NICO, who had slept all day and seemed barely awake, met them at seven o'clock and drove them to The Beautiful House.
"This is where she lives?" Nico peered doubtfully at the hotel shrouded in Spanish moss and dying light. "The loa queen?"
"I want you two to wait here," Z.J. told them as they entered the lobby. He'd timed it right--the sun was just beginning to set. He was a knot of nerves and tension, felt like a razor blade.
When Bruce walked into the lobby, Nico whispered loudly, "He looks just like a human."
"I beg your pardon?" Bruce narrowed his eyes. He spoke to Z.J. "Did you bring a civilian into this?"
Z.J. gestured to Nico and Phoebe. "One of your outcasts has gone after her."
"Phoebe Marrs." Bruce bowed to her and she took a step back. "Clementine welcomes you." He turned to Z.J. "What 'outcast?'"
"Minotaur," was all Z.J. said, and Bruce looked as if he'd just said 'The Devil.' Z.J. continued, "I want to speak to Clementine alone."
Bruce led him to the private courtyard, where Clementine stood, elegant in a black evening gown. Her feet were bare. Z.J. didn't wait for her to speak as her silver gaze fell upon him. He said, "Why didn't you tell me you made Phoebe's brother into a Jack?"
She sat on a low wall, hunched forward. "He was dying."
"How?"
"He was using heroine. When he was seventeen, he overdosed. I could not let him go."
The Black Scissors had once told Z.J. the Fatas were not immortal as much as eternal. Immortal meant even though one's body remained young, the mind changed, became weary. The world transformed a person, a soul. Being eternal meant existing always, unchanged, remaining the same, like an insect in amber. Eternally youthful. No senility. No life lessons learned. Wisdom, perhaps, but only the kind that came with age.
Clementine looked like an eighteen-year-old girl. She pretended to think like one. As many years as passed in the world, she would never grow or change. Z.J. said, teeth gritted, "So you yanked out his insides and filled him with magic."
Clementine tilted her head. "No. That is the Dark Court's way. My magic flourished within him. I gave him my heart."
"So he's not human anymore." Z.J. watched her. Her face remained expressionless. He told her, wanting her to feel his dread and knowing she wouldn't: "A minotaur is following Phoebe."
A scream tore through the night. Clementine, rising, whispered furiously, "And you brought her here?"
Z.J. was already racing toward the lobby.
He burst through the doors and found Nico sprawled on the floor and the elderly desk clerk hurrying toward him.
"Nico--"
"I'm good." Nico shakily pointed to the open doors. "He dragged Phoebe out."
"The minotaur--"
"Not the minotaur. Some guy."
"What did he look like?" Clementine glided into the lobby Nico stared at her as if she were the second coming. Then he said, "Dark hair. Very white. Dressed like The Crow."
"Theo," Clementine said with a grim look. "Phoebe's brother."
***
Clementine wouldn't go with Z.J., but she gave him a tiny glass ball filled with emerald light and told him it would lead him to Theo if Theo was nearby.
When Nico volunteered to come with him, Z.J. told him to stay put. Phoebe had carried the mistletoe weapon. All that Z.J. had now were the misericorde, an amulet, and several small daggers.
Clementine walked Z.J. to the gate in front of the hotel. "If the minotaur is seeking them..."
"What kills a minotaur?" He turned to Clementine, who looked like just a girl in an elegant gown after a party.
Softly, she said, "You lost someone to one of us."
"Are you going to answer my question? If the minotaur is stalking Phoebe and it finds them--"
"I cannot tell you how to kill one of my kind. Your Black Scissors doesn't know?"
He turned his back on her and, holding the ball up in one hand, headed in the direction in which it seemed to glow the strongest.
After a while, the ball lit up like a tiny sun as he rounded a corner and found himself in front of a warehouse splashed with gorgeous graffiti. The last time he'd entered a place like this, he'd also been alone, clueless, without any weapons, without any guidance.
He felt something in his pocket and frowned. He reached in and pulled out a spool of red fishing line, stared at it. He began to suspect something and it made him stronger. He stepped into the darkness.
The glass ball lit his way as he moved down a corridor of corrugate steel--someone had built a maze. Above were pipes and shattered light fixtures. Things echoed; metal groaning; scrabbling sounds.
A voice.
Z.J. dulled the sphere's light by wrapping it in a piece of fabric torn from his T-shirt. Then he unwound the fishing line and hooked one end to the handle on the door. He prowled toward the voice. He turned a bend in the makeshift corridor and winced when he saw a huge, horned head spray-painted black on the wall.
The next voice sounded like a girl yelling. Z.J. ran toward it.
A sleek shadow swung down from above and kicked him in the chest. Z.J. went down, scrabbling for the glass ball.
A black-nailed hand snatched it up and raised it to the face of a boy his age, his hair a tangle, black triangles painted beneath his eyes. He was all in dark leather.
Z.J. slid warily back.The boy cocked his head. "Who are you?"
"I'm Z.J., Theo. Where's your sister?"
***
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