Read Online Thorn Jack by Katherine Harbour - Free Book Online

awareness standing in one corner. Above the bed with its treelike posts was a large photograph of a dark-haired girl, her green eyes made even more exotic by black and gold kohl, her glossed lips curving over the logo “Bebe.”
    Reiko Fata, his only reason for existing, wore a dress of red silk tonight that revealed her legs to the thigh. She leaned against a window of stained glass, her black hair glistening. “Jack. What did you do tonight? Did you do as I asked?”
    He dropped into a chair and propped his booted feet on a table. “I played a trick.”
    â€œAre you going to behave badly?” She languidly turned and walked over to him; sitting down on his lap, she slid her wrists across his cheekbones. Her fingernails pricked the nape of his neck.
    â€œIs there any other way for me to behave?” His own wrists were knotted with thorny bracelets that glinted as he raised his hands and broke her hold.
    She leaned close to him and whispered, “You weren’t supposed to scare her. You were supposed to bewitch, bother, and bewilder her.”
    â€œI wasn’t in the mood for the bewitching.”
    â€œReally?” Her lips nearly touched his. “Because it’s what our family does .”
    His eyes went dark. He almost said what he really wanted to.
    She rose. Something dark and hot twisted in him as she turned and moved to the curtain of vines and flowers that veiled her bed. She looked back over one shoulder. “Jack.”
    He moved to his feet and took a step toward her because he couldn’t help it.
    The doors swept open and fiddle music skirled from the courtyard below as a boy in a black top hat and striped suit sauntered in. He bowed gracefully, orange hair sweeping the floor. “You called?”
    Reiko, still gazing at Jack, said, “Absalom. What is the penalty for someone who interrupts one of our ceremonies? A wake, for instance?”
    â€œWas the wake for anyone important?”
    â€œDavid Ryder’s girl.”
    â€œOh.” Absalom’s eyes glowed as he looked at Jack. “Not important, then. My ruling would be the lesser of three evils—mischief.”
    Jack stalked out. As the doors closed behind him, he pictured the schoolgirl with the tangled hair and sweet mouth, the one he had led into the birch wood. His predator’s instincts had caught her scent of sorrow and damage, but it was her resemblance to someone he’d known that had intrigued him. Maybe she would be different. Maybe, unlike all the other girls, she could make him bleed.

 
    C HAPTER F OUR
    Are the dancing girls sleeping or are they dead? The flower fragrance says they are corpses—the evening bell rings for the dead.
    â€” T HE S NOW Q UEE N, H ANS C HRISTIAN A NDERSEN
    A girl named Maude Clare followed a hare
    To a black metal house that is no longer there.
    And what did she find in the dark of that place
    But a prince with no heart and a beautiful face.
    â€” F ROM THE JOURNAL OF L ILY R OSE
    A fter the strangeness of the previous night, the daytime seemed a disappointment. Slouched at her table in Botany, her mind too fuzzy to absorb plant classifications in one of the two classes she’d chosen for their nonartsy value, Finn wondered if she was going crazy. There is no such thing as the birch girl . . . and who is Jack Fata?
    LATER, IN ORIGEN’S COURTYARD, CHRISTIE dropped down beside her and unwrapped his sandwich. “What a bitch of a day. I was late for metalworking, so Wyatt just ignored me. Then I burned my finger when I was soldering—is that Nathan Clare?”
    â€œNathan Clare?” She followed his gaze to a boy walking across Hudson’s lawn, who was accompanied by some of HallowHeart’s elite, including Kevin Gilchriste the actor, and Aubrey Drake, the captain from the school’s varsity football team. Nathan’s bronze curls shone, and the threadbare sweater and jeans he wore didn’t