Briar Queen by Katherine Harbour Page B

seemed to want to get wasted.
    â€œAbsalom,” Phouka warned, “you’re wandering.”
    â€œWhat”—Moth dragged his hands through his hair—“is an aisling ?”
    â€œA human stolen out of time and kept immortal,” Jack said. “The oldest Fatas have that power.” He pulled his coat back on, winced.
    Finn looked at Phouka. “Seth Lot has my sister.”
    â€œYour sister?” Phouka seemed startled. “Your dead sister?”
    â€œShe isn’t dead,” Moth told her. “I spoke to her, often, in Lot’s house. I don’t remember how she came to be there, but she was the only good thing . . . the only good thing . . .”
    â€œSo you haven’t asked us if Seth Lot’s in town.” Absalom sounded as if he was merely talking about an eccentric relative. “He is.”
    Finn gripped the edges of her seat and exchanged a quick look with Jack. He was stone-faced as Phouka rose and said, “I would like to speak to Finn alone, please.”
    Absalom, still holding the wine bottle, sauntered toward the door. “Come along, gentlemen. We shall retire to the salon and smoke cigars and chat about the stock market and, possibly, our mistresses.”
    Jack whispered, “Careful,” to Finn, before following Absalom from the room. Moth drifted after.
    When the door had closed, Phouka settled into the chair opposite Finn and leaned forward. “Let me tell you why what you’re planning is a bad idea . That boy Moth is not only unreliable, he’s unstable. I don’t know who sent him here, but if he was Seth Lot’s, he’s not to be trusted.”
    Finn pulled back her coat sleeve to reveal Lily’s bracelet of silver charms. “Moth had this. It was my sister’s. It even has the octopus charm I broke when I borrowed it.” She hesitated. “My sister’s boyfriend was named Leander Cyrus. I saw him here in Fair Hollow—and Jack recognized him as being one of Seth Lot’s Jacks. All that time he was with my sister, Leander was a Jack.”
    â€œNow I’m very unhappy.”
    Finn continued, “My sister wrote things about a wolf-eyed man in San Francisco.”
    Phouka watched her, the light reflecting uncannily from her eyes. “So. Lot plotted to get your sister, while Reiko plotted to get you. And what a mistake that was. It killed her.”
    â€œIt was an accident,” Finn said quietly.
    â€œFinn. A sacrifice has to mean something to work. Something of value must be offered. Reiko should have sacrificed Jack, whom she loved, not plotted to end you . You never would have brought her Fatas one hundred years.”
    â€œWhy did it work? With her and David Ryder?”
    â€œBecause David Ryder offered himself when he saw things going south. And Reiko may have lunged for him to retrieve her heart, her power, but I believe she genuinely wanted to rescue him.”
    â€œWill you do it when the time comes? Will you offer death a Teind?”
    â€œI will sacrifice something I love if I need to.”
    Finn wondered what she meant. She told Phouka: “The first day I met Jack, I was just a kid, and my mom had died, and I said something wrong to a girl in red—she tried to drown me that day.”
    Sympathy seemed to flicker in Phouka’s alien gaze as she said, “Reiko. You see why, Finn Sullivan, it’s not so good to know us.”
    â€œJack says I need your permission to get my sister out of the Ghost—”
    â€œNot only my permission. Has he told you what the Ghostlands are? A hidden world kept from the eyes of mortals, only seen by those who are blessed, or cursed. The Ghostlands are the Wild West, the realm where our kings and queens battle to learn who’s strongest. It’s where forgotten places and things end up. It’s where Fata changelings are born and human changelings die. It won’t drive you mad, but you’ll never