Sitting in the front seat of the Rolls-Royce, Anouk slid her hands over the plain dress and white apron. A broom rested at her feet. She adjusted her flimsy veil. The maid’s costume didn’t fit well, but given that she’d cobbled it and a matching one for Cricket together from curtains and gardening wire in under an hour, that was to be expected. She fought against the feeling that she was going backward, sliding into her old life. The apron was only temporary, she reminded herself. She didn’t have to sweep. Didn’t have to polish silver. But still, she was startled when she caught her reflection in the side mirror: Hair pulled back in a crisp ribbon. Dress that was blank and forgettable. No golden threads. No gossamer wings.
She folded up the veil and twisted to the back seat, where Cricket sat between Hunter Black and Viggo. Cricket’s usual wardrobe consisted of ripped tights and shirts with skulls; Anouk wasn’t used to seeing her in a starched apron and prim knee socks with a feather duster in one hand, and she almost had to hide a snicker. Cricket’s arms were folded tight to avoid having to touch either of the boys. Viggo, sitting behind Anouk, kept sneaking his hands forward in an attempt to massage her shoulders.
“Stop it, Viggo,” she snapped.
“You look tense, my love.”
“We’re about to break into Castle Ides to steal the only spell that could keep us human. Yes, I’m tense.”
They’d stuck the cat clock back on the dashboard with gum, and now it tick-tick-ticked, counting down the hours until they arrived in Paris.
“I hid the pouch of eucalyptus leaves in my bra, but there aren’t enough places to stash my blades in this dress,” Cricket complained.
“You’ll have to leave the big ones behind,” Anouk said. “The small ones you can hide in your hair. Speaking of . . .” She motioned regretfully to Cricket’s curly mass of hair. “You’ll need to pull it back.”
Cricket scoffed, offended.
“Maids don’t wear their hair loose,” Anouk said. “Maids don’t wear black lipstick; they don’t have rips in their tights. They don’t show any personality at all: that’s the point. You have to hide everything that makes you you. When you move through a room, it should be with quiet steps and small movements. You’re not a person, you’re a piece of furniture with legs.”
She felt a hollow pang inside; she’d never thought about it in these terms before. How long had she spent hiding who she was behind an apron? Scouring floors for hours in the hopes that her work would be so perfect that she’d be noticed? But she was never noticed. She reached for the old franc coin but realized she’d left it on her bedroom dresser, back at the estate.
Beau was looking at her oddly. She had her arms clutched tightly across her chest and was shivering slightly. He handed her the Faustine jacket from the back seat. She laid it over her chest like a blanket, tracing her fingers over the fabric. When she glanced in the mirror again, a piece of furniture with legs didn’t look back this time.
The gargoyle.
“Thanks,” she said softly, putting the jacket on.
Cricket grudgingly pulled her hair back into a high bun and took off her charm earring, but she refused to remove her sunglasses. She sighed loudly and slid down in the seat. Her boot knocked against Hunter Black and he kicked back.
“Watch it,” he snapped.
“You watch it.” Cricket held up a eucalyptus leaf threateningly. “Or I’ll use the cutting spell on that greasy hair of yours.”
“I wouldn’t do that, Cricket,” Beau warned.
But Hunter Black gave her boot another kick and Cricket swallowed the leaf. “That’s it. Prepare to be bald. Incisha coup, bastard—”
The car lurched hard enough to pitch everyone forward, the engine chugging and struggling. Anouk grabbed the dashboard to steady herself.
“Beau, what the hell?” Cricket cried.
“It isn’t me.” He fought to regain control of the car. “I told you not to do magic in here. It interferes with the car’s technology.”
“We shouldn’t be fighting anyway,” Anouk said. “We’re all on the same side now, don’t you get that? We’re a family.” She turned and faced the front. Two hands snaked up to her shoulders and started kneading her tense muscles, and she whipped around again. “Viggo, I said no massages!”
She exchanged an exasperated look with Beau.
“Witch’s boys these days,” he lamented.
They rode in silence through the French countryside, and Anouk watched the world pass by. Small towns dotted the landscape, and she thought of how each one was filled with Pretties going about their daily lives, to school and offices and grocery stores, never once realizing how precious their very existence was. What a gift it was to be them.
She closed her eyes. What would she lose if she failed? No more beautiful couture jackets. No more fairy tales. No more cooking, smiling, laughing.
Only darkness.
She shivered awake with a jolt. How long had she slept? She glanced at the clock—it was past noon. It was stormy as they returned to the city. On the horizon, the distant lights of Paris lit up the clouds.
Beau adjusted the rearview mirror. “We’ll be there soon.”
A crow flew by overhead, casting a shadow on the car.
When they had left—had it really been only forty-eight hours ago?—she’d felt as though she were hurtling through some twisted dream world.
And now?
Only two days had passed, and yet those days had changed everything. She wasn’t anyone’s servant. She stroked the sleeves of her jacket; her battle armor, her second skin.
Rain slapped against the windshield, blurring the city into a kaleidoscope of streetlights. The streets were empty of everything except black umbrellas that hid faces. Beau circled a roundabout.
“That’s it ahead.”
She jumped as Viggo thrust himself between the front seats, jabbing a finger toward a gray stone building lit up in the rain. The Champs-Élysées was lined with edifices, each more impressive than the last: international banks, luxury hotels, boutiques that catered only to the wealthy. But Castle Ides stood alone. Set back from the street behind a black iron fence, ten stories high, it looked more like a seventeenth-century fortress than a castle, despite its name. The windshield wipers swept back and forth steadily, giving them brief glimpses of the structure before the rain obscured it again. The building looked darker than it had in Mada Zola’s paintings.
“Scrying crows,” Hunter Black said, answering the question in her head. Hundreds—thousands—of crows perched on every rail and foothold of the building, blackening it with glossy feathers. She had to press her hands against her ears to filter out that incessant chattering. Didn’t the Pretties hear it? But the ones outside, hunkered under umbrellas, went about their day as usual. Anouk felt a chill. The Haute wielded power over the Pretties, but the Pretties greatly outnumbered magic handlers. If the enchantments were broken, what would happen? If the Pretties’ technology continued to grow, would it render magic obsolete? Would the entire Haute become nothing but a memory?
“Is it always like this?” Anouk yelled above the din.
“No,” Viggo answered. “It’s because of Mada Vittora’s death. The whole city is in chaos now.”
Rain pelted the car. If the crows felt the rain, they didn’t care. They let it roll off their waxed wings, squawking and whispering and climbing over one another in a tangle of sharp little beaks.
Beau stopped the car. The engine rumbled. The windshield wipers went back and forth. Anouk peered out the window at the imposing entrance with its the heavy iron doors. Two crows flew away from a sign that warned away visitors, though Anouk imagined stronger magic was also at work to keep out any curious Pretties. The sign read:
The Ides Club
Invitation Required
The clock clicked to one o’clock in the afternoon.
“Ready?” Anouk said.
Beau tugged gently on her sleeve, and she realized she was still wearing the Faustine jacket, clutching it hard enough to almost tear the fabric. She shed it reluctantly. Cricket’s hair was smoothed back, her face scrubbed of black eyeliner. She looked different; younger, softer. It rankled Anouk—they shouldn’t ever have to be anything other than themselves.
“Ready,” Cricket said, brandishing the feather duster.
Cricket and Viggo and Hunter Black climbed out the back. She reached for the handle, but Beau stopped her.
“Wait.”
The rain kept pelting the car, the windshield wipers sweeping it away. She felt as though they were back in that car wash in the Marais where he’d promised her that everything would be okay.
He reached into his pocket. “For luck.”
He handed her the franc coin she’d found in the Château des Mille Fleurs.
She gasped. “Luc’s coin.”
“You left it on the dresser. I thought you’d want it with you. This way it’s almost like he’s still watching over you.”
She leaned across the dash and planted a soft kiss on his cheek.
“Thank you, Beau.”
“Be careful, cabbage. Come back to me.”
“Always.”
She strung the coin on the chain around her neck, took her broom, and climbed out of the car into the rain. It was cold, and she dashed to the covered porch where the others waited, collars turned up against the rain: a thief, a witch’s boy, and an assassin.
The crows’ whispers paired with the rain were deafening. Slick oil puddled in the driveway, its swirling colors the only brightness on the gray afternoon. Thunder cracked, and a flock of the crows alighted on a statue by the front door. Rennar’s granite face looked out over Paris. She shivered again.
“After you, my love,” Viggo said.
He held open the heavy iron door. The others hunched in the rain, waiting for her. She darted inside. The foyer was startlingly bright. White marble floors, white columns, white molding on the ceiling. Even the gaslight chandeliers were glitteringly bright. A wall of glass cut through the center of the room, separating them from the steam-powered elevator and broken only by two small vents at the top and a glass turnstile in the center.
“They must have a good maid,” Cricket observed of the pristine room.
“Shh.” Anouk nudged Cricket, nodding toward a woman sitting at a reception desk. Another woman stood to the side of the turnstile. They were both very pale—as colorless as the walls—and very still, with identical white-blond hair and ivory suits that were heavily starched. Neither of the women acknowledged them as they approached, and a creeping feeling spread up Anouk’s back. There was something wrong with them. They didn’t move.
“Don’t worry,” said Viggo. “Say whatever you like. They can’t hear us. None of them are real.” He gestured to two more women on the far side of the glass that Anouk hadn’t noticed.
“What do you mean, not real?”
He fumbled in his pockets for his invitation. “These are the Marble Ladies. They’re enchanted statues. They don’t think or care what we say as long as we have an invitation.” He found his invitation and presented it with a flourish. The woman at the desk snapped to attention with mechanical precision, inspected his invitation, and then abruptly stood.
Anouk gasped. The woman’s back . . . it simply wasn’t there. The receptionist was only half a person—the front half—like a relief statue carved from a block of stone.
“What if it doesn’t work?” Anouk whispered.
“Why wouldn’t it?”
Slowly, the receptionist’s white eyes lifted to Viggo. “Welcome, monsieur.”
Viggo smirked and started to enter the turnstile, followed by his shadow, Hunter Black. But the receptionist slammed a hand into Hunter Black’s chest with enough force that the air rushed from his lungs. Another one of the ladies lunged out of the shadows and grabbed Cricket’s wrist.
Viggo stepped back from the turnstile.
“Hey, relax!” he said, making a calming motion and gesturing between himself and the others. “They’re with me.”
“I must inform you that the rules have changed, monsieur,” the woman said mechanically. “No guests.”
The two other Marble Ladies near the elevator stepped closer to the opposite side of the glass wall, one under each of the vents. They were a foot taller than even Beau and wider by a hand’s width.
“But it’s Hunter Black,” Viggo said. “He always accompanies me. And the others are—”
“This change in policy is a direct order from the head of the Haute,” the Marble Lady continued as though he hadn’t spoken. “The building is under tighter security. We cannot allow in anyone who does not personally have an invitation.”
Viggo glanced back at Anouk. “Any ideas, my love?”
Anouk thought. The glass wall prevented them from making a mad dash to the elevator, and it was too high to climb over. In every good recipe, there had to be adaptation. Room to substitute one ingredient for another, adjustments to be made in the event of a pot boiling over or a shortage of salt. She could do this.
Do you want to hear a story? Luc’s voice came to her, and just like that she was back in her turret bedroom, cuddled under a quilt as thunder cracked outside, Luc sitting cross-legged on the foot of her bed with a mug of tea that steamed delicate tendrils around his face. Once upon a time there was a girl locked in a thousand-foot glass tower. The prince of a warring country intended to keep her there until she agreed to marry him. No way out, no way down, not even bed sheets to tie together for a rope. Luc had smiled. Do you want to know how she escaped?
Anouk thought of the story, of the girl, and inspected the wall of glass keeping them from the elevator. “I have an idea,” she said, eyeing the stiff Marble Ladies. “But you aren’t going to like it.”