Love Me, Love Me Not Page 14

  The sound of approaching sirens interrupted us. Someone might have seen us and called the police. We stared at each other for one frozen moment before breaking into a run. On the scale of Staying Unnoticed, getting arrested was pretty high up there, but for some reason we were giggling when we piled into the van. Even Sonnet was grinning, and that was her version of slumber-party-sugar-high-giggle-fit.

  We drove over the grass and came out onto the road a little farther down from the exit.

  Rosalita laughed as the police lights flashed over her face down the street, the car speeding past us. “Well, that was fun.”

  Pierce

  When I heard the screen door open in the middle of the night, I was ready.

  I slipped out my window, landing on the yellowing grass. It was late and there was no reason for Jackson to be going anywhere unless it was covert. Like the place where you’d keep a bunch of cloaks or women who turned into swans, if you happened to be collecting them.

  He’d stolen Nana’s car keys again. I waited until he was out on the road before getting into my own truck to follow. I kept the lights off and drove well back. I wasn’t exactly trained in subterfuge driving. He didn’t head into town but instead went north along the edge of the forest before turning onto a barely there trail. There were tire tracks in the grass. I left the truck just inside the property and followed the rest of the way on foot.

  The trail was about a kilometer long, and the light from the fat moon was the only reason I didn’t lose an eye to any low hanging branches. It was incredibly slow going. Even my phone was chugging along, unable to find a signal. So much for calling in the swan cavalry.

  Nana’s car was parked next to a few others outside of a small house. The footprints in the dewy grass led to a large rough-looking barn. I could see the appeal, though. Everyone would overlook it. It wasn’t rough enough to be condemned and not so interesting as to attract kids bent on exploring. And there was no one around for miles, not even crop fields. There was, however, lots of barbed wire fencing in various stages of rust. And new steel-enforced doors.

  Who needed steel-enforced doors on a barn that looked more in need of a new roof?

  “Gotcha,” I murmured.

  I went around the side, looking for a window, but they were boarded up. There was an old horse stall door but the bottom part was rusted shut. I managed to climb up over it, hoping I wouldn’t land in plain sight. I had no idea what I was walking into. I landed in old hay.

  I crept forward. It looked like no other barn I’d ever seen. There was a long desk with a laptop and medical equipment, and the beeping of machines echoing from behind partition walls. Were they experimenting on Ana’s family?

  It only got worse when I saw the cage.

  The girl was curled up in the back, dirt and salt stains on her cheeks. Her long blond hair was perfectly combed, at odds with the tears in her clothes and the bruises on her arms and throat. She was gagged. Her left eye was bruised and swollen shut. I wasn’t even sure if she could see well enough to recognize me. But I recognized her.

  Mei Lin.

  She shifted, her good eye widening. I lifted my finger to my lips so she wouldn’t give us away. She visibly restrained herself from rattling at the cage. Her fingers dug into her palms until I saw specks of blood. I tore my eyes away, searching for the key to let her out. The lock was new, but simple. It was the kind you could get at the hardware store. I remembered how Ana kept saying the escalating attacks felt desperate, especially the attempted kidnapping at the dance.

  Mei Lin pointed urgently to the desk behind me. I dove for it, rifling through the drawers until I found a key ring that made her jump once, smiling behind her gag. I finally got the lock open and used my pocket knife to slice through the zip ties around her wrists. “We need to get back to my truck,” I said as she stumbled, her legs numb. “Can you run?”

  She yanked the gag off, eyes burning. “I can run.”

  There was whimpering coming from farther inside the barn, behind a partition. How was I supposed to save everyone?

  When I couldn’t even save myself.

  Emergency lights flashed. I must have triggered some kind of silent alarm. I didn’t know how quickly the others would respond. Could I cancel the alarm? There were too many laptops, too many flashing screens.

  Too many tranquilizer darts.

  The first one hit Mei Lin, stopping her from singing them to a stop. The next hit me in the thigh. Jackson lowered the rifle, smiling. “Well, hello, big brother.”

  I was so screwed.

  Ana

  We were well on our way home when a truck drove up so close behind us that the headlights turned the rearview mirror silver.

  Sonnet squinted. “Could you get any closer, you—” The truck swerved out of the lane with a screech of tires. A flash of light imprinted on my eyelids. The truck cut in front of us, blocking both lanes. Sonnet slammed on the brakes and climbed out, an arrow nocked to her bow. I shot behind her as Renards spilled around us.

  Liv was there, of course, with her two brothers and two other girls I didn’t recognize beyond the red-pelt hair. They looked more furious than usual, ear plugs safely in place. Lawson launched himself at me, fist swinging. I blocked with my crossed arms, the hit reverberating up my arms as I kicked him in the knee. “Impulse control!” I barked at him as he crumpled. “Get some.”

  “Is this what you call impulse control?” Liv spat. Jude tossed an arrow on the ground, the tip red with congealed blood and fur. “We found this in a fox.”

  I crouched to retrieve it, keeping a careful eye on him. The shaft of the arrow was wrapped with blond hair but I could tell instantly it didn’t belong to a Vila. “This isn’t one of ours.”

  “Oh right, ’cause there are others who use magic arrows.”

  “That’s not our hair, Liv.”

  “You would say that.”

  “This from the girl wearing a swan feather,” I pointed out. “Who did it come from, Liv? Mei Lin?”

  Sonnet shot her arrow. There was a blind moment of panic when I had no idea where she’d aimed it. It sliced between Liv and Jude, piercing the back tire of the truck. There was a loud violent pop. Sonnet nocked another arrow calmly. “Next one gets me a fox. Where the hell is my cousin? And my mother’s cloak?”

  “Where’s my aunt?” Jude retorted quietly.

  “We don’t have her,” Sonnet replied, just as quietly.

  “Who else would shoot foxes and leave them out in front of our house?”

  “The same people who would kidnap my cousin, since you insist it wasn’t you.”

  “You kidnapped me,” Liv pointed out.

  “For like ten minutes,” Sonnet shot back. “Boo hoo.”

  “Enough talking,” one of the other girls said. “Break her face.”

  Rosalita was standing in the doorway of the van, but she hadn’t actually gotten out yet. When they ran at us, she sang a song so loud and sharp that the wind tore a branch from a tree and tossed it into the truck’s windshield. Glass shattered, scattering across the road like ice. The Renards covered their heads, ducking low. Sonnet added her own song, one to stop the shards from reaching us. They hovered just out of reach then dropped with the tinny clash of wind chimes.

  The wind twisted and howled, slapping at red hair and white pointed teeth. Liv was the first to push against it, eyes tearing bloodshot as debris whipped into her face. It didn’t stop her from punching me, and I wasn’t able to deflect this time. She was faster than her little brother. I staggered back a step but managed to stay upright. My teeth had cut through the flesh inside my cheek and I spat out blood. “Can we try not to be idiots for one damn second?” I ground out.

  “You Vila started this.”

  “Then we’ll finish it,” Sonnet promised.

  “Oh my God, I’m living my freaking essay,” I said, disgusted.

  This was how people died. This was how the poisoned plant of a feud was fed. You hit me, I hit you. It was tempt
ing, easy. A plague on both your houses. “Liv, you have to listen to me. This isn’t just Vila and Renards anymore. Something else is going on.”

  “You’re scapegoating now?” She sneered. The white swan feather in her hair glowed in the headlights. “At least have the guts to own it.”

  “They’re using us. All of us.”

  “Why?”

  “If someone would help me for one goddamn minute, I might know the answer to that! But we’re as bad as our parents. Do you even know why we’re constantly fighting?”

  “Because I don’t like you.”

  “I meant our families, asshat.”

  “Because you killed one of ours.”

  “Who? What was her name? His name?”

  She hesitated, stumped.

  “Exactly,” I continued. “No one remembers.”

  “I remember my aunt.”

  I marched back to the van and pointed inside. “See any Renards tied up in there? See your aunt?”

  She lifted her chin. “No.”

  “Then wake up. Before it’s too late.” Why would no one listen to me? “Ms. Pritchard was the one who sent those guys to attack me.” Probably. Well, she was involved anyway. Close enough.

  “What?” Liv paused. “Our history teacher?”

  “Yes, and she made it look like it was the Renards.”

  “Why would she do that?”

  “You tell me.”

  “How should I know?” Her lips lifted off her teeth.

  “Let’s go,” Lawson said, glaring at me like I was personally responsible for every Vila crime. “She’s a coward. They all are.”

  I desperately, desperately wanted to spin-kick him in the spleen.

  Or let Sonnet poke him with an arrow. “Don’t bother,” I said to her. “He’s just a kid.”

  He went so red I thought the blood vessels in his cheeks would pop. I felt a tiny bit of smug satisfaction. I wasn’t proud of it, but there it was.

  Because that was the seductive thing about feuds. Everything was always someone else’s fault.

  But then Soliloquy went missing.

  Chapter Eleven

  Ana

  Pierce wasn’t answering his phone.

  Fear nibbled at me when he didn’t show up at the pond or at school. I hovered around his locker until a teacher threatened me with detention if I didn’t get to class. I cornered Eric by the washrooms. “Have you seen Pierce?”

  “Not since last night. Both he and Jackson were gone when I got up this morning.”

  I tried not to let him see the alarm his words caused me. I felt cold and hot at the same time. Pierce had said he was going to follow Jackson. What had gone wrong?

  I took off without saying anything else when I saw Liv stop at her locker. I practically tackled her, forcing her into a nearby empty classroom. “We need to talk.” She shook me off, scowling. “Have you seen Pierce?” I said before we could get into another round of Your Family Sucks.

  “Maybe he’s avoiding you.” She smirked.

  “Maybe he’s missing.”

  “What?” She paused, narrowing her eyes at me. “My family didn’t take him.”

  “Are you sure about that?”

  “We don’t bother with humans. Anyway, what if your family is behind it?”

  “They’re not.”

  “Are you sure about that?”

  “We don’t have time for this. Can you track him or not?”

  She stared at me for a long moment before finally nodding once. “I can try.”

  I made a gesture of impatience.

  “Not with you here. As if I’d show Renard magic to a Vila.”

  “Oh my God, like I give a crap about that right now. Use your pendulum or your nose or whatever. Find Pierce.” I stormed out into the hall where I paced and tried not to grind my teeth into stumps.

  It was when I thought I would lose him, that something might happen to him—that’s when I knew. That’s when my whole body knew.

  Liv came to the doorway, pale and wide-eyed. “I can’t find him,” she whispered. “Not a trace of him anywhere. And Renards can find anyone.”

  Pain bristled along my spine exactly like feathers poking out of my skin.

  The more I thought about Pierce, the more my spine felt like it was made of cracked glass.

  I took off without a word. I couldn’t let Liv see me like this. She might figure out what was happening, she might tell her family. I looked over my shoulder, terrified I was growing wings in the school hallway. My shirt was damp with sweat all along my vertebrae, but there was nothing else. I ducked into the girls’ washroom and splashed cold water on my face and on the back of my neck. It helped a little.

  I didn’t go back to class; instead I snuck into the family van to wait for my ride home. I was burning up, feverish and weak but electrified at the same time. There was pressure under my shoulder blades, as if they were lifting off my skeleton.

  I lay on the backseat and pretended that everything wasn’t falling apart, pretended I could still breathe. Growing wings could wait. Pierce and Mei Lin and the others couldn’t. And with Pierce gone, I was the only one who really believed this wasn’t just a Vila-Renard fight. I had to keep it together.

  Pierce is okay, I chanted to myself. He was clever. He’d find a way out. Or I’d find a way in. Either way, he was okay. He had to be okay.

  I must have fallen asleep because suddenly half a dozen cousins were peering down at me. “You skipped?” one of them asked in disgust. “If you’re skipping class now, I’m definitely skipping tomorrow.”

  I sat up gingerly. I felt a little light-headed but otherwise normal. My spine didn’t feel like it was wrapped in barbed wire. I’d over-reacted. Well, about the wings maybe. I was still full-on freaking out that Pierce was missing.

  When we got back to Cygnet House, everyone was preparing for the full moon dancing in just a few hours. No one wanted to run out of magic, not now. With my short hair, I’d have to dance twice as hard. I didn’t want to be a scabbard without a sword, as Aunt Aisha always put it.

  Morag was already soaring above us. Aunt Felicity was wearing seven crocheted shawls and drinking tea from a vase for some inexplicable reason. Agrippina stood in the garden, staring hard at the sky. It was her first full moon without her cloak.

  I felt funny again, but not nearly as bad as I had earlier at school. I just felt prickly, like I was full of thorns. Impatiently, I looked outside again but the moon hadn’t risen yet. The sooner I could hoard more magic, the sooner I could go back to hunting for Pierce and the others. I was climbing out of my skin by the time the moon rose in a pale purple sky. I ran out with my blue cloak. It felt different, lighter. More like wings.

  No, I couldn’t think like that. Dance. Find Pierce. Find my family.

  Cousins streamed through the garden, out toward the hills. I made it as far as the back field before stumbling. Pain shot up my back and exploded out of the top of my head.

  Transforming into a swan wasn’t supposed to hurt this much. It was something out of a fairy tale—shouldn’t it be pretty? I abruptly remembered my fairy tales and wondered if I would even survive this.

  Especially since I no longer had any feathers to complete the ritual.

  This wasn’t supposed to be happening.

  Not now and not like this.

  The moon was so bright it cast shadows all around us. Dancing was training, just as much as learning to block a hit and shoot an arrow. I dragged myself up the hill, refusing to acknowledge the pulses of fire under my skin. If they knew I was growing wings, there’d be ceremonies, a cloak to sew, panic that I had no feathers, too much time spent not searching for Pierce.

  As it was, we were spending too much time not dancing.

  My cousins were clustered together, whispering nervously. “What’s the problem?” I asked, teeth chattering even though I was pretty sure I radiated heat like summer asphalt. “Let’s go already.”

  “We can’t,” Rosalita said quiet
ly. She held up the bottle of the Renard blood we smeared on our foreheads to keep us hidden.

  It was empty.

  We stared at each other, blond hair and white dresses gleaming in the moonlight.

  Agrippina staggered between the trees from the direction of the house. “The shields are down! Run!”

  Too late.

  The foxes had arrived.

  And they weren’t alone.

  Everything happened at once.

  The Renards streamed out of the forest, trailing red hair or red tails. Knives flashed. Orange light flickered wildly from the bottom of the hill. I smelled smoke. Cygnet House was burning. We were exposed, surrounded. Was my dad okay?

  The sky filled with white shadows and the sinister hiss of swans. Enormous wings beat a war drum, and beaks broke through skin, leaving jagged gashes and blood. The Renards fought back with daggers and snarling foxes racing low through the grass.

  Aunt Aisha abandoned her swan shape even though it made her vulnerable. Her black eyes gleamed, and her brown skin was dotted with tiny down feathers like snow. She was beautiful and fierce and at least two of the Renards paused, distracted by the naked warrior woman staring them down. Aisha was a force of nature, even for us.

  When she began to sing, the air changed. The grass went flat around her. There was blood and feathers under her feet. I managed to deflect a tranquilizer dart with a song that was more shouted than sung. The wind sent it into the bushes. My eyes stung, prickling with debris and dust. My spine felt like it was re-forming again, pulling my shoulder blades like they were clay to be molded. I fought the swan as desperately as I was fighting everything else. The little cousins were crouched together, Morag circling over them with a bloody beak. The adults were fighting each other, mostly ignoring them. It all felt wrong.

  And Renards didn’t use tranquilizer guns. They used their teeth.

  But the people at the dance used those darts. I dropped lower in the tall grass, searching through the thistles for the direction they were being fired from. There was only the silhouette of black trees and the hungry orange light too busy with its own appetite to help me.