Just as Little Red Riding Hood entered the wood, a wolf met her. Little Red Riding Hood did not know what a wicked creature he was, and was not at all afraid of him.

-"LITTLE RED RIDING HOOD," THE BROTHERS GRIMM You want to play with magic, boy? These were the last words mortal Jack heard before Reiko cut out his heart, with Seth Lot crouched beside them, smiling amiably.

Jack had awakened on cold stone stained by his own blood and found Reiko gazing lovingly down at him. He'd screamed as the alchemy of roses Lot had stitched within him stung like hundreds of bees, the thorns stabbing into his bones, venom shimmering through his veins.

Then Finn was kneeling beside him, her soulful eyes wide, her lips moving but no sound emerging. He shook his head, found that he, also, could not speak. As Finn stood and Seth Lot appeared behind her, gathering Finn's hair away from her neck as if he was a lover, Jack tried to warn her, reached for her- Lot plunged a hand through her and pulled out her heart.

Jack convulsed, watching Finn fall bloodily at Seth Lot's feet.

JACK LAY ON THE FLOOR of the witch's cottage. Night air whispered across his skin. He could hear the wind chimes in Sylph Dragonfly's garden, a flock of starlings sweeping over the roof. He could smell earth and the incense that had soaked into the cottage's wood. He couldn't feel his heartbeat. His brain was splintered by dark, hungry thoughts.

Whatever black magic Sylph had worked upon him had cast a convincing illusion of turning him back into a thing that walked the world solely to cause harm. Worst of all, he could almost feel the phantoms of Reiko Fata's roses snaking through him, thorns scratching at his bones, petals pushing against his internal organs. He could see in the dark once more.

He dragged himself into a crouch and leaned against the wall. His body thrummed with energy. Finn.

He hunched over and something slipped out of his mouth, drifting to the floor-a rose petal that looked like blood. The illusion had triggered something else; his mortality was fading fast now, being drained away by the world to which he belonged.

The door opened. Christie, in a fur-lined jacket and tasseled wool hat, peered in. "Jack? Normally, I wouldn't bother you, but Finn and Sylvie are headed toward a bad place. We've got to stop them."

Jack's voice scraped out, "Sylph Dragonfly told you this?"

"Sort of. Are you okay? Because you look like you're not."

"They're together? Sylvie and Finn?" Jack slid to his feet as hope, that fickle fairy thing, hushed through him.

"Together or about to be-Miss Dragonfly says they're both headed toward the same place. You're . . . not really a Jack again, are you?"

"Enough of one." Jack felt the old smile slice across his face.

"THEY'RE HEADED TOWARD A PLACE called Mockingbird Hotel," Christie continued as he and Jack gathered up the satchels Sylph had packed, while she tweaked out the lamps. "There was a Mockingbird Hotel in Virginia. It closed in the '30s because some people were shot to death there."

"And how do you know this bit of macabre trivia?" Jack sheathed his misericorde in his left boot and slid the kris Christie had returned to him up one sleeve. Christie had the wooden dagger from Phouka.

"It's just something I read once. What are the Mockingbirds, Jack?"

"The Mockingbirds are crazy. That's all you need to know."

They followed Sylph out of the cottage, through the garden, to a gate camouflaged by bean vines and ivy. She yanked the gate open, revealing a cavern of greenery and two bizarre motorcycles of tarnished metal shaped into reindeer, antlers strung with talismans, bodies engraved with runes.

"The dyr spokelse are rusty, but they can still travel a great distance-better than trains." She caressed one of the motorcycles as if it was a living thing and it stirred with a creak, red lights flickering in the eye sockets of the brass reindeer head curving from the handlebars. When the bikes hummed to life with a distinct tick-tocking sound from within their brass bodies, Christie stepped back quickly.

Jack moved to the darker beast, peered into one ruby eye. "How do they move?"

Sylph pulled two pairs of antique goggles from her satchel and handed one to Jack, the other to Christie. She swung onto the second bike. As she tugged on an aviator's cap also equipped with goggles, she said, "What energy drives them? Mine. I can put energy back into things, just like I can drain it. I sent one of my dragonflies to Orsini's and it showed me your Finn, Sylvie, and that bastard Alexander-Moth-opening Orsini's door to a fox knight."

Jack's body shook once with overwhelming relief-Finn had escaped Caliban. "How do you know she's headed for the Mockingbirds?"

"The map on the spirit drum-the pointer went right to their lair," Sylph replied.

"And the fox knight?" Jack touched one of the motorcycles as if calming a horse.

"Like all fox knights-not to be trusted."

Christie was pale in the starlight, his eyes glinting from the elixir. "Are we really going to-"

"Get on." Jack threw one leg over the bike. As he familiarized himself with riding again, Christie swung up behind the witch.

"Close your eyes, gentlemen." The Dragonfly leaned forward as Christie slid his arms around her waist. "They move fast."

THE CLOCKWORK BIKES sped down a highway that soon curved into a mountain forest where no light other than that from the stars was visible and night seemed to be a solid thing. They passed through a wall of mist, and the road ended.

They halted the bikes in a forest glade, its trees hung with the feathered and painted skulls of wolves.

"Where are we?" Christie's voice was faint.

"I don't know." Sylph was grim. "We've been waylaid."

From the darkness emerged three masked figures on dead-looking horses with the opal eyes and weed-tangled manes of kelpies. As Jack pushed up his goggles, Christie said, "Please tell me they're friends of yours."

"They're not." Sylph didn't take her attention from the riders as one of the ghastly horses came forward, the Fata in its saddle resembling a Native American in stitched black suede, crow feathers knotted in his long hair. He wore a wooden mask shaped like a raven's face. He said, "Jack Daw. Where is your brother, the crooked dog?"

"I don't have a brother, Blackheart." Jack resisted the instinct to reach for his knives.

The Blackheart's companions remained in the shadows. Both were masked in painted wood. One, in red, wore the horns of a buffalo. The other, in white, had a headdress made from antlers. As the lead Blackheart nudged his kelpie closer to Jack, the water horse's muzzle curled back from carnivore teeth. "The crom cu has caused much grief among our nation, Jack Daw. In fact, many of your outlaw kind have been nothing but-"

"Disappointing to you? I agree. The crom cu isn't my brother. Feel free to dismember him if he crosses your path. What do you want with us?"

"The sun will set, the moon will wane." As Christie spoke, Jack's irritation level shot sky-high. He narrowed his eyes at the boy.

"The stars will fall, become our bane," Christie continued, his voice steady. "A tribe will bleed, a nation fade. The spirits will weep and turn away."

Silence followed the poem. The lead Blackheart tilted his head and murmured, "Pretty words from a mortal boy-yes, I know he's mortal-I've been told. We won't force you to come with us, but you'll volunteer."

Jack said, "Where exactly are we volunteering to go?"

"The Dearh Cota wants to speak with you."

"Two friends of mine are about to enter the Mockingbirds' nest. We don't have time."

"You will make time, Jack Daw, because the Dearh Cota has the information that will help you take down the Wolf."

Christie said desperately, "Finn and Sylvie, Jack."

"Let me explain it this way," the Blackheart continued. "You'll come with us or remain here. Forever."

Jack spoke through gritted teeth. "Ride fast and we'll follow."

The lead Blackheart turned his kelpie. His two comrades followed, the red one idly saying to the white one, "At least the mortal didn't recite 'Hiawatha' at us, like the white folk usually do. The next mortal does that, I'll get someone to cut out his or her tongue."

"Whatever happened to scalping?" The white one looked wistful.

"They don't recite poetic cliches with their hair. Removing the tongue makes more of a statement."

"Fantastic," Christie muttered as Sylph and Jack revved up their bikes. "More water monsters and a Fata comedy team."

THE BLACKHEARTS LED THEM DOWN a road lined with witchy-looking elms decorated with painted rattles and wooden stick figures. As they passed beneath an arch made of withy and blackberry vines, the trees gave way to a street lined with abandoned brownstone buildings, their balconies strung with colored lights, graffiti on the doors, and talismans hanging in windows of broken glass. The red light muted the sky behind a blackened church at the street's end and made the church's stained-glass windows glimmer like sangria. Citrus trees in urns lined the stair, along with a variety of canine-headed gargoyles. Parked in front was a battered Jeep Cherokee scrawled with silver symbols, a wolf skull attached to the fender.

As the Blackhearts and the clockwork motorcycles halted before the church, the red doors opened and a slender figure in a hooded coat of scarlet, two brindled hounds at its sides, stepped out. Jack got off his stilled motorcycle and murmured, "Jill Scarlet. The Dearh Cota."

"Wait . . . that sounds familiar. . . ." Christie stared at the figure as it spoke in a young woman's voice.

"Jack Daw. Do you think you are the Wolf's death?"

"Maybe"-Jack smiled savagely-"I'll be yours if I don't reach the Mockingbirds in time."

The smile in the shadows of the red hood was equally as feral. The Dearh Cota didn't look dangerous-she appeared to be a young woman in a ruffled black dress, striped stockings, and button-up boots-but Jack knew better. She receded back into the church, followed by her two hounds. "Come in. I won't keep you long."

Jack ascended the stairs, and Christie and Sylph followed him into the church that now served as a home, bookshelves and paintings on the walls between the windows and the altar area a bedroom with parchment screens. Jill Scarlet gestured with a slim, scarred hand toward an antique sofa and chairs set around a potbellied stove. Jack and Christie sat. Sylph wandered around.

"I'll fetch you something to eat." As Jill Scarlet pushed through a pair of doors that shut behind her, Christie leaned toward Jack. "Who is she?"

Jack replied, "She's Little Red Riding Hood."

Sylph, who still wore the aviator's cap, its goggles pushed up, sat in the chair beside Christie. "The very one."

Jack continued, "The fairy tale didn't originate in Germany, but in the Basque province of France, when there were wolves and things that looked like wolves. She was an innocent girl-"

"Aren't they all?" Sylph tilted her head.

"She was an innocent girl"-Jack frowned at Sylph-"who met Seth Lot. When she realized what he was and tried to twist from his grasp-with a hatchet-he killed her and made her into a Jill."

Christie whispered, "I hate this place."

Jill Scarlet returned with a basket of tangerines, dark bread, cheese, a bottle of black wine, and a carton of Fig Newtons. 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 the altar steps. "Who are the two big bad Fatas you and your people have ended? It might make my day to know their names."

"The Gray Tinker and the Night Spindle."

"Bloody ridiculous names for two awful things. I recognize their titles-one came from Scotland and the other from Prague. One slaughtered adolescents, correct? And the other terrorized children. Did you do this, like, to impress me?"

She smiled wryly. "No."

"Who, exactly, is in your band of rebels?"

"Changelings and aislings torn from their world and enslaved in this one. I've kept them safe, away from Fata kings and queens. And there are others-Fatas tainted by the true world, friends and lovers to mortals. Where is Serafina Sullivan?"

"On her way to the Mockingbirds. You've kept track of your descendants. You and the Black Scissors have communicated with Lily Rose Sullivan."

"Only the Black Scissors could speak with Lily Rose-they used insects as messengers. I didn't know Serafina and Lily Rose Sullivan were my blood until the Black Scissors and Leander Cyrus came to me for help. The Black Scissors told me about the trinity death, and about the girls."

Jack twisted the ring Finn had given him. "What was your name when you were a real girl?"