure was playing the violin and it was difficult to tell whether the musician was male or female, because he or she wore a Victorian coat, the hem of which dragged on the ground. Another boy sat nearby, red ribbons knotted around his arms, flowers wreathing his black curls.

She wondered if they were drama students, or just high. They made her remember her da's romantic word for San Francisco's vagrant population:
vagabonds.

Jack Fata, in a coat of black fur, sat among them.

The music wavered, became plaintive, ended. The musician bowed. The boy with flowers in his black curls called out, “Do ‘Ivory Mask and the Lily Gentlemen.' ”

“No. Do ‘Satyr's Lament.' ”

“ ‘The Churchman's Shoes'!”

“Jack.” The violinist spoke, and his gender was no longer a mystery as he stepped from the dark. Scarlet hair framed a narrow face almost alien in its beauty. “You choose.”

The man with the python growled, “Why does he get to choose?”

“Because, Atheno, he is lovely and was once so warm.”

“Aurora Sae is lovely, although she was never warm.” The youth with the black curls laughed.

The golden-haired girl scowled and stretched out one bare leg. Her toes glimmered with rings. “David Ryder does not mind that I am cold.”

“Hush.” The violinist turned to Jack. “Jack?”

Jack Fata said, “Play ‘Greensleeves.' ”

And his gaze idly drifted to Finn's hiding place.

She flinched back and was suddenly very certain she must not be seen by the others. It was a crazy thought, but she felt it as keenly as the blackberry thorns now pricking her skin.

“ ‘Greensleeves' it is—what is that?” The violinist's coat rustled as he turned his head, the quicksilver glint in his eyes making Finn think of buried things. When he murmured, “I do not like it when they see me,” the air began to buzz faintly as he looked down at his bare feet peeking from beneath the hem of the black coat. Beneath his toes, half hidden by leaves and dirt, was a pale curve of something that looked like a skull . . .

The golden girl began singing softly, “
The lily she grows in the green wood. Maidens, maidens take care. Her sweet-scented breath do tell of your death. Maidens, maidens, beware . . .”

Jack rose and said to the musician, “Farouche. No.”

Finn backed away as the red-haired musician fixed his gaze on her. She felt faint.

She whirled and ran, away from the fire and the vagabonds, away from Jack Fata.

She finally had to stop, to catch her breath, her back against a big tree. The moonlight that illuminated every leaf and branch and the strong odors of dark earth and toadstools . . . all of it made her feel ghostly, as if she had stepped out of the true world. She pressed one hand against the bark of a tree just to feel something.
What is wrong with me?

She felt a secret, biting fear that she might be going crazy.

Someone called her name from a gap in the trees and it sounded like Sylvie. It
was
Sylvie. Finn lunged forward, out of the woods—

—and found Drake's Chapel, its details exquisite in the cold light that traced the sea dragons carved around its doorway and the old-fashioned cross on its peaked roof. From inside the building, where darkness had gathered, she heard a faint sobbing. She stepped forward and whispered, “Sylvie? What are you—”

The rotting cake on the altar had been replaced with broken dolls, bottles, candles, and tattered books. A cracked teapot sprouted toadstools. Nearby, a rocking horse missing one ear was tangled in Emory, and an angel of pale stone, its wings black with decay, streaks of rust beneath the orbs of its eyes, regarded her from a corner.

She felt a twist of nausea when she heard the girl sobbing again. She backed slowly out of the chapel with the stone-cold realization that she'd been
lured
here.

Then the dying light splashed a wall and the words spray-painted there:

He is not a gentleman.

She stumbled out of the chapel. She was shaking and angry and had had enough. The sobbing came from all around her now, descending into hysterical laughter. She shouted, “Stop it!”

The laughter faded.

The air shivered, and from the trees came a girl in white, pale hair drifting over her face. Her bare feet were speckled with red, and something about the look of her reminded Finn of hippie girls from the late '60s.

Finn closed her eyes, opened them again, but the girl remained. Finn whispered, “What do you want?”

The girl wasn't beautiful, but her curvy grace was almost achingly sad and Finn felt as if it was that grace that had caught unwanted attention, that this girl was not . . . not like her, anymore. In a human voice, the girl said, “He will kiss you too, like he did all of us. And to the grave you will go.”

Finn stood there, hands curled into fists at her sides as she fought the enchanted sleep threatening to drop her to the leaves. “Why are you . . . ?”

But she spoke to air. The girl was gone. She hadn't been a ghost. She had not. Because, if she had been, then Lily . . .

Finn backed away, turning toward Drake's Chapel, where the glitter of broken bottles on the floor suddenly made her queasy. As the sleep rushed at her, she stumbled against the door frame, catching at it—

When she opened her eyes, Jack Fata sat on the altar steps. He said, “I figured it wouldn't take you long to find this place.”

Finn, who didn't like people figuring things about her, was suddenly very awake as she stepped inside, out of the cold. She curled her hands in her coat pockets, resentful of his looks and his casual appearance. “Did you see that girl?”

“What girl?” He narrowed his eyes. “You've been asking questions about me.”

“No, I haven't.”

“The tip of your nose turns pink when you lie.”

Angrily, she touched her nose, then snatched her hand away. She was tired and confused and in no mood to be mocked. “You followed me. Stalker.”

He stretched out his legs and tilted his head, and Finn began to feel mutinous. “You're an unkind girl.”

Who speaks like that?
she thought as a wind swirled through the chapel.

He rose so quickly she flinched and stepped back. Gently, he said, “What do you think I am, Finn?”

As leaves fluttered into the chapel like oversized moths, clinging to the stones, she replied carefully, “I think you might be a little crazy. You didn't see that girl?”

He began to look annoyed. “What
girl
—”

Something struck Finn, tangling in her hair. She yelped, yanked at the object, then gaped at the crumpled thing in her hand—an origami bird of black paper.

Jack snatched it from her and smashed it in one fist. Hoarsely, he said, “I'll take you home. Don't come here again.”

“Where did it come from?”

“Someone playing tricks. Maybe the girl you saw.”

She tried another question as they stepped outside: “Was this chapel really built by Francis Drake?”

“How should I know? I'm not that old.” He began walking and she hurried after.

“I saw your friends,” she said.

“I know. They're very touchy about being spied on.”

“I wasn't”—he made her feel so prickly—“
spying.
”

“You were very quiet.”

As she followed his lithe shape through the woods, she began to wonder why she'd been so afraid of a bunch of theater majors. “So . . . who are they? Your friends? Drama students?”

He looked back at her, and his smile reminded her of something bright and edged. “They
are
very dramatic.”

She pushed aside another leafy obstacle, ducked beneath a branch. How could he see in the gloom? He gracefully dodged trees and avoided roots and stones. Finn said, “And you? Are you into theater, Jack?”

“My
family
is very much into theater.”

Sylvie had told her some of Fair Hollow's residents had been in films, others had been musicians, and some had become famous on Broadway. Sir Ian McKellen had a vacation home nearby, and one of the mansions on the river had belonged to the 1920s actress Lulu, whom Finn only knew about because of her mom's love of old movies. For decades, Fair Hollow had been a haven for the artistic and the eccentric, for old and new money.