And nearly through Emma’s left eyeball.
Emma ducked her head back, cracked it into Cormac’s nose, even as he wrapped his arms around her and tumbled them to the ground. He only barely managed not to skewer them both with the glowing sword in his hand.
“What the bleedin’ hell are you doing here?” Moira called down. “And keep sewing, Gretchen!”
Gretchen jolted. She didn’t go back to her sewing, not quite yet. Instead she hugged Emma so tightly her cousin squeaked. “This doesn’t smell like the Underworld,” Emma added, wiping alley mud off her hands.
“Don’t disappear again,” Gretchen told her, grabbing for the blood smeared thread.
Slowly, too slowly, the edges of the portal touched, blending together like soft beeswax. The hellhounds continued to snap and snarl and bite at the bewitched thread. Finally, finally, the indigo glow dimmed, flickering out like an oil lamp run dry. The wasps faded, too sluggish to dodge the gargoyles.
“More Greybeards!” Moira shouted again, just as they crowded at the mouth of the alley.
Gretchen braced her hands on her knees, panting as through she’d been swimming in the Serpentine again. Sweat spiked her short hair. “Can you lose them?”
Moira shot her a look, perfectly clear, even from the rooftop. “It’s what I do, inn’t? Send word if you need me. Bleedin’ bloody bollocks, this is just the worst night ever,” she muttered before raising her voice. “Oi! Greybeards!” She made a show of posing on the edge of the roof, gargoyles flying around her like stone pets. When she broke into a run, many of the Keepers followed. Gretchen knew her Madcap friend didn’t need her help.
And she didn’t need the whispers of dead witches to tell her that Tobias did.
As the vitriolic purple light of the portal faded, he turned grey and collapsed. Mud spattered his collar. He’d be cross about that later. His forehead was sheened with sweat. She counted too many welts from the spirit-wasps. “You have magic poisoning,” she said. “Or is such a thing even possible?” The witches in her head were adamant.
“It is,” Cormac confirmed grimly. He slipped one of the talisman from around his neck, laying in in the centre of Tobias’s chest. The jet stone cracked sharply, a thin wisp of smoke hovering over the pieces.
“Not enough,” Tobias croaked. She could see the sorrow stealing his breath, even now. “Tobias, you have to shapeshift.”
He tried to sit up. “No.”
The Keepers approached, daggers and wheel-pendants held out. “Tobias Lawless, you are called to the Order.”
Cormac stepped between them and the Keepers, his arms raised placatingly. Well, mostly placatingly. Possibly the sword was sending mixed messages.
“Tobias, you have to shift, now,” she added in an undertone. “It’s the only way to break Seraphine’s spell in time.”
“If I shift again so soon, I might not be able to shift back,” he coughed.
She helped him sit up. “That’s a problem for later.” The Keepers closed in. Magic sparked from their wheel-pendants, ready to chain Tobias’s powers, ready to take him to Lucius to be hypnotised again, ready to take them all. But Tobias was the real danger, all wolves were. They could break even the strongest of spells by shapeshifting. Lucius would know that about him now, and so would his Keepers.
She wasn’t losing anyone else tonight.
He’d stood between her and the wasps; she’d stand between him and Lucius’s Keepers. Between him and anything, really.
“Go to hell,” she spat at them. Pushing them would push Tobias. He’d shapeshift if he thought it would save her. So she’d use it to save him. He could be disapproving about it later. “And tell Lucius he can do the same.”
“Give us the wolf.” The expression on their faces was more frightening than their weapons: identical and mindlessly focused. Their eyes were flat and lifeless. Emma’s magic gathered clouds overhead, thunder shaking the puddles beneath their boots.
Cormac’s sword came down, deflecting the iron dagger a Keeper had thrown at his head. Lighting sizzled between the clouds as Emma’s temper frayed.
There was no reasoning with them, no reminding them of their oaths, or their families. Gretchen knew that.
And Tobias knew it too.
She heard a grunt of pain, the tearing of cloth. Magic of a different sort shimmered behind her. Her wolfhound answered, howling inside her chest. There was a snarl, and the clack of claws on cobblestones. Gretchen stepped aside as the wolf lunged from the shadows of the alley behind her.
“You did say you wanted the wolf,” she said dispassionately a Keeper screamed, going down under a hundred pounds of savage animal. Canine teeth ripped through his shoulder. Blood pooled in the wound, running between his fingers when he clutched at it.
His companion tried to loop the jet-pendant around the wolf’s head. At the smell of singed fur and a yelp, Gretchen charged forward. Her magic might not be any help in this kind of fight, but she’d been throwing punches long before she’d been breaking curses. It came far more naturally.
The wolf tore at a Keeper’s leg. He’d walk again, but only if he found a healer instead of staying to fight Tobias. She watched the hypnosis spell fighting that knowledge. Gretchen grabbed the pendant as he stumbled, gasping.
Cormac stabbed at his brothers-at-arms, expression unreadable. He sliced at them, controlled and practiced, and easily good enough to spit them like a pig at the hearthfire. But he didn’t, he only weakened them, set them to bleeding until they had no choice but to retreat.
Gretchen kicked a Keeper between the legs until he toppled over, gagging. Perhaps she ought to have felt remorse seeing as he was Lucius’s victim as much as anyone else. She didn’t. The wolf stood beside her, growling, muzzle tipped with blood.
“I suggest you sod off, now,” Gretchen said.
They stumbled away, trying to hold each other up, blood spattering like Hansel and Gretel’s trail of breadcrumbs. That made her think of Godric. He’d called her the Gretel to his Hansel before they’d even realized they were witches, before Greymalkin House had become London’s very own gingerbread cottage swallowing up Penelope. Sorrow clawed at her, worse than any spirit-wasp. This was true grief, raw and opening like a pit of daggers beneath her.
A cold wet wold nose snuffled into her palm, bringing her back. She took a deep breath. Now. There was only now.
The wolf watched her with Tobias’s pale blue eyes. “I’m all right,” she said softly.
Since he didn’t turn into a naked earl’s son with a ridiculously beautiful face, she assumed he was stuck in wolf-shape. She was a little bit jealous. “I suppose we ought to get out of here,” she said, forcing all her scattered thoughts into neat proper rows. Tobias would be so proud. If he wasn’t currently pawing at the blood on his fur.
The streets of Mayfair offered no more safety than the back alleys.
Ice glittered on the lampposts where Seraphine had passed. The air shivered and sparked with the kind of energy that lifted the hairs on the back of one’s neck. The dead witches whispering in her head had several impolite remarks to make on the subject.
Most of the houses were dark, inhabitants sleeping away with little knowledge of the war that had started just outside their walled gardens. Roses turned black with frost. Gargoyles swooped past, like stone crows, creaking and cawing. Gretchen wanted nothing so much as to march right back to Greymalkin House and burn it to the ground. She’d have done it already, were it even possible. There were simply too many magical shields, and all far stronger than she was.
Also, a veritable battalion of Keepers marching her way.
The wolf growled low in his throat, soft and deadly. Gretchen turned on her heel. More Keepers, silhouetted against the still mist. The wolf shoved against her knees, angling her towards a crooked lane between two stables. Emma released billowing clouds of fog, too pale and pearly to be London’s unnaturally yellow air. It swallowed them with a prickle of cold condensation.
“So m
any,” Cormac muttered. “There aren’t that many Keepers in London.” He swore. “Half of them are from Percival House, where Sophie was imprisoned. I recognize the symbol on their coats.”
“A Greybeard’s a Greybeard,” Gretchen said, sounding like Moira.
“Not Percival House Keepers,” Cormac shook his head. “They’re worse. Or better, I should say.”
The wolf howled suddenly, making them jump. The call shivered through the quiet neighbourhood, ancient and primal. A part of her wanted to throw back her head and join him. She might have been a wolf for barely any length of time at all, but even seconds would have been enough to know. She was meant to be a wolf.
They ran down the lane, the horse nickering in their stalls. Gretchen felt more herself with a wolf at her side than in a crowd of gentleman waiting to waltz. She couldn’t help a tiny grin as they leapt over a statue of an alarming alert stone cherub. The eyes blinked at her and magic hummed in her ears. That spell would have been more helpful if they’d buried black pepper and iron nails under the statue. “Not now,” she muttered at the whispers in her head.
The Keepers had found them already. More and more of them came out of the shadows, dead-eyed and hungry. She counted nearly a dozen.
Lucius had most of the Order under his control. There was no one left to stand between the witches and the warlocks. Between anything at all and the warlocks. Gretchen didn’t have any particular love for the Order, but she suddenly missed them. A little.
She broke out into a run again, breath burning in her throat. The wolf matched her steps, loping easily beside her. “You can outrun them,” she panted. “Go on.”
He curled his lip at her. They couldn’t go home, it would only endanger her parents. They couldn’t go to the Order, or even the regular London night-watchmen. They were hardly equipped to deal with this. And they couldn’t take to the rooftops with Moira and the Madcaps, not unless wolves suddenly learned to fly.
But they could go to the Rowanstone Academy for Young Ladies. She remembered her aunt Bethany once telling Lord Mabon, the head of the Order, that he and his men had no jurisdiction at the school. And Mrs. Sparrow, the headmistress, was refreshingly fearsome for a lady who knew which spoon to use at supper and exactly how deep to curtsy at a duke.
The wolf gave a sound of warning before something large ploughed right into her.It was Ky, Tobias’s little brother. He was dressed like a Carnyx: loose casual clothing that allowed for movement and ironwood daggers that could be easily hidden when it came time to shapeshift. Carnyx mostly protected the packs from Wolfcatchers and hunters, although occasionally they would protect other shifters as well.
“We heard the call,” he said, turning to stare at his brother. Ky and Tobias did not see eye to eye over the Order and the Carnyx. But they were brothers, and brothers answered the call. Even when that call was a howl. Especially then. “I wouldn’t believe it if I wasn’t seeing it with my own eyes. It was his howl?” To say that Tobias was reluctant to embrace the animal part of his lineage was an understatement. “He actually howled?” He shook his head. “Why hasn’t he changed back?”
“He’s already shifted tonight.”
“Out of practice, old man,” Ky smirked, a little brother to the core, despite the daggers and the less-than-ideal circumstances.
“Keepers,” Gretchen panted. “Lots of them.”
“Does this have anything to do with the madness out there?”
“Portals, warlocks. Greymalkin House.” She was still trying to catch her breath. Her lungs and her legs were in competition as to which hurt more. “There are too many of them.”
Ky made a small sharp sound, like a bark. “There are a fair few of us too.”
“Don’t trust any of the Keepers,” Cormac said. “Not even the ones you know.”
Ky snorted. “I never do.” His voice hardened. “But if the Sisters are on the loose, we’re all in trouble. Shapeshifter pelts triple in price when there’s a warlock about. The Wolfcatchers will be out.” He barked, two staccato arrows of sound.
Carnyx in both human and wolf form paced out of alleyways and through garden gates. Gretchen felt a tiny thrill of jealousy again. “We’ll get you home,” Ky said.
Gretchen shook her head. “We need to get to Rowanstone Academy.” She pointed. “Problem is, we have to go through them.”
Ky followed the direction in which she was pointing. “I don’t see a problem,” he said, lips lifted off his teeth in a snarl.
“You should probably try not to kill them,” Gretchen said, almost apologetically. “It’s not their fault.”
And then there was no time left for talking or warnings of any kind. Carnyx paced beside them, shielding and fighting in equal measures. Gretchen struggled to quiet the suggestions that certain spells needed more sun-charged water or less badger teeth. Since those spells were currently aimed at her own face, Gretchen didn’t much care to make them stronger.
The melee was quick and chaotic, thrumming with the snap of broken noses, gasps of pain, and the particular hiss of wheel-pendants binding magic. Her own magic itched under her skin. Ky laughed once, just as she used a Keeper’s cravat to tug his face down into her up-thrust knee. “Gretchen, you don’t have a sister, do you?”
No, not a sister. Not even a brother.
Now. Just now.
Beating up the privileged sons of earls and dukes was very therapeutic. She didn’t care what that said about her character. She only cared about this step forward, and now this one.
Eventually, they fought their way to the school.
The gates were, of course, locked.
The witches in Gretchen’s head screeched at her until she pressed her evil eye school ring to the centre of the lock. Iron creaked too slowly for Gretchen as she forced her way through the opening. The wolf followed but as soon he stepped between the gates, a crack of light tossed him back. Magic burned and he flew through the air, landing as a very naked, very disgruntled Tobias.
“Apologies, Lord Killingsworth,” Mrs. Sparrow said, hurrying down the path from the school’s front door. “No Keepers today. You too, Lord Blackburn.”
Gretchen scowled. “They aren’t bewitched like the others.”
“All the same.”
Tobias rose to his feet, catching the coat his brother tossed at him. Shapeshifters learned early on to travel with extra clothes. “Can you patrol?” Tobias asked Ky. “The Carnyx are our best hope tonight. They’re the only ones we can trust to have been immune to Beauregard’s magic.” It cost him something to say it. There was a certain smugness to Ky’s answering nod.
“You have to let us in,” Gretchen insisted. “It’s not safe out there.” Even if Tobias hadn’t been mostly naked.
“I’m sorry, Gretchen. You and Emma only. My duty is to my girls.”
Gretchen stormed back onto the sidewalk, folding her arms. “Well, if they can’t stay then I’m not staying either.” Emma stood next to Cormac, holding his hand tightly. She nodded once.
“We’ll be fine,” Tobias said calmly. Even barefoot and tousle-haired, he was every inch an earl’s son. He touched his forehead to hers, which for such a reserved man was the same as kissing her in front of the Prince. Even though she didn’t have time for it, something softened in her belly. “I’ll come back as soon as I can. I’ll have someone fetch Godric’s body back to your parents. And then I’ll have to talk to the wolves.”
“And I have to talk to dead witches.”
He smiled briefly. “Exactly.”
“I hate this.”
He met her gaze, blue eyes more wolf than earl. “I’ll be back for you soon. I promise.”
“If you don’t, I’ll come find you.” It was as much a threat, as a promise.
His smile widened, hearing only the promise.
***
A thorough investigation of the cellar revealed more bones and cobwebs, but nothing particularly useful. Even the single candle burning in a crackled skull wasn’t enough to se
t fire to the thick oak door. Lucius and Sophie hadn’t returned yet. She didn’t know if they were still even inside the house. She hoped, desperately, that they were in the burning centre of a volcano.
Filled with stinging ants.
And bad poetry.
Meanwhile, she and Cedric were still trapped.
“If I don’t find the last Sister, they’ll kill you,” she whispered.
Cedric was wiping the blood from his face when he looked up. “Pen, they’ll kill me anyway. So don’t give them what they want.”
She scowled. “I’m not going to let them kill you, Cedric. Be serious.”
He crossed the distance between them. “We’re out of options.”
She crossed her arms. “I refuse to believe that.”
“I know you do, and yet here we are.”
She relocated the candle to an arrow-hole in a skull and hefted up the silver candlestick holder. “Then might I suggest we give them something to remember us by?”
He grinned at her, the same grin she’d grown up with, the one that made her breath catch.
“Shall we dance, my lady?”
She offered him a quick curtsy, as though they were about to waltz, before smashing the candlestick into the nearest section of wall. Bones cracked and crumbled. Cedric used the heels of his boots. When Penelope finally lowered the candlestick, bits of bones littered her feet and her hair was a sweaty tangle of dust. “And for the next part of our plan, I’m going to kill Lucius.” Never mind that she had absolutely no idea how to accomplish it.
Cedric shook his head. “No, Pen.”
“Sophie, then? She had Godric killed. And it would be the easiest way to sever her connection to the Sisters.”
“I won’t let them make a murderer of you, Penelope.”
Something about the way he said her name made her shiver.
***
Blood trickled from Gretchen’s her left ear.