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THE FIRST TIME: Do any other three words, when strung together, carry such enormous weight? If faced with those three words, most anyone will know immediately what they mean. “First time for what?” is rarely uttered in response. People anticipate their first time with eagerness, delight, nervousness, unease, and sometimes all of the above. And everyone remembers their first time, often looking back on it with a host of similar emotions.
In I Never, Janey is talking to her boyfriend, Luke, about the looming event. She says to him, “I want you to be my first. I trust you, and I want to remember for the rest of my life that my first time was with you . . . I don’t know when I’ll be ready, and I hope you’ll wait.”
If only we all had the kind of open, honest, safe relationship found in romance novels. It’s hard to look someone in the eye and say exactly what we’re feeling. Sometimes it can be easier to get naked than to get honest.
But we should strive for open and honest communication. We ought to be able to say what we want and need. And more important, what we don’t want. As Janey’s mom cautions, “Sex brings an unexpected set of complications and risks to your life.” She’s right. Sex can make us feel exposed and vulnerable. But it can also make us feel powerful and exhilarated. Sex, when it’s on your terms and the lines of communication are open, is awesome.
I’ve heard it said that sex is like pizza: even when it’s bad, it’s good. But I think sex is like pizza in another, much more important way. If you’re going to share a pizza with someone, you’d ask them what they want: Cheeseless? Meat-lover’s? Deep dish? When you’re eating the pizza, you might ask whether the other person is enjoying it. And when you’re finishing up that pizza, it’s respectful to check in to see if your partner in pizza eating has had enough. Shouldn’t it be the same with sex?
I wrote I Never because I wanted to tell the story of an ideal first time. I wrote it because I want readers to know what a respectful, healthy sexual relationship can look like. Everyone deserves to feel valued and adored. To know about taking charge of your body and your sexuality. It’s not always going to be perfect. Particularly the first time. But it will be yours––make it what you want it to be.
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Thrillers are the best at providing twisty endings you never saw coming...so it makes sense that YOU OWE ME A MURDER would start thrilling readers with a cover switcheroo! That’s right, this YA perfect for fans of GENUINE FRAUD and ONE OF US IS LYING has a new cover.
And here’s a plot twist: in addition to sharing the cover below, we’re sharing an excerpt, too.
***
ONE
AUGUST 15
16 DAYS REMAINING
I plotted murder in the Vancouver airport while waiting at gate D78 for my flight to London.
Based on the expressions of the people around me, I wasn’t the only one thinking of how to do someone in. Our flight was delayed and everyone was irritated and restless. The couple at the end of the row were fighting about which one of them had forgotten to lock the bedroom window before they left. Then there were at least a half-dozen people wanting to take out the toddler wearing the SpongeBob T-shirt, who vacillated between shrieking at a decibel normally used to torture dogs and running around slamming into everyone with his grimy hands.
The old guy across from me snarled, baring his yellowed teeth, every time the kid whirled in his direction. You’d think that would freak the toddler out, but it didn’t seem to make any impact. Maybe the little boy got his ability to ignore unpleasant things from his mom. She stared down at an issue of People magazine, her lips moving as she read, completely ignoring the fact that people in the gate area wanted to club her kid with their roller bags. The only way you knew it was her child was that when he would slam into her, she’d hold out a limp plastic baggie filled with rainbow-colored gummy worms and then drop one into his clutching hand. She was like an apathetic mama bird.
I tilted my head to the side to crack the tension in my neck. I wished I could block things out that well. Instead I found myself continually looking over at Connor. My back teeth clenched, tight enough to crack. Miriam was perched on his lap. I told myself to stop staring, but my attention kept being pulled back. He slid his hand under her shirt and rubbed her back in tight circles. I knew that move. He’d done that to me.
Before he’d dumped me.
Miriam ruffled his hair. He couldn’t stand it when I’d done that. He’d push my hand away or duck out of my reach. Connor had gone deaf after a bout of chicken pox as a kid and had cochlear implants so he could hear. He wore his hair a bit shaggy because he didn’t like to draw attention to the proces- sor behind his ears. I’d found it fascinating. Not just because it’s a pretty cool piece of tech, but also because I wanted to know how he felt going from a silent world to being able to hear. But he didn’t like to talk about it, or for me to touch his hair.
Apparently, he didn’t have the same hang-up with Miriam. I reminded myself that I didn’t care. Connor meant nothing to me now. I swallowed hard.
Toddler SpongeBob slammed into me. His sticky fingers, streaked red and blue from the candy, clutched my jeans. He stared up at me with his watery eyes and then, without look- ing away, slowly lowered his drooling, slobbery mouth to my knee and bit me.
“Hey!” I shoved him hard without thinking. He teetered for a moment and then fell onto his giant padded diaper butt, letting out a cry. I glanced around guiltily, shame landing on my chest with a thud. His mother didn’t even look over. The old man gave me a thumbs-up gesture. Great — that’s me, Kim, the kind of person who beats up preschoolers when she’s not stalking her ex-boyfriend. I crouched down to help the kid up, but he pushed me away and returned to running wildly up and down the aisle.
I peered down at my phone, wishing I could call my best friend, Emily. She always knew how to cheer me up. She was spending the entire summer working at a camp on the far side of Vancouver Island. She didn’t have any cell service or WiFi, so there was going to be no quick “everything will be fine” text or call. Granted, if I’d been able to reach her earlier in the sum- mer, I might not even have been in this situation at all. Com- municating old school — by letters — might be vintage and nostalgic, but it does you no good when you have an emotional disaster that needs immediate BFF interaction.
We’d been friends since elementary school and this was the longest I’d ever gone without talking to her. So far, my summer was proof positive that I shouldn’t be allowed to handle things on my own. I fished the last card she’d sent me out of my bag. Inside she’d scribbled, “I know you can do this! Your trip’s going to be amazing!!” Emily never met an exclamation point that she didn’t like. Despite the positive punctuation, I was pretty sure she was wrong on both counts. I felt far from capable, and although the flight hadn’t even left, I already hated everything about this trip.
I took a deep breath, counting in for three and then letting it whoosh out. I can do this. I wasn’t going to let Emily and my parents down.
A few rows over, Miriam laughed, tossing her head back as if Connor had just told the best joke of all time. She playfully punched him in the chest with her tiny little hand. Everything about her was miniaturized. She told everyone she was five feet tall, but she was four eleven at best. She looked ridiculous when she stood next to Connor. He could have put her into his backpack and carried her around like a Chihuahua.
I had to admit Miriam was pretty, other than being freakishly petite. She had long dark hair that could have starred in a shampoo commercial. Her only flaw was that she wore too much eyeliner. She was addicted to the cat’s-eye look, accentuating the slant of her eyes. She had a flair for drama; she always made huge gestures, sweeping her arms around, flicking her hair over a shoulder, or talking loudly as if she was constantly trying to make sure everyone could hear her. She was in the theater crowd, so maybe she couldn’t help herself.
I never would have guessed Connor would date someone like her: showy. I thought he’d enjoyed that we didn’t always have to be talking, but if we did, it was about important stuff: Philosophy. Science. Politics. We met once at the coffee shop in the morning before work and split up the Globe and Mail, silently passing the newspaper sections back and forth. He was the only other person I knew besides me who liked to read an actual paper. I’d caught our reflection in the window and thought we looked like adults. Like people who lived in New York or Toronto, with important jobs, a fancy high-rise apart- ment with lots of glass and chrome, and a membership to the local art museum.
Miriam had no volume control, but she wasn’t stupid. I didn’t know her well — she hung with the drama crowd — but I wouldn’t have thought Connor was her type. I would have seen her liking a guy with an earring and some kind of social justice agenda. She wasn’t in the hard sciences but still took a bunch of AP courses. She’d written some paper on Shakespeare that won a national award for English geeks. No wonder I wanted to kill her.
I sighed. I didn’t want to kill her, I wanted to be her. Miriam hadn’t stolen Connor. Someone can’t steal what you don’t have. He didn’t dump me because he’d fallen for her. What had happened between us was complicated. More complicated than I even wanted to admit. He had his own reasons for stomping on my heart. If I was going to take anyone out, it should be him. But no matter whom I blamed, it didn’t change the fact that I wasn’t looking forward to spending the next few weeks watching the two of them make out in front of me. I shook my head to clear it. As everyone kept reminding me, it would be for only sixteen days.
I closed my eyes so I didn’t have to see them, but I could still hear Miriam. Her drama teacher should be proud of how well Miriam’s voice carried. She was four feet eleven of all lungs. Her voice filled the entire gate area and spread down the hall like toxic lava. I could tell already that the sound would be like fingernails on a chalkboard by the end of the trip.
The worst part was that I’d pleaded to go. I told my parents if they let me attend, they’d never have to get me another gift. Once Connor had announced he was going — before we’d broken up — I’d been instantly consumed with images of the two of us walking hand in hand through narrow cobblestone streets. The program was advertised as if it were a great edu- cational opportunity, but the truth was, there weren’t any real demands. We’d be “exposed” to culture, as though it were a cold we could catch. I didn’t really care about the chance to travel, or what I might learn from the sights of London; what mattered was going with him. I didn’t want him to be away for almost three weeks, doing all these things without me. I loved the idea of starting school in September with the two of us chatting constantly about “remember the time we were in London?” until everyone around us was annoyed.
In retrospect, I know he wanted to come because he didn’t think I was going. He signed up without talking it over, telling me only after it was a done deal. I pleaded with my parents for days, never admitting that I wanted to go because of Connor and instead laying it on thick how it was a great way to expand my horizons, how amazing it would look on my university apps, and how I’d suddenly developed a fascination with British history, until they gave in.
Then, after things with Connor blew up in my face, I’d begged my parents to let me bail, but they wouldn’t budge. They insisted it wasn’t the deposit, it was the point. My dad called it a chance for me to “build character.” As far as he was concerned, Connor had never been worth my time. He made a snide comment about Connor’s overbite, which, coming from a dentist, was some serious trash talk.
My mom had made a dismissive sniff and told me “he’s not worth bothering over.” She acted as though she didn’t like him, but when I’d first told her about Connor, she’d been as excited as me. He was exactly the kind of boy she would have liked at my age, and the exact kind of boy she assumed would never know her awkward daughter even existed. She looked at me differently, as if her ugly duckling had finally hit possible swan status. We went shopping together and got matching hot pink mani-pedis. We’d never gotten along as well as we had for those few weeks.
Then when things went bad with him, my mom acted as if she were the one who’d been humiliated. She might have said she wanted me to go on the trip because it was a chance to travel, but she also wanted me to be the kind of person who held her head high to handle the situation the way she would have done. And I wanted to be that person too — the kind who would have a fantastic time regardless of a breakup and, by the end of the trip, see Connor desperately sorry he’d broken up with me. All while making a pack of new friends.
However, if I was going to go full fantasy, I might as well add in that the queen would invite me to the palace, and Will and Kate would ask me to baby-sit, and Harry and Meghan would offer to hook me up with some minor count or a duke. The truth was, the next few weeks were going to suck.
And I was going to be stuck strapped in directly behind the lovebirds for the entire flight, watching them crawl all over each other in the tiny coach seats. I squeezed my eyes shut as if I could block out the mental image playing on the big screen of my mind. I’d told myself a thousand times since we’d all checked in and I’d heard our seating assignments that I could handle this, but with every second that went by, it was becoming increasingly clear to me that I wouldn’t make it. I’d snap somewhere thirty-three thousand feet up and beat the two of them over the head with the in-flight magazine.
Or start crying again. I wasn’t sure which would be worse. You would think there was only so much crying a person could do before she got completely dehydrated. I’d told myself I couldn’t stand him anymore, so why did my heart still seize and my throat grow tight every time he was around?
I stood up so suddenly that my bag fell to the floor. I snatched it up and strode over to the airline counter. The gate agent didn’t look up. She was too preoccupied typing into her computer. Her fingernails, which had a thick layer of bright red gel polish, made a strange clacking sound on the keys. I cleared my throat, but she still didn’t stop.
“Excuse me,” I managed to get out before she held up a fin- ger to silence me.
She finally finished whatever she was doing and glanced up. “If you’re asking about the delay, I don’t have any more information. As soon as we get clearance, we’ll start boarding.” There was makeup creased on her forehead and I suspected she was on her last nerve. She was a walking reminder to never go into a customer service occupation.
I leaned forward even though logically I knew Connor couldn’t hear me from where he was sitting. “I wondered if I could change my seat?”
She scrunched up her face. “I don’t think —”
“See the guy back there?” I yanked my head in Connor’s direction. “That’s my ex-boyfriend. We’re going to England on a travel program. I’m supposed to sit right behind him.” I paused. “For nine hours.”
Her perfectly arched eyebrows shot up to her hairline and she looked over my shoulder.
I sensed I was getting somewhere. “He was my first boyfriend.” My voice cracked and I had to swallow over and over to keep control. “He dumped me just a couple weeks ago.”
Her eyes softened, but she shook her head. “I’m sorry, but
I can’t —”
“That’s his new girlfriend. She used to be my best friend.” The gate agent sucked in a breath and looked over at Connor as though he were something she’d scraped off her shoe.
I felt bad as soon as the words were out of my mouth. Mir- iam and I had never even hung out before this trip, let alone been friends, but I needed the agent to help me. Desperate times called for desperate measures.
I don’t lie to hurt people, or to pull something over on them, but I guess sometimes I . . . make up stories to make myself more interesting. As long as I can remember, I’ve done it. On the playground in elementary school, I told the other kids that fairies lived in my backyard. In junior high I let everyone think I’d been adopted. I didn’t want to lie. I wanted to be normal and interesting, but I wasn’t.
I hadn’t lied with Connor. With him I’d been one hun- dred percent honest about my feelings, and look how that had turned out.
The agent clacked away on the computer. “Your name?”
“Kim, Kim Maher.” I spelled my last name.
“I need your old boarding pass.” I slid the limp piece of paper across the counter. She tore it in half as the machine spat out a new one. She passed it over to me with a wink. “He doesn’t deserve you. Have a good trip.”
The tight band around my chest loosened. “Thanks.”
I wove through the crowd clustered around the gate and plopped back down in my seat. I pushed the New York Times I’d already read out of the way and pulled out the magazine I’d brought. I hid between the pages, blinking back tears. The gate agent was right. Connor didn’t deserve me. It was the same thing Emily told me. But even if I knew it was true, it didn’t hurt any less. All I had to do was figure out how to get my heart to catch up to the fact that my head didn’t like him anymore.
A girl slid a few seats over to be next to me. “Did she say anything about the delay?” Her English accent made me feel as if I’d dropped onto the set of a BBC historical drama.
I shook my head and quickly wiped my eyes so she wouldn’t notice the tears. “No news.”
The girl sighed. She pulled her legs up and wrapped her arms around her knees. She tugged the thin cream cashmere sweater sleeves over her hands. She glanced down at the stack of paper on the chair next to me. “Your Times?”
I nodded.
“Did you read the article about the changes to the space program? I saw it earlier this morning.”
I jumped slightly in surprise. She seemed like someone who would spot a copy of InStyle at a hundred meters but wouldn’t know a shuttle from a rocket if she were whacked across the face with one of them. “Uh-huh.” I picked up the paper, look- ing for the Science section.
“I think that’s what I like about a real paper,” she said. “It’s like a knowledge Easter egg hunt. You never know what you’re going to find.”
I nodded like a bobble-head doll. That was exactly why I
loved reading a paper too. “Yeah. Are you into space stuff?” She shrugged. “Just find it interesting.”
I held out my hand. “I’m Kim.”
“Nicki.” She smiled as we shook. “How come you aren’t hanging with the rest of your group?” She motioned to a cou- ple rows over. There were eight of us on the trip and we were all on this flight. A few had busted out cards to play a game on the blue carpeted floor, and the others were clustered around Jamal’s laptop checking out his music.
“How did you know —” I got out before she flicked the blue
and white student scholars for change tag attached to carryon. I’d forgotten I was branded. “Ah. I’m not really friends with any of them. There are just three of us from my high school. It’s complicated,” I said.
Nicki nodded. “Story of my life. I was here visiting my dad, and the reason he lives here, instead of in London with me and my mum, is all sorts of complicated too.”
Nicki tucked her hair behind her ears. Her bob wasn’t quite long enough, so as soon as she did, the hair fell free and swung forward again. “Sorry, that came out a bit pissy. I just find other people . . . ugh. I don’t know. Disappointing.” She shoved her hair back again.
“Story of my life,” I said, echoing her words. She laughed and it reminded me of scales on a piano.
Nicki tapped the robotics magazine on my lap. “You plan on going into robotics at uni?”
I shook my head. “Not sure. I’m leaning toward engineer- ing, maybe computers.”
She waited until an announcement about a flight to Phoe- nix stopped blaring on the PA. “I’m thinking psychology. I’m interested in research. This is my gap year.” She watched the unsupervised toddler fish a booger out of his nose and rub it into his hair.
“What kind of research?”
“Human behavior. I don’t have any interest in being a coun- selor. People blathering about their problems all day would drive me barmy. But I’m intrigued with why people do what they do, why they don’t do some things, what they could accomplish, that kind of thing.”
I traced the pattern in the carpet with my shoe. Under- standing other people was one of the great mysteries in my life. “If you ever figure people out, you’ll have to let me know what you discover. Math I can make sense of, but people are more confusing than quantum physics. Give me a robot any day.”
She laughed. “Don’t give up on humanity just yet. Maybe
you haven’t met anyone worth figuring out.”
The overhead speaker chirped to life. “Attention: Passen- gers on Air Canada flight 854 to London. Due to aircraft main- tenance issues, this flight will be further delayed. We apologize for the inconvenience.” The crowd groaned. The screen over our gate flickered and a new departure time, three hours from now, blinked on.
Connor stood and stretched. “Who wants to find a place to
watch the Whitecaps game?”
Our group began to gather up their stuff. He was like the pied piper of nerdy people. Everyone was willing to follow him. Miriam walked over toward me.
“Do you want to come?” she offered. Her legs were so small that her size extra small leggings were baggy around her thighs. She must buy her clothing in a kids’ department.
“No thanks,” I managed to say, willing her to walk away. Or
she could disappear completely — I was open to that, too.
“You can’t want to just hang around here for the next three hours.” Miriam nudged my tote with her foot. “C’mon, we’ll all get some fries or something. It’ll be fun.”
Fun wasn’t even in the top ten words that I would think of to describe the situation. “I’m fine,” I insisted. It was bad enough that Connor wanted nothing to do with me. It was worse that he started dating someone else right away. It was a nightmare that I was stuck on this trip with them. But her being nice to me was a layer of shit icing on this crap cupcake. I didn’t even know how much Connor had told her about what had happened between the two of us. I wasn’t sure what I preferred: that she knew and felt pity for me, or that he hadn’t told her anything because he didn’t think I was worth mentioning. I slouched lower in the seat.
“Leave it — she doesn’t want to come. Trust me, no one will miss her with that attitude.” Connor strode over and took Mir- iam’s hand without even glancing at me.
I flushed. He was right. I was a walking black cloud of doom. I hadn’t bothered to get to know anyone else coming on the trip and now I was going to be miserable and alone.
“Gawd, he’s a tosser,” Nicki said, loud enough to carry.
I wasn’t entirely certain what it meant, but it sounded both hysterical and insulting. I burst out laughing.
Connor and Miriam walked off down the hall, the rest of the group following behind them. He glanced over his shoulder at us, and when he saw we were still staring, he whirled back around.
My chest filled with air. I felt like one of those large balloons at a parade — ready to float away. “I don’t know what you said, but you’re my new favorite person on this planet,” I said. I meant it, too. My BFF couldn’t be reached except by letter. Emily might as well have been in space for all the help she could give me.
“That guy is a loser.” Nicki pulled me from my seat. “I can tell, because as we’ve already established, I study people. You can pay me back for correctly identifying him as a wanker by keeping me entertained for the next few hours.”
“How would you like me to do that?”
Nicki’s smile spread across her face. “We’re smart women, we’ll think of something.”
TWO
AUGUST 15
Nicki stopped short outside the duty-free store, causing me to nearly slam into her back. She seemed entranced by the bright lights bouncing off a display of jewel-colored perfume bottles.
“Let’s go in here,” she said.
“They won’t have gum,” I noted. “There’s another store down just a bit further.” I pointed, but she’d already started to weave her way through the aisles. She randomly picked up items: a stuffed bear holding a satin heart, a giant Toblerone bar, and a box of washed-out pastel-colored saltwater taffy. She inspected each one as if she worked for quality control and then put each back down. I trailed after her.
My mouth still burned from the jalapeños I’d had at lunch. Nicki claimed the best thing to eat before a big flight was huevos rancheros. She insisted the combination of protein from the eggs and cheese, along with the spice from the salsa, would ensure a good sleep on the plane. When I pointed out the entrée wasn’t on the menu, she’d raised one perfectly tweezed eyebrow. “Ordering off the menu is for the common person,” she’d declared. When the waiter came over, she turned on the charm, and before I’d known what was happening, he dropped off two custom plates just for us. And she was right — the huge meal made me want a nap.
Nicki grabbed a stuffed zebra and gave it a squeeze. “Things like this make me wish I had a kid brother or sister. Let me guess, you’re an only child too.”
My mouth fell open. “How did you —”
“Only children are different. They have to amuse them- selves growing up. They’re independent, better problem solvers. There’s tons of research on it. I could tell by the way you’ve been talking. You’re just like me.”
Technically, I wasn’t just like her. I never knew what to say when people asked if I had any siblings. “About a half-dozen fully frozen” seemed too flip and required an explanation. Saying I was an only child felt like lying about the existence of my parents’ cryogenically suspended embryos. They were my brothers and sisters, just in cold storage in a medical lab.
My parents hadn’t had an easy time getting pregnant. Thanks to the fact that my mom was an early blogger, the whole world knew about their struggles. Then after three rounds of IVF, I took. My mom called me MBK on her blog — Miracle Baby Kim. She said she used the initials to protect my privacy, but how private could my life be when she plastered every one of my development milestones in cyberspace for the whole world to see?
Somewhere on the Internet there’s a picture of me as a three-year-old, wearing a tiara and giant pink fuzzy slippers, sitting on the toilet with the caption “MBK Finally Masters Potty Training!” The “finally” is a nice touch; nothing I like bet- ter than people thinking I was delayed in the hygiene depart- ment. My mom’s name was all over her blog; it didn’t exactly take a Mensa-level IQ to figure out that I was MBK. The truth was, she didn’t care how I felt about the blog. What she cared about were all the people who read it and gave her nonstop “you’re the best mom ever” feedback.
The year I turned ten, my mom wrote a long blog post where she announced to her legions of fans that she and my dad were officially giving up their efforts to have more children. They couldn’t keep up the nonstop cycles of IVF. It seemed Mother Nature didn’t have it in the plans for my mom to be the mother she wanted to be, with a minivan and the ability to construct something out of Legos while simultaneously preparing an organic dinner for her large happy family. And while she wanted to focus on her blessing (Beautiful MBK!), she could still grieve for what could have been and she would always see those frozen embryos as her babies. The Huffington Post picked up that blog post and ran it on their site. It’s one of their most downloaded pieces. They rerun it on Mother’s Day most years.
It was around that time that I started to become aware that I was a disappointment to my mom. When she’d imag- ined having children, none of them were like me. She wanted a daughter who liked to play with dolls and whom she’d punish with a wag of her finger, all while smiling at how adorable it was that I stole her makeup. My desire for tangle-free short hair and passion for books and blanket forts befuddled her. Why didn’t I want to skip rope outside with the other girls? Why didn’t I let her braid my hair into complicated patterns befitting a Disney princess? Why wasn’t I similar to her at all? How could she be a mothering expert when her own kid was so . . . awkward?
My mom was one of the first mommy bloggers. Thousands of people still read her site daily. They comment on her reci- pes (Super YUM Crock-Pot Meals!) and reviews of baby items (Bugaboo Strollers Worth Every Penny!). She’s blogged about how motherhood is hard and disappointing, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t worth it. I can’t be the only one who realizes that she’s trying to talk herself into that fact. I believe that my mom loves me, I just don’t think she likes me. If she’d had more kids, maybe it would have made a difference. I guess neither of us will ever know.
Nicki sniffed a bottle of Burberry Brit perfume and then spritzed a tiny bit on her wrist. She held out her arm for me and I leaned in.
“Nice,” I said, but she’d already moved on to the next display.
She stared up at the tower of Grey Goose vodka. “Want some for the flight?”
I crossed my arms over my chest. “I don’t think even you can talk this place into selling us booze.”
Nicki winked and I noticed she was wearing a hint of a shimmery eye shadow. “Who says they’re going to sell it?”
My heart picked up speed. I glanced over my shoulder to make sure we were alone. “You’re going to steal it?” I asked, lowering my voice. My heart rabbited into overdrive.
“No, we’re going to steal it,” she said, her light brown eyes sparkling. “No one ever suspects the nicely dressed girl with a British accent. They think I’m too posh to sink to thievery.”
A swarm of spastic butterflies tried to take flight inside my lungs. I was pretty sure I didn’t look too posh to be arrested. “I don’t know . . .”
“Up to you.”
The chatter from the two clerks at the front of the store as they debated the merits of Ryan Reynolds seemed unnaturally loud to my ears. I bit the inside of my cheek. “What happens if we get caught?”
Nicki’s lips curled up, Grinch-like. “Bad things. That’s why we’ll do it so we don’t get caught.” Her head tilted slightly toward the bottles of booze. “They haven’t put on the plastic antitheft devices yet, and I don’t see any cameras.”
She was right. Every other bottle in the store had a black plastic disk attached around the neck, but the display of Grey Goose was naked. I could almost hear the angel and devil perched on my shoulders. One advising me to do the right thing and go on to the next store and buy a pack of Trident like a good girl, and the other telling me that it wouldn’t kill me to take a risk now and then. Where had playing it safe gotten me? I wanted to be someone else, anyone else. Maybe if I wanted to change the course of my life I needed to change the things I did. Be someone who did daring things, like Nicki.
“What do we do?” I whispered.
Nicki poked my leather tote bag. “When it’s time, grab the closest bottle and drop it in.”
“How will I know it’s time?”
She tapped me on the nose. “You’ll know because you’re smart.” She turned back to the perfume display and grabbed a small bottle. “I’m going to check the price — my mom loves this stuff.” She’d taken only a few steps when her foot hooked into the handles of a brightly colored canvas bag stamped with a maple leaf and the words canada forever, sitting on the floor among other similar bags.
I opened my mouth to warn her, but she’d already jerked forward with a loud oomph. Her arms flew up as she fell and the bottle of perfume collided with the ground with a brittle smash. A cloud of a citrus and musk scent filled the air. The clerks flew to her side.
I was about to do the same when I realized this was it. My hand jerked out as if it were under the authority of another force and yanked a bottle of vodka off the display, plopping it into my tote. I jammed my elbow over the top of the bag to pinch it shut and hustled to where Nicki was now standing between the two clerks. My heart beat out of control.
“Are you okay?” I asked, surprised that my voice didn’t crack with the electric tension filling every inch of my body, zapping down my nerves, lighting me up from the inside.
“I’m okay. I think.” Nicki looked down at the broken glass on the floor and her eyes widened. “Oh, I’m so sorry.”
“You’ll have to pay for the perfume.” The tall clerk pointed to a you break it, you buy it sign by the entrance.
Nicki drew herself even straighter. “But I wasn’t being careless. I tripped on your bags, which were all over the floor.” The mouth on the tall clerk pressed into a tight line, like a slash across her face. “If you don’t pay for it, we have to call a manager.”
Panic flashed like a bright white light. I had to do something. I kicked the canvas bags now strewn across the floor. “You should call a supervisor. Maybe if you hadn’t been so busy talking, and instead had straightened up this mess, it wouldn’t have happened at all. You know, if she’s hurt, you’re liable. My dad’s a lawyer — he deals with this stuff all the time.” As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I wanted to swallow them back down. I hoped I was right. My dad was a dentist. Any legal knowledge I had was from watching The People’s Court when I stayed home sick from school. What had I done?
Nicki’s lip twitched. “Now that I think about it, my back is quite sore. I hit the floor pretty hard.” She rubbed the base of her spine.
The tall clerk looked ready to clobber Nicki, but the shorter woman with her hair tied up in a mountain of tiny braids put her hand lightly on the arm of the other. “We’re certainly sorry you fell.”
Nicki met her gaze. “And I’m sorry that the bottle broke.” The short clerk smiled, her white teeth as bright as the wall
tiles. “Well then, why don’t we just decide that no harm’s been done?” The tension that had been coiling inside me released.
“Are you sure?” Nicki asked. Her eyes were so wide, she looked like an anime character. When the clerk nodded, Nicki reached for me. “We should get back; our flight will be leaving soon.”
I nodded solemnly as if I were very concerned about time- liness. Every muscle in my body clenched as I walked over the threshold, anticipating a piercing alarm going off, but nothing happened. Nicki gripped my elbow. “Don’t look back. Only guilty people look behind them.”
My neck stiffened and I kept moving forward down the hall. The adrenaline that had rushed through my system seconds ago was now bailing ship and I felt lightheaded. My bag weighed a hundred pounds. I half expected every person we passed to develop x-ray vision, see through my tote, and point me out as a shoplifter. Nicki seemed to sense I was barely hold- ing it together, and she pulled me along until we reached an empty gate area. We both started giggling as we dropped into a row of seats.
“I can’t believe I did that,” I said. I opened the bag expecting the vodka to be missing, a figment of my imagination, but the bottle was there. I glanced quickly at Nicki to see if she was impressed that I’d actually done it.
“Since we’re headed to England it would have been more fitting to have nicked some gin, but a girl has to work with the opportunities she’s got.” Nicki patted the side of my leather bag. “You were perfect. When you said that line about how I could sue them, I wanted to cheer.”
I shook my head. “Are you kidding? As soon as I took the bottle, all I wanted to do was run for it. I felt like I was going to freak out at any moment.”
She laughed. “But you didn’t. Being good at something doesn’t mean that it isn’t hard or scary — it just means that you keep moving forward when other people quit.”
I laughed. “I tend to be a quitter. I’m scared of everything.” “Like what?”
I rolled my eyes. “I could make a list a mile long. For start- ers, I’m terrified of heights. I won’t even go to my grandparents’ new condo in Miami because they live on the twentieth floor. Usually when things scare me, I’m the first one to bail. I won’t go skiing, kayaking, or anyplace that looks like it will have spiders, and I get hives when I have to go to the dentist and my dad’s a dentist.”
Nicki wrinkled up her nose. “Now, I get the dentist phobia, but heights? If you’re going to be scared, be scared of something good.” She laughed. “You were scared to take the liquor, but you did it. That’s the difference between ordinary people and extraordinary. Extraordinary people might be afraid, but they do it anyway.”
My chin lifted slightly in the air. The shame over stealing was mixed up with pride in doing something risky. I wanted to brag about what I’d done and apologize all at the same time. Most of all I wanted her to keep talking. “I still can’t believe I did that,” I said. I wanted her to understand I wasn’t some- one who did things like this. Heck, I wasn’t someone who did things at all, but maybe it was as simple as deciding that I didn’t want to be that person anymore.
Nicki threw an arm around me and gave me a half hug. “Think about it. I wonder what you might do if you let yourself really go? You know, every accomplishment starts with the decision to try. And then keep trying, even when it’s hard.” She smirked. “And of course, if life gives you an opportunity, take it before it disappears. Or at least before they put the antitheft device on it.”
I packed up what she said and placed it carefully into my memory. It struck me that her advice was important. Not because I wanted to become a master criminal — I felt bad about taking the booze and couldn’t imagine doing it again. But . . . I liked that I’d done it at least once. Been like Nicki. Daring. Not afraid. She seemed to have figured out the secret to life. All the brochures for the Student Scholars program had stressed how travel made a person grow. I’d secretly thought it was a bunch of marketing bullshit. How could a change in geography make a difference? But maybe it was possible: I could evolve into someone else. I could almost picture my mom’s approval . . . and the blog post she’d write about it.
The public-address system squawked and announced that our flight would start boarding. I couldn’t believe how the three hours had flown by. I pulled the bottle slightly out of the bag. “Do you want this?”
“You keep it. I don’t know the whole story with the guy and girl back at the gate, but I suspect you need it more than me.” She pushed herself up from the seat with a ladylike grunt. “We should get going. I still want to get that gum.”
I reached for her arm before she started to walk away. “Thanks. I was feeling really down before.”
“That’s what friends are for!” She poked me in the side as if I were being silly.
“Well, I appreciate you making me a friend after only a few hours.”
Nicki smiled. “Don’t you know? I decided we were friends the instant we met.”
***
YOU OWE ME A MURDER will be available on 3.12.19! Pre-order from any of the links below.
The holidays are right around the corner, and do we have a gift for you: an excerpt of ONCE A KING, the new standalone fantasy from Erin Summerill publishing 12.4! While fans of EVER THE HUNTED will find some nice easter eggs in this book, it’s a total standalone about the noble journey a young king takes to ensure lasting peace in his kingdom. (It’s also about falling in love with someone you really, really shouldn’t.)
Scroll down to read the first two chapters!
CHAPTER ONE- Lirra
I lean against the dusty elementiary shelf crammed with books and jars of animal bits, and stare at my father’s letter. His nearly indecipherable scratch strikes me with swift disappointment. Gods, the All Kingdoms’ Summit happens only every five years. It’s not as if Da hasn’t had time enough to arrange his schedule. The remainder of Da’s message is blocked by another letter. It’s sealed in my father’s wax and addressed to someone named AC. My heartbeat slogs through my ears, muting the chatter of mismatched accents and clatter of carriage wheels outside the Elementiary. What a fool I am for thinking this time Da’s priori- ties would include something other than busi- ness. Having worked for my father for five years, I know better than to be hurt by this news. Just as I know, without reading further, Da needs me to deliver the letter to AC.
I suppose it also shouldn’t be surprising that there’s no note here for the littleuns or Eugenia, my stepmother and worrier extraordinaire. Overwhelmed by black-market trade and valuable secrets, Da tends to forget all else.
“Lirra, you done?” Orli’s clipped tone echoes from the other side of the shelf.
I fold Da’s letter, intending to finish it later, and squeeze my fingers along the parchment seam. One, two, three sharp slides.
“Almost,” I call out, and shove the now-empty box back into concealment behind a jar of rat tails. To maintain our family’s anonymity and safety, Da sends correspondences here for me to retrieve in secret. He trusts few people more than Astoria, the Elementiary owner and my former magic teacher.
“What’d he write?” Orli asks when I come into view.
My best friend is standing by the door, trapped in a stream of dusty light, right hand strangling the doorknob, the usual tawny tone leached from her knuckles. Despite her unease with Channeler magic, she’s accompanied me here every week since Da left.
“He won’t be returning for a while.” I pick at the broken seal.
“You mean he’ll miss the start of the tournament, right? He’ll return for the jubilee and the other summit festivities.”
I shake my head.
Raven brows shoot up. “He’s going to miss your jubilee performance?”
My nail wedges under the last bit of red wax and frees it from the parchment. “Aye.”
Astoria has one hand on her cane and the other clutch- ing a pile of books, going about business as she usually does whenever I slip inside the Elementiary to pick up Da’s mail. She ambles out of the backroom to her desk, where she deposits the stack. I’m not entirely sure she’s noticed me until she lifts an age-spotted finger to shove her spectacles higher and then points to the letter in my hand. “Not what you were hoping?”
I slip it into my satchel and force a smile. “That’s the way it is with Da’s business.”
“Oh, dear girl.” She frowns. “And it’s your first year enter- ing the jubilee.”
The sadness magnified in her watery blue eyes sours my mood.
My gaze drops to the ring of dirt darkening the hem of my day dress.
There’s a shuffle thump of steps on the wood floors, and then Astoria’s arms come around me, squeezing me to her wonderfully round body.
“Your da knows it’s important to you.” The love she radi- ates makes me feel like a cat basking in the sun. “He’d be there if he could.”
Astoria has been Da’s friend and closest confidant since before my birth. She offered us a safe place to hide at her home in Shaerdan after we escaped Malam’s Purge — the Channeler eradication that would have seen me killed for my magic ability. We have lived near her ever since. She understands Da better than anyone, but I don’t want to hear her talk him up right now.
“She knows,” Orli says. “All set to go, Lirra?” Her despera- tion to leave the Channeler school is as potent as the scent of lavender here.
“You don’t have to leave so soon.” Astoria returns to her desk. “Come away from that door and sit down.”
“We need to run by the docks. Getting through all the visi- tors’ carriages will take time.” Orli points to the blown-glass windows. Outside, a rainbow of fabric has assaulted Shaer- dan’s capital city of Celize. Passersby wear their kingdoms’ colors like a shield. Usually, the northern edge of town, where the cliffs climb up from the docks, sees little traffic. Travelers have invaded all of my hometown, even the quiet roads stretching east into farmlands and forests. Scores of people from the four neighboring kingdoms have been arriving for days in anticipation of the All Kingdoms’ Summit and festivities — the Channeler Jubilee, the Tournament of Cham- pions, and the Kingdoms’ Market.
“Orli is right,” I say. “We need extra time to look at the crowds.” I have things to pick up for my jubilee exhibit that can’t wait until tomorrow.
Astoria fiddles with the wrist button of her dress sleeve. “See you next week?”
I nod, even though it’s uncertain if she’s referring to the jubilee showcase or my next mail visit. My head is stuck on a memory from five years ago. At the last jubilee, Da and I watched from the sidelines. Channelers from across the king- doms showed displays of magic. Breathless and awed, I confessed my dream to perform at the next jubilee.
Next week’s jubilee.
Da said he wouldn’t miss it for all the world.
***
Silence is the sweetest sound in the Barrett home, and such a rare thing to be had. It’s alarming how loud the boards creak underfoot as Orli and I sneak inside the back door, both of us carrying packages from the dock market. Packages that could be easily snapped in half by my younger brothers’ grubby fin- gers.
“Where is everyone?” Orli mouths.
I shake my head. The kitchen is filled with the usual mess, minus my family. Dirty dishrags lie heaped in a pile on Grandmother’s table beside a discarded, half-finished drawing of a pig — or an owl. I cannot tell. A stale odor lingers in the air like a haunt of last night’s leek-and-carrot soup. And then there’s the crock of Eugenia’s morning pottage, still sitting on the sooty hearth.
“Eugenia?” Never one to miss a Monday service, my stepmother drags the littleuns to the cathedral on the cliff each week as penance for Da’s profession.
No one answers.
I abandon my protective crouch around the wrapped wooden dowels. “The carriages on the road must’ve slowed her travel.”
“Do you think it’s odd that Eugenia will make peace over Millner’s sins and then spend his earnings the next day?” Orli asks as we head down the hall toward the attic ladder that hangs in a permanent lowered position.
“When you talk about my da’s business like that, it sounds wicked.”
“It’s not exactly saintly. Your father sells secrets to the high- est bidder. Not produce or pelts.”
“He’s an information trader.” I shrug off her comment, not eager to discuss my father.
Orli’s head falls back, and she explodes with laughter. “That’s a new one. Though a bit much for Millner Barrett. Maybe something like high ruler of the black market would be more accurate.”
I laugh. At least she didn’t call him Archtraitor, the infamous title he earned for defying the Malamian regent, evad- ing capture, and building a secretive life in Shaerdan. It gets under my skin.
“My point is, she repents one day and spends his money the next.” Orli follows me up to the attic room. She flops on my bed while I sit on the floor and arrange the dowels from largest to smallest. “It doesn’t make sense.”
Was that a note of irritation? I leave the packages lined up like soldiers before their captain. “What’s this about?”
Gone is the easy smile she wore after leaving the Elementiary. Was today too much for her? Were the crowds over- whelming?
“I know what you’re thinking, and that’s not it.” Orli slides her dark braids out of her face. “It’s nothing. Forget I said anything.”
“Nothing is nothing.”
“That makes no sense.”
I pinch her toe. “It means if something’s important to you, it’s important to me. No secrets.”
She points to the packages. “Don’t you want to finish un- wrapping those before your brothers get home?”
I don’t even glance down. “Subject change? Beginner’s move. You know I have more self-control than that.”
She guffaws. “A fox in a henhouse has more self-control than you.”
“Exaggeration.”
“Is it?” A little light brightens her stormy eyes. “I’m sore over Eugenia’s soil order, is all. Satisfied?”
“The one for cabbage?” Wasn’t that weeks ago?
“You know how the growing season is. Mum hasn’t been able to enhance the soil.” Late spring to summer means increased hours on Orli’s family farm. Especially for her mum, who earns extra money by selling magic-infused soil for growing vibrant, pest-resistant plants. Altering the soil drains her energy, a cost all Channelers pay, which slows production.
“Has Eugenia been pestering her?” Even though Eugenia isn’t a Channeler, she knows Channelers need time to restore energy.
I tear the packaging off the dowels to feel their notched ends, all sanded to a silken texture. The largest dowel, bal- anced on my open palm, is impossibly light. Almost weightless. The wood’s scent is balsa and musk. A humid summer day and freedom.
“It’s my mum.” Orli’s tiptoe-quiet response brings me back to the room. “She wants me to fill Eugenia’s order. She thinks I’m ready.”
“What do you think?”
She doesn’t answer. A year ago, Orli was kidnapped as part of an attempted coup in Malam. The former regent was intent on siphoning magic from Channelers and combining the sto- len energy into the ultimate weapon to use against the young king. I was part of the effort to rescue her, and ever since, Orli has been plagued with nightmarish memories and constant fears. It took months before she was able to leave her farm and venture into public. But she has yet to use her Channeler magic.
“I would help, but all I’m good for is blowing dirt around your farm.” I nudge her knee.
Channelers have influence over one energy — land, air, fire, water, or spirit. Orli and her mother have the ability to manipulate the land, while I can harness the wind.
“That’s all you’re good for?” Orli rolls her eyes. “It’d have to be a small pile. Dirt’s heavy.” “You’re full of hot air, you know that?”
“Better than dirt in the ears.”
We both laugh, never too old for Channeler puns. “Truthfully,” Orli says, more serious. “All you’ve done this year is impressive.”
Does she realize she’s come far this year too? I open my mouth to tell her as much, but she cuts me off. “Don’t be modest. I wasn’t even referring to what you did for me.” Her voice cracks with emotion.
My throat burns too. Dammit.
“I’d do it again,” I whisper, knowing exactly how hard it was to find her. To free her.
Orli rubs her eyes, and then shoves me in the leg and adds an annoyed look. “Don’t make me teary. I’d do the same for you, fool.”
I know she would.
She scoots off the bed and sits cross-legged on the floor. “What I’m trying to say is what you’ve done with your gliders is a big deal. You use your magic in a different way than we grew up learning. Everything we created was from our energy. Like my mum and the soil. She has to sacrifice herself for every batch of stupid dirt. But your gliders are different.”
“I use my magic to make them,” I say, confused. “No, you use magic to test them. To see if they’ll fly.”
This much is true. I wanted to build a contraption that would allow my brothers to glide in the sky without me having to conjure wind.
“Anyone, Channeler or giftless, can follow your pattern and make their own glider. You’re going to show people a new way of looking at Channelers. Maybe they’ll even see that we shouldn’t be feared.”
She’s exaggerating. But . . .
“Maybe, hopefully, it’ll inspire a few people,” I say, though the possibility makes me feel like I’ve ingested a swarm of lightning bugs.
A door slams in the house, and a herd of elk rumbles through the hallway below. Eugenia shouts, “Not inside!”
“Sorry, Mum!” I hear my brothers say before the stampede alters course.
I rush to rewrap the dowels and hide them under my bed. “Do you want me to talk to her about the soil? Or are you ready?” I hate pressuring Orli, but she has to use her magic again one day. May as well be helping her mum and Eugenia.
“I’ll figure something out. I’ll be fine.” Her expression shutters closed.
She thinks my winged inventions will change how people see Channelers. Maybe she’s right. But what will it take to inspire her? To prove that her magic isn’t to be feared?
I go downstairs to greet Eugenia in the kitchen and find her plucking dirty rags off the table.
“Any word from your da?” she asks.
“No.” It’s better not to mention he wrote me about busi- ness. When Da is working, Eugenia likes to pretend he’s just taking a trip to visit friends. She won’t acknowledge his meth- ods of collecting and profiting off secrets if she can help it.
“Do you think he’s all right?”
“He’s been gone for longer stretches, and he always returns safely.” I’ve become adept at managing Eugenia’s worry.
Her hands knot in a dishrag. “Right. Of course. I’m sure he’ll return for the festiv —”
The rear door smacks against the wall, startling us both. The twins race inside, skidding into their mother’s feet.
Eugenia drops the rag, and screeches. “Boys!”
Despite her runny emotions, she lunges for them as they try to scramble away. Loren bangs into the table and upends a chair. Kiefer hunkers beside the hutch.
“What has gotten into you two?” “Sorry, Mum,” the boys chant.
“We don’t run in the home. Look at this dirt. I just swept the floor, and now I’ll have to do it again.”
Loren rubs his hip. “Wasn’t running, Mum. Just some quick moving.”
“Save your quick movement for outdoors. Hear me?”
“But what of Lirra?”
“What about me?” I ask.
Loren’s smile switches into something sly, like a youthful image of Da, all dimpled tanned cheeks, stocky frame, and windblown curls the color of wet driftwood. I’ve always longed to look more like them instead of a reminder of my mum, with nearly black hair so thick it could be roof thatching.
“Lirra does whatever she pleases.” Loren turns pathetic cow eyes on Eugenia. “She don’t follow rules.”
If only that were true.
“And I’ve seen her run in the house.” Little toad. “You have not.”
“Have too.”
I turn to Eugenia for support. Working for Da requires liv- ing by another set of rules, something Eugenia knows even if she doesn’t like it.
“You don’t go to church.” Loren points at me. “You sneak out at night. And sometimes you go around with mud on your face. Mum always makes us wash our faces. Doesn’t she, Kief?” Kiefer, the more silent twin, peeks around the hutch. “I seen mud on Lirra.”
“Get back in your hiding spot,” I growl at him before spin- ning to face Loren. “Don’t pull me into this. You were foolish enough to get caught, so say you’re sorry already.”
He starts to complain, and Eugenia silences him with a look. The boys rush toward freedom in the shape of the back door. That’s when I notice the specks.
Specks coating their trousers.
Specks on Loren’s boots.
Specks that look an awful lot like wood shavings?
“Stop! Where have you two been?”
“Outside.” Loren smirks over his shoulder.
“Where outside?”
“The shed.”
“Which. Shed.” My nostrils flare. Kiefer cringes.
“Lirra, let them go,” Eugenia says.
My glider wings are in that shed. If the boys touched them . . . “Tell me. Or this week at the summit festivities, I’ll find the she-pirate, Song the Red, and pay her to sail you to Kolontia. The north is terribly cold. So cold that men and boys lose toes and feet and even legs. How fast will you run without legs, hmm, Loren? Tell me now — woodshed or my shed?”
“Yours,” Kiefer blurts. His cherry cheeks turn pale pear green. “We only wanted a peek.”
“We didn’t touch nothing, promise.” Loren presses his hands together in a prayer. “Spare me legs, Lir.”
I hold in a smile. “Keep your stubby limbs for now, Loren. But if you —”
Eugenia scoots them out the door. “Don’t be hard on them.”
“They need to keep their dirty hands off my things.” “What do you expect, Lirra? They look up to you, and you
run around breaking rules as if you’ve no responsibilities.” “No responsibilities?” Anger twists through me faster than the twin tornados could destroy my stuff. “My responsibilities force me to break rules. My job for Da requires it.”
She yanks a pin out of her bun, and her hair topples like a bird’s nest breaking apart. “Don’t pretend to be dedicated to your da’s work when you spend all your time on gliders.”
I gape at her, wounded by the insinuation. My family mat- ters most. If Da asked me to pay more attention to his business, I’d do it. But he doesn’t ask. He doesn’t include me in every deal. He doesn’t share all his secrets, as much as I’d like him to.
“What of your dedication?” I stomp to the window and point at the carriage parked inside the barrier of trees conceal- ing our home. “Every week you visit the cathedral and make penance. Maybe instead of praying so much, you should no- tice how hard Da works for you. For the family.”
Eyes widen over a stone expression. “Nonsense. You’re angry because the boys were curious. I understand that, but you cannot blame them. Your contraptions look like children’s toys.”
Children’s toys? Will the jubilee organizers think my glider is child’s play too?
My fingernails dig crescents into my palms. “Was it curiosity when they broke your Plovian vase? The vase you insisted Da buy with his black-market money? Don’t be a hypocrite.” It comes out like spat venom.
Last year the twins knocked over the vase. Eugenia was shattered. That same colorless devastation overtakes her expression now.
A baby’s cry peals from the hallway.
I bite my vindictive lip. “I — I shouldn’t have said that.”
“Julisa’s awake.” Eugenia gives me a look of defeat and leaves.
I return to where Orli is waiting for me in the attic, my chest stuffy and hot with frustration. And shame.
It’s not her fault that Da is gone. Or that he takes on too much work and doesn’t allow me to help manage the load. He has me deliver messages to informants, listen to private conversations, and track people’s habits, but he never asks for more. He tries to manage most of the work alone.
Loren and Kiefer are too young to help, and I doubt Eugenia would let them get involved in Da’s business even if they were older. I’m the only one he can lean on. It’s up to me to help him. Eugenia is right. I should be focusing on Da’s letter, not my gliders.
“Whoa, what happened?” Orli watches me climb the lad- der. “You look ready to practice dagger throwing on a live tar- get.”
I dig through my satchel for the letter. I peel it open and remove the letter to AC.
Hullo Beetle,
I’ll not be returning in time for the summit.
The rest of the page is blank.
“This cannot be all there is.” I flip it over. Da would never use this much parchment for so short a note, or ask me to deliver a letter with no instructions. His message must be here, hidden.
Orli peers over my shoulder and hums to herself.
I trace the blank page. “I wonder if he used a blood charm. Da’s never used one before. Blood charms are illegal, and even if they weren’t, they’re hard to come by,” I say, remembering what Astoria taught us. “But it would explain why there are no words.”
She releases a shuddery breath and taps the letter. “Right. And we are talking about Millner.”
“I guess there’s only one way to find out.” I pull a dagger from my boot.
Orli sits on the bed, trembling fingers sliding under her thighs. “Go on.”
I hate that magic makes her uncomfortable. But I have to know what Da wrote. I sink the blade’s tip into the fleshy pad of my finger. A crimson drop bubbles from my skin and drips onto the ivory parchment, fanning out as it seeps into the surface.
Hullo Beetle,
I’ll not be returning in time for the summit.
If you’re reading this, you figured out the blood charm. The following job must be completed immediately and privately. As you can tell, secrecy is of greatest importance.
To fulfill an agreement I’ve made with the king of Malam, you must deliver the enclosed letter to him. Don’t curse. I know this assignment will displease you, but it must be done.
The king’s letter has also been sealed with a blood charm. You’ll find nothing there if you attempt to peek. Please explain to King Aodren how these types of charms are activated. The man’s Channeler knowledge is in the budding stage.
Deliver the letter before the summit is underway. It cannot be late. Tell no one and go unseen.
Give my love to Eugenia, the boys, and Julisa. Love, Da
“Bloody stars.”
I’m not displeased. I’m furious.
What deal has my father made? King Aodren cares noth- ing for Channelers. Hell, his kingdom has encouraged the hunting of Channelers for the last twenty years. This is why my father and I were forced to flee Malam and live in Shaer- dan. King Aodren may have ended the Purge Proclamation, the horrific law that was responsible for the deaths of countless Channelers in Malam for the last twenty years, but he did so out of desperation. Last year, King Aodren needed the Channelers Guild, the governing women who oversee all Channelers in the five kingdoms, to save his life and help stop a plot to usurp the throne.
My efforts to save Orli caused my path to cross Aodren’s. I was the one who introduced him to the Guild, and I even saved his life in battle. But has he ever expressed his gratitude for either?
No. Not at all. Ungrateful lout of a king. King Aodren cares only about himself.
Da has all sorts of unsavory business associates, and though I dislike it, it’s not so shocking to discover King Aodren is a new one. Royal coin is as good as commoner coin. What I don’t understand, however, is why the king of Malam needs help from Da, ruler of the underground.
I press my fist to the sudden bloom of ache in my belly. I want to forget this request and finish my glider. But Eugenia’s comment earlier nags me. Da needs me. And maybe this is the way to finally prove he can rely on me.
CHAPTER TWO- Aodren
My attention catches on a flash of colors as gold and blue Shaerdanian tunics enter the far end
of the mud-streaked training yard. Not count- ing the half dozen guards standing at attention nearby, until now Leif and I have had the field alone to spar. The two newcomers must be the men who have been chosen to represent Shaerdan’s ruler, Chief Judge Auberdeen, in the upcoming Tournament of Champions at the All Kingdoms’ Summit.
When the tournament first began, each king- dom’s ruler and their second fought a mock bat- tle to prove their strength and leadership mettle. Decades ago, after the Plovian king lost his life, the rulers decided participation was too dangerous, and tradition changed. Now the most skilled warriors in the land vie to fight in place of their leader.
Leif, the first of my chosen competitors, swings his prac- tice sword through the air. I thrust upward to block. It’s too late. His waster slams my left arm. Bone-rattling pain lances from elbow to shoulder, and my weapon hits the ground.
Godstars! “Solid strike.” I suck a breath between my teeth to temper the pain.
“Are you whistling, sir?” Leif chuckles.
Glaring, I straighten my posture, regain some of the dig- nity he knocked away, and switch to breathing through my nose, despite the moisture that clings to my nostrils. Shaer- dan’s humidity is also out to kill me today.
“I shouldn’t have landed that,” Leif says in a low voice. In my periphery, I notice one of the ever-present guards avert his gaze, and I wonder if he heard Leif’s comment. It’s too sympa- thetic for the captain of the royal guard — the elite force of the most skilled combatants in Malam. He needs to control that emotion if he and Baltroit, the other Malamian competitor, are to prove they’re the best fighters in the five kingdoms. Grit wins tournaments, not sympathy.
The last All Kingdoms’ Summit was five years ago, and I didn’t attend. It’s more important than ever that we have a good showing during the tournament. We must prove to the other leaders, my late father’s peers, and to Malamians that Malam is worthy of being here. That I am worthy of being here.
I roll out my bruised shoulder. “I shouldn’t have let you. On the battlefield, distraction means death.”
Leif watches the Shaerdanians through the slits in his helmet. “Lucky there’s no risk here.” He reaches for the fallen practice waster and swings it in an arc. “Not with this blunted sword.”
I move into position. “Enough talk.”
“Oh, you’re recovered? Ready to get beat?” Exhaustion helps Leif forget himself, a benefit of our sparring sessions. Too often, he lapses into the formality he feels the captain of the royal guard should maintain around the king. He forgets I am just a man and he is my closest, if not only, friend.
Chuckling, I switch grips to take the sword in my domi- nant right hand. “Captain and court jester, let’s see how you fare now.”
He snorts and swings his waster. I’ve spent the last six months training with Leif. I’ve studied his movement. He is quick, but I’m faster. I block his blade and push my weight into his. He stumbles. A vulnerable space opens between his elbow and ribs, and I strike. Leif grunts against the pain.
The rhythm of our clanks and curses echoes across the yard. This rigorous sparring session keeps Leif competition- ready for the Tournament of Champions. And it tempers the uneasiness that came on earlier today when my traveling retinue exited the forest and first beheld Shaerdan’s sum- mer castle. The stone fortress is designated for all leaders and dignitaries during the summit and sits north of Celize like a solemn gray throne.
My absence from the last summit sparked rumors that spread like a scourge. King Aodren’s too young. Soon he’ll be just like his hateful father and the blood-spilling regent. Malam’s people are divided, and the kingdom is weak. Under King Aodren, only time remains until the kingdom falls.
Malam’s history has more shameful spots than the sky has stars.
My father was a prejudiced man, whose fear of Channel- ers spread to his advisers and led to the Purge — a kingdom- wide Channeler eradication spanning nearly two decades. The feverish hunt for magic users turned neighbor on neighbor. After my father died when I was a child, a regent ruled until I came of age. He closed the Malamian borders so no one could leave or enter Malam. Trade halted and our economy suffered. This dark time was further blackened when, a year ago, the regent didn’t want to relinquish power. He led a coup, killing hundreds of citizens and half of Malam’s nobility.
The rumors hold some truth — I am the youngest ruler at the summit, my people are divided between support and opposition for Channelers, and Malam has been weakened.
But I won’t be my father.
I won’t allow Malam to fall.
When Leif and I are both aching and bruised, we stop fighting. I lean on my sword, breath sawing through my lungs. Leif tugs off his helmet. He swipes sweat from his beard and shakes out his hair. The usual amber color is now a slick mud- brown. “I could sleep till the first night of the tournament.”
My thoughts as well. However, “It wouldn’t do well to miss dinner.”
Leif mutters an unenthused agreement.
Once our gear is stored in the yard house, two guards follow me and Leif off the field.
“See how in sync they are?” Leif glances at the Shaerdani- ans before they’re out of sight. “If Baltroit would practice here, we’d have a better chance of winning the cup.”
I scratch the day’s stubble on my jaw. The summit, the tournament, and the jubilee are key factors in turning Malam’s tide. We must do well in all three. When Lord Segrande insisted his son be chosen as the second competitor, I complied. Segrande was integral in the negotiations to re-open trade with Shaerdan, and going forward, his support is necessary to boost Malam’s economy. While Segrande and I form alliances and trade agreements during summit meetings, Baltroit and Leif will be fighting in the Tournament of Champions.
Thousands of Malamians have traveled to Shaerdan to at- tend the events. A tournament win will inspire pride. It’ll give Malamians a reason to rally together. A reason to set aside their differences. And hopefully, later, a reason to spread unity back in Malam.
Baltroit is a fierce fighter, but he’s arrogant and refuses to train with Leif. While I could order Baltroit to the practice yard, it may offend Segrande, who has spent as much time training his son as I have with Leif.
“He won’t let us down,” I say, determined. “The two of you will do well.”
Leif shoots me a look that argues otherwise.
The castle’s grand hall is a clamor of voices, thuds, and scrapes, all under the aroma of rosemary and bread. As we pass through, conversation dims and everyone in sight bows. Our boots clack loudly against the stone stairs leading to the third floor, where Malam’s private rooms are assigned. The two guards who followed us from the practice field take up posts at our closed corridor, while Leif enters my chambers.
He points to the stack of letters on the desk. “The courier delivered these to the castle. Also, the welcome meal will begin in two hours.”
Half of Malam’s fiefs have new leadership, and the repeal of the Purge Proclamation has made it possible for Channelers to return to Malam. A difficult transition, to say the least. To stay abreast of brewing tension, each lord reports on his fiefdom. Even during the summit.
“Inform Lord Segrande and tell him to come to my cham- bers at a quarter till.” I start toward the washroom.
Leif lingers. “Your Highness, one more thing.”
Your Highness. Few dare meet my eye, let alone speak to me directly. Some decorum is expected, but Leif’s slip back into formality is aggravating. And isolating. “I’m scarcely six months older than you, and not a quarter-hour ago, you were trying to hit me with a practice sword. Call me by my given name.”
“You’re the king.” He coughs into his fist.
“I’m aware. Trust me, rigid formality isn’t always requisite. Understood?”
“Aye.” His gaze shifts to the door. “At tonight’s dinner, though, it’ll be formal. Yes?”
“Yes. But you may talk with the other dignitaries.”
“I — I’m not sure I can.” A maroon tint stains his neck. He yanks his beard. It’s hard to reconcile the man before me with the bear from the practice field. “Thing is, talking is not my strength.”
Leif has notable battle experience, good rapport with the royal guard, and is unfailingly loyal, but he is also new to nobility. Too busy trying to bring Malam out of the darkness, I’ve overlooked his greenness.
“Talk about the tournament,” I suggest. “King Gorenza will no doubt have much to say, since his youngest son is com- peting.”
“Could work.” He focuses on the floor stones for a long minute. “I won’t be skilled like Captain Omar was with con- versation. But I’ll try.”
I laugh, loud and irreverent. The long day is bringing out Leif’s wit and humor.
But he doesn’t join in, his mouth is pressed into a grim line.
Oh gods. Is he serious? My previous captain spoke in mono- syllabic sentences.
“Leif.” I restrain my laughter. Composure has been drilled into me since birth. “Omar used to say it’s the message that matters. Remember that. Treat this dinner like those at Castle Neart.”
“I mostly talk to Britta at Castle Neart. She’s not here.” The comment comes unexpectedly.
The words settle over me like a scratchy wool throw. Britta and her husband are on their wedding trip instead of attending the summit. It’s odd to consider her married, since I once hoped she would share my life. But . . . Britta is on my council. We will continue to work together. She will still be a friend.
“You’ll do fine,” I say, tone clipped.
Silence, and then, “Certainly, sir.” Leif bows and leaves my chambers.
So much for convincing him to use my name. I walk to the desk and study the letters, though it’s a fight to focus on any one of them. Perhaps Leif is right to remind me that friend- ships should be the furthest thing from my mind right now.
My focus must be Malam.
***
Correspondence to Aodren Lothar Cross, King of Malam:
March 25
To the King our Most Sovereign Lord,
By dictate of your wise council, I begin my monthly report of the affairs concerning my humble fiefdom. The abolishment of the Purge Proclamation has been posted in the markets and common areas, and all countrymen have received notice of the new law sealed by your great hand. May the news be received well. Or perhaps I should write, may the news be received better than it has been thus far. I’m certain those displeased with the return of Channelers will soon welcome the newcomers.
Last, Sir Chilton, who inherited the bordering fiefdom after Lord Chamberlain was killed in the tragic attack on the castle, has struggled to manage his lands. The poor lad. If he needs to be relieved of his land, I offer my guardianship.
Your servant,
Lord Wynne of Jonespur
April 19
To the King, Lord of Malam,
This past month, four Channeler families returned from Shaerdan to reclaim lost lands. Unfortunately, their return was met with opposition — one barn fire, three travel carts destroyed, and numerous fights in the market square. I wish I could report these numbers amounted to less than last month.
In addition, the ore mine can no longer keep men employed until trade demand increases. The line of needy outside the church has doubled. And yet traders continue to come from Shaerdan. Considering Malamians have no coin to buy Shaerdanian goods, the traders must be foolishly optimistic.
Regardless, I hope the bordering kingdoms will welcome our trade soon. They cannot turn us away forever.
Your loyal man, Lord Xavier Variant
April 24
To King Aodren Lothar Cross of Malam,
Difficulties have arisen as returning Channelers have declared ownership and sought possession of land that has been in another’s hand for nearly two decades. Last week, a disagreement led to the destruction of two alfalfa fields, a Channeler booth in the marketplace, and a clergyman’s entire cart of bread for the needy. It’s impossible to say if these actions were meant to harm. I believe they were intended to scare.
Scribe for the Lord of Tahr, Sir Ian Casper
May 5
To the King our Most Sovereign Lord,
Though your wise changes in the law dictated that the market be open to all, the appearance of Channelers has caused disturbances. Truly, I do all I can to keep peace. Channelers have been so bold as to ask friends and family to boycott the merchants that have refused business to persons of magic.
However, not all merchants have excluded Channelers. A new trader in the market square has been selling Channeler-made healing balms. A portion of townspeople have shown interest in his goods. One remedy gaining popularity is called Sanguine. It is a healing oil, and quite effective from what I’ve heard. Perhaps it could be a boon to our economy.
As always, I am humbly dedicated to overseeing my fief’s needs, just as I could be with any additional land you might wish to grant upon me.
Your servant,
Lord Wynne of Jonespur
May 22
To King Aodren,
Calvin Bariston of Fennit passed on from injuries sustained in a tavern fight. It’s uncertain who stabbed him, since he first stabbed two other men and one woman. Calvin was acting erratic, and was, we believe, possessed by a devil.
Rumors started that the cause was the Channelers. Those rumors were quickly proved unfounded.
Scribe for the Lord of Tahr, Sir Ian Casper
June 1
To the King of Malam,
Rumors about the Channeler oil have spread after an occur- rence last week. Onlookers reported that Mr. Erik Bayles met a passing trader in the market square to purchase Sanguine. For unknown reasons, Mr. Bayles became angry and struck the trader, who then hit back, punching Mr. Bayles once and killing him. The trader left town before he was questioned. I’ve sent men after him.
Without answers, many blame Channeler magic. Either Sanguine gave the trader unnatural strength, or it caused Mr. Bayles’s death. Those who knew Mr. Bayles best have insisted he was a hard man to kill. I did not inquire how many times they tried.
The dispute has divided the town. Some businesses have refused service to anyone associated with Channelers. While I could force businesses to open their doors to all, I fear it will not end the division.
I must know, is Sanguine truly harmful? Please advise on how to restore order to my fief.
Your loyal man, Lord Xavier Variant
***
After I dress for dinner and Leif returns with Lord Segrande, I scan the letters I received over the last few months and compare them to the newest batch.
“Anything promising, Your Highness?” Segrande surveys the letters. His salt-and-sandy hair has taken a severe combing, unlike his untamed beard that twists and curls over the starched collar of his dinner coat. The mismatch suits Seg- rande, who is known for earning as many calluses as the people working the fields of his fief.
“More reports of division and opposition. Poverty in the ore fiefs. Destroyed property, disturbances in the market. More rumors that feed wariness of Channelers.” The chair scrapes the floor as I push back from the desk and pace away.
Our retinue spent two weeks traveling through Malam. Two weeks of passing through towns and farmlands and seeing firsthand the chasm between countrymen that should’ve been mended by the Purge’s abolishment.
Those two weeks confirmed that decrees don’t assuage distrust.
We are a gray, threadbare tapestry in desperate need of new threads to strengthen us. But my people have spent two decades fearing the very color we need now. Regardless of the abolished Purge, our factionalism leaves us weak.
Ignoring the powerlessness dragging through my veins, I stalk across the room, drop down on a bench, and fasten the buckles of my boots tighter.
I remind myself that this is why I’m here. The summit, the tournament, the jubilee — they will be the start of change for Malam.
“What of this one? Sir Casper mentioned Sanguine, the Channeler oil. That’s a pebble of good news.” Segrande leans over the desk. His dinner coat bulges around his buttons. “More people buying the oil means more people are trusting Channelers.”
“Look at Jonespur’s letter. Or Variant’s.” I stand and scrutinize my shirt for lint, finding none. “Two men have died, and rumors link them to Channelers and the oil. People believe the oil is dangerous.”
“Fools,” Leif grouses from where he sits on the hearth’s edge. “If they knew anything about Channelers, they’d know there’s no danger. They’re not going around killing anybody.” Segrande abandons the desk to wait at the door. “Some ideas are hard to bury. Those people have feared Channelers
all their lives. That rock won’t be turned over easily.”
It’s always rocks with Segrande. In this case, he’s greatly underestimated the size of the problem. The prejudices dividing Malam are mountains. I look out the window at the city of tents stretching across the land to the southeast where thou- sands of foreigners have come for the Tournament of Champi- ons and the jubilee.
“Has the Archtraitor reported anything?” Segrande asks. “Millner.” Leif mutters something more about unturned rocks.
“Slip of the tongue.” Segrande chuckles. “We’re the only three Malamians who refer to Millner by his given name. Most still consider him an enemy of Malam.”
Irritation hardens Leif’s face. I hadn’t realized he had an opinion about Millner. He said nothing weeks ago when I mentioned my choice to hire the man. But perhaps Leif’s insistence on respect is because he and Millner share a com- monality. Millner was once captain of the royal guard. Years ago, he protested the Purge. Because he was nobility, his defiance was considered traitorous. Guards burned his home, killing his wife. In retaliation, Millner ended those men’s lives and became a fugitive in Shaerdan. Over the years, rumors have twisted the story, marking him as Malam’s enemy — the Archtraitor.
But I know better than to put much weight in rumors. I’ve always admired Millner for standing up for what was right.
“He’s sent no word yet,” I admit, albeit reluctantly. I hoped his information would shed light on Sanguine and give me something positive to report to the Channelers Guild. It would be remiss of me to put off informing them. I tug on my dinner coat and turn to Segrande. “Draft a letter to Seeva. Explain the situation.”
A cough sputters out of him. “The entire situation? The men who died? The rumors?”
I understand his apprehension. As a member of both the Channelers Guild and my advisory circle, Seeva Soliel won’t be pleased to hear the rumors. And even less pleased to discover I waited to tell her. The Guild was reluctant to pledge their support to Malam, and though Seeva serves me, her loyalties still lie with Channelers first.
“Tell her everything,” I command as we exit the chambers. The guards escort us through the winding halls of the castle to the dining hall, where the other delegations are al- ready seated around a mammoth oval table. The chief judge of Shaerdan, the queen of the Plovian Isles, the king of Kolontia, and their dignitaries sit on the far side, while I take a place beside Ku Toa of Akaria and her dignitaries, with Leif and Segrande at my right. Our guards remain in the room, their five different types of armor matching the flags hanging behind them. The mesh of kingdom colors serves as a reminder that not so long ago, Malam was headed to war with Shaerdan.
And now Shaerdan is the hosting kingdom and Chief Judge Auberdeen is the summit officiant. He makes formal introductions and then speaks about the upcoming summit meeting schedule, the Kingdoms’ Market, the jubilee, and the tournament.
When the latter is mentioned, Leif shifts forward, eager and ready. The motion doesn’t escape notice. King Gorenza scowls at my captain, likely because Leif will be competing against his son.
“All competitors fighting in your name must be declared at the March of Champions tomorrow.” Auberdeen sets down a leather tome, thick with a hundred years of rules.
A murmured agreement rolls through the room, and then the meal is served.
The other leaders launch into a conversation, showing their familiarity with one another. Auberdeen boasts about a new ship design that will make it possible to double the size of a trade shipment.
“A ship that large will give you freedom to introduce new imports,” says an Akarian dignitary.
“True.” Auberdeen nods to the Plovian queen. “Like silks from the isles.”
“How fortunate for Malam that we’ve reestablished trade with Shaerdan.” Segrande thumps the table, drawing light laughter. “In fact, we’re already seeing the benefits.” He turns to me.
“Yes.” I lower my fork and seize the transition to discuss Sanguine. “I’ve heard word of a new import in our markets.”
“You’ve snared our attention, Young King Aodren. Tell us more.”
Young king? King Gorenza’s booming delivery in a brisk Kolontian accent doesn’t lighten the dig at my age. He sits languidly on the other side of the table, a head shorter than me, shoulders twice my width, nose like a hawk’s. He has one arm draped on the chair’s back and the other resting on the table. A casual domination of space.
“What item of trade, specifically, are you talking about?” he asks.
“Channeler oil,” Leif answers.
“Oil for Channelers?” Auberdeen’s confusion is mirrored by others around the table. He takes spectacles from his pocket and holds them beneath his unkempt eyebrow hedges. “Is that the new import?”
“Yes. No . . . I mean, no.” Leif’s face is the same color as the beets on his plate.
“Captain O’Floinn is referring to Sanguine,” I explain. “It’s said to be a Channeler-made healing remedy. Have you any experience with the oil?”
“Sounds familiar,” murmurs a Plovian dignitary.
“The oil comes from Akaria, no?” King Gorenza focuses on the Ku, who is sitting to my left. “What do you know of it?’ Ku Toa is older than me by four or five decades, small in stature, and has a shorn head — as is the custom for the southern kingdoms’ leaders. I turn to her, curious about her answer. But her dignitary, Olema, answers. “We have an oil in our land
called Sanguine.”
“Are they not the same, Fa Olema?” Gorenza props both arms on the table.
Olema is an ancient man, older than the Ku, with a face mapped in wrinkles. He exchanges a look with the Ku. “I cannot say.”
“It’s the most potent of all Channeler healing aids. Is it not?” asks Judge Soma, second in command to Auberdeen.
Everyone turns to the thin, lanky man.
“That so?” Gorenza stabs a roll with his knife.
Soma nods. “It’s similar to Beannach water, but more po- tent. Are you familiar with Beannach?”
Earlier this year, Judge Auberdeen sent Soma to Malam to draft a treaty between our kingdoms. Soma was earnest and well informed. His contradicting opinion on Sanguine confirms that the rumors were fueled by prejudices. I know I should be pleased that Sanguine isn’t hurting my people, but the hatred that must exist in my kingdom to start such a vicious rumor gnaws at me.
“Beannach means ‘blessed,’” says Leif, jumping in when he can. “It replenishes.”
A flicker of a smile twitches on the Ku’s face.
“I know what it does.” Gorenza shoves pieces of the im- paled roll into his mouth, chewing viciously before adding, “Even if we don’t use Channeler magic up north.”
“And yet,” says Soma, “at every summit, a Channeler from your kingdom performs in the jubilee.”
“We don’t use their magic, but they live among us.” Gorenza yanks his knife free. He swings the point to face me. “Kolontia hasn’t outlawed and hunted Channelers as Malam has.”
Lord Segrande develops rigor mortis. Queen Isadora’s fork clatters on the table.
“Now that the stone’s been thrown, we can move on,” I say, having anticipated this reaction from the other leaders. “After all, Malam has. There isn’t one of us whose kingdom has a spotless history. My people’s shame is merely more recent.”
Judge Auberdeen and Ku Toa’s eyes slant to me, assessing.
Gorenza scoffs. “Will we actually see Channelers repre- senting Malam at the jubilee this year?”
“Of course,” I say. They think Malam will have no repre- sentative in the Channeler show, like the last four summits. They’re wrong. The jubilee is one event in which I can rest easy. “Katallia of the Channelers Guild will wear Malam’s colors. I’m honored that she calls Malam home.”
Katallia became an ally when she fought alongside me to defeat Lord Jamis. When she performs in the name of Malam, she’ll inspire pride in all Malamians.
“I’m sure it would’ve been difficult to find another willing Channeler,” Gorenza says, oddly quiet. “How fortunate for you that Katallia’s life was spared during your kingdom’s extermination, which you did nothing to stop when you first came into power.”
The room goes silent.
If a rat scuttled across the floor, its steps would register louder than a drumroll.
The pommel of my sword digs into my hip. A call to arms against such an appalling insult to my honor. I drag a breath through my teeth, tempering the wave of intense loathing, and bridling the urge to cut Gorenza down.
The smallest movement catches in my periphery. A Malamian guard has edged forward. Gorenza stares at him, nostrils flared in a look of daring that says he’s primed to shed blood. Any guard in this room wouldn’t hesitate to kill a person for caustic remarks made against their leader, but because Gorenza is the king, my guard waits. As does everyone else, sitting with bated breath.
I’m not here to start a war. I’m here for Malam, I remind myself.
For allegiances. For unity. For my people’s future.
I flick out my hand, low to the side in a staying motion. Auberdeen bangs the table with his fist, though he keeps
an eye on me. “Enough talk of trade. King Gorenza, you have a grandchild on the way, do you not? Let me tell you about what my granddaughter said to me just this morning.”
The single lamp illuminating my chambers is not enough to give shape to the clothing chest or prevent me from slamming my shin into the corner. I hop back, cursing, and yank off my coat. My boots come off next. One tumbles beneath the desk. The other hits the curtain. For a half second, I swear it’s followed by an oomph. I pull the tunic over my head and let it drop, welcoming the cool evening air.
A shadow moves from behind the curtains. An intruder. Pulse ricocheting through my veins, I snatch the sword at
my hip.
The man grabs for something behind him. I lunge, thrusting the blade’s point at the intruder’s chest. He lets out a squawk. Hands hang at his sides, frozen.
“Don’t move or I’ll kill you.”
A blast of wind slams into me, knocking me to the ground. I manage to keep a hand on my blade. I jump to my feet, but the distraction has given the intruder the advantage.
“I’d apologize for using a wind gust to knock you down,” he — no, she says. A woman? A Channeler. Shock has me frozen in place. How did she get in here? “But you had a blade digging into my heart.”
She shakes out her hands and steps into the lamplight. Blue eyes rimmed with stripes of black lashes stare at me from under a boy’s cap. She looks like a scrawny stable boy. “You don’t recognize me?”
The scrawny-stable-boy disguise throws me off. But a memory emerges of her on the same battlefield as me. Last year, she came to Malam seeking her friend, and she ended up fighting beside me to stop the army of traitors from taking Malam.
When I don’t answer immediately, she huffs. “Figures.” And then she tugs off her hat, releasing a coil of raven hair. “It’s Lirra Barrett. I saved your life earlier this year.”
She mutters under her breath about me not remember- ing, and then adds something that sounds like “arrogant arse.”
Any shock still chilling my veins quickly heats with anger. Regardless of our past, how dare she be so brazen as to sneak into my room, use her Channeler magic on me, and then disrespect me?
“You’ve trespassed in my chamber. State your purpose.” My tone is terse and cold.
She blinks at me. Her mouth pinches like she’s tasted something bitter, and then she withdraws a letter from her pocket. “This is from my father.”
***
Uh-oh....when enemies from different kingdoms come together, either peace or war could be on the forefront. Want to find out how Lirra and Aodren will partner together to get to the bottom of what’s happening in Malam? Read ONCE A KING, which you can purchase from any of the links below.
This season we’re thankful for these five moments that are sweet as cider and will warm your heart like grandma’s apple pie.
Grim Lovelies by Megan Shepherd
Beau and Anouk dancing in the kitchen
He held up their hands as though ready to dance. Soapy water ran down his arm, soaking his shirt cuff, but he didn’t seem to mind. The tempo of the violin music picked up; Viggo must have been in a good mood. Laughter came from the ballroom.
Anouk rested one hand on his should and sighed. “Go on, then. Show me how.”
He grinned. “Step back. Like this. There. Now forward.”
She tried to follow his movements, leaving damp footprints on the kitchen tiles. He led her in a clumsy circle around the big oak table, counting, “One-two-three-four, one-two-three-four.” The floor was slick from the water dripping form her dish gloves. Soap bubbles popped in the sink.
The Inexplicable Logic of My Life by Benjamin Alire Sáenz
Sal and Mima making cornbread
We were making pies. Well, I wasn’t doing any making. It was really just my dad. And Uncle Julian. They’re, like, this team. They look alike. I sat next to Mima as Dad rolled out the dough.
Mima nodded. “I showed him, she said.
She was calm.
Then Mima said to me, “We should make the corn bread.” Yeah, the corn bread. Mima’s stuffing was to die for. So I got the ingredients and made room for myself on the kitchen table. I took out a big mixing bowl. We always tripled the recipe. Making the corn bread with Mima was my thing. Our little tradition.
I watched her hands as they worked the batter over with a wooden spoon. I wanted to kiss them.
Somewhere That’s Green by Meredith Russo in Meet Cute
Nia and Lexie at a party
Her throat tightened and her eyes felt suddenly hot and wet and her face twisted up and this was worse than throwing up, definitely worse, but then she felt arms around her neck and she opened her eyes to find her cheek pressed into Nia’s neck, her nose filled with lavender and bergamot hiding just under a blanket of woodsmoke, and the tears faded.
Retribution Rails by Erin Bowman
Charlotte and Reece at the house
I twist back to Charlotte. And freeze. There’s a welt on her cheek and her coat’s hanging open and askew on her shoulders. She’s still wearing the brown dress I last saw her in. There’s blood on it.
I jumped from the bed, and my hands push the coat down her arms till it catches at the crook of her elbows. Then I’m inspecting her – brushing her hair back to see her neck, the side of her head – searching for whatever injuries left the dress collar stained.
“It’s yours,” she says. “Reece, it’s your blood.”
From when she helped me into the house. I realize my hands are cupping her face, and I step away quickly.
Song of the Abyss by Makiia Lucier
Reyna and Levi
The fight left him. He crouched before her, then said quietly, “You frightened me. I don’t think my heart will ever beat normally again.”
“The same.” Her words were muffled, spoken into her knees.
Levi reached for her. His hand grazed her cheek. A second only.
Preorder the book Out August 27, 2019!
It’s the most wonderful time of the year....and no, we’re not talking about the holidays (yet.) It’s YALLFest! We’ll be there with bells on, and can’t wait to see you.
Check out our drop schedule below!
Next up, our author panel schedule— AKA, where you can find Emiko Jean, Robin LaFevers, Rebecca Schaeffer, and Megan Shepherd at the festival!
AND FINALLY— the creme de la creme (or maybe we should say the waffliest of the waffles? We’ll work on that...) our BIG WAFFLE EVENT! Come to the Museum Courtyard at 1PM on 11/10 to meet all four of our authors, PLUS get some tasty waffles in a variety of flavors. If you purchase one of their books and bring it to this event, they’ll sign it for you.
1. WAX BY GINA DAMICO
Living Wax Figures. Dark Comedy. Mysterious Fire.
Paraffin, Vermont, is home to the Grosholtz Candle Factory. There, seventeen-year-old Poppy finds something dark and unsettling: a room filled with dozens of startlingly lifelike wax sculptures. Later, she’s shocked when one of the figures—a teenage boy who doesn’t seem to know what he is—jumps naked and screaming out of the trunk of her car. Poppy wants to return him to the factory, but before she can, a fire destroys the mysterious workshop.
With the help of the wax boy, who answers to the name Dud, Poppy tries to find out who was behind the fire. Along the way, she discovers that some of the townspeople are starting to look a little . . . waxy. Can they extinguish the evil plot?
2. THIS MONSTROUS THING BY MACKENZI LEE
Alive. Dead. Alive Again.
A Gothic fantasy retelling of Frankenstein showing us that humans, by nature, are monstrous.
In an alternative fantasy world where some men are made from clockwork parts and carriages are steam powered, Alasdair Finch, a young mechanic, does the unthinkable after his brother dies: he uses clockwork pieces to bring Oliver back from the dead.
But the resurrection does not go as planned, and Oliver returns more monster than man. Even worse, the novel Frankenstein is published and the townsfolk are determined to find the real-life doctor and his monster. With few places to turn for help, the dangers may ultimately bring the brothers together-or ruin them forever.
3. MAY QUEEN MURDERS BY SARAH JUNE
Dark Omens. Dark Beauty. Dead Queen.
Stay on the roads. Don’t enter the woods. Never go out at night. Those are the rules in Rowan’s Glen, a remote farming community in the Missouri Ozarks where Ivy Templeton’s family has lived for centuries. It’s an old-fashioned way of life, full of superstition and traditions, and sixteen-year-old Ivy loves it. The other kids at school may think the Glen kids are weird, but Ivy doesn’t care—she has her cousin Heather as her best friend. The two girls share everything with each other—or so Ivy thinks. When Heather goes missing after a May Day celebration, Ivy discovers that both her best friend and her beloved hometown are as full of secrets as the woods that surround them.
4. SOMETHING STRANGE AND DEADLY BY SUSAN DENNARD
Zombies. Spirit Hunters. Necromancy.
A steampunk fantasy where the Dead are rising and wreaking havoc through the city.
After her father dies and her brother goes missing, Eleanor Fitt witnesses the walking dead in the streets of 1876 Philadelphia. Desperate to solve the mystery of her brother’s disappearance, Eleanor ventures into the private lab of the Spirit-Hunters, who protect the city from supernatural forces. Always a social misfit, Eleanor finally feels at home among the intelligent Joseph, feisty Jie, and extremely stubborn yet handsome Daniel. But the more time she spends with them, the more dangerous her life becomes. And the search for her brother may be compromised.
SPECIAL SHOUT OUT BLOODLEAF BY CRYSTAL SMITH
Blood Magic. Ghosts. Sacrifice.
An epic fantasy where a princess uses her forbidden blood-magic anyway and is haunted by ghosts.
Princess Aurelia is a prisoner to her crown and the heir that nobody wants. Surrounded by spirits and banned from using her blood-magic, Aurelia flees her country after a devastating assassination attempt.
To escape her fate, Aurelia disguises herself as a commoner in a new land and discovers a happiness her crown has never allowed. As she forges new bonds and perfects her magic, she begins to fall for a man who is forbidden to rule beside her. But the ghosts that haunt Aurelia refuse to abandon her, and she finds herself succumbing to their call as they expose a nefarious plot that only she can defeat. Will she be forced to choose between the weight of the crown and the freedom of her new life?
Buy the Book (OUT MARCH 29, 2019)
5. THE DARKEST PART OF THE FOREST BY HOLLY BLACK
A Glass Coffin. A Mad King. A Knight and her bard.
In the woods is a glass coffin. It rests on the ground, and in it sleeps a boy with horns on his head and ears as pointed as knives....
Hazel and her brother, Ben, live in Fairfold, where humans and the Folk exist side by side. Since they were children, Hazel and Ben have been telling each other stories about the boy in the glass coffin, that he is a prince and they are valiant knights, pretending their prince would be different from the other faeries, the ones who made cruel bargains, lurked in the shadows of trees, and doomed tourists. But as Hazel grows up, she puts aside those stories. Hazel knows the horned boy will never wake.
Until one day, he does....
As the world turns upside down, Hazel has to become the knight she once pretended to be.
6. THE BOOK OF LIES BY TERI TERRY
Fantasy Secrets. Mistaken Identity. Witchcraft.
Twin teen girls are linked by a dark and deadly inheritance that will destroy one of them.
In this suspenseful, gripping novel, teen twin girls raised separately meet for the first time at their mother’s funeral. Quinn has been trained to never tell a lie. Piper is a practiced liar. Narrated in both voices, the story of their quest to learn truths that have been concealed from them is shadowed by a dark spell that beckons them to run at night with a pack of murdering ghost hounds.
7. WINTERSONG BY S. JAE-JONES
A missing sister. A labyrinth. The Goblin King
The last night of the year. Now the days of winter begin and the Goblin King rides abroad, searching for his bride… All her life, Liesl has heard tales of the beautiful, dangerous Goblin King. They’ve enraptured her mind, her spirit, and inspired her musical compositions. Now eighteen and helping to run her family’s inn, Liesl can’t help but feel that her musical dreams and childhood fantasies are slipping away. But when her own sister is taken by the Goblin King, Liesl has no choice but to journey to the Underground to save her. Drawn to the strange, captivating world she finds—and the mysterious man who rules it—she soon faces an impossible decision. And with time and the old laws working against her, Liesl must discover who she truly is before her fate is sealed.
8. WITH MALICE BY EILEEN COOK
Secrets. Lies. Amnesia.
An addictive psychological thriller, in which a teenage girl, following a mysterious accident, cannot remember the last six weeks of her life, desperately tries to uncover the truth about what happened—and what she's done.
Eighteen-year-old Jill Charron wakes up in a hospital room, leg in a cast, stitches in her face, and a big blank canvas where the last six weeks should be. She comes to discover she was involved in a fatal accident while on a school trip in Italy three days previous but was jetted home by her affluent father in order to receive quality care. Care that includes a lawyer. And a press team. Because maybe the accident . . . wasn't an accident. Wondering not just what happened but what she did, Jill tries to piece together the events of the past six weeks before she loses her thin hold on her once-perfect life.
9. SAWKILL GIRLS BY CLAIRE LEGRAND
The New Girl. The Pariah. The Queen Bee.
A girl gang fights back against an evil who preys on young women.
Beware of the woods and the dark, dank deep. He’ll follow you home, and he won’t let you sleep. Who are the Sawkill Girls? Marion: the new girl. Awkward and plain, steady and dependable. Weighed down by tragedy and hungry for love she’s sure she’ll never find. Zoey: the pariah. Luckless and lonely, hurting but hiding it. Aching with grief and dreaming of vanished girls. Maybe she’s broken—or maybe everyone else is. Val: the queen bee. Gorgeous and privileged, ruthless and regal. Words like silk and eyes like knives, a heart made of secrets and a mouth full of lies. Their stories come together on the island of Sawkill Rock, where gleaming horses graze in rolling pastures and cold waves crash against black cliffs. Where kids whisper the legend of an insidious monster at parties and around campfires. Where girls have been disappearing for decades, stolen away by a ravenous evil no one has dared to fight… until now.
10. SPECIAL ONES BY EM BAILEY Isolation. Fear. Exposed.
He keeps us here because we're Special. Esther is one of the Special Ones: four young spiritual guides who live in a remote farmhouse under the protection of a mysterious cult leader. He watches them around the clock, ready to punish them if they forget who they are—and all the while, broadcasting their lives to eager followers on the outside.
Esther knows that if she stops being Special, he will “renew” her. Nobody knows what happens to the Special Ones who are taken away from the farm for renewal, but Esther fears the worst. Like an actor caught up in an endless play, she must keep up the performance if she wants to survive long enough to escape.
11. THE DARK DESCENT OF ELIZABETH FRANKENSTEIN
Madness. Obsession. Murder.
The story of Victor Frankenstein’s sister.
Elizabeth Lavenza hasn’t had a proper meal in weeks. Her thin arms are covered with bruises from her “caregiver,” and she is on the verge of being thrown into the streets…until she is brought to the home of Victor Frankenstein, an unsmiling, solitary boy who has everything—except a friend. Victor is her escape from misery. Elizabeth does everything she can to make herself indispensable—and it works. She is taken in by the Frankenstein family and rewarded with a warm bed, delicious food, and dresses of the finest silk. Soon she and Victor are inseparable. But her new life comes at a price. As the years pass, Elizabeth’s survival depends on managing Victor’s dangerous temper and entertaining his every whim, no matter how depraved. Behind her blue eyes and sweet smile lies the calculating heart of a girl determined to stay alive no matter the cost…as the world she knows is consumed by darkness.
12. NOT EVEN BONES BY REBECCA SCHAEFFER
Betrayal. Revenge. Magical Body Parts.
Nita doesn’t murder supernatural beings and sell their body parts on the internet—her mother does that. Nita just dissects the bodies after they’ve been “acquired.” Until her mom brings home a live specimen and Nita decides she wants out; dissecting a scared teenage boy is a step too far.
But when she decides to save her mother’s victim, she ends up sold in his place—because Nita herself isn’t exactly “human.” She has the ability to alter her biology, a talent that is priceless on the black market. Now on the other side of the bars, if she wants to escape, Nita must ask herself if she’s willing to become the worst kind of monster.
13. CHEERLEADERS BY KARA THOMAS
A Suicide. An Accident. A Double Homicide.
There are no more cheerleaders in the town of Sunnybrook. First there was the car accident—two girls dead after hitting a tree on a rainy night. Not long after, the murders happened. Those two girls were killed by the man next door. The police shot him, so no one will ever know his reasons. Monica’s sister was the last cheerleader to die. After her suicide, Sunnybrook High disbanded the cheer squad. No one wanted to be reminded of the girls they’d lost. That was five years ago. Now the faculty and students at Sunnybrook High want to remember the lost cheerleaders. But for Monica, it’s not that easy. She just wants to forget. Only, Monica’s world is starting to unravel. There are the letters in her stepdad’s desk, an unearthed, years-old cell phone, a strange new friend at school…. Whatever happened five years ago isn’t over. Some people in town know more than they’re saying. And somehow, Monica is at the center of it all. There are no more cheerleaders in Sunnybrook, but that doesn’t mean anyone else is safe.
I know, we can’t believe it, either. Ten years since Katsa came into our lives. Ten years since we fell head over heels for Po. Ten years since Kristin Cashore charmed us all with her YA fantasy about a world both brutal and beautiful, with characters who were often the same.
That’s why we decided to give the book a brand new look, and asked Kristin to write new content inside of it! To get your copy, order from any of the outlets below.
And, just for you, a special letter from Kristin below!
Dear readers,
There’s a point in Graceling where Katsa carries Bitterblue, who’s ten at the time, across a famously impassable mountain peak. Katsa does this wearing snowshoes that she’s built herself from scratch, on a mountain with no tools in her possession, after having seen snowshoes maybe once or twice in her life. She does it while recovering from a fist fight with a mountain lion. She does it while wearing no coat, because she’s given her furs (which she also made herself) to the little girl on her back. She does it in a shrieking blizzard. She does it without much consideration, because it’s what she has to do. By the time she’s done carrying Bitterblue across the mountain pass, she’s decided that it probably was a terrible idea, but it’s okay, because she’s done it, and she’s fine. Bitterblue is fine too. Everyone is fine. Katsa was born to do these things.
Next weekend, I’m boarding a three-masted tall ship in Svalbard, which is a Norwegian archipelago in the Arctic Ocean 10° from the North Pole. I’ll be on the Arctic Ocean for two weeks, living in this tall ship, experiencing one of the world’s most unique and beautiful environments, possibly encountering polar bears, and hopefully not puking my guts out. In case you think I’m anything like Katsa, however, allow me to disabuse you. This evening, I will carefully pack into at least two separate, wheeled suitcases a substantial amount of clothing composed of Gore-Tex, synthetic down, real down, fleece, and wool. (Can you imagine Katsa with a wheeled suitcase?) I have Arctic muck boots. I have a scopolamine patch behind my ear this very minute, because I’m trying out this powerful motion-sickness drug before I go, just to make sure it works for me (and the jury is still out on that one. I feel pretty darn weird). I have a bright orange coat, which friends suggested I bring rather than the navy blue coat I was considering, because “It will make you easier to spot.” Nice to hear that my friends, who sure knows I’m not Katsa, are imagining rescue scenarios. Anytime I’m on land in the Arctic, I will have an armed guard (because of polar bears). When I’m on the tall ship, I will have heat, a bed, a bathroom and shower, and delicious meals prepared for me. Not only am I not Katsa, I am Bitterblue. I am a fragile and delicate human, with lots of gear and food and other stuff created by other people’s genius, and with experts making my adventure possible.
And I’m so lucky! After all, I’m not really Bitterblue either. I’m not fleeing to the Arctic to escape a psychopath; I’m going there voluntarily, because my life has offered me the opportunity to join an artist residency called The Arctic Circle, designed by experts who make this amazing opportunity possible. I’ll be on board the ship with painters, photographers, filmmakers, composers, sculptors, muralists. Why has my life offered me this opportunity? Because I wrote a book once, and people took it into their hearts, and put me in the fortunate and rare position of being able to write full time. Because I found myself wanting to write more books, in which I was constantly drawn to tales of tall ships and cold climates, loneliness and adventure, and self-discovery. Because a painter friend did this residency once, came back home, and told me I should do it too. And because I always seem to choose to do things that feel just a little bit too hard for me.
Like writing a book.
I can’t believe it’s been ten years since Graceling was published. I wrote it on faith, not really understanding what it would mean or how it would change my life, but feeling that I had to at least try. It’s about people who don’t really know what they’re getting into, but they’re doing their best, and they’re stretching themselves, and they’re trying to find the best way to live in a world that sometimes feels a little out of their control. Katsa was born for physical adventure, but some other parts of her story are out of her ken… I think that’s what made her, and her adventure, interesting to me.
Similarly, I don’t really feel like I was born for this adventure I’m about to embark upon. Surely an adventurer should be more hardy, and less in need of scopolamine patches and Gore-Tex? Less anxious about silly things, like whether I’m going to forget to pack my toothbrush? Less paralyzed by the question of which socks to bring? But I think one of the things I’ve learned in my life — and I hope I write books in which my characters are learning this too — is that the most worthwhile adventures are the ones that you might not feel 100% equipped for as you set out to do them. It is really worthwhile to do things you’re not sure you can do.
Thank you, dear readers who have taken Katsa’s adventure into your hearts. Each of you is an adventurer in your own life. I hope her successes entertain you and her vulnerabilities comfort and empower you. I also hope you love her new look, and will celebrate ten years with me! :o)
Au revoir,
Kristin
We’ve got another taste of HMH Teen for you, and this time, it’s a gorgeous fantasy inspired by Japanese mythology! Every generation, a competition is held where girls across the kingdom compete to marry the Emperor...and become the next Empress. To do so, they must conquer magical rooms with powers infused by the seasons—Winter, Spring, Summer, and Fall. Mari is one of those girls, with big dreams to win the contest, and the Emperor’s heart. But not because she loves him...because she has to steal his fortune. In order to do so, she’ll need to keep her forbidden magic a secret and survive—without falling in love along the way.
Scroll down to read an excerpt of EMPRESS OF ALL SEASONS.
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CHAPTER ONE- Mari
BREATHING IN THE DARK, and not her own.
Mari tilted her head. She couldn’t see in the pitch-black, but she closed her eyes. It helped her focus. She knew this space well, this room with no windows and an almost airtight door. Sometimes the musty smell invaded her dreams, morphed them into nightmares. The Killing Room, and Mari was executioner.
She inhaled, holding the stale air in her lungs. There, in the right corner, two feet away, someone waited. Afraid.
Mari stepped forward, the floorboards creaking under her weight.
“P-p-please,” a high-pitched male voice wailed.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” she said, letting a note of reassurance enter her voice. Not yet, anyway. She probed the wall. Her fingers brushed against a wooden ledge, then paper pulled tight over a bamboo frame. Matches rested next to the lamp. She struck one and lit the cotton wick, illuminating the room in a soft glow. The scent of rapeseed oil crept through the air. When her eyes refocused, she saw that the man was dressed in hakama pants and a surcoat. Samurai garb. The uniform of the military elite.
“Gods and goddesses,” he said, mouth lifting into a sneer, “I thought you were one of them. Why, you’re no taller than a sapling! What happened, little girl, did you lose your mommy?”
Mari regretted her paltry effort to comfort him. That’s what you get for being nice. Men. They always underestimated her.
Opposite the man, a variety of weapons leaned in the corner: a sickle and chain, a bow and arrow, a nunchaku . . . Mari gestured toward them. “Choose.” She liked to give the men a fighting chance. I’m sporting that way.
The samurai huffed. “You don’t know what you ask, little girl. I trained at the Palace of Illusions with the shōgun himself.”
Mari clenched her teeth. This was growing tedious. “I said, choose your weapon.”
The samurai strolled to the corner. He rifled through the weapons and selected a katana and a wakizashi.
Predictable. The long and short swords were samurai weapons. Her opponent brandished them, sharp-edged steel blades glittering in the lamplight.
Mari sauntered to the corner and quickly chose her own instru- ment. Always the same. The naginata. The reaping sword was a long bamboo pole culminating in a wicked curved blade. Thought to be a woman’s weapon, none of her opponents ever selected it. It was the only weapon Mari knew how to wield. “If you train on all weapons, you will master none,” her mother always said.
Mari stamped the naginata on the ground. Dust billowed around the hem of her navy kimono. “I’m very sorry, but from this moment, you’re dead,” she said, unsheathing the blade.
The samurai laughed, the sound robust and biting.
Mari cut his chortle short. She dipped into a crouch, letting the pole end of the naginata swing out in an arc, clipping the back of the samurai’s knees.
He collapsed with a loud thud. Mari winced. The big ones always fall the hardest.
“That was a mistake,” he said, clambering to his feet. He crossed the swords in front of him, a dangerous glint in his eye.
At least he’s taking me seriously now. “No,” Mari corrected. “That was intentional.”
The samurai rushed her, and she followed suit. The blade end of her naginata clashed against his big sword. Sparks flew.
The samurai jabbed with the smaller sword, and Mari dodged. A hairsbreadth from being impaled. That was too close. Her pulse quickened with fear and excitement. This samurai is well-trained. Before the samurai could pull back, Mari began twisting the naginata, catching both of his weapons in the windmill. Forced to let go, the samurai dropped his swords, which scattered to the ground, a few feet away. Well-trained, but not as well-trained as I.
She couldn’t allow him time to take a breath, to reach for his weapons. End this. She snap-kicked, her right foot connecting with his abdomen. The samurai grunted and doubled over. He clutched his stomach as he tipped to the ground.
She stood over him, breath ragged, victory sealed. Warmth radiated through her body. She felt the beast rise within her, felt her brown eyes dissolve into twin black abysses. Her hands flexed as muscles spasmed and bones popped. Her fingernails grew into black pointed talons. The skin on the back of her hands bloomed with leathery, charcoal-colored scales as tough and thick as a rhinoceros hide. She ignored the agony of transformation. She had trained her- self to shut it out.
The samurai stared, horror-struck.
She knew she looked hideous — still part human, but with the eyes and hands of a monster. She brought her face close to the samurai’s, and when she spoke, her voice came out as a rasp. “You were right after all. I am one of them.”
CHAPTER TWO- Taro
TARO RUBBED THE MARK between his eyebrows, where pain blossomed. For someone chosen by gods and goddesses, he’d certainly suffered his fair share of ailments during his seventeen years of life.
The ache between his eyebrows pulsed, beating in time with the hive of activity surrounding him. In the Main Hall, servants bustled, scrubbing the zelkova floor on hands and knees, dusting the rafters with peacock feathers, polishing the four sets of statuesque doors, one for each season. Preparations for the competition had begun weeks ago.
Most days, the commotion was enough to grate on Taro’s nerves, a reminder that his hard-won solitude would soon end. But today, that was not what annoyed him. Today it was a disturbance so great that he’d heard it from inside his workroom, clear on the other side of the palace.
His features darkened at the spectacle before him. Two imperial samurai, clad in black lacquered armor, dragged a screaming kappa into the Hall. A muscle ticked in Taro’s jaw at the sound of nails scraping across metal. The kappa’s green webbed feet left a trail of slimy, muddy water on the high-glossed floor. A servant girl who had just finished cleaning it gasped and skittered off, vacating the space with the rest of the workers.
Behind the kappa trailed a retinue of priests. Their dove-gray robes brushed the ground, their steps careful and measured. Their voices were synced as they chanted curses in a song so beautiful, it made humans weep.
Unfortunately for the prisoner, the words were earsplitting to kappa, indeed to all yōkai. Chains, shackles, and wooden cages were unnecessary. The priests’ chants kept the kappa locked tight in an in- visible torture chamber.
Smaller than a human child, with a turtle-like shell on his back and an orange beak protruding playfully from his feathered face, the kappa didn’t appear to be a threat. He was sweet-looking. Cute. Seemingly benign.
Things are rarely as they appear. Taro knew this to be true. He lived in the Palace of Illusions, after all. He also knew that kappa were notorious for their strength, possessing five times that of a human man, and for their love of entrails, usually harvested from live victims. Taro placed a hand over his stomach. No wonder the servants fled the Hall.
The kappa’s screams ceased, quieting to a coo. The language he spoke was unintelligible to humans, but Taro recognized the plaintive tone of his voice. The kappa pleads for his life. As they passed, the samurai and priests bowed to the emperor’s son. Taro inclined his head, the barest hint of recognition.
The entourage slowed at a set of mahogany and cypress doors. A bar, made from the trunk of a thousand-year-old oak tree, rested across, blocking what was inside from getting out. A relief of a mountain covered in gleaming snow was carved into the wood.
The Winter Room. As with each of the Seasonal Rooms, it could be used for pleasure, or for pain.
Today, it is pain.
A sick feeling took root in Taro’s gut, but his countenance remained stoic. He was good at wearing masks. His favorite was a formidable expression. He used it often. So often that sometimes he forgot who lay beneath.
The samurai dumped the kappa just outside the Winter Room doors. The creature whimpered, its spindly limbs curling in like a dried leaf. Unwilling to watch, Taro flicked his gaze to the tattooed priests. Cobalt ink covered their bodies. Even their faces were permanently branded with swirling, calligraphed curses. If a yōkai touched a priest’s skin, it would burn.
Grunting, the samurai lifted the oak bar, then stepped back, the heavy wood weighing down their shoulders. The doors sprang open. Snow flurries escaped, melting in the warmth of the Main Hall. Icy air brushed Taro’s cheeks, and his lips twitched. From the depths of the room, he thought he heard the echo of his long-gone laughter. As a child, he’d played in the snowfields and hidden in the Ice Forest. Now only death walked there.
Footsteps echoed behind him. The priests and samurai sank to the ground. Stillness descended, punctuated by the low hum of the priests’ chants. Only one man commanded such a reception. Taro’s father, the emperor, divine ruler of humans and yōkai, Heavenly Sovereign, paused beside him. Heat rose on Taro’s neck as his father’s shoulder brushed his.
They were the same height now, almost mirror images of each other, except for the fine lines of aging that had settled around the emperor’s mouth and eyes. Their broad shoulders swathed in purple robes cut imposing figures. Their hair was shaved on both sides but left long on top and pulled into knots. On their left hips, they wore the long and short swords, a nod to their samurai training. It was not enough to be chosen by gods. Ruling an empire required strength and force, the fierceness of a dragon. Traits Taro had always lacked. Until now.
Born prematurely, Taro had been a sickly child, small and given to coughing fits. In the last two years, he’d undergone a semi-metamorphosis, shedding his frailty. His lungs had cleared, and his muscles had thickened, his build now as massive as a bear’s. Sometimes when he gazed at his hands, he didn’t recognize them, the blunt strength in his fingertips, the power of his grip.
Taro kept his eyes forward as the emperor cast him a searching glance. If his spine straightened any more, it might snap. His father studied Taro often, now that he’d grown.
“Father,” Taro said in a monotone.
“Son,” the emperor replied. The emperor’s voice always made Taro think of rusted iron — cold, hard, crusted, useless. “I thought you would be off playing in your workroom.” Taro swallowed against the bite of his father’s tone. The emperor had very definitive views on what made a man. Men did not cry. Men were not small. Men sought power and dominion. Taro spent most days avoiding his father.
The emperor’s driving purpose was to rid the East Lands of yōkai. Taro craved privacy, quiet spaces where he could invent things. If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were made up entirely of gears and springs, his childhood nurse had often commented. The emperor certainly never understood his son’s passion for engineering. Rumors swirled that there was a time when the emperor had been softer, that he had loved deeply and without judgment. If this was once the case, Taro had never witnessed it. And as for Taro, he knew what the servants and courtiers whispered about him. The Cold Prince. More metal than human. A man without a heart. Perhaps this was true.
“I heard the commotion.” Taro didn’t bother to hide his annoyance. A muscle rippled along his jaw.
“We caught a kappa in the moat,” said the emperor.
Taro expelled a breath. The kappa must have been starving to risk coming so close to the palace.
His father arched a single silver brow.“Unbelievable, isn’t it?” The emperor waved an impatient hand and spoke loudly.“Enough.”
The chanting ceased.
The kappa stilled. His eyes — black, wounded, beseech- ing — rested on the emperor.
“His odor is offensive,” the emperor intoned. The Main Hall did smell like fish and pond water. The emperor jerked his chin. “Throw him in the Winter Room.”
Kappa may not understand human words, but this one clearly comprehended a death sentence. The kappa’s eyes sharpened into res- olute points. The creature opened its beak, screamed, and shoved the samurai.
For one glorious moment, the imperial guards were airborne, their bodies graceful arcs, hyperextended in space, and Taro marveled at the small yōkai’s strength. The samurai crashed into the wall with a dull clunk, slumped and dazed.
A gust of snow from the Winter Room swirled into the Hall, obscuring Taro’s vision. Out of the white, the kappa barreled toward Taro and his father, webbed hands outstretched, beak open in a shriek.
Taro squared his shoulders, counted his breaths. One. Two. Three. His mask did not slip. Nor did the emperor’s. For all their differences, they shared a few traits. A cold air. Pride. No one would dare defy the emperor or the prince. To do so would be to court the wrath of the gods and goddesses. Religion was the emperor’s greatest weapon.
The priests quickly resumed their chanting, climbing to their feet and beginning to sway. The kappa paused, clasping his webbed hands over his ears. A futile effort. The air thickened and crackled with the priests’ incantations. The Hall grew colder. The kappa toppled to his knees, doubled over. Paralyzed.
The emperor barked at the dazed samurai.“Get up.”
Slowly, the samurai regained their wits and dragged the kappa’s limp body to the threshold of the Winter Room. Taro turned a cheek as they threw him in.
If the kappa was lucky, the frigid temperatures would kill him before the predators did. The Seasonal Rooms created their own weather, aided by Master Ushiba, the revered Seasonist. A blizzard could come. In the Winter Room, that might be the quickest way to die.
A final wave of cold air blasted Taro as the doors swung shut. At least it isn’t the Summer Room. His features tightened at the thought.
The blazing heat pressed down like a hot iron, blistering the skin of its victims.
The oak bar thudded back into place. The kappa screamed, beat- ing tiny fists, rattling the doors. Another futility. The doors would hold against the kappa; they held against oni, the strongest yōkai. Taro turned and began to stride away.
“You won’t stay?” his father called after him.
Something inside Taro clenched. A sound of disgust emanated from low in his throat, and he allowed his mask to slip, just this once. “I’m afraid not everyone has such a taste for death as you,” he replied.
The emperor laughed. “Go hide in your workroom. But I will expect you at dinner tomorrow night. We need to discuss the competition.”
Taro bit his tongue. The competition. His heavy footsteps matched the dull thud of his heartbeat. In a matter of days, hundreds of young women would descend upon the palace, armed and hopeful. The rules were simple: Survive the Rooms. Conquer the Seasons. Win the prince.
Taro seethed at the threat to his hard-won solitude and the ri- diculousness of his being reduced to a prize to be won, a thing to be auctioned off. He shook his head. No. He would not stand idly by while his entire life was taken from him. Girls may come. They may conquer the Rooms. One may even win. But Taro would not marry her. He had a plan.
CHAPTER THREE- Mari
THE SUN WAS just an orange flicker on the horizon, and the green trees appeared black against the encroaching twilight. Slushy snow dotted Mari’s path, winter’s last stand against the spring. She hastened her steps toward home, hunching her shoulders against the crisp wind. Best not to be caught in the forest after dark.
Just as the final ray of light sank beneath the horizon, Mari ex- ited the woods. A clean scent hung in the thin air. She inhaled deeply. Home.
A few steps, and Mari arrived at the gates of Tsuma, her village. Paper tied to the iron bars flapped in the wind. Below were gifts, trib- utes left for her people, their packaging absurdly bright against the black gates and gray stone wall surrounding Tsuma. Travelers rarely ventured up the mountain. Those not acclimated to the altitude often suffered headaches, insomnia, and dizziness — Mountain Madness.
But some — human and yōkai — would risk it.
They came to leave offerings for her clan — fish, flowered hairpins, silk embroidered obi, even copper coins. Affixed to each tribute was a mon, a familial crest in the shape of a mandarin orange, a three- leaf hollyhock, or intersecting loops. A fool’s errand. Mari’s top lip curled as she bent to collect the bribes. Her clan would enjoy the gifts, but they would not spare those families. Everyone was fair game. Prey.
Mari navigated Tsuma’s barren roads by memory. Though the village was small, it was built like a puzzle. The streets had no names, and the houses no numbers. The homes were all similar — wooden and unadorned. The steep thatched roofs always made Mari think of hands clasped in prayer. Many feared Mari’s clan, and just as many would like to see them destroyed. Only Tsuma’s inhabitants knew who resided in each home, how each piece of the puzzle fit together.
Two left turns, fourteen steps, and Mari was home. Light glowed behind the shuttered windows of her cottage. Hand on the door, she paused, taking a breath to steady herself. Facing imperial samurai in the shed was one thing. A more formidable opponent awaited her inside. Mari shook her head and laughed at her childish fear. It’s only your mother.
Inside, she slipped off her sandals, dumped the tributes, and padded into the tatami room. Under her feet, the floor squeaked. Another small measure of protection: boards that sang so that no one could sneak up behind you. Warmth prickled her hands and cheeks as the wooden interior of her home came into focus. Save for a low table, the tatami room was intentionally bare. To any who entered, the home appeared simple. Poor. But beneath the singing floorboards was hidden untold wealth.
“You’re late.” Her mother’s quiet, even voice drifted from the kitchen.
Usually, a screen partitioned the rooms, but tonight it was folded aside. Framed in the archway, her mother made a pretty picture as she bent over the irori. In the small hearth, an orange flame licked the bottom of a cast-iron teakettle. Steam charged from the spout, unleashing a low whistle. Mari’s mother, Tami, poured the boiling liquid into a ceramic teapot on a plain wooden tray. Flowery notes scented the air. Jasmine tea. Mari’s favorite. With practiced grace, her mother shuffled into the tatami room and placed the tray at the center of the low table. “How did it go?” Her mother knelt and began to pour.“Mari?”
Shaken from her cold trance, Mari stepped forward.“People will look for an imperial samurai.”
Her mother delicately shrugged a shoulder, taking a sip of tea.“A disgraced imperial samurai. He liked the hostess houses too much, frequented ones with young girls.” Mari shuddered. “No one will come for him. Sit,” her mother commanded. Mari obliged, settling across from her.“Now, how did everything go?”
Mari sighed, folding her hands together atop the table. “Every- thing went fine. He didn’t even take my weapon.” Her chin jutted up smugly.
Her mother’s dark eyes flickered.“It is the last one.”
Mari’s heart tripped in her chest. Her smugness slipped away, unease taking its place. Soon a far more perilous journey would be- gin.
Her mother ran a manicured finger over the lip of the ceramic cup.“It’s a shame you didn’t inherit my looks.”
At her mother’s words, Mari felt the tiniest pinch, as if a needle pricked her side. If only your hair had the same shine as mine; yours is so dull and lifeless. It’s too bad your teeth overlap in such an unfortunate way. Perhaps if you stood straighter, you wouldn’t look so . . . substantial. As always, Mari couldn’t help staring at her mother, at everything she should have been and wasn’t — long hair the color of the midnight sky, golden skin that never needed powder, a graceful, lithe bod
These days, Mari rarely looked in mirrors. She had abandoned hope that her reflection would change a long time ago. She’d stopped growing at five feet. She wasn’t fat, but she was thickly muscled, sturdy. Her face was round, the shape of an apple. She wasn’t ugly. She was plain. And in a village of preternaturally beautiful women, average meant unattractive.
The only trait Mari shared with her mother, shared with all Animal Wife yōkai, was the beast hidden inside her human form. Animal Wives were born for a singular purpose: to trick men into marriage and then steal their fortunes. Men are conditioned to take. Women are conditioned to give, Mari’s mother once told her. Long ago, our clan decided to stop giving and start taking.
Mari ignored her mother’s comment. She refused to apologize for her many deficits.
Wind beat against the shuttered windows, and a cry drifted through the slats. Not wolf, bear, or owl. Animal Wife. Mari startled to attention, her mother’s words forgotten. She knew the origin of the wail.“Hissa is still in labor?”
“You are pale. I’ve saved you some dinner,” her mother said, pushing a covered tray toward Mari.
Mari lifted the cloth from the tray, revealing a bowl of sticky rice topped with strips of dried seaweed. Her stomach roared. Hissa can wait a few seconds more. She dug her fingers in and shoved a scoop of rice into her mouth.
“Mari,” her mother chided. “Have you forgotten how to use hashi?”
Mari shrugged. It was a small victory, offending her mother’s delicate sensibilities. “It tastes better this way.” She licked her fingers with a smack.“Hissa?” she prodded.
Her mother’s lips pressed together. She shot a pointed look to the unused chopsticks. Mari’s fingers curled on her lap. A standoff. Her mother would not dole out information until Mari complied. With a sigh, Mari picked up the two sticks and proceeded to eat with them. She should have known better than to spar with her mother. She is the one opponent you’ll never beat. One look, and you shrivel like a slug doused with raw salt.
Her mother was slow to answer. “Still in labor. But her time approaches.”
Mari chewed a bite of rice and swallowed.“I hope she has a girl.” “That would be nice.” Tami smiled, an odd combination of bitter
and biting. At this, Mari tensed. She was an only child, but not the only child her mother had given birth to. Two boys had come before Mari. Two half brothers she would never know. Because Tsuma kept her daughters and discarded her sons. Animal Wives’ traits passed only to females, making them full-blooded yōkai. Boys were halflings — abominations.
Mari focused on filling the pit in her stomach. A knock sounded at the door. Mari’s chewing slowed. Who can it be? Visitors past dark were uncommon.
The door slid open, bells tinkling. Ayumi entered, her sandals still on, a sure sign of bad news. “Forgive me, Tami-sama,” she addressed Mari’s mother.
“Hissa?” Mari asked, her heartbeat quickening under her ribcage. “Yes. She’s had her baby.” Ayumi scowled furiously. “A boy. She
refuses to let him go.”
Mari’s mother sighed and stood.“I will come.”
Mari rose to her feet as well. Tami regarded her daughter, indeci- sion etched in her expression. She is going to order me to stay home. A little ball of rebellion loosened in Mari’s veins. She inhaled through her nose, ready to argue, to insist she be included. I won’t be left be- hind. She’d never attended a delivery. But this was Hissa. Her best friend.
A year ago, Mari had kissed Hissa’s fair cheeks, bidding her good- bye before she departed Tsuma. Two months later, Hissa returned, her hands spilling over with riches, a triumphant smile lighting her face. Hissa had tricked a wealthy merchant into love and marriage, and on their wedding night, she stole away with his most valuable wares — heavy silk kimonos, washi paper, umbrellas wrought from the finest bamboo . . .
Everything would have been perfect. If only Hissa hadn’t been pregnant.
As her pregnancy bloomed, Hissa grew zealous in her belief that the child would be female. “It will be wonderful,” she told Mari, stroking her abdomen where the baby kicked. Mari remembered how lovely Hissa looked then, beaming and radiant. Glowing. “I’ll have a little girl. You will be her auntie. Auntie Mari! We’ll dress her in silks and play puppets.”
Mari’s heart lodged in her throat. Her friend had been so high on hope. How far she’d fallen. But Mari would be there to catch her.
Tami’s mouth opened and then shut with an audible click. She jerked her head toward the door. “Come on, then.” A flush of relief spread through Mari’s limbs, and she stowed the little ball of rebel- lion away for another time.
She followed her mother and Ayumi out the door. I’m coming, Hissa. Through thick or thin, the friends once had promised each other. Through boy or girl, Mari amended. A new life had come into their village, and just as quickly, it would be snuffed out.
CHAPTER FOUR- Taro
FIVE MINUTES PAST MIDNIGHT, and Taro wasn’t sleeping. Exhaustion chased him like a dog, but he would not succumb. While he waited for the rest of the palace to slumber, Taro worked. Deep in the palace, in an all-but-forgotten room, the prince built . . . things.
His eyes grew bloodshot, and his limbs ached as he hammered copper into thin sheets. Grease coated his hands and gummed up under his nails. With every bang of the hammer, he sought to drive out the kappa’s cries, his begging in his native tongue.
It’s no use. Taro’s throat constricted with emotions he refused to feel. The kappa’s screams haunted him, a battering ram bashing at his self-control, daring him to react. A fitting punishment for standing by and watching as the tiny creature was executed — and for what? For swimming in the imperial moat? For being born yōkai?
What if he had spoken up, opposed his father? It was unfathom- able. The emperor considered any expression of sympathy for yōkai a weakness. Taro had learned his lesson long ago.
Only once had he asked for the life of a yōkai to be spared. Taro was ten and didn’t understand the depths of his father’s hatred.
The yōkai was a tanuki, a small gray-and-black-furred animal with the head of a raccoon and the body of a dog. Taro had found the starving cub in the tea garden. He cuddled the emaciated creature to his chest, repeating the comforting words his nursemaid would whisper to him. There, now. It will be all right. The tanuki pressed its small wet nose into Taro’s neck and purred, a deep rumble that stirred Taro’s lonely soul. He carried the creature’s limp body to the emperor, presenting it like a sacred offering. And in the way of a small boy who yearns for something with acute desperation, he said,“I want to keep it as a pet.”
The emperor’s smile was thin and cold. To this day, whenever Taro remembered it, a chill settled around his shoulders.“Men do not keep pets. Especially yōkai pets,” he said, his voice thick with scorn.
“Oh,” said young Taro. “What should I do with it, then?” He wheezed, for he was small and sickly then.
“Put it back where you found it.” Taro listened to his father and released the tanuki into the tea garden, but not before feeding it an apple and letting it lap at a bowl of rice wine. Tanuki were fond of alcohol. Perhaps the little fellow would find a home elsewhere.
But the next day, Taro found the tanuki in a cage in the garden. His father had had it imprisoned for the entertainment of the courtiers, who were mocking the creature mercilessly. A couple of days later, it died.
From then on, Taro found solace in his metal workroom. He did not need his father’s love. He would never again find room in his heart for a creature that could be taken from him. His metal creations kept him company. They did not talk back, they did not demand, and they could not die.
Lost in his memories, Taro failed to notice the hammer in his hand drift from the copper sheet. The hammer smashed his thumb, and Taro grunted in pain. Tossing the tool aside, he palmed his head. On his workbench, a wingless mechanical bird jumped on tin feet — Taro’s latest companion. Just last week he had placed a tiny heart made of gears in the bird’s chest. His miniature creation was nearly ready. All it needed was wings. He’d been working on making the copper malleable enough to carve metal feathers. A rare smile touched Taro’s lips. Perhaps the bird would soar high enough to over- take the palace walls. Wouldn’t that be something?
The hands of the clock ticked. Early morning had arrived. It was time. Taro’s smile dissolved. He unwound the bird, and it shuttered its steel eyelids. With a single breath, he extinguished the candle and slipped from the workroom.
Taro regarded the pelts lining the hallway: boar, lion, great bear, even a kirin, a rare chimerical yōkai beast that resembled a deer, only with dragon-like scales and a golden fiery mane. Torches blazed in metal sconces, the light reflecting the gilded walls and creating dancing shadows on the high ceilings.
At inception, the Palace of Illusions was built plainly and with- out nails, the interior nothing more than an open room. There had been no grand Main Hall or painted rice-paper panels. Since then, the dwelling had evolved, shedding its humble origins. To best his predecessors, each emperor had added new features: sprawling gar- dens with exotic plants, an imposing gate with snarling stone komainu, fierce lion dogs that acted as guardians and represented the beginning and the end of all things. The palace became a monument, a building of legends, where emperors would be immortalized.
Each emperor knew that all the gold and varnish couldn’t protect them. If given the chance, there were always those who would try to take it for themselves. Thus, the palace was safeguarded with priests’ curses. Illusions. A bottomless moat. Underground tunnels as intricate as lacework. Someday it would all be Taro’s: the riches, the command of the land, the power. I don’t want it. I don’t want any of it. I especially do not wish to be a prize in some stupid competition.
His lip curled in disgust as he pushed aside a tiger pelt. The decorative furs concealed trapdoors. In this hallway alone, there were ten. And in the Main Hall, the entry point to the Seasonal Rooms, there were more than one hundred. Dozens of samurai patrolled the tunnels below, ready to spring from the floorboards, surprise- phantoms of death hungry to mow down marauders.
As a boy, Taro had been forced to memorize the lacework tunnels, an easy task, given his nimble mind. His brain stored millions of memories, each like a painting chronicling the seconds of his life.
The hidden door opened and closed with noiseless ease. The hinges were kept well-oiled. Taro descended the stone stairs. He didn’t need a light. Sixteen steps, and he’d reach the bottom. Even if Taro hadn’t had such a fine memory, the tunnels had a simple key. Steps were measured in multiples of eight. Always sixteen steps down. One hundred twenty-eight steps to the Main Hall, with eight lefts and eight rights and eight steps in between.
Taro inhaled. The air was cool and musty. His broad shoulders brushed the walls. The tunnels were narrow in this part of the palace, widening as they drew closer to the Main Hall. A rodent scampered across his path, followed by a cat chasing its prey.
A hazy light flickered. He’d come to the section of tunnel where samurai patrolled. He let his feet fall heavily, announcing his en- trance. Two spears crossed and blocked his path. Taro arched a brow. “Your Majesty.” They bowed, lowering the spears. It wasn’t unusual for Taro to walk through the tunnels. As a boy, it had been a game to him, playing to see if he could sneak up on the samurai. He passed the samurai without acknowledging them. Taro’s nightly walks served a purpose. The guards were used to his presence. Un- suspecting. Soon these lacework tunnels would be his way out. Every day Taro walked these tunnels and dreamed of all the directions he could go. He longed for only one: the one that led to freedom from the castle walls. He’d vowed to be liberated from this fancy prison before the start of the competition.
Eight steps and a left turn, and Taro came to another set of guards. These two slept at their posts. Taro flattened against a wall and waited for another two guards to vacate a section of the tunnel. Their patrols left certain parts unguarded, but only for a few seconds. He’d memorized every guard’s movements, the sound of their individual breathing, even what times they took breaks to relieve them- selves. He knew their habits, their distinct quirks. If he were planning to be Emperor, he’d warn them not to be so predictable. But their flaws were his gain.
Taro slipped from his hiding spot and up the stone stairs. Again, this trapdoor lifted and closed effortlessly. Taro was in the Main Hall. While pelts hid the trapdoors near Taro’s workroom, they were unnecessary here. The doors camouflaged seamlessly with the high- glossed zelkova floor.
Taro cracked his knuckles, the sound echoing through the cavernous space. He didn’t need to worry about guards here. The samurai in the tunnels were trained to keep their ears open for the slightest sound. Intruders would be detected before they made it to the Hall. Another chink in the palace armor.
The Winter Room doors rose above him as he faced them, dark and ominous. Moonlight danced through skylights. He pressed an ear to the door. No sound.
Placing a shoulder under the oak, he pushed up. Even with his newfound strength, the weight was nearly unbearable, and Taro swore foully as he removed it. The doors creaked open. Against a rush of cold air, Taro slipped inside. His feet immediately sank into inches of crusted-over snow, his toes curling at the freezing temperature. The night was clear in the vast Winter Room. The moon was thin, but the stars shone bright, making the snow appear like spun glass. Hundreds of thousands of meters of Ice Forest stretched before him. In the middle of all the trees was a river upon which he had skated as a child. In the distance, wolves bayed. Closer, a white owl screeched in the trees, and beneath the owl was the kappa.
As Taro had suspected, the kappa had frozen to death. Its mouth was open, strained in a perpetual scream. Little icicles hung from its orange beak. Something in Taro’s stone heart cracked. The yōkai had spent his last moment of life cold, afraid, alone. This is not how it should be.
Wind swirled, kicking up snow around Taro’s ankles, billowing his purple robe. He stared down at the kappa. Tucked into the belt of his hakama was his hammer. Usually, he used it to create. Today, he would destroy. He brought the hammer above his head and slammed it down upon the kappa. The resounding crack was inordinately loud in the silence. Startled owls and crows flew from their trees. Snow loosened from branches, falling in clumps to the ground.
The kappa shattered into icy crystals. One by one he gathered the kappa shards to his chest and strode through the forest until he came to the frozen river. He hammered a hole into the ice and cast the shards into the running water beneath. He had returned the creature to its rightful home.
There, he hoped, it would find peace.
***
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If you like your books a little bloody, prepare to devour this killer YA debut: NOT EVEN BONES by Rebecca Schaeffer is about a girl who dissects dead bodies for the magical black market...but soon enough finds herself the one in danger of being sold for parts. To save herself, she must unleash the monster within.
Keep scrolling to read the first FOUR chapters of NOT EVEN BONES!
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ONE
Nita stared at the dead body lying on the kitchen table. Middle-aged, and in the place between pudgy and overweight, he wore a casual business suit and a pair of wire-rimmed glasses with silver handles that blended into the gray at his temples. He was indistinguishable on the outside from any other human — the inside, of course, was a different matter.
“Another zannie?” Nita scowled at her mother and crossed her arms as she examined the body. “That’s not even Latin American. I thought we moved to Peru to hunt South and Central American unnaturals? Chupacabras and pishtacos and whatever.”
It wasn’t that zannies were common, but Nita had dis- sected plenty during the months she and her mother spent in Southeast Asia last year. She’d been looking forward to dissecting something new. If she’d wanted to cut up the same unnaturals as usual, she would have asked to stay with her dad in the States and work on unicorns.
Her mother shrugged, draping her jacket over a chair. “I saw a zannie, so I killed it. I mean, it was right in front of me. How could I resist?” Her black-and-red-striped bangs fell for- ward as she dipped her head and half smiled.
Nita shifted her feet, looking at the corpse again. She sighed. “I suppose you’ll want me to dissect and package it for sale?”
“Good girl.” Her mother grinned.
Nita went around to the other side of the dead body. “Care to help me move it to the workroom?”
Her mother rolled up her sleeves, and together they heaved the round, deceptively heavy body down the hall and onto a smooth metal table in the other room. White walls and fluorescent lights made it look like a hospital surgery room. Scalpels and bone saws lay in neat lines on the shelves, and a scale for weighing organs rested in front of a box of jars. In the corner, a tub of formaldehyde caused everything to reek of death. The smell kept sneaking out of the room and making its way into Nita’s clothes. She found it strangely comforting. That was probably a bad sign.
But, if Nita was being honest with herself, most of her habits and life choices were bad signs.
Her mother winked at Nita. “All ready for you.”
Nita looked down at her watch. “It’s nearly midnight.” “And?”
“And I want to sleep sometime.”
“So do it later.” Her mother waved it aside. “It’s not like you have anything to get up for.”
Nita paused, then bowed her head in acceptance. Even though it had been years since her mother had decided to illegally take Nita out of school, she still had some leftover instinct telling her not to go to bed too late. Which was silly, because even if she’d had school, she’d gladly have skipped it for a dissection. Dissections were fun.
Nita pulled on a white lab coat. She always liked wearing it— it made her feel like a real scientist at a prestigious university or laboratory somewhere. Sometimes she put the goggles on even when she didn’t need to just so she could complete the look.
“When are you heading out again?”
Her mother washed her hands in the sink. “Tonight. I got a tip when I was bringing this beauty back. I’m flying to Buenos Aires.”
“Pishtacos?” asked Nita, trying to hold in her excitement. She’d never had a chance to dissect a pishtaco. How would their bodies be modified for a diet made completely of human body fat? The promise of a pishtaco dissection was the only thing that had convinced Nita moving to Peru was a good idea. Her mother always knew how to tempt her.
Nita frowned. “Wait, there are no pishtacos in Argentina.” Her mother laughed. “Don’t worry. It’s something even better.”
“Not another zannie.” “No.”
Her mother dried her hands and headed back toward the kitchen, calling out as she went, “I’m going to head to the airport now. If all goes well, I should be back in two days.”
Nita followed and found her sitting, booted feet on the kitchen table as she unscrewed the top of the pisco bottle from the fridge and took a swig. Not cocktail-drink pisco, or mixed-with-soda pisco, just straight. Nita had tried it once when she was home alone, thinking it would be a good celebration drink to ring in her seventeenth birthday. It didn’t burn as much as whisky or vodka, or even sake, but it kicked in fast, and it kicked in hard. Her mother had found her with her face squished against the wall, crying because it wouldn’t move for her. Then Mom had laughed and left her there to suffer. She showed Nita the pictures afterward — there was an awful lot of drool on that wall.
Nita hadn’t sampled anything in the liquor cabinet since.
“Oh, and Nita?” Her mother put the pisco on the table. “Yeah?”
“Don’t touch the head. It has a million-dollar bounty. I plan to claim it.”
Nita looked down the hall, toward the room with the dead body. “I’m pretty sure the whole wanted-dead-or-alive thing ended in the Old West. If you just turn this guy’s head over, you’ll be arrested for murder.”
Her mother rolled her eyes. “Why, thank you, Nita, for teaching me such an important lesson. Whatever would I do without you?”
Nita winced. “Um.”
“The zannie is wanted for war crimes by the Peruvian government. He was a member of the secret police under the Fujimori administration.”
No surprise there. Pretty much every zannie in the world was wanted for some type of war crime. When your biological imperative was to torture people and eat their pain, there were only so many career paths open to you.
That reminded Nita — there was an article in the latest issue of Nature on zannies that she wanted to read. Someone who had clearly dissected fewer zannies than Nita, but with access to better equipment, had written a detailed analysis of how zannies consumed pain. There were all sorts of theo- ries about how pain was relative, and the same injury on two people could be perceived completely differently. The scientists had been researching zannies — was it the severity of the injury that fed them, or the person’s perception of how much it hurt?
They’d also managed to prove that while zannies could consume emotional pain, as well as physical, the effect was significantly less. Emotional and physical pain receptors over- lapped in the brain center, so the big question was, why did causing other people severe physical pain feed zannies, while causing severe emotional pain had less effect? Nita privately thought it was because physical pain had the added signals from nociceptors, but she was curious to see what others thought.
Her mother continued, oblivious to Nita’s wandering mind. “A number of interested parties have offered very large bounties for his head. They, unlike the government, don’t care if he’s alive to face trial.” There was a sharp flash of teeth. “And I’m happy to oblige them.”
She rose, put the pisco away, and pulled on her burgundy leather jacket. “Can you have him all packed up by the time I get back?”
Nita nodded. “Yeah, I think so.”
Her mother came over and kissed the top of her head. “What would I ever do without you, Anita?”
Before Nita could formulate a response, her mother was out the door. There was a creak and then a bang, and the house was silent. When her mother departed, sometimes Nita felt like she took more than just noise. She had a presence, a tangible energy to her that filled the house. Without her, it felt hollow. Like the life had left, and there was only a dead zannie in its place.
Which, really, there was. Nita turned back to her newest project and allowed herself a small smile. A pishtaco or a chupacabra would have been better, but she’d still enjoy a zannie.
The first thing she did was empty its pockets. An old- fashioned timepiece, some Brazilian reais (no Peruvian soles though, which was odd), and a wallet. Nita gazed at it a long time before putting it on the tray, unopened. Her mother would have already taken the credit cards and used them to get as much cash as possible before ditching them. The only other things left in the wallet would be identity cards, club memberships — things that would tell her about the person she was dissecting.
Nita had learned a long time ago — you don’t want to know anything about the person whose body you’re taking apart.
Better to think that it wasn’t a person at all. And really — it wasn’t. This was a zannie.
Nita took an elastic and tied her hair back in a puffy attempt at a ponytail. Her hair tended to grow sideways in frizzy kinks instead of down. In the glow of the fluorescent lights, its normally medium-brown color took on an orange tint. No one else thought it looked orange, but Nita insisted— she liked orange.
She put a surgical mask over her mouth, just below her freckle-spattered cheekbones, before putting the goggles on. After snapping on a pair of latex gloves, she rolled her tool set over to the metal slab where the body rested. She slipped her earbuds in and flicked on her Disney playlist.
It was time to begin.
Nita couldn’t remember a time when she hadn’t been fascinated by dead things — perhaps because her home was always full of them. As far back as she could remember, her parents had acquired the bodies of unnaturals and sold the pieces on the internet. The darknet, to be specific. Black market body part sellers didn’t just post their items on eBay. That was how you ended up with a short visit from the International Non- Human Police — INHUP — and a long stint in jail.
When Nita was younger, she used to run around the room, bringing her parents empty jars. Big glass ones for the heart, small vials and bags for the blood. Afterward, she’d label them and line them up on the shelf. Sometimes she’d stare at them, pieces of people she’d never met. There was something calm- ing about the still hearts, floating in formaldehyde. Something peaceful. No more beating, no more thumping rhythm and noise. Just silence.
Sometimes, she would look at the eyes, and they would stare back. Direct, open gazes. Not like living people, who flicked their eyes here and there while they lied, who could cram an entire conversation into a single gaze. The problem was, Nita could never understand what they were saying. It was better after people were dead. The eyes weren’t so tricky anymore.
It took Nita all night and the better part of the next day to finish with the zannie, put everything in jars of formaldehyde or freezer containers, and clean the dissection room until it sparkled.
The sun was up, and she didn’t feel tired, so she went to her favorite park on the cliffs overlooking the ocean. Tropical trees with large, bell-shaped flowers covered the benches like a canopy, and blue and white mosaics patterned the wall that prevented people from tumbling over the side of the cliff and into the sparkling waters below. Newspapers sat abandoned on the benches, from tabloids announcing Penelope Alvarez looks twenty at age forty-five. Good skin care or something more “unnatural”? to official news sources with headlines like Should Peru sign into INHUP? The advantages and disadvantages to an extraterritorial police force for unnatural-related incidents.
Peru was one of the only South American countries left that wasn’t a part of INHUP. There were always a few countries on every continent that stayed out so that black market dealers had somewhere to flee when INHUP finally nailed them. Certain people paid politicians handsomely to ensure it stayed that way.
Nita took a seat far away from the other people in the park. Under the shade of a floripondio tree, she cracked open her medical journals on unnaturals.
Sometimes it was frustrating reading them and knowing they were wrong about certain things. While lots of unnaturals were “out” and recognized by the world, most still hid, afraid of public backlash. So when the journals talked about zannies being the only species of unnatural that consumed nontangible things, like pain, Nita wished she could point out that there were creatures who consumed memories, strong emotions, and even dreams. INHUP just hadn’t officially recognized them yet. INHUP was big on doing damage control, and part of trying to decrease racism and discrimination against unnaturals was not telling people just how many types there were.
It also kept people like Nita’s mother from finding out about them. Sometimes.
Nita whiled the afternoon away in the shade of the tree, devouring medical research like candy, until the sun dipped so low there wasn’t enough light to read by.
When Nita got home, she was greeted by a string of exple- tives.
She crept into the hall, shoulders tight with tension. Her mother could be unpredictable when angry. Nita had been on the receiving end before and wasn’t eager to repeat the experience.
But ignoring her mother was more dangerous, so Nita padded into the kitchen.
“What are you doing?” Nita gaped, staring at the mess.
Her mother tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and gave Nita a wry smile. Around her, empty shipping crates littered the floor, along with packing materials like bubble wrap and Styrofoam worms. A gun sat on the kitchen table, and Nita briefly wondered what it was doing out.
“I want to have the zannie parts shipped out tomorrow.
We’ve got something new, and to be frank, this apartment isn’t big enough to hold all the parts.” Her mother flashed her another smile.
Nita was inclined to agree. Her dissection room was already at capacity, and they’d only dissected one zannie. There really wasn’t room for a second body.
“Something new, huh? I take it everything went well, then?” Nita’s mother laughed. “Do things ever go well with unnaturals that aren’t on the list?”
Among the unnaturals that were public knowledge, there was a list of “dangerous unnaturals” — unnaturals whose continued existence depended on them murdering other people. It wasn’t a crime to kill them in INHUP member countries, it was “preemptive self-defense.” But anything not on the list, the harmless unnaturals (which was most of them, in Nita’s experience), it was very much a crime to kill.
Her mom mostly brought Nita unnaturals on the list. Mostly.
Nita knew her mother had probably killed a lot of not-evil, not-dangerous people and sold them. She tried not to think about it too much, because really, there wasn’t much she could do about it, was there?
Besides, they were always dead by the time they got to Nita. And if they were already dead, it would be a shame to let their bodies go undissected.
Speaking of . . .
“What did you bring back?” Nita asked, weaving through the crates to the fridge, where she took out last night’s leftovers and shoved them into the microwave.
“Something special. I put it in the dissection room.”
Nita felt her fingers twitch, the imaginary scalpel in her hand making a sliding cut through the air, like a Y incision. She couldn’t wait for the slow, relaxing evening, just her and the body. The straight autopsy lines, the jars full of organs watching over her, like her own weird guardian angel.
She shivered with anticipation. Sometimes she scared herself.
Her mother looked at Nita out of the corner of her eyes. “I have to say, this one was tricky to get.”
Nita removed her food from the microwave and sat down at the kitchen table. “Oh, do tell?”
Her mother smiled, and Nita settled in for a good story. “Well, it wasn’t hard at the beginning. Buenos Aires was lovely, and hunting down my tip was easy. Even acquiring our new . . . I don’t even know what to call him.”
Nita raised her eyebrows. Her mother knew every unnatural. It was her job. This one must be something really rare.
“Well, anyway.” Her mother sat down beside her. “It wasn’t even so bad getting him. Security wasn’t too much of an issue, easily dealt with. The problem was getting him back.”
Nita nodded. Airlines usually frowned on stuffing dead bodies into overhead bins.
Her mother gave her a conspiratorial wink. “But then I thought, well, why don’t I just pretend he’s a traveler? So I put him in a wheelchair, and the airline never even guessed.”
“Wait, a wheelchair?” Nita scowled. “But wouldn’t they notice that he didn’t, well, move or breathe or anything when they were helping him to his seat?”
She laughed. “Oh, he’s not dead. I just drugged the hell out of him.”
Nita’s fingers twitched, then froze. Not dead.
She gave her mother a sickly smile. “You said you put him in my room?”
“Yes, I spent the morning installing the cage. Bugger of a thing. You know they don’t make human-size cages anymore? And I had to get the handcuffs at a sex shop.”
Nita sat there for a long moment, smile frozen like a rictus on her face. Then she rose and began making her way through the crates to her dissection room.
Her mother followed. “This one’s a little different. He’s quite valuable, so I’d really like to milk him a bit for blood and such before we harvest the organs.”
But Nita wasn’t listening. She had opened the door to see with her own eyes.
Part of her beautiful, sterile white room was now taken up by a large cage, which had been bolted to the wall. Her mother had put a padlock and chain around the door. Inside the cage, a boy with dark brown hair lay unconscious in the fetal position. Given the size of the cage, it was probably the only way he could lie down.
“What is he?” Nita waited for her mother to list off the heinous things he did to survive. Maybe he ate newborn babies and was actually five hundred years old instead of the eighteen or nineteen he looked.
Her mother shrugged. “I don’t know if there’s a name for what he is.”
“But what kind of unnatural is he? Explain it.” Nita felt her voice rising and forced it to calm down. “I mean, you know what he does, right?”
Her mother laughed. “He doesn’t do much of anything. He’s an unnatural, that much I’m sure of, but I don’t think you’ll find any external signs of it. He was being kept by a col- lector in Buenos Aires.”
“So . . . why do we want him?” Nita pushed, surprised at how much she needed an answer, a reason to justify the cage in her room and the small, curled-up form of the boy. His jeans and T-shirt looked like they were spattered with something, and Nita wondered if it was blood.
“Ah. Well, he’s supposedly quite delicious, you know. Something about him. That collector had been selling vials of his blood — vials, not bags, mind you — for nearly ten thousand each. US dollars, not soles or pesos. Dollars. One of his toes went up for auction online last year, and the price was six dig- its. For a toe.”
Her mother had a wide, toothy grin, and her eyes were alight at the prospect of how much money an entire body could make. Nita wondered how soon the boy’s time would be up. Her mother preferred cash in hand to cash in the future, so Nita doubted the boy would be prisoner for long.
“I already put him up online, and we have a buyer for another toe. So I took the liberty of cutting it off and mailing it while we were in Argentina.”
It took a few moments for Nita to register her mother’s words. Then she looked down, and sure enough, the boy’s feet were bare and bloody. One foot had been hastily wrapped in bandages, but they’d turned red as the blood soaked through.
Her mother tapped her finger to her chin. “The only problem is, his pieces need to be fresh — well, as fresh as we can get them. So we’ll sell all the extremities first, as they’re ordered. He should be able to survive without those, and we can bottle the blood when we remove them and sell it as well. We’ll do the internal organs and such later, once we’ve spread the word. Shouldn’t take too long.”
Nita’s mind spun in circles, not quite processing what her mother was saying. “You want to keep him here and cut pieces off him while he’s still alive?”
“Exactly.”
Nita didn’t even know what to say to that. She didn’t deal with live people. Her subjects were dead.
“He’s not . . . dangerous?” Nita asked, unable to tear her eyes off the bandages around the missing toes.
Her mother snorted. “Hardly. He got unlucky in the genetic draw. As far as I can tell, everyone wants to eat him, and he has no more defenses than an ordinary human.”
The boy stirred in the cage and tried to twist himself around to look at them. Nita’s heart clenched. It was pathetic.
Her mother clapped her on the shoulder before turning around. “We’re going to make good money off him.”
Nita nodded, eyes never straying from the cage. Her mother left the room, calling for Nita to help her organize the crates in the kitchen so they could start packing the zannie parts.
The boy lifted his head and met Nita’s eyes. His eyes were gray-blue and wide with fear. He reached a hand up, but it stopped short, the handcuffs pulling it back down toward the bottom of the cage.
He swallowed, eyes never leaving Nita’s. “Ayúdame,” he whispered.
Help me.
TWO
Nita was not a heartless, murdering, body-part thief.
That was her mother.
Nita had never killed anyone. Her plan was to keep it that way.
Why couldn’t Mom have killed him before she came back? If she’d killed him before coming home, Nita wouldn’t have had to see him like this. She could have just pretended he died naturally. Or blamed her mother and chalked it up to another of those well, too late to do anything now cases. But now he was alive, and in her apartment, and she actually had to think about this.
About the living, breathing person her mother planned to kill.
And have Nita dissect. Alive.
What would it be like to cut someone up while they were screaming at you to stop?
“Nita?” Mom came around the corner from the kitchen, and Nita realized she’d been standing in the hall staring off into space for the past few minutes. “Something wrong?”
Nita hesitated. “He’s alive.”
“Yes. And?” Mom’s eyes were as tight as her voice. Nita had a sudden feeling she was treading on very dangerous ground.
“He talks.” She shifted her shoulders in unease, more so from her mother’s look than anything else.
Her mother’s face relaxed. “Oh, don’t worry about that, sweetheart. He won’t be around for long. He’ll be on your table shortly, and no one talks back to you there, do they?”
Nita nodded, appreciating her mother’s efforts to quell her anxiety even as her nausea rose. “Yeah.”
Her mother gave her an appraising look. “You know, if you want, I can go cut his tongue out now. I have some pliers — I can pull it right out. Then you won’t have to worry about him talking.”
“That’s okay, Mom.” Nita forced a smile. “I’m fine.”
“If you’re sure . . .” Her mother gave her another searching look before sighing. “All right. Shall we start packing some of those zannie parts?”
Nita nodded, glad for the change in subject.
They spent the rest of the afternoon filling up crates. Her mother had arranged the bribes to get them back to the family warehouse in the States. Her father would handle them from there. He dealt with the online sales, storage, and shipping of the body parts, while her mother dealt with the retrieval. Her father was also their major cover, if INHUP ever came sniffing. Nita was sure her mother had a record a mile long — her stack of foreign passports, driver’s licenses, and credit cards was probably two feet high. That sort of thing usually came with a record, in Nita’s opinion.
Her father, though, was squeaky clean as far as Nita knew.
By day, he worked as a legal consultant in Chicago, and by night, he sold body parts on the internet. Nita missed him, and their home, and their shitty Chicago suburb that was actually a two-hour drive from Chicago. She hadn’t been home since she was fourteen.
She wondered what her father would say about this situation. Would he be unhappy her mother had brought a live unnatural home? And moreover, a harmless one?
It was one thing when her mother dumped a zannie or a unicorn on Nita’s table. For one, they were monsters who couldn’t continue to live without killing other people. And the world agreed — that was why there was a Dangerous Unnaturals List. It wasn’t even a crime to kill them. You were saving lives.
But someone like the boy in the other room? How could she justify that?
Sighing, Nita wiped the sweat off her forehead as they closed another crate. No matter how she thought about it, she couldn’t find a way to justify murdering that boy.
Well, except money.
“It looks like we’re going to need a few more shipping crates.” Her mother ran a hand through her hair. Her manicure caught the light, black and red and yellow, like someone had tried to cover a fire with a blackout curtain.
Nita poured a glass of juice. “Probably.”
“I think we deserve pizza now. How about you?” Nita heartily agreed.
After dinner, they realized they were low on bottled water.
Tap water wasn’t drinkable unless boiled, and Nita’s mother didn’t like the taste. She’d been promising they were going to get a UV light for purifying water since they arrived a few weeks ago, but it hadn’t happened yet.
Her mother sighed and got up, dusting pizza crumbs off her lap. “I’ll go down to the store and get a seven-liter bottle. I’ll start on the boy when I come back.”
“Start what?”
Her mother grinned. “I sold his ear an hour ago.” Nita stiffened. “You’re going to cut it off tonight?” “Of course.”
Nita swallowed, looking away. “But you can’t mail it until tomorrow morning. It makes more sense to cut it off tomorrow. If freshness is important, like you said.”
Her mother’s eyes narrowed. Nita tried to resist the urge to shift in place, but failed.
Finally, in a small voice, Nita whispered, “I don’t want to hear him screaming all night. I won’t get any sleep.”
Her mother laughed, throwing her head back, then came over and clapped Nita on the back. It was just a little harder than it should have been, and Nita stumbled forward a step.
“You’re absolutely right, Anita.” Her mother grinned as she walked back to the door. “We’ll do it tomorrow morning.”
Nita stood there, trembling, as the door closed with a thud and a click. She remained in place for a few minutes, calming her breathing before picking up a slice of pizza and walking back to the dissection room.
When she opened the door, she found the boy sitting cross-legged in the cage, watching her. She approached with caution, and as she got closer, she was able to discern that yes, those stains on his clothes were definitely dried blood.
She put the pizza close enough to the bars that he could wiggle his fingers through and pull pieces off. She skittered back, afraid if she got too close he would leap at her. Not that he could do much, chained to the cage, which was chained to the wall. But she was careful anyway.
He looked down at the pizza and licked his lips. “Gracias.” “De nada.” Nita was surprised at how hoarse her voice was. She stood there for a long moment, awkward, not sure
what to do next. Logically, she knew better than to talk to him. She didn’t want to know anything about him if — when — she had to dissect him. But she also felt weird just giving him food and leaving.
This was the part where she could really have used more social skills practice. Was there etiquette for this kind of situation?
Probably not.
He wormed his fingers through the bars and ripped off the tip of the pizza. His hands wouldn’t reach to his mouth because of the handcuffs, so he had to bend his head over to eat. He chewed slowly, and after one bite, just sat, looking at the pizza but not eating. She wondered if he didn’t like pep- peroni.
“Cómo te llamas?” he asked, still not looking up. His accent was clearly Argentinian, his y sounds blurring into sh, so it sounded like “cómo te shamas?”
His accent wasn’t too hard to understand, unlike Nita’s.
Her father was from Chile, and she’d lived in Madrid until she was six, so Nita’s Spanish was a hopeless tangle of the two accents. Sometimes the Peruvians in the grocery store couldn’t understand her at all.
“Nita.” She hesitated. “Y tu?”
“Fabricio.” His voice was soft. “Fabricio Tácunan.” “Fabricio?” Nita couldn’t keep the incredulity out of her
voice. “Is that from Shakespeare or something?”
He looked up at her then, and frowned. “Pardon?”
Nita repeated slowly, trying to make her accent less pro- nounced.
This time he understood. He raised his eyebrows, voice pitched slightly differently. More curious, less sad, his Spanish soft and barely audible. “Who is Shakespeare?”
“Umm.” Nita paused. Did they teach Shakespeare in Latin American schools? If the boy — don’t think of him by name, you’ll get too attached and then where will you be? — had been a captive of a collector, had he even gone to school? “He’s an English writer from the fifteen hundreds. One of his characters was named Fabrizio, I think. It’s . . . I guess I thought it was kinda an old name.”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. I think it’s fairly common where I’m from. One of my father’s employees has the same name. But he spells it with a z, Fabrizio. The Italian way.”
Fabricio looked down at his shirt, crusted with dried blood and swallowed. “He spelled it with a z.”
Oh.
Nope, too much information. Nita didn’t want to hear about this.
Why did you even talk to him, then? she scolded herself. This was going to make everything worse later.
Nita turned to leave, but he called her back. “Nita.”
She paused, wavering, before glancing over her shoulder at him. “Yes?”
“What’s going to happen to me?”
She watched how he strained against the handcuffs, leaning forward in the cage. His face was tense, fear shining through in the angle of his head, the crease on his forehead, and the wide blue eyes.
She turned away. “I don’t know.”
But that was a lie. She just didn’t want to admit it to him.
THREE
Heading back into the kitchen, Nita found her mother waiting for her.
There was no water.
Nita paused when she entered the room, uncomfortable. Her mother was watching her with cold eyes, hand resting near her gun. Casually, not on purpose. Not that her mother had ever needed a gun. She preferred poison.
“You weren’t talking with him, were you, Nita?”
Nita shook her head, looking at the floor. Her shoulders hunched as her body instinctively tried to curl into itself. Nita’s mother had an aura around her, an unspoken sense of coiled menace when she was angry. Nita would never admit it to either of her parents, but she was secretly terrified of her mother. She’d only stood up to her once in her life.
When Nita was twelve and they’d been living and operating near Chicago, her mother had tried to get into the dact fur business. Dacts, small fluffy balls of adorableness people kept as pets, were totally harmless. Her mother would come home with groups of them in cages, never saying where they were from. And every night, after her parents went to bed, Nita would sneak down to the basement and take the cages to the twenty-four-hour emergency vet clinic and ask them to give the dacts to the SPCA or shelter. A few times they’d scanned the dacts for microchips and found they’d been stolen from someone’s backyard.
Nita’s mother had not been impressed. She’d come home one day with a cage of dead dacts instead of live ones, and Nita had responded by flushing five pounds of pure powdered uni- corn bone down the toilet (that stuff sold better than cocaine and was more addictive by far). She took the dead dacts’ bodies to the emergency vet clinic anyway.
Nita’s mother hadn’t appreciated Nita’s discovery of morals. After her father calmed everyone down and ended the plan to sell dact fur, Nita’s mother still hadn’t been satisfied. So she’d poisoned the dact food in the pet store, and every single dact in their suburb had died. Her mother, knowing Nita’s pro-pensity for ignoring things that weren’t right in front of her nose, took to putting the corpses in Nita’s bed for a week.
It had only ended when Nita broke down crying on the front step, begging her mother to stop. Her father had agreed and told her mother it was affecting their profit margin — by that time Nita was dissecting most of the bodies coming through, and she was such an emotional wreck she hadn’t worked in a week. Money convinced her mother to stop when nothing else had.
But there was an unspoken promise: if Nita ever disobeyed her mother again, the punishment would be far, far worse.
Nita swallowed and tried to push away the memories. “Why would I talk to him? What would I even talk about?”
“Of course you weren’t talking to him, you’re socially incompetent.” Her mother took a step forward, and Nita nearly flinched. She kept herself in check. Barely. “Because, if you were trying to talk to the boy, you might develop sympathy. I don’t need that. And I can promise you” — a sharp, mean smile— “you don’t want that.”
Nita shrugged, trying to play it nonchalant when every nerve screamed at her to run, run far and fast and never ever look back. “I gave him his food. He said thanks. I said you’re welcome. Then I left.”
Her mother gave Nita a long, searching look before bestowing a condescending smile on her. “That’s good. It’s always appropriate to be polite.”
Nita tried to force a smile, but it wouldn’t come. “I’m tired. I kinda want to go to bed. If you don’t mind?”
Her mother waved her away. “After you pick up some water. I decided I didn’t want to go myself after all.”
So her mother didn’t trust her. She’d just sat there, eaves- dropping, and knew Nita had lied to her.
Great. “Okay.”
It was always best to obey her mother.
Nita grabbed her sweater and a bag on her way out, making sure to lock the door behind her. She took a deep breath, leaning her head on the door and closing her eyes. She felt like she was walking a tightrope. One wrong step, and she could fall to either side. The problem was, she wasn’t sure what exactly she’d be falling into, except that it would be bad.
Would her mother kill Fabricio while she was out so Nita couldn’t interfere?
No. Of course not. But she might start cutting off pieces. Nita swallowed, hands clenched at her side. Would that be
so terrible? It wouldn’t be Nita’s fault then — she wouldn’t be here; she couldn’t do anything about it. She could just brush it aside.
But she’d still have to dissect him when it was all over. Scoop out those scared blue eyes and put them in a jar.
Nita let out the breath she’d been holding. It would be a waste to start cutting pieces off Fabricio now.
She walked down the hall and to the stairwell, heading for the store.
Outside, it was dark and hazy, but the streetlights kept things moderately well lit. Nita lived in a nice part of Lima, right in the heart of Miraflores district, and she wasn’t too concerned about safety at night.
The heat of the evening settled comfortably on her skin, and a gentle breeze brought her the scent of something spicy in a nearby restaurant. She’d only been in Lima a month, but she liked it a lot so far. It was one of the nicer places they’d set up shop.
Nita and her mother moved around a lot. They would move to a central location on a continent, and her mother would tar- get all the nearby countries, hunting for unnaturals she could kill and sell. They’d spent years doing this in the US before they’d moved on to Vietnam, Germany, and now Peru.
She passed by the open door of a restaurant and saw a pair of American tourists snapping at a waiter. The woman was snarling something in English, and the waiter just stared at her, smile frozen on his face while shaking his head and try- ing to tell her, in a mix of broken English and Spanish, that he didn’t understand.
“Well, find me someone who does!” snapped the woman, and then she turned to her husband. “You’d think they could hire people that speak English.”
Nita rolled her eyes as she passed. Why was there this obsession Americans had that others should learn their language to accommodate them? They were in Peru. Why didn’t those American people learn Spanish?
She saw it everywhere, the weird entitlement. Tourists who stole pieces of pottery and coins from German castles because they could. Rich men who flew in to Ho Chi Minh thinking they could buy anyone they wanted for a night and do anything they wanted to them, laws of the country be damned.
Nita kept walking past the restaurant and down the street. Her footsteps slowed just beneath a plaque commemorating a battle against the Spanish. She thought about the Spanish conquistadores five hundred years before, who’d swept through South America and painted the whole continent red in their hunt for gold.
Something uncomfortable and squiggly shifted in her chest. The plaque was talking about Pizarro, the man who’d carved a bloody swathe through Peru. He’d taken the Inca — the ruler of the Incan people — hostage, and then ransomed him for a room full of gold. When the Incan people gave him the gold, he killed the Inca anyway.
Pizarro wasn’t even the worst of the conquistadores. Christopher Columbus used to cut the hands off indigenous people who didn’t dig enough gold for him each month.
Like her mother cut off Fabricio’s toes. Nope.
Nita really didn’t want to think about that.
So she ignored the niggling little voice that told her she had no right to claim the tourists were being entitled jerks when her mother felt entitled to take these people’s lives and sell their body parts for profit.
She went to the local bodega instead of the giant grocery store. She didn’t like how crowded the grocery store was. People were always talking to her and breathing near her, and some- times they brushed by her, and she found it uncomfortable.
The bodega was smaller, and she actually had to talk to the person at the cashier sometimes, but it was worth it to not feel the press of so many bodies around her. Also, the bodega never had a line.
As she was paying, Nita’s eyes were drawn to the television sitting on a chair on the other side of the room, a stack of toilet paper and Kleenex packages on top. It was an old, boxy unit, and someone had put on the news.
“The debate over whether to add unicorns to the Dangerous Unnaturals List continues, as INHUP starts its third day of discussions over the proposal.”
Nita smiled as a memory surfaced, one of the few she had where she really felt her mother cared. A man with blond hair and swirly black thorn tattoos had reached to ruffle her hair at a store, and her mother had nearly shot him right then and there. Nita had been swept away before the man could get too close, and while her mother never said, Nita knew that particular soul-eating unicorn was dead now. He would never again target virgins. She’d seen the new powdered unicorn bone stock.
Letting out a breath, Nita shook her head. Her mother might be many things, but she loved Nita. It was a scary kind of love, but it was there. That was important. Sometimes it was easy to forget, given her mother’s suspicious nature and obsession with money.
A reporter was interviewing a scientist about unnatural genetics.
“Unicorns are another type of unnatural linked to reces- sive genes. This means these creatures can reproduce with humans, and the genetic makeup can lie dormant for generations before the right circumstances combine and two per- fectly normal parents give birth to a monster.
“It’s not only unicornism that’s hereditary,” the man on the screen ranted. “But other creatures. Zannies. Kappa. Ghouls. Even vampires, to some extent.”
Nita thought of the pieces of zannie in her apartment. She wondered how many people it had tortured in its life to feed its hunger for pain. It was a good thought, because she had no guilt about cutting up a monster like that, and even admired her mother for killing it.
“Could you describe the proposal you’ve submitted to INHUP, Dr. Rodón?”
“Genetic manipulation. It’s a very select series of genes unique to each species, so once fully mapped, it should be easy to screen for and eliminate them. If we catch it before they’re born, we can eradicate all dangerous human-born unnatu- rals.”
The clerk gave Nita her water with a smile, and she nearly ripped it out of his hand as she stormed out of the shop, unable to listen to another minute of that drivel.
Nita hated people.
While Nita agreed it might be an effective, even humane way to reduce the monster population, she knew people would take it too far. People always took it too far. How long before people started isolating genes from harmless unnaturals and eliminating them too? Aurs, who were just bioluminescent people? Or mermaids? Or whatever Fabricio was?
Or even Nita and her mother?
FOUR
The next morning, Nita woke to screaming.
She yanked the covers off and reached for the scalpel she kept on her nightstand. Her feet tangled in the sheets as she stumbled out of bed and fell on her knees with a thud.
The screaming rose in pitch, sharpening into a long, horrible shriek.
Breathing fast, Nita freed herself and climbed to her feet. She crept out of her room, scalpel first, toward the source of the noise. The screams were punctuated by the rattle of metal against metal, the scraping squeak of something heavy on the linoleum floor, and her mother’s vicious swearing. Nita’s heartbeat stuttered.
Her mother hadn’t been testing her when she mentioned cutting off Fabricio’s ear. She was actually doing it. Right now.
Nita opened the door to the dissection room and saw blood. It had spattered her clean white walls and floor. Droplets clung to her mother’s angry face, and streaks of red tears patterned Fabricio’s cheeks. He’d scooted his head as far into the cage as he could and had bunched his legs so his feet were pressed to the front of the cage. He rocked it from side to side, trying to prevent her mother from getting a grip. The padlock was on the floor, but the cage door had swung shut, and Fabricio was holding it closed by wrapping his remaining toes around the door and tugging.
Her mother was holding a syringe, probably something to sedate Fabricio. He knocked it out of her hand with his shoulder, and it clattered to the bottom of the cage. He used an elbow to smash it, spilling the contents and chunks of broken glass across the ground.
Both of them turned as Nita entered, and Nita flinched when she saw Fabricio’s face straight on. Her mother had clearly tried to cut off his ear while he slept, and he’d woken up mid cut. His ear had been partly severed, and then the knife had slipped, slicing a deep red line across his cheek.
Nita took an involuntary step forward to stop this, to do something. Her mouth opened to protest. Then it closed.
You can’t stop this, Nita. You can’t save him.
If you show sympathy, your mother will make sure you regret it. She wouldn’t hurt me, Nita protested. But that didn’t mean
there weren’t worse things her mother could do. The memory of small broken bodies stuffed between her sheets surfaced, but she shoved it away.
She let her hands fall to her sides as she talked herself out of action and looked away. She was no stranger to blood and carnage, but she hated that shard of hope shining from Fabricio’s eyes. She didn’t want to see it replaced by betrayal.
“Nita.” Her mother rose, flicking blood off her fingers. “Good morning.”
“Good morning.” Nita paused. “Are you trying to get the ear?”
“Yes. He’s not cooperating.” Her mother beckoned her. “Give me a hand.”
Nita hesitated only a split second before approaching. “How can I help?”
The hope in Fabricio’s eyes cracked, and then melted into terror and anger. Nita tried not to look.
Her mother took out another syringe, presumably full of sedatives. “I’m going to try and hold him still. I want you to sedate him.”
Nita took the syringe with trembling fingers, not letting herself look at Fabricio. It was better this way, wasn’t it? This way he wouldn’t feel the pain when his ear came off.
Nita wouldn’t have to hear him scream.
“Why didn’t you sedate him before you started?” Nita asked, hiding her shaking hand from her mother.
Her mother shrugged, nonchalant. “I thought I could cut it off fast enough.”
No, Nita realized, looking at the half smile twitching across her mother’s face. You thought no such thing. You wanted this to hap- pen, so I would wake up and be forced to help you.
Nita was being tested. She didn’t know what the conse- quences of failure were, but she knew they weren’t good.
You shouldn’t have talked to Fabricio and then lied about it to her. Nita had been stupid. She should have known better. Clenching her jaw, she put the syringe down. “I don’t see how it’ll be any easier to sedate him than it would be to just get the rest of the ear off.” She showed her mother her scalpel.
“There’s only a strip of flesh left. It won’t take much to finish the job.”
Her mother’s smile widened until it seemed to consume her face. “If you think so, I’m happy to try.”
“Nita.” Fabricio spoke for the first time. “Nita, por favor.” Nita’s mother laughed. “Oh, it figured out your name.” Nita clenched the scalpel in her sweaty palm and focused
on the ear, ignoring Fabricio’s crying and continued whispers of her name like a prayer.
Just get this over with. Then she could figure out where to go from there. But if she failed this, bad things would happen. She didn’t want a repeat of the dact incident with parts of Fabricio in her bed each morning.
She tried not to look at his face as she pushed the scalpel through the cage bars, but she couldn’t escape his sobs and cries. Her hand was shaking, and her palm was so sweaty that when Fabricio shook the cage again, the scalpel was knocked right out of Nita’s fingers, leaving a deep, bloody gash across her palm along the way.
Nita yanked her hand back, swearing as the blood dripped down her arm.
Her mother gave her a tired look. “Well, heal it already, and we’ll try again.”
Nita turned away so her mother wouldn’t see the flash of anger in her expression. Then she let out a breath and focused her body. She increased blood clotting factor in the affected area to speed up the scabbing process. She didn’t want to do too much repairing until she had some disinfectant, though— while she could stimulate her body’s natural defenses against the microbes, it was just easier to wash the wound in soap.
Nita wasn’t sure how old she’d been when she discovered that other people couldn’t control their bodies the same way she could. Her mother did it all the time — enhanced her own muscles so she could run faster, hit harder, heal quicker.
The more Nita understood about her body, the more she could control it. But it was dangerous — there was a reason for swelling, and if you took away the symptom without dealing with the underlying cause, it could make things worse. She’d discovered that the hard way when she was seven and her father had to take her to a hospital because she’d accidentally paralyzed herself trying to make her bicycle-butt bruise go away. Only after the x-rays and scans, and the doctor’s detailed explanation of the precise issue, had Nita been able to fix it.
After that, she’d been very cautious about how she altered herself.
“Are you done yet?” Her mother’s voice was cold.
Nita nodded and turned back to her mother. “For now. But it’ll take time to fully heal. I severed a tendon — I don’t think I’ll be able to hold a scalpel for a day or so.”
Her mother scowled, clearly displeased. Nita made no comment and kept her face blank. It wouldn’t do for her mother to see how relieved this injury made Nita feel, or for her mother to realize she was stalling and could, if she wanted, finish healing the wound much sooner than tomorrow. Now she had at least a day where she didn’t personally have to do the slicing. That was something.
“Fine.” Her mother picked up the bloody scalpel, gave it a quick rinse in the sink, and then, before either Nita or Fabricio had a chance to react, spun with near superhuman speed and threw it. It neatly sliced through the last piece of cartilage connecting Fabricio’s ear to his body, and he screamed as the sev-ered piece of flesh tumbled to the ground. He tried to clap his hands over his ear, but they were still chained to the bottom of the cage, and he couldn’t reach. Instead, he wept as blood coated the side of his face.
Her mother scooped up the scalpel and speared the ear like a piece of steak. She showed it to Nita with a grin. “You know, I think my aim could have been better.”
Nita resisted the urge to throw up.
***
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CHEMISTRY LESSONS is about Maya, who gets unceremoniously dumped the summer before college, and decides to pick up where her scientist mom left off before she died and perfect a love potion to win him back.
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***
My phone lit up with a message from Yael.
We’re bailing early. Whiff walk, it said, a group text to Kyle and me.
I checked the time. It wasn’t even five o’clock.
I work until six today, I wrote back, then put the phone face-down
on silent, so she wouldn’t be able to fun-bully me into dodging my one responsibility.
I was only a part-time intern in one of the biology labs at the Mas- sachusetts Institute of Technology — hired by my mom’s longtime research partner, Dr. Araghi, to transcribe his notes — but I wanted to behave like a professional. I’d be starting at MIT as a freshman in the fall and wanted to prove that I wasn’t just my mother’s kid, and that I was serious about being there.
Sometimes, though, it was difficult to keep my focus. Mainly because of Kyle and Yael.
“Maya!” Yael snapped. I whipped around to find her standing behind my workbench with Kyle at her side. Her spiral curls were pulled straight into a tight bun. A few ringlets had escaped and bounced against her freckled-covered forehead as she spoke.
“Don’t ignore me, girl. Get your stuff.” “I said I work until six,” I said.
“No one cares what you do,” Yael said. “You’re just an intern.” I scowled.
“You’ll make up the time,” Kyle said. “Besides, Dr. Araghi left early to give some lecture. It’s, like, eighty degrees outside. Everyone is packing up early.”
I walked to the window near our benches, which were clustered in the back corner of the Araghi lab, on the third floor of MIT’s 68b, a tall, gray building mostly populated by bio researchers in and out of lab coats.
It had been rainy and overcast for days around Boston, but it finally looked like summer. I spotted two blond girls walking across the quad in shorts and flip-flops, their ponytails moving like synchro- nized swimmers.
“Okay, just give me ten minutes to pack up my stuff,” I said, sur- rendering.
“Three minutes,” Yael said. “I’ll give you three.”
I placed Dr. Araghi’s tiny antiquated tape recorder in my drawer, grabbed my backpack, and followed Kyle and Yael through the maze of workbenches and out into the busy hallway. Once we were down the stairs and on the quad, and Kyle pulled off his hoodie in the heat, I noticed his new T-shirt, which said i love mit, but instead of the word love — or a heart — there was a picture of a beaver. Kyle couldn’t get over the fact that MIT’s mascot was a beaver. Much of his wardrobe paid homage to the animal, and it had little to do with school spirit.
“You ‘beaver’ MIT?” I asked Kyle as he led us off campus.
“I do beaver MIT,” Kyle responded. “I also beaver chicken skew- ers. Let’s eat after this. I’m starving.”
We passed the massive Koch Center for research, slowing down to see the latest fluorescent, bio-themed artwork in the building’s lobby, then sped up to get to our real destination, farther down Main Street. “Come with me, and you’ll be, in a world of pure imagination,”
Kyle crooned off-key as we walked down the road.
“It’s from the original Willy Wonka movie,” I explained to Yael, who eyed Kyle with confusion as he walked backwards with his long arms stretched out, beckoning. Sometimes American cultural refer- ences went over Yael’s head. I’d learned that not every famous movie was big where she was from in Israel.
“I know the song,” she said, grinning. “I just can’t believe he’s so bad at singing.”
At that, Kyle raised the volume of his voice and lifted his middle finger in our direction. Yael was quick to lift hers right back.
I’ve lived in Cambridge since I was born, so I know every small square and street corner in the city, but I give Kyle and Yael credit for discov- ering the magic cloud of chocolate on Main Street. On the second day of my internship in the lab, Kyle approached my workspace — which was right behind his — dropped his head to his shoulder as if he were sizing me up, and then asked whether I wanted to join him and Yael on their “whiff walk.”
“Really?” Yael said from across the room, before I could answer. “We don’t even know her.”
“Yes, really,” Kyle said. “She’s whiff-worthy; I know it. Let’s initi- ate her.”
“Initiate me with what?” I asked. “What’s a whiff walk?” Yael released a loud exhale but seemed to be giving in.
They let me follow them out of the lab that day, down to an indus- trial section of Main Street in Cambridge where, out of nowhere, an entire block of the street smelled like chocolate gas.
“It’s a mystery,” Kyle had said, his nose twitching. “It always smells like chocolate on this one block. We’re obsessed with it.”
“I think it’s just Cambridge Foods,” I explained after an inhale, pointing to the unmarked white brick building in front of us. “It’s a candy factory. I went to middle school with someone whose dad worked here.”
Kyle and Yael stood silent and stunned, like I’d just solved a great scientific riddle.
“They make the insides of candy bars here,” I continued. “Like the nougat you’d get in, like, a Three Musketeers. This part of Cambridge used to be a candy district. You’ve seen the old Necco building, right? I think they made the wafers there.”
Kyle grabbed my shoulders, startling me with the physical con- tact.
“Why is this not a big deal to you?” he barked, his voice dropping half an octave. His dark brown eyes, which matched his thick short hair, got wide as he raised his brows. “You say, ‘They make the insides of candy bars here,’ like that’s not the best thing ever. Yael and I had joked that Willy Wonka must live here, but now it’s, like, true.”
He paused and looked up, his eyes glazing over like he was dreaming.
“I mean, they make nougat. Right up there.” Kyle pointed at one of the building’s only windows. He said the word “nougat” like it meant solid gold.
“I guess I’ve just taken it for granted, you know?” I said. “I’m from Cambridge, so I’ve passed this building for years. You stop noticing things when you’ve lived somewhere forever. It is pretty cool, I guess.” “I think I’ve never had Three Musketeers,” Yael said before taking
a deep inhale and nodding with approval. “It’s not popular in Israel. Also, American chocolate is terrible.”
“You’ve never had a Three Musketeers?” Kyle asked, horrified. “We must remedy this situation. To the 7-Eleven!”
From that day on, I was a regular on their whiff walks, and happily stood outside the building with them, inhaling as Kyle made up sto- ries about what went on inside. Kyle’s fantasy was that Willy Wonka outgrew his main production facility and opened a satellite office in Cambridge, Massachusetts, naming it the generic Cambridge Foods to make it less conspicuous to the locals. His theory was supported by the fact that we never saw humans enter or exit the building.
“They live inside, so there’s never reason to leave,” Kyle told us. “Willy Wonka, who must be very old now, with the Oompas and Charlie. Charlie’s basically just a businessman now, and he never married. It’s quite sad, actually. He sits up there alone, pondering the metaphor that is the Everlasting Gobstopper . . .”
Sometimes during our trips, Yael allowed Kyle to lift her onto his shoulders so she could attempt to see into one of the few windows on the top of the factory building, to confirm his tale. At five foot one, she was too short to see inside, even with Kyle as a six-foot booster, but they continued to try, hoping for a glimpse of anything magical. I wouldn’t let him try to boost me because I didn’t want to fall and break my legs.
“Here,” Kyle said, now standing in front of a section of white brick at the Cambridge Foods facility. “Stand right here. This is the smell pocket tonight. Right here. It’ll hit you in the face.”
I stood directly in front of Kyle, close enough that the heels of my sneakers touched the front of his. Yael backed up to me and stepped on my toes, a few of her curls hitting my chin as she tilted her head toward the vents that pushed the scent out of the factory building.
“Now,” Kyle said. “Breathe in. We’re right in the middle of it.” I heard their chests expand in front and in back of me.
“It’s perfect,” I whispered as the scent of nougat consumed us.
***
We ate dinner after that, stopping for skewers at the restaurant near campus with the periodic table menu (Hb for hamburger, Qs for que- sadilla). Then I texted my boyfriend, Whit, to see if he wanted to stop by my place. It was only eight.
Already here. Waiting on you, he texted back within seconds. I responded with the emoji of the applauding hands. He sent back a thumbs-up.
After almost sprinting the walk home, which took me past the noisy restaurants and graffitied rock clubs of Central Square, and into the crowded residential neighborhoods between MIT and Harvard, I was back at my house on Gardenwood Lane, a short street lined with busy triple-deckers, small houses occupied by university professors, and some concrete apartment buildings designed for transient grad students who never seemed to take the trash out on the right night.
My house was the small yellow one with the red door. In front of it was Whit, who sat on my front steps twirling his phone between his hands, his elbows resting on his knees.
“Heeey!” I shouted when he came into view. My voice was too loud, my tone too eager.
Ever since we decided we’d have sex in four weeks — once Whit moved into off-campus housing, where he’d have his own room — it was all that was on my mind. It was like I was fighting a biological imperative if I wasn’t touching him.
“Hey,” Whit responded, looking up.
“I didn’t know that we were hanging out tonight,” I said.
“I needed to see you,” he said, his voice soft. My stomach flipped. I closed the gap between us and placed my hands on his shoulders
as I leaned in for a kiss, but before I could attach my face to his, he pulled me down so I was sitting next to him. The ivy that blanketed the front steps of my house tickled my calves.
Whit shifted so that we faced each other and then did the thing where he bumped the tip of my nose with his.
“How was lab?” he asked.
“Great,” I answered, hoping that my breath didn’t smell too much like chicken skewers. “I’m getting faster at transcribing notes, and this morning, Dr. Araghi introduced me to a woman who studies tumor- igenicity in zebrafish. She’s doing a fellowship at MIT this year. She said she’ll let me sit in on some lectures this fall, even though I’ll only be a freshman.”
“Hmm. Zebrafish,” Whit said as he brushed a chunk of my frizzy brown waves out of my face. “You look pretty.”
“So do you,” I said, placing a hand on his chest, unable to stop myself from imagining what was going to happen in less than a month. I’d already picked out what I’d wear — a purple silk night- gown I’d bought at the Galleria. Bryan, my best friend and adviser on all important matters, said it looked like the pajamas that Rizzo wears in Grease. I assumed that was a good thing.
“Do you want to watch a movie?” I asked Whit, our noses con-
necting again. “It’s early. We could probably fit in two movies tonight if we start now.”
I was speaking in code. Watching movies meant privacy in the dark.
Whit took a deep breath and tilted his head forward so that our foreheads touched. I took in his blue eyes and thick red hair, the genetic combination that made him such an unusual Punnett square.
“I will always love you, Maya,” he said in a whisper. “Always.”
“So dramatic,” I teased, closing my eyes, preparing for the night’s first kiss.
He pulled his head back and grabbed my hands, squeezing them.
“You need to listen,” he said, his tone dark, the way it gets when he reads lines. “I need to talk to you.”
His eyes were glassy, and I noticed then that his hair was a mess, much of it pushed to one side on the top, like he’d been stepped on.
“Whit, what’s wrong?” I asked.
“I’ve met someone else,” he said, his eyes on my neck.
“Someone else for what?” I asked, lowering my head to try to find him.
It probably took me three full seconds to register what he had said.
I had experienced this delayed reaction before, when my mom died. I now believe that this is just how humans accept unexpected traumatic news — one word at a time, in slow motion. It’s this nev- er-ending moment — the exact millisecond a person registers the meaning of those basic words strung together, like when my dad said, “Maya, Mom isn’t going to make it.”
“Make what?” I had asked just as stupidly back then, my knees locking as I realized that what my mom wasn’t going to make was the rest of her life.
Now with Whit, whose gaze had dropped so low he was looking at my sneakers, I whispered the words out loud for my own benefit. “I. Have. Met. Someone. Else.”
As a sentence it sounded silly, like trite soap opera dialogue that Whit would ridicule if he heard it on TV. “Lazy lines,” he’d say. “No one actually says, ‘I’ve met someone else.’”
I tried to come up with an alternative meaning to the sentence. Maybe he’d met someone else to write with. Like a writing partner. Most people in Hollywood had writing partners, he’d told me. That was what he wanted to do after college — move to the West Coast and write independent films.
“You don’t mean another girl to date,” I said, grabbing some ivy at my feet and pulling it from its root. My dad had tried to tame the plant, but it had taken over the front of our house, growing at twice its usual speed, like it knew my mother was no longer watching.
Whit glanced up, his expression flat, and ran his hands through his hair. “Yes, another girl to date.”
He looked up at the house then and flinched as he noticed my dad walking by the living room window.
“We need to break up,” Whit said, now looking at everything but me. “I mean, it’s not what I want to do, but there’s someone else, and I think I owe it to myself — and to you — to figure out what it all means. You know I love you. But part of loving you is being honest with you.”
The last line sounded practiced, each word too rehearsed. “You’re kidding, right?” I asked. My words echoed in my ears. My
chest was tight. “We made it through your first year of college. That was supposed to be the hardest part — you in college and me still in high school. But we did it. And I’m going to lose my virginity to you in less than four weeks.”
Whit looked around, upset by my volume, probably worried that my dad would hear us through the open window.
“No,” I said, anger taking over. “Don’t you worry about who’s lis- tening. We’ve been waiting for this. You said we should hold off until you were out of the dorm and in your apartment. That’s so soon. You said you were counting down the days.”
He hesitated for what felt like an hour and then opened his mouth to speak.
“Wait,” I interrupted, before he could respond. “How long?” “How long what?” Whit asked, having the nerve to look irritated. “You said you met someone else, so when? How long has this someone else been around? We’ve been planning for July tenth in your apartment for two months now. When you have your own room. When your roommates are away for the weekend. At what point did you meet someone else?”
Whit rubbed the back of his neck the way my dad does when he pays bills.
“Technically, I’ve known her all year, in my program, just as a friend. Nothing’s happened; she knows I’ve had a girlfriend who’s still in high school. But over the year, we grew closer, and I tried to set boundaries, but . . . you can’t force them. We’re both in these sum- mer classes now, and we’ll be together all the time. It’s just harder to ignore.”
I shivered, not knowing whether it was because the temperature was dropping with the sun or because I was so upset that I was expe- riencing some sort of arrhythmia.
Two girls who looked a few years younger than us walked past the house, singing a song I recognized from the radio. Something about the heart wanting what it wants.
“Have you had sex with her?” I asked loud enough for the girls to hear. I needed some witnesses to prove this was happening. The girls stopped walking and singing and turned to stare at Whit, waiting for an answer, pleased to be part of the drama.
“Jeez, Maya. No,” he said. “I just told you, nothing’s happened.” “Nothing’s happened!” Whit shouted again in the direction of the
girls, one of whom yelled back, “Whatever, man,” before they contin- ued on their path.
I thought of the past few weeks with Whit and whether I had missed any signs. It seemed impossible that I wouldn’t see this com- ing.
“We love each other,” I whispered, more to myself. “There’s been no evidence to suggest that anything has changed.”
“Evidence,” Whit repeated, shaking his head. “That’s part of the issue, Maya. I think on some level I’m finally admitting to myself that you and I are just too different. You breezed through calculus, even though you were the youngest person in the class. You know the exact percent chance I’ll have kids with red hair. You care about metastatic tumors and . . . zebrafish, or whatever. And I love that about you. You’re brilliant, Maya. But I have to admit that being with Andrea— this other person — it’s just . . . easy. It’s been kind of nice to hang out with someone who gets what I do. She and I can talk about screen- plays for hours. I mean, don’t you want to be with someone who gets what you do? Someone more like you?”
“No,” I said, my voice strong again. “I just want you.”
“You haven’t even started college, Maya. You don’t know what you want.”
My head snapped back. He’d never been so dismissive.
I sat still and silent then and focused on the pace of my breath- ing while Whit explained that he had fallen for a film student named Andrea Berger. Like him, she was going to be a sophomore at Boston University. They had signed up for the same summer-session writ- ing classes, and he was helping her make a short film. He was excited about it.
“You should go,” I told him once he stopped talking, my voice flat, my legs too gelatinous to stand.
“Are you sure?” he asked. “We can talk some more if you want. I know there’s a lot to say.”
“No, there’s not.”
He nodded and rose, towering above me as I wrapped my fingers around the rusty metal railing of the stairs for support.
He didn’t try to help me up.
I phoned Bryan from the top of the steps.
“You’ve reached the Mother of Dragons,” Bryan said. “He broke up with me.”
“Hmm?” Bryan was only half listening. I could hear Hamilton on in the background. “Hold on; let me turn the volume down. What did you say?”
“He broke up with me,” I repeated. “Who broke up with you?”
“Whit,” I snapped. “Who else could break up with me?”
“Right. Good point,” he said, now focused on my trembling voice. “Wow. Okay. Tell me where you are right now. Just stay on the phone. I’ll come to you.”
“I’m home on the front steps. He just left.”
I didn’t realize I was crying until I had to wipe my eyes because I couldn’t see.
“He’s a clever little coward,” Bryan muttered as I heard him shuffle around his room, probably gathering a bag for the night. “Of course he’d do this right before you took off for Plymouth for a long weekend. He knew you’d disappear and be someone else’s problem for the next few days.”
His assessment stung, but I was used to Bryan’s lack of filter. It’s why I trusted him so much.
“Bryan,” I said, but nothing else came out. The ivy covering the house looked sinister all of a sudden, like it might be the result of a fairy-tale curse. Before it could trap me, I turned around and went inside. My breaths felt shallow and strained, my legs heavy.
“What’s happening now?” Bryan asked. “Now I’m inside. I just closed the front door.” “Good,” he said. “Just hold on, Maya.”
I nodded, even though he couldn’t see me. Then I slowly climbed the stairs and found my dad in his room packing a suitcase for our long weekend with Aunt Cindy and Pam.
I forced back new tears and tried to compose myself. My phone was still in my hand at my side; I didn’t even know whether Bryan was still on the line.
“Cindy says bring a swimsuit,” my dad said without looking up when he noticed me in the door frame. “Do you and Whit need din- ner? We have coupons for Thai.”
“Whit’s not here.”
“Oh, I thought I heard him outside,” Dad said. “He left.”
“That was a quick visit.”
I told him then, my tongue feeling too big for my mouth as I said the words.
His head shot up.
“What do you mean he met someone else?” my dad squeaked. He froze in the center of the bedroom he used to share with my
mom, mirroring my pose as his arms fell to his sides. He held a pair of boxer-briefs and a toothbrush in his left hand.
The stunned look on his face was some validation. At least he hadn’t seen it coming either.
“Sweetie, I’m sorry,” he said after I explained. “Maybe he just needs some space.”
“Space with Andrea Berger,” I snapped.
My dad flinched.
Before he could respond, the front door banged open below us and Bryan charged through. He lived two houses away and had his own set of keys.
“Okay,” Bryan said, after discovering us standing frozen like mannequins next to my dad’s king-size bed, which was only ever messy on one side.
Bryan surveyed the room, preparing to triage.
“Kirk,” he said to my dad, whose eyes were as glassy as mine, “why don’t you go downstairs and make us some of that special grape fizzy water. Get that SodaStream going. You can finish packing later.”
My dad nodded but didn’t move. Bryan walked to him, took the underwear and toothbrush out of his hand, and patted him on the shoulder, prompting him to march like a robot out the door.
“Bryan!” I snapped as I caught my best friend running his thumb over the waistband of my dad’s boxer-briefs.
“Sorry,” he whispered. “For the record, I always imagined that he wore boxer-briefs, but gray, not black.”
“Bryan,” I said, exhaling as my voice broke, “how is this happen- ing right now?”
He shook his head, dropped the underwear and toothbrush into my dad’s suitcase, and crossed the room so he could put his arm around my shoulders. “It just is. Come on. Let’s talk it through.”
Bryan slept at my house a few times a week, so he didn’t have to bring a toothbrush when he stayed over. He was the youngest of five — a surprise to his then forty-something Catholic parents who thought they were done having kids after his sister arrived ten years earlier. He was like an only child when we met, a kid living alone with two adults who had little interest in playing with toys and going to his school concerts. By the end of middle school, Bryan was sleeping at my house every weekend. His parents sometimes sent him over with baked goods, their small acknowledgment that he was being raised part-time in our home.
We went into my room, and I shuddered, noticing that Whit was all over it. The framed prom picture that sat on my desk, the copy of the Oliver Sacks book that he’d borrowed from my mom’s bookshelf and left on the small white nightstand. On top of the wicker hamper in the corner was the T-shirt he bought me for Valentine’s Day that said you are here next to an illustration of the Milky Way. I imagined that if you shined a black light in the room, you’d see Whit’s finger- prints on everything.
My first instinct was to google Andrea Berger, but Bryan wouldn’t let me and pulled my phone from my hand. “No phone tonight,” he said. “The internet is not your friend right now.”
Once we were both tucked under my light purple comforter, though, he agreed to find some pictures of her and describe her to me so that my imagination wouldn’t make it worse than it was.
“She’s attractive, I guess,” Bryan said, his phone glowing in the dark as I lay next to him in my oversize MIT pajamas. “You know, she kind of looks like one of the people from Pretty Little Liars. The one with the lighter brown hair.”
“What does that mean? Like someone from the show Pretty Little Liars?”
“Yeah.”
“The show is called ‘Pretty’ Little Liars, Bryan. Those actresses are pretty. That’s the point. Is she that attractive? Like, television attrac- tive?” I asked, betrayed by the desperation in my voice. I wanted to put myself on mute.
Bryan waved his hand to dismiss my concern. “No, not TV attractive. I guess she’s not a pretty little liar; she’s more like an aver- age-looking little liar. She looks more like — actually, she looks a lot like Genevieve Moran,” he said, referring to our class’s girls’ soccer captain, whom I’d tutored in math.
“She has red hair?” I said, thinking of Genevieve’s pretty auburn mane, which was just a few shades darker than Whit’s.
“Almost a ginger. More like a brownish red. She looks like she could model a fall coat.”
“What else?” I asked.
“Well,” Bryan said, hesitating as he considered what details to share, “according to one social media account — that you are not allowed to check — she likes hiking and the band M83. It also looks like she had a boyfriend up until a few weeks ago. Before then, it’s all shots of her and some guy — and then he just disappears.”
“Are there pictures of her and Whit?”
“Not yet,” Bryan said, his voice soft. He stroked my head, which was tucked into a pillow next to his chest.
Speechless, I nodded.
“I was going to have sex with him in four weeks, Bryan.” My voice was so hoarse.
“Don’t make it about that,” Bryan said. “This whole ‘losing my virginity’ thing is a heteronormative concept anyway. You’re too smart to buy into it.”
I turned onto my stomach. “My point is that we were together. There were no plans to not be together.”
“I know,” Bryan said.
The room felt too hot, but I didn’t want to get out from under the covers. I felt safe there.
“Bryan,” I whispered, “were you ever this upset about Matt? I don’t remember you ever being like this after you broke up. Or did I miss it?”
“Ending it with Matt — that was up to me. It was different.” “Oh.”
I had no memory of falling asleep, but when I woke up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom, it was still dark, all the bedding was on the floor, and my head was resting against a wet spot made by snot and tears on Bryan’s T-shirt.
“There are no M83 songs on this playlist,” Bryan said the next morn- ing as he handed me my phone. We stood in the driveway, where my dad was stuffing our suitcases into the back of the green Subaru.
Bryan loaded my phone with new playlists every few weeks because he said it was his responsibility to make sure I had some pop culture in my life to keep me well-rounded. He was thoughtful about the music, carefully curating the collections of songs to match themes, such as “Women of the ’90s,” or “Songs with Boys’ Names in Them,” or, after I told him about my plans for sex with Whit, “Summer Awak- ening,” which featured various songs meant to put me in the mood.
“This mix is very different,” Bryan explained as I gazed at the phone in my palm. Bryan pushed his pale brown hair to the side and tucked it behind his ear. Now that it was getting longer, he did that about twenty times a day.
“Maya,” Bryan said, trying to keep my focus as I got myself into the passenger’s seat and shut the door. He knelt so that his face was level with mine through the open window.
“This playlist is the mix that will pull you out of this mess. Because you are bigger than this breakup. You are bigger than Whit Akin. The songs are in order, so do not hit shuffle or it loses its meaning. You have to go from one to two hundred, one song at a time. And when you’re done, the grieving is over. It’s a deadline.”
“Okay,” I said.
Two hundred songs. I wondered how he had found time to put it together.
“You fell asleep at eleven, but I was up until one,” he said, answer- ing my unspoken question.
I smiled, exhausted by the effort.
“What are you going to do while I’m gone?” I asked.
“I have lines to memorize. Not as many as I’d like, but enough to keep me busy.
“Take care of her, Kirk,” Bryan added, glancing over at my dad in the driver’s seat.
“Sure thing, B,” Dad said.
As we backed out of the driveway and began the hour-plus drive to Aunt Cindy’s house, I connected the phone to the car adapter.
“Do you mind if we play Bryan’s mix?”
“I’d never say no to a Bryan soundtrack,” my dad answered with a stiff voice, looking a little scared of me.
The first track was a Justin Timberlake song I’d never heard before: “Drink You Away.” My dad tapped his thumb on the steering wheel to the beat.
I thought of drinking then, of the wine that Whit once stole from his parents’ liquor cabinet so we could share it on one of our first real dates. We had carried it in water bottles to the lawn in front of the Cambridge Public Library, where he surprised me with a picnic din- ner. It felt like something that might happen to a girl on television.
My dad’s thumb-drumming got louder as the song hit a climax.
I felt my stomach burn as Justin whined the same lyric over and over, on top of a rhythmic guitar. “Tell me, baby, don’t they make a medicine for heartbreak?”
They should, I thought.
I put the track on repeat and closed my eyes.
***
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We hope to see you Saturday, May 5th, for YALLwest 2018 at Santa Monica High School! We have four authors attending panels and signings plus a booth of giveaways and swag PLUS a very special GRIM LOVELIES event. See below for the full schedule, and if you have any questions you can always email hmhteen@gmail.com.
Check out the brand new look for the feminist Robin Hood retelling by New York Times bestselling author Betsy Cornwell! We absolutely love this look—it reminds us of epic YA fantasy like Marissa Meyer’s CINDER, or Tahereh Mafi’s SHATTER ME! Here’s what Betsy has to say about the new cover direction:
Seeing the cover of a new book for the first time is one of my very favorite parts of the publishing process. I feel very lucky that I got to experience that moment twice with The Forest Queen! I always try to guess how the designers will distil a story into one image - and I have to admit that I have never yet guessed right about which scene from one of my books will make it to the cover. I kept picturing my girl Robin Hood's face on the cover, but instead we have . . . her boot! A boot that I seriously wish I could pull out of the book and into my closet, by the way. What I love so much about this image is that it conveys a sense of action and practicality. Silvie, my Robin Hood character, goes from a sheltered girl with high ideals to a true activist, a rebel leader of a whole community that works to fight injustice. Her boots are made for walking (and maybe storing a few gold pieces she stole from the rich to give to the poor, too). The book's second tagline is ‘become your own hero,’ and the boot and arrow here look like a hero's uniform ready for the reader, as well as Silvie, to take up. I really, really dig that - and I hope you do, too.”
Check out an excerpt of THE FOREST QUEEN below!
***
CHAPTER ONE: Chasing the Hart
The huntswoman sounded her horn, and hounds rushed like water around our horses’ feet.
I leaned forward over my mare’s neck and let out a steady breath as we jumped the stream. She landed lightly, our speed barely breaking, and we plunged ahead with the rest of the party.
I heard a falcon’s cry and looked back just in time to see the great raptor spread its wings and push off from Bird’s leather-gloved hand. It flashed into the green ocean above us and its namesake grinned, tucking the falcon’s hood into his sleeve.
I felt the huge muscles under me tighten and I looked ahead to see the fallen tree my horse was about to jump. This time I wasn’t ready, and I had my breath knocked from me on her landing as my reward. One of her ears flicked back in reassurance or annoyance, and I felt a reminding tug on the reins I always kept as loose as I could. Pay attention, she was saying; you’re not sitting in any rocking chair, here.
Bowstrings sliced against my chest as I leaned forward again. I pressed my legs more firmly against the mare’s side and slid my hands into her mane. She felt my focus and began to run flat out.
Soon all I could see were flashing, flickering streaks of green and orange, the forest colors around us flaming toward autumn. The day was crisp, September-cool, but inside my wool riding habit I was beginning to sweat.
Scenthounds bayed just ahead of us. The riders gave out joyful whoops and warrior cries. Close behind me on his red-roan gelding, Bird was silent, but I could feel him, focused and determined, listening for the falcon that rode the wind above us, far beyond the shifting, murmuring canopy.
Then, with a shock like plunging into cold water, we left the forest shadows and entered a sunny clearing, an ex- panse of tall grass and daisies with a sheer cliff on the other side. There, trapped against the rock face, stood the hart we chased.
His antlers betrayed his age: no young buck he, but a great elder king of the forest, his horns twisting into a crown that nearly doubled his considerable height. He stomped and thrust those antlers bravely forward, menacing us, but he knew well that he was trapped.
He’d have to be old to be caught, I knew. Young and healthy quarry, whether hart or hare, fox or boar, almost always outran the hounds. I’d been on countless hunts, and only a handful of times had our day of riding and jumping and following the graceful calls of hound and horn yielded any actual meat for the Loughsley table.
But this day, it would. I sent up a heartfelt prayer for this animal’s quick, clean death, now that at last we had it cornered.
“Hold!”
The hounds hung back, corralled in an instant by the huntswoman’s calls. In the wild, the pack would have overwhelmed this beast in an instant, but a formal hunt is different.
I tugged my mare’s reins, even though she was already coming to a stop. Shifting the balance of my waist and hips in the sidesaddle, I straightened my spine as I pulled the bow from my back.
Prince Rioch moved for his crossbow. As the highest-ranking hunter, the prince had the honor of the first shot, but all of us would be ready to dispatch the animal quickly if his aim faltered. Any good hunter spares their prey needless pain.
He raised his arms and squared his shoulders, settling the heft of the crossbow in his hands. He squinted through the precisely carved notch at its center.
Beside him my brother, John, watched and nodded his encouragement. This was our young royal’s first time hunting without the king: he’d never had first shot before.
The prince’s arrow flew across the clearing.
I felt a familiar shadow pass over me, and without look- ing up I knew that Bird’s falcon circled us, and that she watched the arrow, too.
It pierced the hart’s hind leg.
He gave a guttural, frothy scream that turned into a panicked groan as he tried to run and found that he could not.
Hobbled, the great stag began a struggling limp toward the forest.
I raised my bow, taking in the long breath that would allow me, on the exhale, to shoot clean and true. Around me two dozen hunters did the same. All of us watched the huntswoman from the corners of our eyes; she would give the signal that would let us end the beast’s suffering, and she would not wait long to do it.
The huntswoman raised her horn. “Wait!” John called.
I stared at my brother in horror.
“It is the prince’s first quarry,” he said. “Let him try again.”
I looked back at the huntswoman. I was certain she wouldn’t let this stand; she was a clean and rigorous hunter, and I knew the worth she saw in each life her hunting par- ties took. She was Bird’s mother, for goodness’ sake!
But she moved the curved horn away from her tight-set lips and nodded.
Behind me I heard Bird’s strangled breath. Both he and the huntswoman were servants of Loughsley, and they could not contradict its young master; and even though I was its lady, as the younger sibling, I had no more authority to speak over my brother than they did. Besides, our visit- ing monarch had just named John sheriff; John had even more power now.
The prince took out another arrow. He fumbled at his crossbow with unpracticed hands.
After a long minute, John took the bow and reloaded for him. He handed the crossbow back to our prince with a dutiful nod.
“Thank you, Loughsley,” Rioch muttered, his color rising.
Don’t bother with thanks, I thought. Just kill the poor thing.
The prince’s second shot hit the stag in the neck. Too high to break his windpipe or open an artery, too low to pierce the spine and cease his pain.
The sound he made this time wasn’t panicked or even loud. It was mewling. Low. He leaned to one side, giving slow, panting, bubbling breaths. His tongue began to loll even while his eyes stayed open.
His punctured leg buckled, and with a faint snap, he fell.
Still the huntswoman watched my brother. “Once more, Your Highness,” John said.
The prince’s face was red. “I’ll reload myself,” he muttered.
In time ticked out by the wheezing clock of the hart’s wounded breaths, he did so.
A lean, brindled sighthound at the front of our party whined at the scent of blood. I heard the soft clashing of feathers behind me: the falcon came to rest on Bird’s arm again. The twenty or so humans all stayed as still as the animals, our hands cautious on bows, or tight on bridles or saddle horns.
None of them would speak against my brother, let alone the prince.
And the beast at the edge of the cliff lay trapped. Killed already, or as good as, but not yet dead, the animal panic in him not enough to numb his pain or mend his bones or carry him to safety.
I raised my bow again and shot him through the heart.
***
What a cliffhanger! Pre-order THE FOREST QUEEN today to see what happens to Silvie in her quest for justice.
We are so excited for GRIM LOVELIES by New York Times bestselling author Megan Shepherd that we wanted to share a new excerpt with you!
Meet Anouk, a girl enchanted into a human from an animal, and her best friend and fellow Beastie, Beau. What’s about to happen between them will change their lives—and the lives of all magical beings—forever.
***
“Dance with me,” he said.
She gave him an impatient look, holding up the dripping dish gloves. “I’m a mess.”
“You always are.” He wrapped one of his hands around her gloved one. “Come on, I know that look. You’ll worry all night over this. You deserve a break.”
He held up their hands as though ready to dance. Soapy water ran down his arm, soaking his shirt cuff, but he didn’t seem to mind. The tempo of the violin music picked up; Viggo must have been in a good mood. Laughter came from the ballroom.
Anouk rested one hand on his shoulder. “Go on, then. Show me how.”
He grinned. “Step back. Like this. There. Now forward.”
She tried to follow his movements, leaving damp footprints on the kitchen tiles. He led her in a clumsy circle around the big oak table, counting, “One-two-three-four, one-two-three-four.” The floor was slick from the water dripping from her dish gloves. Soap bubbles popped in the sink.
“How did you learn how to dance?” she asked.
He spun her in a circle by the oven. “I don’t. Know how to dance, I mean. I’m making it up as I go along. Now forward. To your left. Step back.” He swept her around the kitchen, past the dirty dishes and the pantry filled with jams and pickled meats. “Twirl. Bow. Now step to the right.”
“Beau, you’re ridiculous!” She laughed.
He pulled her close, twirling her by the icebox. His shirt was wet to the elbows now. The both of them were a mess, and she felt that same giddiness that she had on the roof, tipsy just from being in his arms, and —
He stepped on her toes.
“Oh!” She grimaced as she pulled her hands from his and clutched at her foot.
“Merde. Sorry about that. Let’s see the damage.” He lifted her by the waist, set her down on the kitchen table, and knelt to inspect her foot. Her left big toe was red and bore the imprint of his shoe tread, but it wasn’t bleeding. He ran his thumb over it gently. “No permanent harm, I think.” He paused. “I’d hate for you to have lost another one.”
He took her right foot in his other hand and, holding both her feet, ran his thumbs gently over the scars where her little toes had been. It had been six months. Nearly healed.
“One, two, three, four,” he said quietly, counting the remaining toes on each foot.
He didn’t let go of her feet. His hair was disheveled from dancing and from the steam from the oven. She touched her own. It had fallen out of the ribbon.
“Anouk.” Beau’s hands tightened over her feet, kneading slightly. She tugged her feet out of his grasp, embarrassed by the scars and the missing toes and the questions Beau always raised about them.
“Don’t start, Beau.”
She climbed off the table.
“Take these off,” he said suddenly, tugging at the dish gloves. “I want to hold your hand. Really dance.”
“But we don’t know how.” “It doesn’t matter.”
She pulled off the dish gloves — at least he’d dropped the subject of her toes. “And the apron,” he said, digging his fingers into the fab- ric at her waist. “I hate them, all these stupid things she makes you wear. Dressing you up like a doll.” His voice had grown low.
“Beau, are you all right?”
“Take it off,” he said, pulling at the ribbons behind her neck. “You aren’t some plaything. It isn’t okay, her ordering you around. Prince Rennar was right. You shouldn’t be sweeping her floors.”
“But it’s my job.”
“You get paid for a job. A job with no pay is called slavery.” He tugged at the apron.
“Beau, what’s gotten into you? The Mada is . . . she’s like our . . .” “She’s not our mother,” he said flatly.
The music from the ballroom stopped abruptly. For a moment the house was silent. No laughter, no clinking glasses, only the slowly bursting soap bubbles in the sink.
“Anouk!” Mada Vittora suddenly called. “More wine!”
Anouk gave Beau a hard look as she pushed his hands off her shoulders, then retied the bow of her apron. She smoothed her hands over it, pulled back her hair, and carried the wine decanter to the ballroom. They had cleared the table, throwing napkins on the floor and haphazardly stacking the dirty dishes, and now they leaned over a map of the city that was unrolled on the table. Prince Rennar held a dagger over the map, speaking in a low whisper as he made small, pre- cise cuts. Anouk kept her eyes averted, but she glimpsed silver powder on his lips. What magic were they doing now?
As she poured the wine, she tried not to make it obvious she was listening. Rennar was speaking the language of magic: the Selentium Vox, the Silent Tongue. Members of the Haute spent lifetimes mas- tering the complicated nuances of every word. Mada Vittora spoke it better than most. The townhouse library was filled with rare hand- written volumes of Selentium Vox grammar and vocabulary, books that Anouk borrowed and pored over at night so that she would be ready to help her mistress if the time ever came. And it had, once. There had been an evening over the summer when Mada Vittora had guzzled too many limoncello tonics and couldn’t remember the words to a love spell she’d meant to cast on some famous Pretty movie star. Anouk had snuck into the library and sorted through the volumes using the bits and pieces of Selentium Vox she’d taught herself until she’d found the right book. She left it out on the bistro table in the courtyard, open to the correct spell; Mada Vittora discovered it and, in her tipsy state, assumed she’d found the spell herself.
When Anouk went back to the kitchen, Beau was gone. Probably sulking in his room on the far side of the courtyard. Was it her fault he and Mada Vittora hadn’t ever gotten along? The Mada had given them life. Human life. Words to speak their thoughts, hands to do work, clothes to dress themselves, and all the other gifts that came with being human, like music and laughter and fairy tales, things Anouk clung to like precious jewels.
Before Mada Vittora — well, that was only darkness. It frightened Anouk to think about those days. She knew what she had been: ani- mal. She didn’t know what type — none of them knew — but what did it matter? Animal was animal. Mangy and hungry. Alone and vulnerable. She knew she’d been this, but she didn’t remember. All she had was a hazy feeling of dread, like trying to rush home before a winter storm strikes, and that’s how she’d given her past a name: Dark thing. Cold place. It made her first memory all the sweeter: Roses and thyme. Waking on the attic floor with all the rest of them look- ing down at her. Beau. Cricket. Hunter Black. Luc, the eldest, who looked twenty but had been human for only five years. He’d wrapped a blanket around her and stroked her hair and said, It will all be well, you’re safe now, it’s scary now but you’ ll learn. A puddle of blood had stained the floor beneath her. Viggo’s, though she hadn’t known it at the time.
And the Mada. She had been there too, of course, perfumed by the trick’s marjoram and wormwood and fox glove, the words of the whisper still on her lips. When her eyes had found Anouk’s, she had tilted her head and smiled.
This one’s sweet, isn’t she?
Anouk was lost in the memory, elbow-deep in cleaning the dishes, when she heard the click-click of heels on the kitchen floor. Mada Vittora came tottering in, drunk, her cheeks flushed unbecomingly.
Anouk pulled off her gloves. “Is dinner over? Shall I fetch the Royals’ coats?”
Mada Vittora waved vaguely. The top button of her blouse had come loose and was dangling. “Viggo’s seeing them out. He’s going to Castle Ides with them to handle the final paperwork.”
An image flashed in Anouk’s head of Prince Rennar and she felt a stab of regret that she wouldn’t see him again. Why did she care? Honestly, she should be relieved that he and the other Royals were gone. But there had been something about the way he had looked at her so keenly, as though he knew something that she didn’t.
“It was a good party, I hope?” Anouk asked.
Mada Vittora took a step and slipped on the soapy water. She cursed and kicked off her heels. Her bare toes were surprisingly pale, like Anouk’s. Except, of course, that she had all ten.
“Better than we dreamed.” Her eyes glistened with the alcohol. “Big things are going to happen. Just wait and see.”
“Oh . . . good.” Anouk had been referring to the food.
Mada Vittora saw the unraveling button and frowned. “Attash betit . . . betit . . . betit . . .” She couldn’t recall the last word of the repair trick.
Anouk feigned a cough. “Truk.”
Mada Vittora’s watery eyes snapped to her. A momentary suspi- cion wavered in her look, but it was soon drowned out by a tipsy hic- cup, and she blinked and flicked at the little button. “Ah, I remember now. Attash betit truk.”
The button obediently stitched itself back to the blouse.
A flush of pride warmed Anouk’s cheeks. To her surprise, the witch suddenly pressed a kiss against Anouk’s forehead. “My sweet girl. My darling girl. Ma galuk spirn.” She wobbled away, leaving the heels.
My clever girl. That was what she’d said in the Silent Tongue. Did she know about Anouk’s late-night reading? Did she approve?
Anouk brushed her fingers against her forehead, the kiss still damp. Her heart was lighter as she finished washing the dishes, dried them, and put them away. She soaked the big roasting pan in the sink to scour first thing in the morning. She cleared the rest of the dishes from the empty ballroom and blew out the candles. She swept the floor and closed the curtains over the tall windows. The moon was high outside. It had to be close to midnight.
A thump sounded from upstairs.
She dropped the broom, which clattered to the floor, and picked it back up in a hurry.
She listened.
No footsteps. No voices calling for her to come clean up a broken vase or fallen books. But something about the silence ate at her.
“Mada?” she called up the stairs. “Is everything all right?” No answer.
“Viggo?”
But no, he had left with the Royals, and he would have taken Hunter Black with him. They wouldn’t be back until the morning. She went to the window and pushed aside the drapes. The black Rolls- Royce was parked out front, as was Hunter Black’s gunmetal-gray motorcycle. They must have gone to Castle Ides in the Royals’ car.
Now the silence gnashed at her with big, jagged teeth. With a start, she realized the clock above the drawing-room fireplace had stopped. She tapped its face. Nothing. She’d have to reset it.
Her eyes trailed up to the portrait of the Shadow Royals, pulled by some unavoidable force, and she shivered. Were they watching even now? She went to the salon to check the time on the grandfather clock so she could reset the mantel one, but it had stopped too. A chill started at the base of her spine. She checked the hall clock, and the one in the kitchen, and the one on the stairs landing.
Every clock in the house had stopped at exactly midnight.
The chill grew. What was this dark magic? Not like any trick or whisper she had ever seen. The coldness spread up her back as she made her way up the stairs. She realized distractedly that she still clutched the broom in one hand.
“Mada?”
Empty bedrooms, empty halls. She double-checked Viggo’s room and the guest room Hunter Black used while he was in town to make sure they’d really left. All empty. She clutched the broom like a weapon, ready to strike. It wasn’t until the sixth floor, Mada Vit- tora’s grand bedroom, that she heard the scramble of someone’s jagged breath.
“Hello?”
She brandished the broom handle but then let her arms fall in surprise. “Beau?”
He was crouched on the Persian rug at the foot of the bed. The closet door was open. The dressing table’s chair was overturned. Bright red wine had spilled and was soaking into the carpet, and Anouk tsked reflexively. The hardest stains to get out.
She set the broom aside uncertainly. “What are you doing in here? Where’s Mada Vittora?”
His hair was messy. His chest rose and fell quickly. He met her eyes with a gaze like a caught animal’s, a look she’d never seen on his face before, not even the time that Hunter Black had cornered him in the garage and threatened to cut out his tongue if he ever called Viggo a salaud again.
“Anouk. Oh God.”
The stain wasn’t red wine, she realized. Her mouth went very dry.
Blood.
But whose blood?
Then she saw the knife in Beau’s hand.
***
What happens next? Pre-order GRIM LOVELIES at any of the links below to find out!
