She staggered up and ran to the wall with Jack. There was no sign of anyone in the alley below.

"I 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."

"You 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 . . ."

"He had a pulse." She pulled herself to her feet.

"Finn." Jack stood up, alarm in his voice. "I know what you're thinking. Don't. Please don't."

"He'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?"

"I don't know." His voice was ragged.

"It 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."

"Finn. Stop."

"They 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.

"Finn, 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 CLAMBERED UP JACK'S FIRE ESCAPE, following him. Not once on the drive here had she mentioned Lily Rose.

As they climbed into his apartment, he paused as if listening to a distant sound. He bent to draw a knife from one boot, then glided toward the bathroom, yanked the door open.

Moth was crouched between the sink and the toilet, his arms over his head. He still wore the clothes Jack had given him, but he was barefoot, surrounded by pieces of glass from the mirror that had hung over the sink. He whispered, "I've no reflection. I'm not real. I'm not really here."

Finn knelt before him. "Of course you're here. I'm speaking to you, aren't I? Why did you try to kill Jack?"

"The dark-haired girl," he said faintly, "told me to."

Finn pressed on, "Does the name Reiko Fata mean anything to you?"

He continued, "'If she be made of white and red, her faults will ne'er be known.'"

"This," Jack said, crouching beside Finn, "is getting weird."

Finn took out her phone and tapped at it. Jack said, "What are you doing?"

"Calling for reinforcements."

CHRISTIE AND SYLVIE ARRIVED dressed for battle in silver and holly. As they hauled themselves over the windowsill into Jack's apartment, Moth rose from his place on the bathroom floor and stared at them.

"Is that Moth?" Sylvie was apple cheeked from the chill. A Laplander hat was snug on her braided hair.

Moth backed away until he came up against the sink. Finn winced as glass crunched beneath his bare feet. He whispered again, this time in English, "Dragonfly. Why would you let her into your house?" He pointed at Christie. "And I remember you now, the one who found me . . . the Sionnach Ri . . . trickster . . ."

"They're not whoever you're mistaking them for." Jack leaned in the doorway of his kitchen. "What a hell of a night. I'm going to make tea. Moth, you're probably bleeding all over my floor. Sit down. Hello, Christopher. Sylvie."

Moth walked to the sofa. As he sat, warily watching Christie and Sylvie, Finn didn't see any blood on his feet. She said, "You're lucky. You didn't get cut. You've met Christie and that's Sylvie."

"I thought . . ." Moth shook his head and hunched over again, his thumbs pressed to his temples. "I have misremembered . . . what were those names I said?"

"You forgot them already?"

"Great." Christie stared at Moth. "Someone else who's lost his mind."

An hour later, Christie and Sylvie had learned all about Leander Cyrus, Moth, and Seth Lot. Moth listened without speaking, his hands clenched together.

"So," Christie spoke carefully, hunched up, "your sister's boyfriend, all this time, was a Frankenstein?"

Sylvie was watching Moth. She whispered, "And Leander worked for this Seth Lot? What does that mean?"

"It means"-Christie sounded desolate-"the Big Bad Wolf knows about Finn. I wonder if he knows we all helped perish his ex-girlfriend?"

The silence that followed was broken by Moth. "I don't remember a man who is a wolf. Why can't I remember him?"

Christie asked Jack, "How is the fairy mob handling this grim turn of events?"

"Christopher," Jack spoke idly, "that fairy mob might be the only thing standing between you and the Madadh aillaid."

"Is that the Big Bad Wolf's fancy name?"

Jack looked at Moth. "You don't remember the Wolf king, Moth, only a dark-haired girl. You tried to kill me because the dark-haired girl told you to. You protected Finn from the crom cu. So my guess is that you have left Seth Lot's services and now work for another-only you don't remember who that is. You've been enchanted. Or cursed."

Moth's bracelet of silver charms caught the light and Finn could make out the charms' individual shapes-a bee, a seahorse, an owl . . . an octopus with a tentacle missing. Her stomach somersaulted. "Moth, where did you get that bracelet?"

He stared at it as if he'd never seen it before. He took it off, held it out to her. "It was hers . . . the dark-haired girl's."

With one trembling hand, she accepted the charm bracelet. There was the butterfly she had bought at a thrift shop in San Francisco, the skull with garnet eyes, the guitar, the octopus . . . The air in the room seemed to crack. She met Moth's green gaze and whispered, "Who is the dark-haired girl who sent you?"

No one spoke. No one moved.

She pulled out her cell phone, tapped it to a picture, and raised it before Moth. "Is this her?"

His face changed. Light dawned behind his eyes. He whispered, "Lily Rose."

AS MOTH SPRAWLED BACK ON THE SOFA, his gaze opaque, Finn gazed down at her sister's picture. Sylvie was sitting at the edge of her chair, nibbling on a thumbnail and watching Finn. Christie turned a battered Rubik's Cube he'd found on a shelf over and over in his hands, but his attention was also on Finn. Jack was leaning forward in his chair, feet apart, hands clasped between his knees, his face sober.

"I don't remember things in order anymore." Moth spoke as if the memories restored by Lily's photo hurt him. "Sometimes, I remember the Wolf's house . . . sometimes, it was a ruin, other times, like the home of a lord. I ran away, once, and stone wolves chased me, brought me down." He continued softly, "I came to that house a long time ago. Before that, I traveled with a company in England. Actors. We were actors. Someone-a red-haired girl-I made her angry. Then I was . . . not me. The wing tattoos on my back . . . they're a curse." He looked up at Finn. "When I was me again, I was in that house, the one with the stone wolves. And so was the dark-haired girl. Lily Rose."

"But"-Sylvie frowned at Finn-"you saw your sister fall. She was in the hospital."

"It wasn't her." Finn didn't take her gaze from Moth. "It wasn't Lily who fell or Lily in that hospital bed. It was one of their tricks. Moth, is she alive? Lily Rose?"

"Finn," Jack said urgently.

"I think we were friends." Moth seemed to not have heard her question. "All the others in that house were cold things, cruel. But Lily Rose spoke to me. She was kind." He lifted his head. "I don't remember when I left, or how. I think she helped me escape, sent me to protect you. Then a sharp, dark man caught me. He made me sleep, and I woke up in the attic of the house you found me in."

"Moth." Finn leaned forward. "Where is Lily Rose?"

Moth slid his gaze to Jack, his body suddenly taut. "She wanted me to protect you from dangerous things."

"Jack isn't dangerous to me." Finn wanted to shake him. "Where is my sister?"

"I'm to protect you. I remember what he used to be." He pointed at Jack. "I saw him, in the house of the Wolf."

"I don't recall meeting you." Jack narrowed his eyes.

"Please." Finn's composure cracked. "Tell me where my sister is."

Moth lowered his head. "I dare not. I'm to keep you safe." He shivered as if shaking something from himself and said, "Fifteen ninety-five. Lily Rose would tell me that whenever I began to forget. It was the year I was stolen away. He'd taken my name. Fifteen ninety-five, she would say, and I would almost be myself again."

"Finn." Jack stood. "Let's go outside for a minute."

As Finn climbed out onto the fire escape, Jack came after. She gazed out over the snowy parking lot as that terrible night replayed in her head . . . her sister, shattered in blood and glass. She felt the poisonous sleepiness return, fought it with clenched teeth. "I thought she was dead. Seth Lot took her."

Jack gently said, "I'll have Moth tell me where she is. Then I'll go search for her."

"I'm coming with you."

"Where Lot has taken your sister-if what Moth has said is true-it isn't a safe place. And . . . this concerns me-that bracelet is made of silver. Where Moth has come from . . . silver and iron decay or transform."

Her stomach twisted. Where was Lily Rose? "You'll take me with you or I'll find a way to go alone. I'll find Leander. And if any of your Fata friends even attempt to make me or my friends forget you, my sister, or anything else, I've got things written and hidden, files on several computers, and little reminders scrawled on some of my everyday stuff."

He stared at her, his brows knit. Then he bent his head and kissed her.

She hadn't expected such a tactic and knew that he was trying to distract her. She got a little angry, so the kiss wasn't delicate, but heated and fierce. She stood on her toes, wrapped her arms around his neck, and pushed her hands through his hair. She dragged his lean-muscled body close as her blood became fiery butterflies . . .

She pulled away and steeled herself from winding her arms around him again as he leaned back against the railing, one boot heel pressed against it, his hair in his eyes as he watched her. They were both breathing quickly.

She pointed at him. "I mean it, Jack. Do you think Moth's telling the truth? He doesn't even know his real name."

"Lot"-Jack was studying her from beneath his lashes, which meant he was scheming-"will have taken that from him. Moth is a changeling, a stolen-away. From Elizabethan England. He's probably lost his mind more than a few times. As for Leander, he seems like a fugitive as well." Jack settled against the railing beside her and she could feel him sheltering her from the cold. "Leander called himself 'Cyrus' when I met him in San Francisco, when Reiko was visiting Lot, who'd made a temporary den in Muir Woods. Cyrus went to Seth Lot because he'd lost whoever had made him a Jack. He was rootless, as I once was."

Finn hated to think of Jack as he'd been, someone who'd caught the attention of a creature who had murdered him and brought him back to life stitched full of magical roses that kept him immortal. In the beginning, Jack had lured Finn to him like the elf knight in an old ballad, with no good intentions. And, dull with grief, she'd fallen for him. Was that how it had been with her sister and Leander? She carefully set her hands on the railing. "It wasn't just Norn, the Fata my sister met when she was little. It was Leander, too, who told Lily some of those things in her journal. Leander loves her. He bleeds for her. My sister is still alive."

"We need to remember that Leander and Moth once belonged to the Wolf. Go home, Finn. I'll take Moth to a safe place after I've talked to him."

"Remember our deal, Jack. Find out where my sister is and take me with you. And don't try to trick me."

His mouth curved, but his eyes were troubled. "I wouldn't dream of it."

AS FINN ENTERED THE LAMP-LIT HALL of her house in a jangling of keys and elation, her father called from the parlor. "Finn."

She ducked her head around the corner.

"Come. Sit." He patted the sofa next to him. She sauntered in and dropped beside him, glad Jane Emory wasn't there. As he handed her a cold cherry Coke, she squinted at him. "How did you know I'd be exactly on time?"

"After Halloween, I didn't think you'd want to terrify me again."

She'd vowed to never tell him what had actually happened that night. Now, she had another secret, one she wanted to tell him, but didn't dare, not until she knew Lily was really alive. It didn't feel real, that remote possibility, but she would keep it in a death grip until she found out.

As her father handed her a plate stacked with nachos, melted cheese, salsa, and his famous guacamole, her mouth watered. He said casually, "How's Jack?"

She bit into a nacho and noticed a book on gardening laid facedown on the table. It was winter. Her da didn't have any indoor plants. She sighed and looked at her da, saw how the shadows had left his eyes and he was smiling more. "Fine. So are Sylvie and Christie. How is Jane Emory?"

"She's the one who suggested I invite Jack for Christmas." He switched on the TV. "Want to watch a movie? Something scary, or an action movie, seeing as you don't like romance or comedy."

"You know what? Let's watch something funny."

CHAPTER 4.

It is true we shall be monsters, cut off from all the world: but on that account we shall be more attached to one another.

-FRANKENSTEIN, MARY SHELLEY Sylvie and Christie had signed up for phys ed activities that complemented HallowHeart's posh, old-fashioned, and eccentric vibe. Sylvie took archery and Christie had fencing class, which he'd convinced Finn to try, but she wasn't very good at it. Still, it beat soccer.

As they'd walked toward McKinley Hall, with its Doric columns and the face of the sun god Apollo carved in granite over its doors, Christie had quietly asked Finn if she knew for certain if her sister was alive. She'd told him she wasn't sure, but she needed find out. And Jack would help her. Christie hadn't said anything else to her since. Now, in the fencing studio, he was pretending to be busy with his gear, ignoring her, and she was tempted to poke him with her foil.

When Jack arrived after class had ended, Christie scowled and began slamming his equipment onto a bench.

"Finn." Jack leaned in the doorway. "Christopher."

"Christopher isn't talking to me, so he won't be engaging you in conversation either."

"Have you ever used one of these, Jack?" Christie straightened and twirled his foil. "I mean, in your abnormally long life, you must have."