Read Online Briar Queen by Katherine Harbour - Free Book Online Page A

?”
    Then Jack’s arms were around her, pulling her away.
    â€œFinn,” Jack said calmly, “he’s bleeding.”
    She saw the blood on Leander’s mouth where one of her flailing fists had struck. Her eyes wide, she whispered, “Leander . . .”
    He backed away.
    â€œWhy are you bleeding if you’re a Jack?” She reached out, gripping his hand—
    â€”and was knocked out of herself . . . as if someone had snatched her soul from her body and flung it above a winter forest from which rose a mansion of leprousmarble, with stone wolves on the cloven stairway and shadows moving behind windows that were nothing more than shards of glass. It was a phantom house and, as the sun set, it glowed with light, transforming . . .
    Then she was inside the house and knew she could never leave it as she walked its corridors, a gown of smoke and belladonna petals billowing around her legs. When she halted before a colossal mirror of tarnished glass, she saw a ghost, its dark hair snarled with lilies, its face in shadow. Soon, he would come, to lay his fine, jeweled hands upon her—
    She was jarred back to herself, on her knees, with Jack crouched before her, gripping her shoulders, speaking her name over and over again. She retched, gasped, “I’m okay.”
    â€œYou didn’t tell her?” Leander’s voice was wild.
    â€œTell her what?” Jack snarled.
    Leander shook his head. “Just keep her away from them . . .”
    He turned and stepped up onto the low wall of the roof. Finn screamed, “Leander!”
    He jumped.
    She staggered up and ran to the wall with Jack. There was no sign of anyone in the alley below.
    â€œI recognized him in the photographs you showed me, the ones of your sister.” Jack slid down, his back against the wall, and sat there. She dropped down beside him as he continued, “I should have told you. I just couldn’t.”
    She tracked her memories of Leander, of day-bright San Francisco, of carp in sun-drenched water, of bicycling through hilly streets, of walks in Golden Gate Park . . . she couldn’t place Leander in a single one of those sunlit memories. Why had she never noticed how strange it was that Lily only saw him at night? “All that time with Lily, he was a Jack. How could I not know ?”
    He twined his fingers around her wrists, pressed his thumbs gently against her pulse points. “You were a child.”
    â€œYou said you recognized him. From where? Who does he belong to?”
    Jack hesitated. “Seth Lot.”
    She closed her eyes as her stomach heaved. She saw the ghost girl walking barefoot in the hall of a house with stone wolves guarding a split stairway. “Leander was bleeding. Why do Jacks bleed?”
    Warily, he said, “Finn . . .”
    â€œHe had a pulse .” She pulled herself to her feet.
    â€œFinn.” Jack stood up, alarm in his voice. “I know what you’re thinking. Don’t. Please don’t.”
    â€œHe’s in love . If the person a Jack loves dies, does a Jack return to what he was? Or does the heart and blood remain? Why is he still bleeding, Jack, if Lily is dead?”
    â€œI don’t know.” His voice was ragged.
    â€œIt wouldn’t remain.” She was amazed by her own calm. “When I left you, you began to go all hollow again. Whatever Leander was”—she gripped the low wall as a terrifying hope soared through her—“he loved my sister and loves her still.”
    â€œFinn. Stop .”
    â€œThey take people and put dead things in their place, all fixed up to look like the ones they stole away.” She remembered what Reiko had said on Halloween: I can bring back your sister .
    â€œFinn, please don’t think like this.”
    Reiko had said, Do you want this world of absolutes and accidents? Of hopelessness and ugly deaths? “Jack . . .”
    He looked away and said nothing more.
    FINN