Finn, Jack, and Moth raced down the hall. Darkness howled past them. It clotted before them, sweeping into the shape of Seth Lot, who ran at them with the sword.

Moth stepped between Lot and Finn. He blocked Lot's blade with the jackal walking stick and the force of the blow nearly bent him backward. Then Lot hooked a leg beneath one of his and Moth fell.

Jack had retrieved the silver dagger. As he strode forward, Finn leaped after him and wound one hand around his, around the dagger's hilt. When Lot writhed into darkness, they launched themselves at him, and, together, plunged the dagger toward the Wolf. For Lily, Finn thought.

The dagger stabbed into the shadows that had swallowed Seth Lot. The Wolf collapsed in his mortal form, clutching at the hole in his chest as darkness spilled from his mouth, his eyes.

Jack pulled Finn back. They swung around and hauled Moth to his feet and fled down the hall.

A storm of shadows massed behind them.

They pushed through the doors into the courtyard where Leander and Lily waited, looking as if they'd just come from a cocktail party, he in his white suit and she in her black gown. Leander carried Finn's backpack.

Finn flung herself forward and fiercely embraced Lily. "That thing with the butterflies . . . where'd you learn it?"

"Someday I'll tell you." Lily's attention switched to Moth and she said, "Hey, you."

Moth smiled. "Lily Rose."

"We need to fly." Jack gestured to a door in the wall.

"That was your plan?" Finn whispered to Jack as she took her backpack from Leander. "Get caught?"

"As long as Lot believed Leander would betray me." Jack handed Finn a wooden dagger. "Elder wood. We need to pin this damn house down so we can get out. Would you do the honors?"

As a howl came from within the mansion, Finn gripped the dagger. Then Lily's hands settled over hers and, together, they pushed the wood into the ground. The world shook.

They ran to the door in the courtyard wall. As Jack shoved it open, Moth and Leander swept out first to make sure nothing waited on the other side.

"Jack."

Finn and Jack slowly turned.

Reiko Fata, in a blood-red dress, stood near the wooden blade in the ground. The courtyard had become a creeper-snarled mess of neglect, the mansion once again a hulking ruin. Black hair whipping across her face, Reiko said, "Do you think another girl is going to free you, Jack? You are mine. Not hers. Not his. So, run, my Jack, from the Wolf. But I will find you."

With one foot, she shoved the wooden blade all the way into the soil.

A howling, inky void descended upon the Wolf's house.

Finn grabbed Jack's hand and they fled through the door in the wall. They turned to look back as the mansion and the grounds around it disappeared in that whirlwind of darkness and snow until all that remained was an empty clearing in a forest of mammoth oaks and towering yews.

"She pinned it." Jack sounded stunned.

Finn remembered Hester and felt her legs go wobbly. Jack gripped her elbow to keep her from falling and told her, "We're almost home, beloved."

Shadows seemed to stir in the forest that surrounded them. Caverns of darkness gaped. Mist crept around trees like monstrous figures, adding to the forest's baneful aspect. Close by, something howled.

Jack said, "He let some of his wolves out."

They ran, following Moth's, Leander's, and Lily's noisy flight through the black-and-gray world of the forest. Finn heard Lily shout her name, saw Moth racing ahead, leading the way. A strange barking sound echoed in the night around them.

When Jack halted, Finn nearly crashed into him.

"Where are they?" Finn cried. "Lily! Moth!"

"Finn." Jack's voice silenced her. "He's sent something else after us."

His fingers lost their grasp on hers.

She yelled as he was dragged away, through the leaves, into the dark. Lunging, she almost fell. She tore after him, into a deeper darkness, where the trees seemed bigger and older, their roots forming bridges and caves. Tiny lights danced in blackberry bushes and crimson toadstools scabbed the trunks. She flinched when she broke through a glistening spiderweb the size of her torso.

"Ja-" She bit down on his name.

To her right, a dark shape slinked through the forest. The shape was too narrow to be a wolf, its head sleek, with big, pointed ears. As it lifted its head to sniff the air, she fell to her knees in the snow.

She knew what it was.

She scrabbled up and began to run again, crashing through walls of ferns, avoiding low-hanging branches. The forest, a labyrinth of dire shapes and sounds, was now her enemy. Despite the elixir gifting her with litheness and an athlete's lungs, she knew she could not run forever.

When the heavy, muscled shape of the beast collided with her, she fell hard into the leaves.

Then the weight was gone. She sobbed and slid around in the dirt and snow. She kicked out, but couldn't see what had slammed her to the ground.

When a low laugh came from close by, she climbed to her feet.

Jack stepped from the shadows, a black greatcoat sweeping around him, his hair over his face. His eyes were icy silver. She stared at his hands glittering with rings.

This Jack wasn't her Jack or a trick . . . this was a memory released from Seth Lot's house with the wolves, before the house had been pinned into a void. This was a Jack of the past.

"You know what I am?" His voice was the hoarse, velvety one she recognized from when he'd hated himself. As he moved toward her with savage grace, she thought of the jackal she'd glimpsed, the beast that had knocked her to the ground. She backed away until she came up against a tree.

"Yes."

He circled her, his ghost gaze fixed upon her. He halted and moved his head as if scenting something. His brows slashed down. He drew closer and his fingers caressed her cheek. "You don't smell like a mortal girl. Why is that?"

She whispered, "Jack, listen-"

"Yes. I'm a Jack. But what are you? Why does Lot want you?" His fingers slid along the line of her jaw. "You look familiar, pretty little human."

"My name is Finn."

"You should never give your name to anyone." His eyes darkened. For a second, despite the bitter curl to his mouth, the ragged edge to his voice, she saw her Jack-and she wondered how much longer this version would have to suffer before being freed from Reiko and Lot.

She tilted her head up and tenderly brushed her lips against his, felt the mocking curve of his mouth soften as he returned the kiss until it became something lush and desperate-still, a stranger's kiss. His skin was cool, but familiar. She laid one hand over the place where his heart should be, felt nothing.

He tore back as if she'd bitten him. She reached out as if coaxing a skittish animal. "Jack . . . you'll know me again when you see me. But now you have to let me go. And you have to lead the wolves away."

"I know you, yet I don't." He turned and vanished into the forest. Finn ran in the opposite direction.

Something large swept down, rattling the branches. She caught herself against the nearest oak and almost collapsed, wondering what new monstrosity was about to descend upon her.

A girl emerged from the gloom between the trees, her coat billowing around a black gown. She carried a staff that resembled an antique hobbyhorse, but the toy horse's head had been replaced with a reindeer skull. She had Sylvie's face, but she wasn't Sylvie. Her eyes glimmered Fata silver. "Do you know who I am, Finn Sullivan?"

"You're Sylph Dragonfly. The witch." Finn felt unbalanced.

"I do wish your kind would stop using that word. Come along. We'll have to walk because you can't fly. Your friends aren't far." The Dragonfly twirled her staff.

"Jack . . ."

"He's with them. He was dragged away by a wolf. Jack's in fine shape. The wolf is not." Sylph Dragonfly began moving gracefully away. Finn followed, noticing that the witch's heeled boots didn't leave prints in the earth. "You are quite the firecracker, Finn Sullivan-or rather, an atomic bomb." She grabbed Finn's wrist and pulled her close. "Hush. Don't move."

Finn followed her gaze to an upright shadow loping through the trees to their left. She glimpsed a white, ghastly face above a mouthful of teeth.

As the wolf Fata loped away, Sylph Dragonfly jerked her head. She and Finn continued on. When Finn felt safe enough, she whispered, "Why weren't Sylvie and Christie, as kids, taken by your people and replaced by you and Sionnach Ri?"

"Our originals were flawed and protected. My people don't like flaws and they don't like being exorcised. So."

"Flawed and protected." Finn wondered what that meant.

"Could you lose that backpack? You're too encumbered."

"There are things in it that I need."

"Like what?"

"Stuff." Finn hoped they were getting closer to Jack and Lily and the others. This replica of Sylvie was making her nervous.

"Stuff to slay a wolf? You dropped this." Sylph Dragonfly tossed something to Finn, who caught it and stared down at the tiny sphinx bottle labeled Tamasgi'po. She'd forgotten about it. It must have fallen from her boot as she ran.

"Spirit in a kiss." Finn quickly reached down to check that the elixir was still in her other boot.

"Tamasgi'po. Where"-Sylph gracefully turned-"did you get such a thing?"

"From the Blue Lady. What is it?"

"Hellaciously dangerous." The Dragonfly began walking again. "What is memory, Finn Sullivan?"

"A storage of life events."

"It is conscious spirit. It is being something over being nothing. Therefore, memory for us is a tricky thing. Here we are."

"Finn!" Lily ran from the trees and embraced her. When she stepped back, she gripped Finn's shoulders and shrewdly looked her over. "You okay?"

"I'm fine." She wasn't.

Lily nodded once to the Dragonfly, who curtsied as if Lily was a queen. Behind Moth and Leander stood two girls dressed in fashionable black, Egyptian designs painted around their eyes. Each girl held a staff adorned with ribbons and topped with animal skulls.

"Finn." Jack walked toward her. He had a bloody scratch on his face, but he smiled like his old, wild self, and his eyes were the beautiful gray and blue. He touched her face and said, "I knew I hadn't lost you."

Finn glimpsed a shadow in her sister's gaze when Lily looked at Jack.

A howl broke the quiet. Sylph Dragonfly glanced at the other two girls. "We counted twenty wolves. Half went in another direction, as if led that way. The other ten-"

A huge, spiky shadow launched itself from the trees.

The humanity sloughed from Jack like a shed skin. He moved with feral grace, flinging Eve's silver dagger into the shadow, which became a Fata man, who fell to the forest floor.

Lily looked impressed as Jack put one booted foot on the Fata's shoulder and pulled out the dagger. The Fata blackened and bled until all that was left was a fur coat and some fossilized bones that didn't seem human at all.

"He had teeth." Lily gazed down at the monstrous skull that remained. Again, something dark passed behind her eyes. She raised one foot-she wore black Converses-and smashed it down, shattering part of the wolf's skull. Everyone stared at her.

The howling came from all sides now, growing closer. More big shadows were moving through the trees. Finn said, "They've found us."

Sylph strode to Moth. She grabbed him by his hoodie and kissed him as everyone stared. He flinched back from her but didn't change. Then she and her witches walked to three points around Finn and her companions, facing outward. The air began to hum. Finn heard another sound in the distance, like roaring, and whispered, "What-"

Lights danced through the trees. The roaring grew louder.

The wolves howled, circling closer. Feral eyes glowed in the dark.

The bright lights and thunder of the motorcycles that sped from the night to surround them seemed like the descent of battle angels. As the lead rider glided up to Finn, she counted a dozen riders.

Removing his helmet and handing it to her, Sionnach Ri smiled. "Nick of time?"

She grinned and put the helmet on. "You do that on purpose, don't you?"

CHAPTER 18.

This maiden had scarcely these words spoken, Till in at her window the elf knight has leaped . . .

"Seven kings' daughters have I slain.

And you shall be the eighth of them."

-"LADY ISABEL AND THE ELF-KNIGHT"

Sylph Dragonfly and her sisters vanished into the night as Finn, on the back of Sionnach's speeding bike, glanced over one shoulder and saw a pack of silver-eyed Fatas in fur coats emerging from the forest darkness behind them.

The wolves had lost their prey.

As the fox knights sped onto a highway with Finn and her companions, Finn yelled into Sionnach's ear. "Where are you taking us?"