Merci à Dieu, Anouk thought, for magic.
Instead of waiting for the hare to expel the ruby the natural way—or, as Viggo crassly put it, waiting for it to démouler un cake—Anouk consulted with Luc and then gathered a concoction of gorse, owl feathers, a snippet of the rabbit’s fur, and a splash of Viggo’s blood. She swallowed it down and, while Cricket held the hare steady, whispered a spell she’d learned at the Cottage, a version of the one Cricket had cast in the museum restaurant, that could temporarily transmute a substance into water. As soon as she finished the whisper, the hare’s golden fur turned translucent. They could see through its skin like peering through glass: its clear heart beating and clear lungs breathing and, in the pit of the hare’s stomach, a red ruby.
Fast as she could, Anouk thrust her hand through the enchanted fur—her fingers sinking into the watery substance, through fur and skin and stomach lining—grabbed the ruby stud, and pulled her hand back out. The watery substance molded itself back into place as her spell faded, and within seconds, they were looking at fur again. The hare, unharmed, twitched its nose and leaped out of Cricket’s arms.
“Hey!” Cricket ran after it, but Anouk shook her head.
“Leave it. We don’t need it for anything else. Anyway, it’ll be safer down here than anywhere else in the city.” She held the ruby in her palm and watched its polished facets catch the light.
She peered into the empty rafters. “Where’s Saint? We need him.”
They poked through the back storerooms until Hunter Black found Saint perched on the frame of a Degas painting, a freshly killed mouse in his beak. Cricket and Beau kept their distance but Hunter Black enticed the falcon onto his arm and carried him back to Anouk.
Saint cocked his head. A drop of blood rolled off the point of his beak.
“Easy, fellow. Remember me?” He had a new golden bell dangling from a cord around his neck. She thought briefly of how anguished she’d been when the Duke had taken her magic, how desperately she’d wanted it back. Carefully, Anouk unfastened the bell, pried back one of the metal leaves, and inserted the ruby stud inside. She refastened the bell around Saint’s neck and treated him to a scrap of pepperoni. He hopped onto her arm. “Hunter Black.” She called over the assassin and delicately passed him the bird. “Take him and try not to terrorize each other.
“We need to get to the roof,” she told the others.
“The floors between here and there are still overrun by reanimated corpses,” Beau said.
Anouk turned to Luc. “Do you have any more gorse?”
With a pinch of herbs and a whisper, Anouk enchanted a janitor’s closet door into a portal to the roof. When she twisted the doorknob, mops and buckets had been replaced by the exterior rooftop dome. Frigid air carried in the chaotic sounds of the city. Cars honking. People screaming. Alarms that never ended.
Anouk held the door open for the others. They filed through, but Anouk grabbed Cricket before she crossed the threshold and motioned for her to hang back.
“That ruby has me thinking about jewels,” she said. “How good they are at containing spells. Did you see the exhibit for the Heart of Alexandrite downstairs? It’s the rarest jewel in the world. It had every manner of security guarding it. Bars. Cameras. Alarms. It seems like the perfect vessel to contain the Noirceur.”
Cricket cracked her knuckles. “I’ll just need a few hours and a screwdriver.”
“There’s . . . something else.”
Anouk hesitated, and then discussed the situation with Cricket in a quiet voice. Cricket’s eyes went wide, but she nodded.
They joined the others on the roof. Beau supported Luc under one arm. Viggo propped open the door with one of the Nutcracker dolls in case they needed to get back into the basement quickly. Anouk walked to the edge of the roof. Beau joined her on one side, Cricket on the other. Hunter Black, with Saint still perched on his wrist, veered dangerously close to the edge, peering down at the tumultuous city with an unreadable expression. Viggo hung back in the warmth of the doorway, blowing into his hands.
“Merde,” Cricket muttered as she gazed over the rooftops. “It’s gotten even worse.”
In just a day, the city had become unrecognizable.
Twin moons shone on roof tiles littered with toads—some alive, some dead. Wisps of black smoke curled toward the sounds of the city in arcs too perfect to be regular chimney smoke. The time slips had multiplied. Cars drove into them and simply vanished. Pretties running from crazed mobs took wrong turns and disappeared.
Luc, still weak, sank onto an air-conditioning unit.
“What happened?” Beau’s voice was halting. His eyes were wide as he took in the Pretties circling, repeating the same motions again and again.
“The plagues,” Anouk said. “And they’re only going to get worse. I saw it in my vision. The time slips will accelerate until the city is completely consumed by the Noirceur. Once those clock hands reach midnight, it’ll be nothing but smoke.” They looked at the clock face and saw they didn’t have much time.
Anouk motioned Hunter Black and Saint over.
“Go to Castle Ides,” Anouk told the bird. “Fast as you can.”
She nodded a signal. Hunter Black went to the edge and launched the bird off of his wrist. Saint took wing and glided into the air, soaring over rooftops until he’d disappeared into low-lying clouds.
Cricket peered incredulously down at the city. “How long until Saint gets to Paris?”
“He’s fast, even without magic, and he’s strong enough to fly high above the time slips. He’ll make it within the hour,” Hunter Black said.
“He’d better,” Beau muttered, “otherwise there won’t be any city left to save.”
Luc was shivering. Hunter Black shrugged off his heavy coat and rested it over the gardener’s shoulders.
Cricket folded her arms tightly. “So how exactly are we supposed to stop the Noirceur when we can’t walk two steps beyond the museum without getting caught in a time loop? We’ll never make it to Big Ben. We’d get hit by a falling toad or struck by lightning.”
Anouk thought about this, then jerked her head toward the clouds. “Snow.”
“Um, cabbage, it isn’t snowing,” Beau pointed out.
“Not yet.” Anouk felt the magic tingling in her palms. This time, she didn’t have to rely on anyone to cast magic for her. She needed a big storm, big enough to cover the whole city. She began to whisper. She spun her left hand in a circle, and the clouds lowered and darkened. Flakes started to fall.
“You’re summoning Jak,” Cricket realized.
Anouk muttered between whispers, “Not just Jak—all the Snow Children. They can’t stop the plagues, but they might be able to interrupt them. Buy us time before the city is torn apart.”
The snow fell like the gods were sugaring the city. In the chaos below, the few Pretties not caught in time loops raised umbrellas. Snow fell thick on Anouk’s head and arms. It caught in Cricket’s hair and in Beau’s eyelashes. Hunter Black pulled up the collar of his shirt, hunkering low. Soon a light coating of snow dusted the glass dome of the museum roof.
Anouk heard a cruel chuckle behind her and spun.
“Miss me so soon?” Jak asked.
He was clutching the spire at the top of the dome.
Behind him, more faces appeared, all of them pale with black eyes and icicle hair. Dozens of Snow Children perched on the glass dome. A girl with jagged frosty curls. A cluster of boys with clothes made of ice. Even as a witch, Anouk felt uncertain. These were ancient creatures. Older than Goblins, older than Royals, so old that they weren’t even an order of the Haute.
“Jak,” she said. “The Noirceur is spreading too fast. I need you and the other Snow Children to freeze the city. Coat it all in ice temporarily. Cricket and I have a plan to transfer the Noirceur to a new vessel—the Heart of Alexandrite—but the plagues are going to destroy the whole city and everyone in it before we can.”
Jak didn’t seem concerned about the bedlam below or her anxiety. “Cities rise and fall. It is the way of things. Why should we intervene?”
Her cheeks burned. She was desperate. “You want a kiss. I’ll . . . I’ll give you one once all of this is over.”
Hunter Black growled his disapproval.
Beau spun on her. “Cabbage, are you crazy?”
Viggo, in the doorway, looked deeply troubled. “You can’t, Dust Mop. Think of those dead girls in the forest you told us about. You want to join them?”
She ignored them. “I’ll do it,” she told Jak. “I promise. I’ll risk it.” She held her chin high, but to her surprise, Jak sadly shook his head.
“No, lovely.”
Her eyes widened. “Why not?”
“You’ve changed. You’re no longer warm—you’re burning. The blue flame inside of you would burn me too.”
Anouk let out a cry. She’d become a witch to defeat the Coven of Oxford, only to find they’d ceased to exist, swallowed by something even more daunting. Now she couldn’t even kiss a Snow Child. “Then what do you want?”
“A kiss, just not from you.”
His black eyes skimmed over Cricket, who gave him a scowl, to Beau, who straightened quickly, to Viggo, who leaned in the doorway and picked carelessly at his fingernails, to Hunter Black, who looked like a sullen shadow even without his coat, to Luc, where they finally settled.
Jak smiled.
Luc tensed. He pulled the collar of Hunter Black’s coat higher around his neck. The other Snow Children crept forward over the dome, soft and graceful as spiders, leaving no prints behind.
Hunter Black moved defensively in front of Luc. He cracked his knuckles. “Try it, and you’ll kiss my fist.”
“He’s right,” Anouk said. “It’s me or nobody.”
Strangely, Luc hadn’t said a word. She shot him a worried look. He looked awful. She crouched next to him and asked quietly, “Luc? You okay?”
“Yes, it’s—” His gaze flickered to her eyes briefly, then to Hunter Black’s, and he closed his mouth. “Nothing.”
Jak took a silent step forward and Anouk snapped her head around. “No. He was poisoned. He’s still recovering. A kiss from you would kill him immediately.”
Jak gave Luc a long look, and Anouk got the sense she was missing some understanding between them.
“It’s all right,” Luc said quietly. “I’ll do it.”
Hunter Black barked a quick “No.”
Anouk dug her fingers into Luc’s arm. “Luc, you can’t. You know what a kiss means.”
Beneath her fingers, his skin was burning up. Shouldn’t her antidote have worked by now?
“It’s okay, Dust Bunny.” He clapped his hand over hers. Then he faced Jak. “Freeze the city and when all of this is over, I’ll give you what you want.”
Anouk tried to protest again. Cricket pulled out her knives, hurling threats at Jak and the other cold bodies behind him, but the Snow Children only blinked their black eyes languidly.
Jak pivoted toward Anouk. “We can do as you ask, but only if we are present, which means as long as the snow falls. As soon as your snow spell ends, we vanish, and your city returns to chaos. Do you intend to keep whispering forever?”
Anouk felt a moment of panic. But she wasn’t some maid anymore with minor tricks at her fingertips. She was a witch. The Gargoyle. She swallowed a pinch of snow with downy-soft owl feathers and whispered, “Ombra ja.”
She took an exaggerated, theatrical step forward. A copy of herself, nearly translucent, remained behind. A shadow self. She’d never tried this spell before, and she marveled to see her own ghostly double hanging back. She stopped chanting the snow spell, but her shadow self continued. The snowfall continued too.
“That’s amazing!” Cricket said. “How long will it last?”
“Not long, I’m afraid. Shadow selves are unpredictable. A few hours, maybe. Right now it’s the best I can do. We’ll have to work fast.”
Jak turned to the other Snow Children and spoke a few words in a language she’d never heard. They gathered on the dome, clinging like frost. They needed no life-essence to cast magic; it was easy for creatures made of snow to command ice and frost. The glass beneath their hands began to frost over. The doves that were perched at the edge of the museum froze in place as though they’d been encased in glass; not a single movement of their eyes, not a flutter of their feathers. Anouk ran to the edge of the rooftop. The frost rapidly spread down the sides of the museum, stopping leaves from fluttering, pausing birds in midflight and leaving them fixed in the sky, immobile. The frost spread to the next block, where it froze the churning waves of the Thames, froze the pedestrians and the cars, froze billowing coats and scarves, even froze the flickering gas-lamp flames outside of tourist pubs. There were no more screams, no honking cars, no twisting of metal, no deafening flutter of wings. Only the patter of snow.
Anouk pressed a hand to her chest to feel for the rise and fall of her breath, reassuring herself that she was still able to move. Beau stretched and folded his fingers. Cricket tapped her shoe on the rooftop to hear it echo.
“The whole city’s standing still,” Beau breathed.
Hunter Black pointed grimly to the horizon. “Not all of it.”
The black smoke that clouded at the base of Big Ben was still swirling. The clock hands still ticked, echoing in the quiet city, and the smoke vibrated in time with it.
“We cannot freeze what cannot be frozen,” Jak explained. “That tower is commanded by the Noirceur, and the Noirceur is an oblivion, an emptiness. There is nothing to freeze. The city now belongs to you and to it.” He jerked his chin toward the tower. Then he flashed Luc a grin. “And soon, you will belong to us. We’ll come to collect.”
Hunter Black darted between them in a flash, his fists raised. The wind blew stronger; the snow was so heavy it was hard to see more than a foot or two in any direction. Hunter Black twisted, hanging close to Luc in case the Snow Children tried to grab him. When the wind finally eased, Jak and the rest of the Snow Children were gone. Hunter Black spun in a tight circle, fists high, ready to fight a foe who’d vanished.
Anouk threw her arms around Luc. “You shouldn’t have made that promise!”
The city was eerily quiet. She could hear Luc’s heartbeat, Cricket’s pacing footsteps, Beau’s anxious hands stretching his leather gloves, Viggo spitting over the roof edge onto the motionless Pretties below.
And then there was an odd crackle in the air. The hair on the back of her neck stood up, like it did when electricity was building before a lightning strike. But the clouds overhead weren’t threatening a storm. The crackling sound thunked and whirred like machinery gearing up, and she peered at the air-conditioning units on the museum roof. A half an inch of frost coated the fan blades. They were as frozen as the mummies that had just moments ago been pressing and moaning against the stairwell door.
Suddenly, the crackling noise came from behind her, and she twisted around. Little sparks erupted in the air around the skylight. The others heard it too. They all gathered close. Cricket drew her knives. Hunter Black balled his fists.
With a blinding flash, a figure appeared on the skylight.
Anouk slapped her hands over her eyes. When the spots cleared from her vision, she saw a girl dressed in an enviable black couture coat and champagne-colored sunglasses, holding a box.
Petra.
The witch coolly slid the sunglasses up into her hair, squinting at the double moons with a distrustful glower. She dusted a few snowflakes off of her coat. Then she caught sight of Anouk and grinned. She stepped off the skylight, shifted the box to one arm, and held out her palm.
The ruby.
“Thanks,” Petra said, folding her fingers back over the ruby, “for the ticket into the city. We got your message from Saint. Congratulations on walking the coals, my fellow witchie.” Something glittered in her eyes, a deep pride. She leaned close to kiss Anouk’s cheek and whispered, “Ash.”
Anouk raised an eyebrow. “Ash?”
“The Ash Witch. That’s my moniker. Born of fire, heart of coals, cozy but dangerous if you get too close. I told you that I’d tell you my moniker when you survived.”
Anouk grinned. “It’s perfect.”
Petra slid her sunglasses back down. She turned to the others. “Rennar sends his regards along with something that I think we’ll find exceptionally helpful. Who’s in the mood for a present?”
She shook the mysterious box tantalizingly.