The gargoyle was small, no bigger than a cat, crouching by the fountain’s pool, spitting a thin stream of water from its stone lips. Its forehead was blockish and ugly, but its eyes were bright, almost playful. Maybe this was why the Pretties found it so magical: beauty and ugliness in one.
She tugged the gold chain over her head, took off the franc, and held the coin out with a shaking hand.
She closed her eyes.
“I wish for her soul to be at rest.”
The babble of water was a balm against her thumping pulse, but it didn’t erase the sweat on her brow, the blood staining her clothes.
She opened her fist.
“No.”
She felt a hand close over hers, stopping the franc before it fell. Beau. Her eyes snapped open.
“If you’re going to make a wish,” he said, “make it for us, not her. That we get out of here with the skin still on our backs.” He lowered his voice. “There are scrying crows all over the rooftops. Can’t you hear them whispering? They’ll spread word of what happened throughout the Haute’s scryboards—both the official ones and the illicit ones. We need to go.”
Despite how confident he sounded, his hand was shaking too. He was more worldly than she was, but only barely. He’d been human for two years to her one. His life had been the house and the car and not much in between.
She turned back to the fountain. “I wish for us, then. To be safe.”
She dropped the coin in.
Together, hand in hand, they hurried to the Rolls-Royce. Beau had left the key in the ignition, the doors open. Would their wish count? She’d expected Beau to tell her again that the wishing fountain was just a silly thing the Pretties believed in, but he didn’t. Maybe deep down he wanted to believe too.
Beau slid into the driver’s side and slammed the door. Anouk raced to the passenger’s side. She took in the townhouse in one final, heady glance. It looked different from the outside. Only three stories tall, not the seven that it was inside. Where did the ballroom fit? The attic? The courtyard?
A crow landed on the roof cresting, followed by another, and another. Dozens of them. Twice the size of Corpus crows. Peering down at her with sharp glass eyes. The low murmur of whispers carried on the wind. With a flurry of wings, one landed on the chrome hood ornament just feet from her. The bird lunged, moonlight glinting off its sharp beak. The tip of it caught the flesh of her arm. She gasped at the red scratch.
The bird lunged for her again. She jumped back and grabbed Luc’s watering can. Tears in her eyes, anger in her throat, she swung it as hard as she could at the bird, slammed the can into it with an explosion of feathers and white shimmering smoke. She waved the smoke away, coughing.
The crow was gone.
But more cawed from the rooftops. Louder. Sharp talons. Sharp beaks.
“Anouk—”
“I know!”
One dived off the cresting, talons aimed for her eyes. She dropped the watering can, jumped in the car, and slammed the door hard just as the crow collided with the window.
Beau hit the locks.
In the car. Safe. Looking out the windshield at the crows. Another one landed on the hood ornament. One pecked viciously at the door handle. Whispers filtered through the air vents, speaking in no earthly language. “They’ve seen into the windows,” she said. “They know she’s dead. They’ll follow us.”
“Like hell they will.”
The car roared to life beneath Beau’s hands. Anouk clutched the edges of her seat. She twisted to look behind them. The crows were taking wing and swooping down from the rooftops toward them.
“Beau, go!”
He jammed his foot down on a pedal and the car tore into the street. Anouk struggled to keep sight of the birds. Dozens of them glided on the night air, dodging street signs and trees with ease.
“They’re everywhere,” Anouk breathed.
Beau glanced in the rearview mirror. His face was grim, but there was a confidence in the way he gripped the wheel. He turned down a one-way street, sharply. Anouk’s fingers clutched the leather seat harder. It felt like the car was hurtling impossibly fast. He whipped the wheel again, and there was a squeal of brakes. For a second, the skies were clear, and her grip eased. But then the flock of birds appeared over the nearest roof.
“They’re still coming!”
The crows weren’t limited by streets and traffic signals. They could soar over trees and houses, travel from one city block to the next in seconds. Beau didn’t take his eyes off the street, curving sharply around a closed brasserie on the corner, red-and-white awning folded for the night and chairs stacked beneath it. He pressed harder on the gas and they zipped past closed-up shops, then turned onto a cobblestone alley so narrow the side mirrors nearly scraped the buildings, the car bouncing violently. Anouk’s heart clattered in her throat with each jolt. We’ll be okay, she told herself. I made a wish. We’ll be safe. We’ll make it . . .
Something thunked on the car roof, and she shrieked. The sound of hundreds of flapping wings came from somewhere overhead, along with sharp caws and chilling low whispers like a swarm of bees. Another sharp beak pecked at the roof of the car hard enough that it dented the metal ceiling.
Beau spun the car onto another street, still accelerating. How fast were they going? Eighty kilometers an hour? Ninety? They sped past a bar with thumping music and flashing lights and writhing dancing bodies. Past a supermarket with all its lights on, blindingly bright. And then the car shuddered and the sound of the road changed. Anouk pressed her face to the glass. A bridge. They were driving over the Seine. From here, she could see a wide stretch of the city. Buildings reflecting in the water, and a tower—a soaring metal structure that curved into a point. Hundreds of tiny lights on it, shimmering like champagne bubbles. Her breath fogged the glass.
The Eiffel Tower.
But as beautiful as it was, a dark shadow on the water stole her gaze—a black cloud of flapping wings.
The car shuddered again when the bridge ended. Other drivers were honking at Beau, yelling out their windows as he whipped around them, darting in and out of traffic. The Eiffel Tower disappeared behind clouds. Beau drove faster, taking sharp turns, and her stomach objected. The world was moving too fast. Too many sounds, too many sights. The smell of Mada Vittora’s blood on her clothes.
Anouk leaned forward in the seat, covering her mouth with her hands.
“It’ll be okay, Anouk.” Beau gripped the wheel tighter. “I can lose them. I was made for this. To drive.”
She shut her eyes. As the car raced along the dark streets of Paris, it was all she could do not to throw up on the polished silver trim of the Rolls-Royce’s floor.
* * *
“You can open your eyes now,” Beau said. “We’ve lost them.”
Anouk slowly opened one eye, then the other. The world beyond the windshield had gone strangely dark, not the thin black of night, but closed in by some sort of monstrous scales. A loud but rhythmic whoosh-whoosh surrounded them as the scales moved back and forth.
On closer inspection, she saw that the scales were made of the same plastic material as her mop.
“We’re in a car wash near the Porte de Clichy,” Beau said. “We have seven, maybe eight minutes until the rinse cycles are done.” He gave a shrug. “I couldn’t think of any other place to hide.”