Page 29 of Grim Lovelies (Grim Lovelies 1)

“Hurt him again,” Hunter Black snarled, “and I’ll put you in your grave.”

“No!” Viggo’s voice was sharp. “Don’t threaten her.”

Cricket spat out, “I’ll be there tonight. Just get out of here. Just go.”

Viggo started pacing. He raked his fingers through his flaxen hair. “Did you find anything, Hunter Black?”

“They aren’t here.”

Not here? Wasn’t he going to check the closet? Anouk felt Beau stiffen by her side, as confused as she was. He mimicked the gesture of the slap and shrugged as if to suggest the altercation must have distracted Hunter Black. It was true, Hunter Black always went a little wild at the idea of his master being hurt, but still. He was a hunter, like his name. He didn’t get distracted.

Anouk pressed her fingertips to her lips. She was shaking. It couldn’t be the magic, could it? Her whisper? It had been only a desperate try. She hadn’t expected it to work.

“Tonight, then,” Viggo said. “At the townhouse. And if either of those little beasties comes crawling to you, you drag them along with you, understand? Or there will be consequences.”

Heavy footsteps thumped away, followed by the slamming door. She heard Cricket fasten the chain lock and mutter something unrepeatable.

Had they really not been found?

The closet door flew open. Cricket stood in the doorway. “We’ve got to get out of Paris. Far away from those dangerous lunatics. Put as much distance as we can between us and them before tonight comes and we don’t show up at whatever deranged trap he has set for us at the townhouse.” She looked at Anouk strangely. “You must be the luckiest two people alive for him not to have found you in there.”

“The f-fountain,” Anouk stuttered, feeling the blood hot in her face, her hands starting to shake now that the danger had passed and it was sinking in how close they’d been to getting caught. “In the alley at the end of Rue des Amants . . . the little gargoyle . . . I dropped a coin in the water and made a wish for us to be safe. Maybe it worked.”

Cricket scoffed. “That’s just a legend.”

; The muscles of Anouk’s arms were twitching now and she couldn’t seem to make them stop. “I . . . I also cast one of Mada Vittora’s diversion whispers.”

Everyone went quiet. A car drove by, honking, and a baby wailed from the apartment overhead.

“That’s impossible,” Beau said at last. “Even if you know the whisper’s words, it takes a magic handler to cast spells.” He rubbed his chin for a long time. “It had to have been a coincidence. You saw how he leaped to defend Viggo. His mind was elsewhere.”

Anouk expected Cricket to chastise her more; Cricket, who was practical and ironic, who believed in the power of knives, not whispers. But Cricket was oddly quiet. Her long fingers drummed against the desk, rat-a-tat, rat-a-tat, as the swirling colors of her computer screen threw rainbows over her features.

She leaned forward, hands tented together. “Do you really think you worked magic just now, Anouk?”

Something about Cricket’s firm gaze threw her. “I don’t know,” she said honestly.

Beau looked from one to the other with a scrunched-up face. “Are you two seriously considering this?”

Silently, Cricket slid her desk drawer open and set out the candle and matches and journal that she’d hidden when they’d first arrived. She struck a match with a sizzle of smoke and lit the wick. She gestured to everything, chewing on her fingernail. “All of this, the drawings in the notebook too. I’ve been trying to do magic on my own.”

Not just any magic. Dark spells.

Anouk searched her face. “Can you?”

“No.” Cricket dropped her hand. “Not yet, at least. But—?I know this sounds crazy—?I can feel it. I can feel that it’s possible.”

Beau scratched his chin, eyeing the flickering candle warily.

Cricket pointed to it. “It’s a fire trick. Extinguishing the flame with whispers alone. I’d rather start a fire, but I can’t find that spell.” She gestured to the computer. “I found this one on the Internet.”

Anouk had heard Viggo talking about the Internet. It had to do with technology of the Pretty World, but unlike electric lights, which always turned on, and cars, which could be relied on to go forward, the Internet was tricky. Hard to tell what was lies and what wasn’t.

“Try it, Anouk,” Cricket urged. “I’ve barely mastered three words, but you’re fluent in the Selentium Vox.”

“No, I’m not. I’ve only read some books,” she quickly corrected. But she did know the spell—?even without looking at the words in Cricket’s notebook. Mada Vittora had cast it so often that Anouk could have whispered it in her sleep.