Briar Queen_ A Night and Nothing Novel - Katherine Harbour Page 0,9

all sorts of reasons.”

Finn thought about Jack sleeping like the dead last night, and the cozy room suddenly didn’t seem warm enough.

“Well, someone’s been lingering in my neighbor’s house for a while. I swear I heard someone moving stuff around in there when I was walking past, two nights ago.”

Jack’s eyelashes flickered, which meant he was interested in what Christie was telling him. “I’ll have to investigate.”

“Maybe it’s one of your friends.”

“Maybe it’s a vagrant who used to be a liberal arts major.”

Christie bit the head off one of Phouka’s gingerbread men and went mutinously silent.

When they were ready to leave for the Lotus and Luna hangout, Christie and Sylvie took Christie’s Mustang, and Finn accompanied Jack in his sedan. The two cars began the half-hour drive into the mountains, along plowed roads that shimmered as if covered with white sequins.

It was Friday night, and Lotus and Luna, a restaurant that resembled a Buddhist-temple-turned-saloon, was packed. Seated at the corner table Jack had reserved were Hester Kierney and Ijio Valentine, two descendants of the families who had made a pact with Reiko and her tribe of immortal outlaws. Although referred to as the blessed, Finn saw no otherworldliness in Hester or in Ijio, only a secular glamour. Hester dressed like a 1920s starlet and wore expensive ornaments in her short, dark hair. Ijio was always in suits that seemed a bit stylish for a twenty-one-year-old. He was a philosophy major. Hester was deciding between physics and chemistry.

“You’d better get to the stage, Jack.” Ijio checked his watch. “Now. Your lead singer is very tempestuous.”

Jack bent and murmured into Finn’s ear, “The others are here. Be careful.”

And he was gone. Finn surveyed the crowd. She could tell who the “others” were. The regular people wore stylish winter gear, but the others wore fur and feathers and modern incarnations of Renaissance and Victorian clothing, what Sylvie called “neo-antique.” They were as brightly marked as venomous snakes.

“Don’t worry, Finn.” Hester was watching her. “Phouka rules them now.”

“It won’t last.” Ijio drank from a silver flask. “Not with that lot.”

“What are you saying?” Finn folded her arms on the table. “Some new badass is going to come along and try to take over? Like what usually happens when a sheriff in a western dies? Anarchy?”

Christie leaned toward them with his own question. “You were both there on Halloween, to watch Finn burn. Let’s not pretend you’re actually friends, ’cause you’re not.”

“Christie, stop.” Finn knew Hester had tried to call the police on Halloween.

“We didn’t know it was going to be a real sacrifice,” Ijio said, genuinely upset. “We thought it was just, I don’t know, a dramatization. That bitch on wheels, Reiko, said nothing about fire and death.”

“How does it work, exactly?” Christie pretended to be curious. “You clean up after the Fatas, keep their nasty secrets, ease their way into the world, and, when you’re not interesting to them anymore—when you’re official grown-ups—they make you forget they exist?”

Ijio smiled ruefully. “Pretty much.”

“Huh. The whole ‘My parents sold my soul to ancient devils to get rich’ thing would really bother me.”

Hester attempted to change the subject. “Where’s Aubrey?”

“Did I hear my name?” Aubrey slid from the crowd. There was snow in his hair. He shook it out as he dropped into the booth beside Christie, shedding his jacket. “What are we talking about?”

The silence was awkward.

The trembling, sorrowing sound of a violin twined through the air and vanquished the canned music. Jack stepped from the shadows of the small stage, the violin cradled between his chin and shoulder, the bow a silvery twist as he drew several more mournful notes from the strings. The music, the beginning of “Greensleeves,” went through Finn like a solar flare.

He winked at her before slashing into a mad rendition of a Pogues reel. The lights on the stage brightened as a drummer, a guitarist, and a bald and tattooed girl playing a fiddle appeared. Finn recognized them—they were Jack’s Fata friends, the vagabonds. The crowd was soon shouting and stomping their feet.

“You were talking about Halloween, weren’t you?” Aubrey looked at Finn. “There’s a lot we didn’t know. Not just the Teind. Phouka told me about how the Jacks and Jills were made, that they were”—he shuddered—“damn Frankensteins. I mean . . . what Reiko did to Jack . . .”

Christie suddenly stood. “Hester. Do you Riverdance?”

“A little.” She rose and followed him. Sylvie, a bracelet of silver owls and acorns glinting on one wrist, grabbed Aubrey’s hand