Briar Queen_ A Night and Nothing Novel - Katherine Harbour Page 0,14
bed, silver glinting in one hand. Moth.
Twisting up from the bed, Jack avoided the knife Moth slashed at him and slammed Moth into the wall. The young man fought with feral strength, wrestling Jack against a framed poster of Frankenstein. Glass shattered as Moth stabbed the knife into Bela Lugosi and reeled back.
Jack yanked the knife from the poster and turned on his guest.
“She told me . . .” Moth slid against the other wall. “She told me to . . .”
Jack tried not to be distracted by the alarming rate of his heartbeat. The knife was from his collection, a Renaissance blade fine enough to flay skin. He pointed it at his guest and fought an urge to slam it into Moth’s heart. Hoarsely, Jack said, “Who told you to kill me?”
Moth looked up, miserable. “The girl with the dark hair . . .”
Jack whispered, “Reiko.”
Moth turned and ran for the window. Jack leaped over the bed after him, but the young man was already over the sill. Scrambling onto the fire escape, Jack saw the other jump to the ground and run toward the woods.
Jack went after him, barefoot in the snow, and lost him in a mess of skeletal girders conquered by creepers and tree roots. As he sank against corroded metal, he shivered. What would he tell Finn? That the stranger they had tried to help was linked to dead Reiko, that the spiraling tattoo on Moth’s arm meant he had once belonged to Seth Lot?
The wind sliced across his skin. He shivered and remembered that he was mortal.
FINN WOKE TO THE SOUND of breaking glass and, with disturbing words drifting through her sleep-dazed brain—the devil is here—sat up. Her room was dark and freezing. When she saw the glass glittering on her floor, the sweat on her skin iced over.
Again, one of the terrace doors was open, swinging gently in the wind—only, this time, several panes were shattered. Her hand crept to the silver dagger beneath her pillow. She thought, Seth Lot.
She reached instead for her cell phone on the nightstand and scrolled to Jack’s number.
When she looked up, someone was crouched on the stone wall of her terrace.
She dropped the phone and grabbed the dagger. She swung her bare feet to the floor and said with faltering bravado, “You can’t come in.”
The shadowy figure raised its head and she inhaled sharply when light fell over the face of the young man they had named Moth. His eyes seemed even greener in the glow of the winter night. He said hoarsely, “The crooked dog came for you. I stopped it.”
Finn couldn’t move. Her hand was sweaty on the grip of the knife.
He jumped from the terrace wall, and vanished.
She lunged forward. “Moth!”
She halted on the threshold. The snow on her terrace was cut with claw marks from a large animal. She backed away. She carefully closed the broken door, uselessly locked it, and sat on the floor with the knife, to finish calling Jack.
He silently arrived an impossible fifteen minutes later. When she saw him on her terrace, she jumped up and said, “Caliban was here.”
“I noticed the prints.” He wrapped his arms around her. He smelled like winter and evergreen. He whispered, “What drove the crom cu away?”
“Moth.”
“Ah. A complicated person, that Moth. He tried to kill me tonight.”
CHAPTER 3
I hid my heart in a nest of roses,
Out of the sun’s way, hidden apart;
In a softer bed than the soft white snow’s is,
Under the roses, I hid my heart.
—“A BALLAD OF DREAMLAND,” ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE
After the Caliban/Moth incident, Finn wanted a nice, normal day during which she could pretend the Fata world didn’t exist. Jack had remained with her through the night and they’d talked, stretched on her bed, until she’d finally slept. When she woke, he was there with coffee he’d gotten from Main Street because he hadn’t dared go through the house to the kitchen and risk encountering her father. He’d left after a hungry kiss that he’d reluctantly broken away from. She’d slumped back with a groan and curled around her pillow.
Sylvie, who was unnervingly intuitive, addressed the issue as they drank coffee fraps in Origen’s courtyard. “You’re such a lucky bastard. Not only is he enchanting on the eyes, but he’s got to be somewhat brilliant.”
“Yeah.” Finn didn’t mean to sound wistful. “We talk a lot.”
Sylvie whispered, “Ohh . . .”
“It’s as if he’s afraid he’ll infect me with darkness or something. Or snap me in half.” She didn’t tell