looked down at the jackal walking stick. She shouted to Moth, who dragged himself into a crouch. She shoved the walking stick across the floor. He caught it.
As Jack pushed himself up from the shards of glass, Moth, gripping the walking stick, rose unsteadily and ran at Lot, who turned.
Moth swung the walking stick and hit the Wolf in the skull. Lot dropped to one knee, hair falling over his face.
Finn turned to the door, still holding the dragonfly key, knowing it was the key the Black Scissors had given Sylvie to get her and Christie here. She wondered if that sly and dangerous enemy of the Fatas had suspected they’d end up with his key.
“Please work,” she murmured as she heard Jack and Moth running toward her. She pushed the key into the lock.
Lot flung his sword. It slammed into Jack’s shoulder, pinning him to the wall. Finn dropped the key with a cry.
Jack, bleeding from the mirror glass, looked as if he’d collapse any second. Moth grabbed the sword’s hilt and frantically attempted to free him as Finn ducked down for the key. She glanced over her shoulder to see Lot had risen to his feet. As she straightened with the key, the Wolf said, “You won’t get out.”
Moth yanked the blade from Jack’s shoulder—there was more blood—and held him up as Finn turned the dragonfly key in the lock.
As shadows began to swarm around the Wolf, the door opened.
Finn, Jack, and Moth raced down the hall. Darkness howled past them. It clotted before them, sweeping into the shape of Seth Lot, who ran at them with the sword.
Moth stepped between Lot and Finn. He blocked Lot’s blade with the jackal walking stick and the force of the blow nearly bent him backward. Then Lot hooked a leg beneath one of his and Moth fell.
Jack had retrieved the silver dagger. As he strode forward, Finn leaped after him and wound one hand around his, around the dagger’s hilt. When Lot writhed into darkness, they launched themselves at him, and, together, plunged the dagger toward the Wolf. For Lily, Finn thought.
The dagger stabbed into the shadows that had swallowed Seth Lot. The Wolf collapsed in his mortal form, clutching at the hole in his chest as darkness spilled from his mouth, his eyes.
Jack pulled Finn back. They swung around and hauled Moth to his feet and fled down the hall.
A storm of shadows massed behind them.
They pushed through the doors into the courtyard where Leander and Lily waited, looking as if they’d just come from a cocktail party, he in his white suit and she in her black gown. Leander carried Finn’s backpack.
Finn flung herself forward and fiercely embraced Lily. “That thing with the butterflies . . . where’d you learn it?”
“Someday I’ll tell you.” Lily’s attention switched to Moth and she said, “Hey, you.”
Moth smiled. “Lily Rose.”
“We need to fly.” Jack gestured to a door in the wall.
“That was your plan?” Finn whispered to Jack as she took her backpack from Leander. “Get caught?”
“As long as Lot believed Leander would betray me.” Jack handed Finn a wooden dagger. “Elder wood. We need to pin this damn house down so we can get out. Would you do the honors?”
As a howl came from within the mansion, Finn gripped the dagger. Then Lily’s hands settled over hers and, together, they pushed the wood into the ground. The world shook.
They ran to the door in the courtyard wall. As Jack shoved it open, Moth and Leander swept out first to make sure nothing waited on the other side.
“Jack.”
Finn and Jack slowly turned.
Reiko Fata, in a blood-red dress, stood near the wooden blade in the ground. The courtyard had become a creeper-snarled mess of neglect, the mansion once again a hulking ruin. Black hair whipping across her face, Reiko said, “Do you think another girl is going to free you, Jack? You are mine. Not hers. Not his. So, run, my Jack, from the Wolf. But I will find you.”
With one foot, she shoved the wooden blade all the way into the soil.
A howling, inky void descended upon the Wolf’s house.
Finn grabbed Jack’s hand and they fled through the door in the wall. They turned to look back as the mansion and the grounds around it disappeared in that whirlwind of darkness and snow until all that remained was an empty clearing in a forest of mammoth oaks and towering yews.
“She pinned it.” Jack sounded stunned.
Finn remembered Hester and felt her legs