She drove back to the city at less of a breakneck speed. As soon as she crossed the city limits, night descended again, as though someone had turned off the lights in a bright room. Likewise, the world came to a standstill. Frozen cars were coated in ice. Birds hung in mid-flight. Snow was falling, to her relief—Duke Karolinge must still have the energy to continue casting his spell, but she knew he wouldn’t be able to last much longer. She crested a hill and saw flashes of colored light: purple in Belgravia, blue in Kensington. Her heart soared. The lights were at the outer edges of the neighborhoods. The teams were almost finished.
She drove back toward Big Ben on streets that were almost entirely clear of smoke. A few wisps curled after her, but they were too small to be harmful. She neared a figure standing at the base of the tower.
She cut the engine and smiled at Cricket. She tumbled off the motorcycle, her legs shaking badly, and let it crash to its side in the street. Beau would be horrified, but scratched paint was the least of her worries.
“You got rid of the smoke!” Cricket exclaimed. “And you didn’t break your neck. Bravo!”
Anouk grinned. “And you? The Heart of Alexandrite?”
“Mission accomplished.” Cricket held up a paper bag from the museum gift shop. Then her expression turned secretive. “Are you sure about this? About . . . the other plan you told me on the rooftop?”
“As sure as anyone can be.”
A rustle came from the tower. Big Ben’s lancet windows were now sealed, the smoke contained except for the few harmless wisps slipping out from the cracks.
Hunter Black jumped into the mountain of clocks at the base, cursing as he made his unsteady way toward them. His hands were bleeding. There were traces of downy moth wings on his lips. Whatever had been involved in sealing the tower’s windows, it had taken magic and a risk of physical impairment. But the assassin only wiped his hands on his dark pants.
“You scaled the Eiffel Tower faster,” Cricket teased.
She got a scowl in return.
Anouk rolled her eyes and pointed toward the east. “The Court of the Woods is almost finished with Islington. And from what I could see, Petra’s cleared all of Chelsea. I think—incredibly—we might actually live.”
Her confidence wavered as she looked at the pyre of clocks and the few remaining wisps of smoke curling around her ankles. The ticking of clocks—powered by the Noirceur—was deafening. She wished she could see the rooftop of the British Museum. How much energy did Duke Karolinge have left? Could he keep it snowing much longer?
“If I tell you something”—Hunter Black’s voice was uncertain, but he pushed forward, clenching his bleeding hands—“do you promise to keep it secret?”
Cricket and Anouk exchanged a surprised look. Hunter Black was known for his secret keeping, but it was usually them he was keeping secrets from.
“Yes,” Anouk said slowly.
A muscle jumped in his jaw. “This sounds like something from one of Luc’s stories, but I swear that I’m not making it up. When I was at the top of the tower, looking into the smoke . . . I had a vision.”
He jerked his head as though he expected them to laugh. But nobody laughed. Anouk and Cricket exchanged another look, and Cricket said in a hollow voice, “It wasn’t your first vision, was it? I bet you had one too when you were turned into a wolf.”
His eyes snapped to hers. “How did you know that?”
“Anouk and I had visions too.”
His tense shoulders eased in visible relief. “The first one happened when Mada Zola turned me into a wolf. I didn’t trust it then. Wasn’t certain exactly what I saw.” His hand anxiously toyed with the buttons on his shirt. “But up there in the tower, I saw it again.”
Anouk breathed, “What did you see?”
“Royals. A small contingent. In a forest. Riding horses, not motorcycles. Eating lamb roast over a bonfire, not sushi from Le Petit Japonais. Their lips were dusted with powder that glittered like crystals. They were led by a king and queen dressed in bear pelts. They had an army of enchanted Pretties with them.”
“The ancient Royals,” Anouk whispered. “King Svatyr and Queen Mid Ruath of the Snowfire Court, just like Jak told us about.”
Hunter Black nodded. “They ordered their Pretty slaves to pack away their encampment, while the contingent led by the king and queen rode a mile away to a clearing where enormous stones rose from the ground and smoke covered the earth.”
“Stonehenge,” Cricket said.
He nodded. “They revered it. I don’t think they or their ancestors built it—it seemed ancient even to them. They burned hemlock and whispered a kindred spell that drew smoke into the stones. They camped at the stones and celebrated with honey wine.” He paused, uncertain whether to continue, then said, “At midnight, when the others were passed out, Queen Mid Ruath stepped outside of the stones. She sang into the wind. I don’t know if it was a spell or a ballad—I didn’t understand the words—but they’re burned into my brain:
“Baz perrik, baz mare, baz teri,
en utidrava aedenum sa nav.”
A chill ran through Anouk. Something scratched at her ankles like the remaining few wisps of smoke had grown fingernails. Hunter Black went moody and quiet.
A block away, Petra rounded the corner and called to them. She jogged over, marveling at the pile of clocks. “Finished! Hey, I think that cuckoo clock over there was one of mine! You should have seen all the clocks that came out of the primary school on Dover Street. Almost no clocks in the government buildings, which is alarming, don’t you think? Shouldn’t Pretty politicians care about time more than schoolchildren?” She turned back to them and frowned. “Hunter Black, good God, are you feeling okay?”
Anouk spun to him. He was still fidgeting with his buttons, but his moodiness had shifted. His face was now oddly slack.
Cricket asked, “Hunter Black?”
The assassin stood very straight, head tilted up at the illuminated clock face of Big Ben. A tiny curl of smoke—almost imperceptible—snaked out of his ear.
Anouk took a quick step away from him. “Hunter Black!”
Cricket caught sight of the curl of smoke. “Oh, merde.” She pulled her knives.
Another curl of smoke twisted from his nostrils. His lips parted. An inhuman growl came from his throat. Anouk’s eyes dropped to the button at his shirt collar that he kept toying with. It was one of the three buttons that Petra had charmed in the Castle Ides billiard room when she’d made his new clothes.
“Petra, the glass you used to make Hunter Black’s buttons—where did you get it?”
“It was a paperweight,” she sputtered. “On the floor. Someone must have knocked it over when we carried Rennar in.”
Anouk thought back to the lump of glass, how it was raw cut and oddly shaped. At the time, she hadn’t thought twice about it. But now she realized how out of place a paperweight would be on the floor of an impeccably tidy billiard room.
“The sand,” Anouk whispered. Then: “Cricket, keep your distance from him!” Anouk’s throat tightened as she pulled Cricket back.
Petra looked at the buttons blankly. “Sand? What sand? I told you I made them out of glass!”
“Glass is made of sand, Petra! Haven’t you ever read a book on geology? The Noirceur was able to possess King Kaspar and Mia through the sand from the broken hourglass. But when the Royals used magic against the possession, it must have melted some of the sand into glass, like lightning does in nature. We must have accidentally brought the glass to the billiard room with Rennar, not realizing what it was at the time.”
Petra frowned. “So that means the buttons I made . . . oh.”
All eyes turned to Hunter Black.
“Hunter Black, look at me,” Anouk said.
Her voice trembled, but not because she was afraid of him. She was afraid for him. She was no maid anymore, no pastry chef useful only for making sweet treats. She was the Gargoyle. Magic hummed in her palms. The Faustine jacket covered her skin like battle armor. Its golden threads had protected her before, and now its pockets held owl feathers, her crux. She didn’t want to hurt him, but what if he gave her no choice? He squared himself and faced her. His eyes were threaded with smoke. Ribbons of it poured out of his mouth as he continued to make that awful growling. The sound slowly took the form of the Selentium Vox.
“Previso . . . rivet . . . morfin . . .”
It was the same warnings and curses King Kaspar had whispered.
“Hunter Black, if you’re still in there, give us a sign.” Anouk eyes darted from him to the pyre of clocks to the knives in Cricket’s hands. Cricket wouldn’t hesitate to strike whether Hunter Black was in possession of his own body or not. Spells scrolled through Anouk’s mind. Containment spells. Defensive spells. Exorcism spells. But the Royals had attempted all of those on King Kaspar and none had worked.
Hunter Black’s hand moved to draw his knife from the sheath strapped beneath his shirt. His movements were stilted. Anouk plunged her hand in her jacket, whispered open her oubliette pockets, and pulled out a long white feather. Just as he rushed forward with the knife raised, she pushed the feather down her throat and swallowed.
“Ak ignis bleu!” she whispered. The knife sparked in his hand, burning hot. He dropped it with a hiss.
“Anouk? Cricket? Petra?” From across the park, someone was calling to them.
She dared a glance. It was December, hurtling forward on her enchanted roller skates. In the distance, the orange and purple lights had stopped flashing, though the blue and green ones continued. The Royals and Goblins hadn’t finished yet.
Anouk whipped her head back toward Hunter Black, bristling for an attack, but Hunter Black had fled. December skated up and crashed into Anouk. Her eyes went wide when they explained what had happened.
“He could be headed anywhere in the city,” Anouk said.
“Um, or he could be right there.” December pointed in the direction of the Pickwick and Rue’s.