"Bronwyn Rose Govannon. I was wed to a man"-her voice cracked with grief-"named Jonathon Sullivan. Seth Lot made me a widow and my two children orphans."

Jack was silent for a moment, acknowledging her grief. "Finn's coworker is named Micah Govannon-"

"My descendant. He works for me."

"You sent him to watch over Finn. You're not the only immortal from their family tree. I knew a Jack named Ambrose Cassandro, their mother's ancestor. Finn came here to get her sister from the Wolf. I was trying to get to Finn before she reached the Mockingbirds."

Jill Scarlet looked down at her boots. Her hands knotted together. "Will you reach her in time?"

"No. And, really, this delay . . . it wouldn't have made a difference. I knew I'd need to snake my way into the Mockingbirds' nest."

"Let me come with-"

"No. I need to do this discreetly. Why do the Mockingbirds want Finn? And me?"

"The Mockingbirds are no friend to the Wolf. He once did away with an entire clan of them in South Carolina. They fear him."

Jack smiled darkly. "Well, then . . . I think I know what they want."

CHRISTIE WALKED WITH SYLPH DRAGONFLY through Jill Scarlet's courtyard. Lights glittered in the citrus trees, and exotic plants cast soothing fragrances into the air. The Dragonfly's bare legs flashed beneath her black gown as it billowed in a honeyed breeze. She said, "What are you afraid of, Christie Hart?"

"I'm afraid that we won't get to Finn and Sylvie in time. I'm afraid we won't get home. I'm afraid that we'll all die here. And I'm so fucking useless . . ."

"Christie Hart." She turned, her eyes shining like starlight on water.

Her hair and gown began to swirl. Her lips pulled back from teeth like thorns. Shocked, Christie reeled back and chanted words that came to him in a heartbeat: "She is darkness, an elemental sprite. Her words mean nothing. I am stone. My heart protects me from this wight. Against her power, I stand alone."

The dangerous mood fell from Sylph Dragonfly as if she'd discarded knives, and she became herself again. "Do you quote poetry often, Christie Hart? That's a symptom."

Christie couldn't move. "What the hell . . . ? A symptom of what?"

"In the words of one of your people, 'Red blood out and black blood in, my Nannie says I'm a child of sin. How did I choose me my witchcraft kin?'"

"That's Walter de la Mare. Or is it Nathaniel Hawthorne? What are you telling me in your spooky, roundabout way?" He felt as if his stomach had dropped into his boots.

"Fear dorchadas are very rare." Sylph Dragonfly drew closer.

"What is a-"

"A male witch."

His heart galloped. "I am not a witch. Sylvie is. Reiko Fata said so."

"My original, Sylvie Whitethorn, is not a witch. I would sense it if she was. Your power must have lingered near her and Reiko mistook it for Sylvie's."

"No. I don't want to be a-"

"Christie Hart, if you ignore this, it will hurt you. This world tried to take you once-the fox knight who led Serafina Sullivan away is your double. He was to replace you."

"What?"

She reached out, her brows slanting. "Take my hands."

Grudgingly, he did so, and clenched his teeth against a fierce desire as he remembered last night and what had happened after the kiss, how her bare skin had felt against his as they'd rolled around in the grass. He'd never done it outside before. He'd never been with a Fata girl.

She said, "I'm going to free you from this ridiculous fear. Close your eyes. Repeat my words: 'Light as a feather, my bones made of air. I free myself from all mortal care. Upon the air I gently rise, my breath my power, my soul to fly.'"

As he reluctantly recited the words, he felt as if a hallucinogenic venom had spilled into his blood. Something dark and old, coiled in his brain, his heart, his spine, woke. Her hands tightened around his. "Open your eyes, Christie Hart."

When he did, he sucked in a breath.

They spun in a slow circle-two feet above the grass. As his heart began its march toward a stroke, the Fata witch laughed softly and twirled him like a child in the air. The waves of shock and dizziness passed. He dared to look down again at the grass far below his feet. The panic began to return- "Talk to me, Christie. It'll calm you."

He blurted, "The fox knight-who made him to replace me? Who made you to replace Sylvie?"

"I've no idea. My first memory is of being a child and playing with dolls made of flowers and bones." When she kissed him, her lips were soft and sweet.

"Goddamn it." The annoyed-and annoying-voice sent them plummeting to the grass. Sylph recovered with a neat twist, and Christie scrambled up to face Jill Scarlet and Jack, who continued, "I might have known you'd turn out to be the woman of darkness."

"The term," Christie said haughtily, "is fear dorchadas, man of darkness."

"Man? More like buachaill dorchadas."

"That's 'boy of darkness,'" Sylph said helpfully.

"Yes. I guessed that. So, Jack, are we done here? Can we move on and stop Finn and Sylvie from getting to the Mockingbird monsters?"

"I'm going to take the Mockingbirds up on their earlier invitation to tea." Jack's smile made Christie wonder if Sylph's Jack-illusion was becoming a reality. He guiltily hoped it was. Because there was no way they were going to survive the Ghostlands without badass Jack.

JACK'S FIRST WARNING that they were in Mockingbird territory was the sight of a human skull on a pillar, with the skeleton of a bird arrowing out of one eye socket. Standing beside his reindeer motorcycle, Jack regarded the gruesome totem with narrowed eyes as Christie walked to his side and stared up at the skull.

"It's a terror tactic." Sylph Dragonfly was disdainful as she wheeled her motorcycle through the ferns.

"It works." Christie glanced at Jack, the whites showing around his irises. "They've got Finn and Sylvie, don't they? We're too late."

"It's never too late." Jack turned and gazed down the steep ravine, at the fin de sieclestyle hotel in the mountain forest wreathed with mist. Even from this distance, he could feel the dark energy of the place buzzing at his eardrums. It was the same Go-away-don't-come-here-Bad-Things-will-happen-to-you glamour Reiko had used to keep people away from Tirnagoth. "Neither of you can come with me."

"I can help-"

"How?" Jack didn't even look at Christie. "Get hurt and distract them by bleeding all over the place?"

"Was that one of your plans?" Christie sounded tired. Sylph was silent beside them, her black hair and gown drifting in a wind that reeked of rust and rotting leaves. Christie continued, "They're my friends, Jack. I'm going with you. And I did knife that siren that would have mummified you. And I'm a . . . witch."

Jack studied the boy with the tangled curls and goatlike stubbornness. "I need to go in there alone. This isn't pretend, Christopher."

Sylph's eyes caught the last of the light. "You need to convince the Mockingbirds that you've gone dark. So, Jack, what would make you go dark?"

"I'd rather not say." At Jill Scarlet's, Jack had exchanged his clothes for a black suit and a dark coat lined with fur. His fingers were once again decorated with old rings.

Shadows uncurled from Sylph's black hair, her fingertips, enveloped her, and fell away.

Reiko Fata stood where Sylph Dragonfly had been, her hair writhing, her gown as red as wallpaper in hell. Jack felt as if someone had put an ax into his heart. He didn't move as she glided to him, cupped his face in her hands, and whispered, "Come back to me."

He felt the darkness constrict around the illusion of his fossil heart-then Christie was shouting, "Let the mask drop and the true spirit rise. Let the mists of deceit fade from our eyes . . ."

Jack blinked and it was Sylph Dragonfly who stood before him. She cocked her head to one side and looked curious. "Well? Did it work?"

He slid the kris blade back into his sleeve. "That was a dangerous thing to do, Dragonfly."

"You needed to remember what you once were."

Jack asked Christie, "How did you know that spell, with those words?"

"I don't know." Christie was staring at the Dragonfly.

Jack stepped back. "You both remember what you need to do?"

"Yes," Sylph said. "Good luck. Is that what you people say at times like this?"

"That's right, Dragonfly." As Jack moved past Christie, he murmured to the boy, "You'd be wise not to kiss the witch again."

And he strode alone toward the grand, ruined nest of the Mockingbirds, the old darkness beginning to fracture the fragile identity given to him by a girl with tawny hair and caramel eyes.

THE MOCKINGBIRDS HADN'T EVEN BOTHERED to conceal the fossilized hotel with glamour; they didn't expect visitors. As Jack pushed through the nettles that had mated with kudzu and overtaken what had once been impressive landscaping, he could smell decay and mildew. He made himself smile as he ascended the massive stairway of moss-slimed marble.

The doors with their patina of old bone opened. From the shadows came a young woman, or something that resembled a young woman. A gossamer cloak billowed like an enormous butterfly around her lily-white gown. Hair the color of moonlight on pewter cascaded to her hips. She was crowned with a wreath of blackthorn and old roses, her lovely face marred by black spirals inked beneath pale eyes lined with red cochineal.

"Jack Daw, as I live and breathe." Her voice was as honeyed as a southern belle's, and venomous. "What brings you all dark and handsome to my doorstep?"

"Have we met before? I've forgotten."

"I am Amaranthus." Her feet were bare and dirty. There was a smear of red on her mouth, and he doubted very much that it was lipstick. "We've met. I visited Reiko once."

He said, remembering, "'Love-Lies-Bleeding.'"

"That's my name. We left an invitation for you and your charming companion at the Ban Gorm's." She took a slithering step down. "And you ignored it."

Grateful for the darkness within him now, he placed a hand glittering with rings on the balustrade. "You should be careful what you invite into your home, Amaranthus." He advanced up one step. "I believe you've got something of mine."

"Are they all yours, sugar? You've got fine taste. Two pretty girls and one lovely boy. Come on in." Love-Lies-Bleeding turned and moved back toward the entrance. Jack followed. As he passed over the threshold, he felt the dark snake through him.

Leaving footprints on the dusty floor, Amaranthus led Jack into a dingy hall where baroque velvet paper peeled in purple swaths from unhealthy-looking walls. The air was bitter with a smell that reminded him of blood, burned sugar, and the dusty corpses of animals. She pushed open a set of glass doors frosted with the images of lilies and bird skulls, and they entered a large conservatory scattered with Fatas and antique furniture. A creature as gray and insubstantial as cobwebs sat at a grand piano of toad-belly white, fingering a jangling tune from the keys. Some of the Mockingbirds were playing a game similar to croquet, with ivory sticks and a glass ball containing fire.

"Welcome"-Amaranthus looked over her shoulder-"to Mockingbird Court."

A young man, milk-white hair dyed red at the tips, straightened from where he'd been leaning against a headless statue. His gaze was flat. "You."

"Narcissus," Amaranthus chided, "be sociable."

Jack looked at Narcissus and flashed a razor smile. "You were on the train."

Narcissus growled, "You should have put him in chains, instead of letting him run loose. He threatened me."

"Well, he's Jack Daw. He threatens a lot of people." Jack heard Amaranthus rustling beside him and sensed, again, that the beautiful girl was merely a cocoon over a thing of contorted bones, moldering feathers, and malice.

Carefully, Jack said, "Finn Sullivan was one of my finest tricks. She was my key to escaping Reiko. I want her back."

"Reiko," Amaranthus said sweetly, "whom you murdered, with your pretty schoolgirl. The girl who made you bleed, who made you mortal. Tell me, sugar: How is it you're a Jack again?"

"Because I prefer it. Now, do you want the Wolf dead or not?"

CHAPTER 15.

Her lips were red, her looks were free, Her locks were yellow as gold, Her skin was white as leprosy.

The nightmare Life-in-Death was she, Who thicks men's blood with cold.

-THE RIME OF THE ANCIENT MARINER, SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE When Finn opened her eyes and found herself seated at one end of a long table, her head resting against the back of a chair, she was confused. As the nausea and brain fog subsided, she began to focus on an ivory wall stained with mold and hung with a large, peculiar painting of little girls in bonnets, their catlike faces peering at the viewer. Beneath the painting was a hearth filled with flaming candles the color of corpses. Her gaze drifted down.

At the other end of the table, sprawled with one leg draped over the arm of his chair, was Jack.

"Jack." She tried to move, but her limbs felt as if they were tangled in an invisible web. Jack wasn't looking at her, but at the tangerine he was neatly peeling. He wore an elegant, dark suit and his hair was pulled back, emphasizing the sharp bones of his face.

"It's been a great trick," he said, focused on the tangerine as Finn followed the light that gilded his mouth, the pulse in his throat, "to watch you-a shrewd girl, a smart girl-fall for a thing like me."

The air hummed slightly-she felt a trickle from her nose and dabbed the back of one hand against her nostrils, looked, and saw blood. Only Fata magic caused such symptoms.

That's not Jack.

Terror gave way to anger. She curled her hands against the table. "Where are Sylvie and Moth?"

He set the peeled tangerine on the table and rolled it toward her. She could smell its sweet tartness; her mouth watered. He said, "You freed me. For that, I'm grateful. But I don't want you anymore."

Her nails dug into the wood of the table. For a mad moment, she almost believed him.

"You're bleeding." He slid to his feet and walked to her, crouched beside her chair, and offered her a black handkerchief. She didn't take it. She studied his face for flaws in the mask. "Where is your ring, Jack?"

"I've a lot of rings."

Cold slid through the chamber. Feathers and leaves sticky with cobwebs drifted across the floor as she stared into the eyes of the thing wearing Jack's face. She said, "Why is it you remember what you said to me on Halloween night, Jack-what you told Sionnach Ri to tell me, to get me here-but you can't remember which ring I gave you?"