She set the basket on the steamer trunk that served as a coffee table. She pushed back her hood and sat opposite them on the altar steps, the hounds settling on either side of her. Mink-brown hair tumbled around her shoulders. Her argent gaze was unsettling; her scarred face seemed familiar . . .
Jack began figuring some things out as Christie said, “Jill Scarlet. Sylvie and I were supposed to meet you—”
“And you weren’t around when I went to the StarDust Studios. I thought the Dubh Deamhais had changed his mind.” She studied Christie critically. “I see why he chose you.” She turned that reflective gaze on Jack. “Do you want to know how I became a Jill?”
Before Jack could avoid it, she’d reached out and gripped his hand.
. . . a girl in a red gown and cloak fled through a forest dripping with ice and gloom. She held a hatchet in one hand. There was blood on her face, her hands.
She fell, screamed as a massive, spiky shadowy fell over her and a claw as razor-fine and long as a dagger sliced her open as if she were a caught rabbit—
He shook himself out of the vision and edged back to keep her from touching him again. “I know what he did to you. Tell me why you wanted us here.”
“You know about the trinity death for the Wolf.” Jill Scarlet rose and walked to the painting of a winter forest. She opened the painting as if it were a cabinet door and took a metal box from the alcove behind it. She returned to Jack and lifted the box’s lid, revealing a black vial sealed with a tiny pewter dog. “I stole this from Seth Lot, long ago.”
Jack stared at the vial but didn’t reach for it. “What is it?”
“I suspect it’s what will kill him. Do you see the label? Aconitum lycoctonum.”
“Wolfsbane?” Jack was skeptical. “Wolfsbane is quite common.”
Sylph Dragonfly leaned forward, peering at the vial, not touching it. “Not this. It’s not made from the plant. It’s an alchemized poison, Jack. Created by a mortal sorcerer with a Fata queen lover.”
“They used it to poison her king, a creature of shadows and nightmares.” Jill Scarlet watched as Jack studied the label on the vial. When he saw the symbol beneath the label, he said softly, “A pentacle. Solomon? King Solomon was the mortal sorcerer?”
“He and the queen of Sheba made it—supposedly from the blood of Cerberus—to destroy the queen of Sheba’s king, who was an ancient Fata, as was she. After they pinned her shadow king with holy wood, and poisoned him, they cut off his head.”
“The queen of Sheba was a Fata?” Christie leaned forward. “And that wolfsbane came from the three-headed dog in Greek mythology?”
“Probably not. There is no three-headed dog.” Jack took the metal box with the vial and slid it into his backpack. “Tell me, Madame Scarlet, why didn’t you use the wolfsbane on Seth Lot?”
“How was I to get close to Lot? I’ve only ever been able, with my people, to fight his pack—wolves seduced by Lot’s promise of becoming a true king, here, on the new continent.”
“That’s why the Blackhearts played fetch for you. They don’t want Lot lording it over them in their territory.”
“They don’t want any old-world Fata reigning in their territory. The mortal boy may eat and drink, by the way—it’s all human food, including the blackberry wine.” She turned the bottle, revealing a brand label. “From a friend. Leander Cyrus.”
Jack said, “You were the one in the Dead Kings with Cyrus, the night Finn learned what Leander was.”
As Christie reached for the Fig Newtons and Sylph poured the blackberry wine into two goblets, Jack continued with his questions, although the urge to go after Finn made him feel as if his skeleton wanted to burst out of his skin. “How did you get the information about the trinity death?”
She shrugged. “The Solomon story. Research. Things I’ve heard from others. And then we tested it. My people and I have used the wolfsbane against two murderous Fatas as old as the Wolf, Fatas that should only have died by divine fire. Those two Fatas are dead from the Aconitum lycoctonum, pinning, and decapitation. One of my best people was killed.”
Jack glanced at Christie and Sylph. “I need to speak to Madame Scarlet alone. There’s a nice courtyard outside, Dragonfly. Why don’t you and Christopher go look at it?”
WHEN THEY WERE ALONE, Jack sat with Jill on