Bones and Heart Read Free Page B

Jack’s gaze. His brown eyes had the preternatural silver of a dead thing’s. “I am now.”
    Then Jack was alone, standing before the inn. As he sagged against the door, he drew from his coat the pocket watch he’d torn from around the doll horror’s neck and ran his thumb across the name engraved into the pewter.
THE PRESENT
    In Lacroix’s house, Jack squatted down before the antique Grindylow in the red gown. He cupped its broken face in his hands. He felt a pain in his chest. The scratch on his cheek began to seep blood—he could scent its iron tang.
    “Your name”—his voice was a scrape as he gazed into the doll’s remaining glass eye—“is Moira Hawthorn. You were wed to Nikolai Harrow. You had a son named . . .”
    He closed his eyes. The new growth inside his chest, amid the alchemical roses, pained him as the doll’s jointed fingers closed around his.
    He pressed his brow against the bisque skull and pushed the silver dagger he’d brought into the place where the heart would be. There was a sound like glass breaking. The Grindylow’s mouth opened and it breathed out. There was a pulsing light behind the glass eye. All the orbs in the bottles grew brighter, their light casting a harlequin glow against Jack’s skin.
    She was free. He smiled.
    When something tore across his back, he rolled away. He flung his mirror fan at the Grindylow bride that had crept up behind him. The fan razored diagonally into the porcelain face so that the Grindylow was forced to gaze at half of its reflection. Until the mirror was removed, the doll would remain frozen.
    Lacroix stepped from behind the bride. He peered down at the Grindylow in the red gown. “Well, that’s a shame. She lasted longer than the others.”
    Jack slid to his feet, holding two more daggers he’d pulled from his arsenal. He walked toward Mr. Bones.
    “You cannot kill me.” Lacroix smiled. “Reiko Fata needs me.”
    Jack smiled back. “That’s exactly why I’m going to kill you.”
THE PAST
    Jack stepped into the room he shared with his father and found it empty of Nikolai Hawthorn’s belongings, although his own remained. Clutching the pocket watch, he sank against the door. His guts churned.
    He discovered a letter written in his father’s hand folded upon his violin. His da had left him. It had become too dangerous—powerful entities had noticed their activities and they knew Nikolai Harrow Hawthorn’s name. He had left to lure them away. Jack was to travel to Old Church Street in Dublin, where a family friend would meet him and give him a job and a room. There was also an envelope of money, but Jack flung that at the wall. He locked the door and curled on the bed, his boots dirtying the sheets as he cradled the pocket watch he’d snatched from the killing doll.
    He woke to the plaintive sound of a violin.
    In the moonlight pooling through the room, the black-haired girl he’d rescued from the spider spirit sat on the other bed, legs crossed, his mother’s violin cradled between the curve of her shoulder and neck. The bow’s quicksilver glint matched the one in her eyes, which were no longer green. His heart seized up and he forgot to breathe. He had no weapons. There was nowhere for him to run.
    She carefully set down the violin and bow and caressed the instrument. Her beauty was uncanny. When she looked at Jack again, her gaze was once again absinthe green. “Did I ever thank you for saving me from the ganconer?”
    He set his booted feet on the floor and whispered, “Who are you?”
    “What matters is who you are, Jack.” She drew her fingers through her raven hair, letting it drift across the white skin above her bodice. “One of the last in a line of taltu, shamans and spirit walkers and troublemakers who, according to myth, are descended from the child of a wolf sorcerer and a mortal girl who lost her way in the Hungarian forest. A charming tale, that.”
    She rose and walked to him, clasped his hands, drew him up. His