Jack struggled desperately against the mortality that he’d wanted for so long, the mortality that was now killing him, the Wolf rose and swaggered away.
CHAPTER 17
Out of this wood do not desire to go
Thou shalt remain here whether thou wilt or no.
I am a spirit of no common rate;
The summer still doth tend upon my state;
And I do love thee;
Therefore go with me.
—A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM, WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Finn discovered that the door to the ivory bedroom was unlocked.
As she fled down a corridor, the tiny vials of elixir and Tamasgi’po hidden in her Doc Martens chafed against her ankles. She pushed through another door, into a walled courtyard where dwarfish apple trees clustered, their branches hung with rusting birdcages. Moving forward, she found that each cage contained a portrait or a photograph in a fancy frame. The pictures, torn and stained, were of young people from different eras. Lot’s victims . . .
The path took her to a pair of glass-paned doors that shed light onto a hunched yew tree. The doors opened when she pushed at them and she entered a large chamber, its black floor reflecting lit lamps on pillars shaped like birch trees. The leaf-green walls and the ceiling—a mass of green marble vines—gave the chamber the appearance of an otherworldly forest. It was so quiet she could hear her own breathing. Lily . . . where are you?
From the unlit places in the chamber figures emerged, their modern clothing trimmed with fur. Jewels glowed at their throats, on their fingers. Their faces hidden by wolf masks of painted wood, they watched her make her way through the forest of pillars until she stopped before a door carved with brutal images of people fleeing wild animals. She drew in a breath and opened the door.
The Wolf king sat in a luxurious parlor, on a divan in front of a fireplace crackling with flames. Leander Cyrus was crouched at his feet, facing her.
“Leander.” Dismay crushed Finn’s voice.
“Leander,” Lot said pleasantly. “Take Serafina to her sister.”
Leander rose, his face bleak. Without speaking, he walked past her. She followed, feeling as if the shadows of this place were dirtying her skin. He led her up a winding tower stair and spoke softly as they climbed. “She looks different, but she is still your sister. This place . . . it affects mortals.”
“Infects them, you mean.” She had to stop moving as everything around her began to spin. She bent her head, trying to keep that poisonous sleep from returning to trap her here, in the enemy’s house. No. She fought it with her hands and teeth clenched.
“Finn.” Leander spoke with gentle insistence. “You need to keep moving.”
She nodded and, feeling as if her equilibrium had returned, continued following him up the stairs.
He halted before a pair of stained-glass doors ghosted with the images of lilies. It was dark, beyond. He turned to Finn. “Never forget she’s your sister.”
“You’re not coming with me?”
Bitterness dulled his voice. “She doesn’t want to see me.”
He left her standing before the doors and she thought: This house . . . all it is is doors . . .
She stepped into a chamber lit only by the glow of winter through the surrounding windows. On the walls between the windows were shadow boxes filled with pinned butterflies. Cabinets and tables were neatly cluttered with books—leather-bound tomes and paperbacks—and objects: a little wax mannequin in a bell jar, a skull of white marble with antlers that looked like red coral, bottles that held luminous feathers, fantastical insects, unusual stones. Several music boxes were displayed in another cabinet. Hanging on one wall were four gowns that looked as if they’d been sewn from fabrics stained with the purest hues of night, winter, moss, and blood.
She approached an arch curtained with glittering black beads. She could see someone standing beyond. Was that her sister, her sister whom she’d seen dance through a window, whom she’d cradled in broken glass and blood, who had wasted away in a hospital bed? Her sister, who was supposed to be dead?
“Lily?” Tears blurred the room. “Lily . . . it’s me.”
The beaded curtain parted. A figure in a dark gown, shadowy hair spilling around her cold, white face, appeared. Her eyes were framed in black butterfly designs. She clutched a dagger made of glass.
“Lily,” Finn whispered.
Her sister’s remote expression became ferocious. “You thing. You think you can fool me?”
She lunged, slashing out with the knife. Finn yelled. She fell over an ottoman, scrambled