CHAPTER 21

Black the town yonder,

Black those that are in it;

I am the White Swan,

Queen of them all.

                —CARMINA GADELICA, ALEXANDER CARMICHAEL

Finn had known this confrontation was inevitable. It had lain like a shadow over the brightness of her first day back in the world. Now, in the limousine, she felt naked, defenseless, almost unbearably afraid for Jack, Lily, and Anna. Only horror awaited them, and it came at her in such a thorny rush, she found herself slipping into a dreamlike stillness.

“Finn.” Jack’s voice, calm and velvety, made her turn her head to gaze at him. His eyes were dark as he said, “Remember what you are.”

And what am I? she thought. Just a girl about to face down a monster.

As the limousine Lot had sent for them coasted up the road into the Blackbird Mountains, Anna whispered to Finn and Jack, “The Wolf came in through the attic window. Lily tried to hurt him. He got hold of her. He made me follow. There were others with him.”

Finn began, “Anna, I didn’t mean to—”

“It’s okay.” Anna folded her hands over the painted umbrella Absalom had given her. “This was meant to be. Just like Christie and Sylvie were supposed to go with you to the Ghostlands, I was meant to be here with you.”

She was trembling. Finn said to the two wolves in front, “Let her go. She’s only—”

“—an oracle who knows too much.” The shaven-headed Fata girl seated next to the driver smiled—Finn recognized her as the one from the Wolf’s house, Antoinette, glamorous and sinister in a silver silk gown and fur coat. “Naughty children.”

The rakish wolf driving didn’t look back at them, but the rearview mirror revealed his smile, the gold of one tooth. Beneath his hair, gold hoops glinted in his earlobes.

Finn took the vial of Tamasgi’po from her pocket, opened it, and traced the liquid over her lips. The Fata girl, watching in the rearview, smirked. “Our little mayfly is making herself lovely for the Madadh aillaid. How charming. What kind of lip gloss is that, sweetmeat?”

Jack said, idly, to the wolves, “You can stop smiling.”

“Is that a threat?” the male wolf mocked. “What can you do, pretty boy? You’ve still got a mortal taint.”

“I won’t do anything.” Jack indicated Finn with a tilt of his head. “She might, being the queen killer.”

The male Fata muttered something in French.

Antoinette turned and held out a hand to Finn. “Give it to me. Your bottle.”

Finn dropped the vial of Tamasgi’po on the floor.

“Clumsy child. You’re a threat?” Antoinette’s lips curled.

Finn, pretending to scrabble for the fallen vial—which was clearly labeled Tamasgi’po—furtively switched it under the seat with the nearly empty vial of elixir in her other hand.

“Got it.” She straightened and set the elixir vial into the wolf girl’s palm. She didn’t dare look at Jack as he wound one of his hands with her other.

“Elixir, girl? It won’t help you.” Antoinette opened her window and tossed the bottle out.

The limousine detoured into the woods, down a road that had appeared out of nowhere. The rain was coming down in sheets by now, and the sound of it battering the car was accompanied by the hiss of the windshield wipers and the crunch of tires on gravel. The headlights illuminated nothing but endless corridors of trees. Finn whispered to Jack, “We’re not going to die tonight.”

“I know.”

Anna, to Finn’s dismay, remained silent.

The limousine broke from the giant trees, its headlights blazing over what seemed to be a medieval cathedral that resembled one of those Gothic ruins from a Turner painting. The stone walls were barbed with briars. Roses as crimson as though they’d been dipped in blood bloomed as if winter had no hold here. Graceful angel figures carved from obsidian framed the arched entrance, but the angels had the faces of wolves.

The limousine halted. The female Fata exited the car, opened the back door, and bowed mockingly. Jack slid out. He turned, extending a hand to assist Finn, then Anna. Anna handed him her umbrella and he opened it and held it over their heads.

As they approached the massive ruin of stained glass and mottled stone, its more sinister aspects became apparent. A chiaroscuro of candlelight and shadows flickered beyond a screen of spiky briars draped over the entrance. A large pale snake moved among the briars as if it was some true-world embodiment of a guardian dragon. Living eyeballs nestled in the centers of the roses—Finn didn’t flinch from the snake, but she winced when she saw the eyeballs. A skull-headed gargoyle with a female body turned its head to regard them with malice. This was the true shape of the Wolf’s house, a piece of the Ghostlands wrecked on the shores of reality, now infecting the world around it.

Finn and Jack moved forward, hands clasped, with Anna following. As they passed beneath the arch, pollen swept over them, whirling around Finn and falling away. She looked down at herself and inhaled sharply—she now wore a summer dress of silver silk and gossamer, but she still had the lionheart pendant and her Doc Martens. She could smell the roses that had appeared in her hair and touched them to make sure they didn’t have eyes. She checked to see that Moth was still fluttering against her neck, hidden by her hair.

Jack and Anna hadn’t been changed.

“It’s psychological warfare,” Jack said gently.

“I know.” She ducked as he lifted the curtain of briars for her and Anna to pass beneath.

They stepped into the cavernous nave, where a cracked ceiling failed to prevent flecks of rain from entering and a rectangular table of old oak was set with a grotesque feast of roasted meats, tiered cakes, and goblets of black glass. Morning glories tumbled from vases of dark crystal. Seated at the table was Seth Lot’s pack in their modern finery of fur, velvet, and leather, their faces concealed by elaborate half masks. The Rooks were there, in the beaked visages of medieval plague doctors. Hip Hop wore a cowled coat of crimson crushed velvet.

Lot sat at the other end of the table behind a roasted, skinned swan with a gilt crown on its skull. The candles’ glow highlighted the ivory scar snaking along his cheekbone and shone in the glass eyes of the jawless wolf’s head he wore as a headdress. One jeweled hand rested on his walking stick. His fur-lined coat was open, revealing a bare, muscled torso decorated with a golden torque and tribal-looking tattoos.

“Well, Serafina Sullivan. Here we are.” The gentleman Wolf’s black-rimmed eyes glittered with amusement. “And Jack. Thank you, Anna.”

Anna looked warily around at the wolves. Finn felt the elixir shimmering coldly through her blood and slid an arm around Anna’s shoulders as Jack snapped shut the umbrella and handed it back to Anna.

“You see, Finn, Anna,” Jack said, his voice sultry, “the Madadh aillaid doesn’t like to play with his victims unless he has an audience.”

“Jack knows me well.” Seth Lot didn’t smile. “Once, we were very alike.”

“We were never”—Jack watched Seth Lot from beneath lowered lashes—“alike.”

“You were a killer, Jack.” Seth Lot spoke gently. “You enjoyed it—sending those Fatas to their deaths . . . White Bee and Mr. Bones and that idiot carnival giant.”

The wind drifted Jack’s rain-glittering hair over his face as he said quietly, “I never killed innocents.”

Lot continued, “And what about the Lily Girls?”

There was a bitter twist to Jack’s mouth. “They were tricked—”

“But you knew, Jack, that by making those three girls fall in love with you you’d be putting them in danger. You grew a heart for each, but they were selfish hearts—especially the last one, seeded by the girl who would have taken your place as a sacrifice, the girl standing beside you right now.”

Finn, who did not care that Jack had once loved the three Lily Girls, and who reasonably knew she hadn’t been Jack’s only love—he’d been around for nearly two hundred years, after all—withdrew her hand from Jack’s and took a step back, pretending that the news hurt her, when it did not. She turned and walked to one of the empty chairs. Tracking her with his gaze, Jack moved along the other side of the table.

As Anna sat beside Finn, the masked wolves began talking among themselves, reaching for wine goblets, slicing meat from the ornately posed roadkill on the table.

Finn spoke as if the words were shards of glass in her throat. “Where is Lily?”

Lot curled his fingers. “Here.”

Two female Fatas glided from the shadows with Lily between them like a young queen in a gown of sleeveless black with a high, ruffled collar. Lily lurched toward Finn, was yanked back by one of the wolf girls.

Finn began to rise, but Lot’s jeweled fingers closed over hers and she sat back, watching as her sister was escorted to the chair next to Jack. The wolves continued to revel as if mortal pain and fear were exquisite appetizers. Seth Lot said to Finn, in a voice luxurious with hate, “You stole her from me. With me, she was a queen. Now she is nothing.”

Lily’s eyes, inked around with elaborate designs, widened as she leaned toward Lot and smiled fiercely. “I faked all of it. Every minute with you.”

He stared at her and the beast flickered beneath his skin but was swiftly concealed. Civility returned to his manner. “Here is my offer, Serafina Sullivan. You take your sister’s place at my side and I’ll allow your loved ones to leave. Alive.”

It was a deal meant to cause the most harm, to leave Finn’s family and friends—and Jack—forever not knowing what had become of her.

“Don’t you touch her!” Lily leaped to her feet, was slammed back into her chair by Antoinette. The Rooks stirred. Bottle looked up, his injured eye obscured by the beaked mask.

When Jack met Anna’s gaze, Finn glanced at Anna and saw a flickering sorrow there. Doubt began to shadow her—Jack had a plan, one he had not told her about.

“Anna,” Finn whispered, “what do you know?”

Anna bowed her head. “I see a death that should have been and never was.”

A death that should have been . . . Finn lifted her gaze to Lot’s blue one. “You invited Jack and me. You can’t hurt us.”

“Not that again. I didn’t invite your sister or the oracle. I took them.” Lot twirled a bone-handled knife between his fingers, his expression disdainful. “Stop trying to be clever.” He pushed a plate of little white cakes oozing red toward her. “Have a cake. Someone put their heart into them.”

Finn saw the killer in Jack’s eyes when he turned his head to regard Seth Lot, who reached out to pluck one of the morning glories from a vase. “Do you like the morning glories, Lily, my love? And the utensils—the handles are made from real bone.”

He flung the bone-handled knife and the morning glory at Lily. Both landed before her, the knife pinning the flower to the table. As Lily stared down at the knife and the flower, Anna murmured, “Morning glories and bones, from the boy taken by the sea, the boy who wanted to make stories with pictures.”

Finn looked at the bleeding cakes, the forks and knives, the wet purple flowers that now reminded her of internal organs. Sour bile filled her throat. Horror shook her. Leander . . .

“And this is especially for you, my Lily.” Lot sat back as Antoinette set a large bronze platter with a lid in front of Lily, who was now arched as far from the table as her chair would allow.

“No . . . Lily—” Finn slid to her feet as her sister reached for the handle on the lid and tilted it up so that only she could see what was beneath.

As Lily’s voice broke in a lament that caused the wolves to cease their carousing, Seth Lot smiled and Antoinette, the shaven-headed Fata girl, touched a band of teeth around her throat. Jack swore with vicious fury. Anna curled up in her chair, her arms over her head.

Lily’s eyes were black holes in her face.

As she lunged, screaming, across the table, the bone-handled steak knife in one hand, a legion of black butterflies streaked with neon red descended on the wolves, who leaped from their chairs, shouting.

Finn jumped up, reaching for her sister.

Lily was dragged back by Antoinette. Jack snatched up two knives and flung them—one at Lot, the other at Antoinette. Antoinette received hers in the left eye and fell back, howling. Lot caught the blade meant for him in midair and whipped it back at Jack. Jack fell into his chair, the knife sunk in the middle of his chest.

Lot went for Finn.

Jack, all Jack now, pulled the knife from his chest and leaped over the table. Cake and shards of porcelain scattered. The wolves caught him. He snarled as they wrestled him to the ground.

And as Finn tried to reach her sister, Lot seized Finn by the nape of her neck. “And what is this?”

She cried out as he drew from her hair the fragile form of the moth. He began to close his fingers around the frantically fluttering insect. “This was your secret weapon? How predic—”

“Don’t,” Finn said, desperate to keep him from killing Moth. “I’ll stay with you—”

“Too late.” His smile was all teeth.

She cried out as he crushed the moth. Glittering dust spiraled from his fingers, drifting above their heads. Anna pushed to her feet, reaching up. “He’s still here.”

Before Lot could get hold of her again, Finn leaped onto the table, scattering goblets and plates as she ran, following the shimmering cloud of moth wing fragments. She stood on tiptoe, felt the fragments drift across her lips like electric pollen, shivered as a current ran through her, leaving her breathless. She whispered, “Alexander Nightshade . . . come back to me.”

As she was hauled, kicking, down from the table by two female Fatas, she saw the cloudy night sky through the crack in the ceiling. Then the world righted itself.

The tiny cloud of moth remnants ignited, speared down—and Moth crashed into existence, crouched amid the devastated feast, the hem of his coat sweeping over the table. As he yanked the jackal-hilted sword from the strap across his back, candlelight glistened along its blade of silvered iron. Seth Lot shouted as the young man rose and ran toward him down the length of the table, porcelain and glass crunching beneath his boots.

In the chaos that followed, Jack broke free of the wolves and Finn struggled against the Fatas hauling her away. Jack vaulted across the table, swung Anna to Lily’s side, and went after the wolves holding Finn. Two big Fatas in fur coats stepped in his way.

Twisting in the grip of her captors, Finn saw shadows begin to writhe around Seth Lot, until he was completely obscured. She glimpsed something monstrous moving in that darkness and screamed a warning to Moth as he made his way through the wolves, toward Lot.

While Jack and Moth fought the wolves, Finn clawed and kicked at the two who held her.

One of the wolves was torn from her. She wrenched free of the other and turned to see Hip Hop in her cowled coat aiming an ivory pistol at the remaining wolf. As Finn backed away with Hip Hop, the Rook’s hood fell back—revealing, not Hip Hop, but the scarred face of a young woman who resembled . . . Finn whispered, “Who . . . ?”

“I’m Jill Scarlet. Go!”

Finn turned and ran—

A black mass so cold it stopped her breath fell over her, entangling her limbs with an icy grip, lifting her. She couldn’t even scream as she was flung—

—she hit the ground and uncurled in a gloomy corridor. She lay there, shaking and glazed with cold sweat. Nausea and fear wrenched through her in a convulsive shiver.

The tentacled darkness churned back into the shape of Seth Lot. He strode to her and dragged her to her feet.

“Lot.” Looking like a prince of hell, Jack stepped into the corridor.

Lot hooked an arm around Finn’s throat and yanked her back against him. She felt the fur of his coat prick against her neck, flinched as sharp nails caressed the pulse beneath her left ear. Lot said, “Let’s see if you can get to her before I tear her open.”

Jack raised the ivory pistol the young woman called Jill Scarlet had carried, a Fata weapon shaped into a leaping hound. “Silver bullets coated with wolfsbane, Lot. They’ll hurt.”

“Jack.” Lot sounded disapproving. “You’re cheating.”

Finn slammed a heel into Lot’s right foot. He growled and tightened his grip, but she braced her other foot against the wall and pushed with all her might. She slid down, felt a sharp burn across her cheek from his nails, heard the crack of a gunshot. Lot released her.

Jack shouted her name as she launched herself toward him.

Lot, bleeding darkness from where the bullet had grazed the left side of his face, seized her wrist. She shouted as she felt a bone snap, and fell to one knee in agony.

Lot whipped the sword from his walking stick and speared it at Jack.

The blade struck Jack in the chest, exactly where his heart still beat, but it was Finn who made a faint, wounded sound as Jack collapsed, the pistol clattering across the floor. Lot said, in a voice rich with satisfaction, “I thought I’d taught you better, Jack—never bring a gun to a swordfight.”

Jack clutched the sword in his chest. Blood trickled from a corner of his mouth.

Lot smiled down at Finn. Then he walked away, snatching up the ivory pistol and snapping it in half, scattering the bullets, before leaving them. When she heard him call, “Li . . . ly . . .” she staggered to her feet, cradling her wrist.

Jack raised his head. “Go. Moth will help . . . I’ll follow in a sec—”

“Jack . . .”

“Go!”

Torn, she rushed to him, but he pushed her away. “He’ll kill your sister. Go to Moth!”

She stumbled back, turned, and ran.

THE SWORD HAD PIERCED HIS HEART.

Jack clutched the hilt, cried out as he pulled the blade from him and felt the mortal blood leaving him in hot, pulsing streams. No. I’m not human. I am already dead. This can’t kill me.

There was a shadow beneath him. His heart had stopped pumping. He was as cold as night and nothing.

“Not yet,” he gasped as his shadow rose before him, saturating the air with cold. Eyes as burning and bright as the sun glowed in the shadow’s jackal head. Dozens of wings seemed to flutter and thump and rustle behind it. What he had made a deal with in Rowan Cruithnear’s garden had come for him. At last.

He raised his head. “Not yet. Let me save her first. And then you’ll have me.”

SETH LOT HAD FOUND LILY and was dragging her up a flight of stairs, away from the mayhem around the feast table. Finn raced after them with only a steak knife in her good hand—her other wrist still hurt with a jagged, grinding pain. Lot was heading for an arch shaped like a face with a gaping mouth. Beyond, she saw an otherworldly forest cast in the violet glow of a primeval night, the leaves of the trees flickering with orbs—the Ghostlands.

“Finn!” Lily tore away from Lot. He slammed her against a stone pillar and she crumpled to the floor.

Then he strode toward Finn. “I will make you fear me every moment of your life, Serafina Sullivan, for what you did to my Reiko.”

“I didn’t kill Reiko.”

“You caused a beautiful, divine girl who had walked the earth for ages to burn. You snuffed out the life of a goddess.”

“She wasn’t a goddess. She was a monster.” Finn backed away, hit a wall. She slashed at him with the steak knife, gripping the handle made from Leander’s bones. Get up, Lily. Just get up.

He knocked the knife from her grip. One of his hands slowly closed around her throat as he said, “You think we are monsters?”

“You kill people and stitch them up filled with magic flowers.” She continued to speak despite those cruel, squeezing fingers, buying time. “You’ve eaten people.”

His grip on her throat lessened. He shrugged, his blue gaze holding hers as if he were curious. “I was a madman, back then.” He stepped back. The coldness seemed to leave his eyes for a moment. Finn didn’t antagonize him further, her gaze flickering to her sister, who was beginning to stir. “We were not always nothing, Serafina. Or things of the dark. There are moments”—he reached out and she flinched as his fingertips caressed her brow—“when we are good.”

Her vision was replaced by a field of heather, where a tower rose against a twilit sky. A girl in a green gown was standing in front of the tower, her dark hair knotted with white roses. As she moved forward, she became Reiko—a younger Reiko, without the shadows. She smiled and held out a hand and masculine fingers free of rings clasped hers. Seth Lot, in armor of organic metal, stepped close to her, bowed his head to kiss her.

Finn blinked and met the Wolf’s gaze as he continued, “The elixir is changing you, Serafina. Soon, you’ll understand.”

She thought of Jack bleeding for her. She wondered if the Wolf had ever bled for anyone. “What were you, before?”

“I was good. I was noble.” He circled, never taking his gaze from her. “I was like you.”

“So you know you’re not good and noble now, right? Not the hero of your own story?”

His mouth twitched in what might have been a smile or a snarl.

A slender shadow slid up behind him.

He must have seen it mirrored in her gaze, because he spun, vicious and quick, and slammed a blade that snapped from his sleeve, into the breast of the hooded figure.

Jill Scarlet slid to the floor, a sword clattering from her hands. As Finn whispered, “No,” Lot casually drew his blade from the Jill’s heart and snatched up her sword. As bloody, black petals drifted from the wound in Jill Scarlet’s breast, his blue eyes shadowed. “Wolfsbane. You fool. I used mistletoe on that blade that went into you.”

He slid to one knee beside Jill Scarlet, gripping her sword, its point balanced on the ground. He bowed his head like a knight about to receive a blessing and whispered, “Did you really think you could win?” He folded one hand over Jill Scarlet’s scarred face, tightening his grip as if planning to crush her skull.

Finn edged toward Lily.

Lot snapped up and shoved Finn against a pillar. The beast, for an instant, made his beautiful face hideous. “Where are you going, my dear?”

She whispered, “‘A wilder’d being from my birth, my spirit spurned control.’”

His eyes narrowed. “What are you doing?”

She continued with the words of a poet haunted by darkness, “‘But now, abroad on the wide earth, where wand’rest thou my soul?’”

“What”—his teeth clenched as his hand returned to her throat, fingers tightening—“are you doing?”

She laughed breathlessly and wondered if the elixir or the fear was making her crazy—behind him, Lily was pushing to her feet. Finn said, “Don’t you like poetry?”

“Hekas don’t work on me either. Dangerous girl. What a waste.” His fingers gouged into her throat.

Something burst through his chest.

He collapsed to one knee, staring down at the point of the umbrella that had speared him. The Mad Hatter painted on its vinyl folds gazed madly back at him as the umbrella’s handle protruded from his back.

Finn lifted her gaze to Lily, who stood behind him, breathing hard and looking ferocious. Anna—whose umbrella Lily had used to impale the Wolf—was backed up against a wall, her eyes wide. Lily whispered, “That’s for Leander, you fucking monst—”

Seth Lot spat out a dark liquid, laughed, reached around, and yanked the umbrella out. Black ichor spattered Lily’s gown. She slowly retreated from the shadows that had begun rippling around him.

“Anna,” Finn whispered, “run!”

There was a tearing roar, as if reality itself had been damaged, and the darkness grew around Seth Lot, who vanished, warping, towering. Ice cracked the glass in the windows. Frost furred the walls. As violent, guttural sounds came from within the dark cyclone, Anna backed away, one nostril trickling blood. She looked at Jill Scarlet’s body and flinched.

A monstrous shape began forming in the darkness and Finn whispered, “That’s one death for you—only two more.”

Lily, on the other side of the black mass, met Finn’s gaze. Anna was staring at the writhing shadow as if it contained all her childhood fears—the beast snarling in that spinning darkness exuded glacial cold and decay. Whatever emerged from that, whatever toothy, ripping horror . . . Finn wanted it to come at her, not Lily and Anna.

The cold vanished. The shadows fell away. Seth Lot stood before Finn in his beautiful form. As if recovering from a loss of control, he tucked his tangled hair behind his ears, the jewels flashing on his fingers. The ragged wound in his chest spilled more darkness as he bent down and picked up Anna’s smashed umbrella. Turning it over in his hands, he sauntered toward Finn.

“The Fool,” he said softly, running his fingers across the umbrella’s wooden handle. “Wolfsbane poison on the tip and the rest puzzled together from sacred winter plants—mistletoe, holly, poinsettias, and black hellebore . . . made to kill a winter king. So, it was planned, was it? To bring the little oracle and her umbrella.”

He looked up at Finn with a weariness that frightened her as much as the monster in the shadows had. Then he whirled and flung the shattered umbrella across the room, at Anna. Lily cried out and pulled Anna against her. The umbrella struck the wall and splintered.

Seth Lot spoke to Lily like a lover, but his blue gaze returned to Finn. “You were a fine queen, my love, but I have found a better one.”

He gracefully extended a hand toward Finn, who didn’t move.

“It’s only because you don’t want to die,” she whispered. “And I can kill you.”

He staggered a little, dropped his outstretched hand, and braced himself against a pillar. He laughed again, softly. “I’m not dead yet.” As he pushed away from the pillar, malice in his gaze, she felt a swift terror of a different sort. He moved closer, leaned in. “Your Jack is dying of mistletoe poisoning. Aside from you, I see only two frightened girls.” He raised his voice as Lily stepped toward something glittering on the floor—the steak knife that Finn had held. “And if those girls move, they will cause your death.”

Lily stopped moving. Anna reached out and drew Lily back.

Seth Lot lifted one hand and laid it against Finn’s face. She felt the rings on his fingers bite into her skin. “Think of what you could do as a queen. You could change me. You could make me a good man.”

She said, her voice cracking, “I think it’s too late for you.”

“Then see,” he breathed, “what I shall make you.”

Her body shuddered against his as she slid toward darkness.

She stood in a forest, perhaps the first forest ever, branches arching above and before her in massive tangles over emerald gloom. Dusk stained the sky a nuclear crimson. Leaves of a red and orange so bright they seemed toxic fell around her. Her bare feet, jeweled with rings and tiny gems, crushed trilobites and prehistoric ferns. She saw her reflection in a pool of silver water suspended between two trees—she was a white-skinned creature in a black gown that trailed ribbons shimmering with spiderwebs, her brown hair dusted with pollen, braided with acorns and berries. She was crowned with briars and antlers. Her eyes were silvered, framed by black spirals, her smile a curve of malice. She felt strong, fearless. She could see every detail of the dark, fairy-tale forest around her: a striped spider in its web, its poison sac luminous; a cluster of crimson toadstools in the roots of an alder; the bones of what had once been a beautiful boy beneath her feet.

She could rule the dark.

Lot was walking toward her, his fur coat billowing, the wolf headdress a savage crown. His fingers, strong enough to crush bone, drifted like an electrical current across her collarbones, curved against one breast, over her heart. He began to unknot the ribbons on her gown. His autumn hair was tangled with thin braids and he smelled of sun-warmed fur, musk, and green things. A sleepy desire coursed through her.

He raised his head, his eyes radiant. “Why do you think you were drawn to those grand, ruined mansions, Serafina? To our places?” He leaned close, a darkness blotting out the world, and whispered in her ear, “Because you’ve always been seeking us.”

And his mask slipped a little, revealing, for an instant, something shadowy and ancient and grinning. Smashing down her terror, Finn curled her fingers in the fur of his coat. “Show me.”

He kissed her as if intent on killing the mortal girl who remained. Biting and ruthless, it was not a sweet kiss; it was a devouring one, of lust and pain and power. Her blood began to ice, stinging her insides. An expanse of empty tundra filled her.

When Seth Lot snapped back from her, she tasted blood. He raised the edge of one hand to his mouth. He shook his head, once, like an animal trying to orient itself. When he lifted his blue gaze to her, the Wolf moved behind his eyes. “What did you do to me?”

“Tamasgi’po,” she whispered. “Spirit in a kiss. Second death.”

The true world returned as he lunged at her, his nails curved claws meant for her eyes.

A knife arrowed through the clawed hand reaching for her.

The Wolf twisted around, pulling out the knife, staring at Lily. He still gripped Jill Scarlet’s sword in his other hand. He pointed the sword at Lily and lovingly said, “I’m done with you.”

“You’re dying.” Finn’s voice was faint. He turned on her and she thought she saw a flicker there, of horror, of someone trapped who had witnessed things that should never be. It’s a trick, she told herself.

Then the Wolf smiled before whirling and lunging at Lily Rose, the sword’s point aimed at her throat.

Another sword, the silvery-blue of new steel and engraved with runes, deflected his blade from Lily with an earsplitting shriek . . . and Jack, lithe and deadly, drove Lot back, moving as if the mistletoe hadn’t done him any harm. He attacked Lot with quicksilver ferocity, his blade scything at the Wolf’s neck, his torso, his legs. Seth Lot dodged, on the defensive.

Finn edged along the wall, toward Lily and Anna.

She saw Jack stagger—the wound in his chest dripped rose petals. Lot drove forward, effortlessly, relentlessly, bashing him into a defensive position, the ringing and clanging of their blades echoing from the stone walls.

“Finn!” Lily, shielding Anna from the whirlwind of Jack and Lot’s battle, was edging with the young girl toward the exit.

Lot suddenly spun and lunged toward Finn, stabbing the point of his blade toward Finn’s left eye.

Jack slid between them.

Lot twisted the blade to plunge it through Jack’s chest.

As Lot dragged the sword out of Jack, who crumpled to the floor, hemorrhaging rose petals and blood, Finn dropped to her knees. The world went still.

“Jack . . .” Clutching one hand over the wound in his chest, she pushed the hair back from his face as he coughed blood and closed his eyes. Angrily, irrationally, she said, “Jack, don’t you dare leave me now . . .”

Seth Lot crouched beside her. Gently, he said, “You see how this sort of thing concludes? This childish belief in happy endings?”

Jack’s hand moved beneath hers. His fingers clasped hers around the hilt of the sword—she recognized the jackal hilt. She couldn’t do it. She couldn’t . . .

Jack took her hand from his chest and smiled. His lips moved: You can.

She rose and slammed back against the wall, gripping the sword’s hilt with both hands. Her broken wrist still hurt.

Lot stood at the same time, gazing searchingly at her. Kindly, he said, “No. You’re not a killer.” He hefted the blade he held and looked at Jack. “So, now, he dies, and if he is in pieces, he won’t be brought back again.”

“Don’t.” Her voice scraped out of her. She still gripped the sword.

Lot stepped forward. He set a booted foot on one of Jack’s hands, to hold him in place.

Jack’s eyes opened. He twisted from beneath Lot, shouted, “Now!”

Moth slid from the shadows. Finn flung the sword to him. As Moth caught the sword by its hilt, Lot met Finn’s gaze. And it came into his eyes, then, the soul with which the Tamasgi’po had begun to poison him.

He lunged toward her, his form as jittery as an old film as he sought to ride the shadow—

Moth swung the iron blade with two-handed strength. She wanted to look away, but she needed to see the monster end.

Before the flash of metal sliced through Lot’s neck, the Wolf’s eyes turned summer blue, the memories surging back, a human soul, long dead, waking up.

She closed her eyes, heard a whisper of breath, then silence.

“It’s over, Finn.” Jack spoke. “It’s done.”

She opened her eyes to see Moth standing above the body of a man, the head at his feet, the hair mercifully flung over its face. There was blood. She could hear Anna sobbing softly and Lily’s hushed words of comfort. She lifted her gaze to her sister’s and decided never to tell Lily what she’d seen at the last moment in Lot’s eyes—the gratefulness of someone released from hell.

Jack rose from his false death to draw Finn into his arms. She was shaking, with anger, fear, and an immense relief.

“He died as a man,” Lily whispered. “How?”

“Tamasgi’po.” Finn watched Moth, his face shadowed by the hood of his jacket, his hands blood spattered. “Spirit in a kiss. Memories. A soul sealed him into that body.”

Moth said, his voice hoarse, “When you kissed me, Finn, when I was in pieces, you had the Tamasgi’po on your lips.”

“Yes, Moth.”

Moth walked to Jill Scarlet’s body, crouched beside her, and laid one hand over her face. Without looking up, he said, “I’m remembering things. Do you recall the girl I told you about? The one in France? This was her. Rose Govannon, who wed a man named Sullivan. She was your ancestor, Finn. And Micah Govannon is of your blood.”

Finn took a step forward, staring at Jill Scarlet’s body, but Jack clasped her hand and said quietly, “Moth.”

“Go,” Moth said without looking up. “I barricaded the wolves in their atrocious banquet hall. Go before they get out.”

“Moth—”

“Go.” Moth laid the jackal-hilted sword across his knees. “I’ll take care of the Wolf’s bloody house. I’ll send it and his pack to hell.”

“No, you will not.” Finn pulled away from Jack.

Distant howling came from within the ruins.

“Finn,” Lily said urgently as Anna glanced around in alarm.

“Finn, he’s right, we need to go.” Jack wrapped his coat close. “Moth—we’ll see you again.”

Moth didn’t move. “Maybe you will. Finn, take your sister home.”

“Moth,” Finn pleaded. Then Jack was pulling her away and she was running with him and Lily and Anna, down the hall, toward the stairs, as the Wolf’s house began to shudder.