Chapter Ten

Ana

The days passed in a blur. I went to classes. I worried. I turned down Aunt Felicity’s herbal drinks designed to calm the nerves, because as far as I could tell they were made entirely of pink sugar and weeds picked off the lawn. We developed a rhythm, and even though it wasn’t a good rhythm, it was better than nothing.

I had Pierce back and that made everything else bearable. Even if I’d fed him magic cupcakes and now he didn’t seem to notice if I was standing too close or if our arms brushed. I noticed. We didn’t talk about Edward, beyond the fact that I’d mentioned we were no longer dating. We didn’t talk about Pierce kissing me, either. It was like he’d forgotten, but I still felt it there, sparking between us.

Luckily, or unluckily, we had about a hundred other things to talk about.

Starting with Jamie.

We cornered her in the hall before the first bell. “I have a quick question for you.”

She closed her locker door. “Okay.”

And I had nothing. I could parkour up her locker, run a fox to ground, sing up the wind, or smear magic blood on my face, but I drew a blank on subtle investigation techniques. What could I say? Swans didn’t generally do subtle.

“My brother lost my cell phone,” Pierce said smoothly. “At your party. We’ve looked everywhere, but he went off into the fields pretty far with a girl. Any chance you know who lives in the house just behind yours?”

I kept discovering these new facets to Pierce, even when I thought I’d known him as well as anyone could. He had this layer of confidence and calm that translated even under the worst my family threw at him. It was pretty amazing. Especially since I was pretty sure my technique would be to shake Jamie until she said something useful.

“It’s totally embarrassing,” she said, rolling her eyes. “Ms. Pritchard moved in there a few months back. You don’t know how awkward it is to live that close to a teacher.”

I couldn’t hear anything but my blood pounding in my ears. When Jamie went back to class, Pierce touched my arm. “Ana.”

“It fits,” I said finally, as I connected the dots in my head. “She was there when I took out Jackson fighting over Samuel. She was there when we found the swan. And at the dance. She’s part of this somehow.”

I was about to be expelled for dropkicking a teacher.

“Shit, wait up.” Pierce hurried after me, realizing where I was going. Ms. Pritchard taught history in the classroom at the end of the hall. The one with the window overlooking the steps to the student parking lot. Who knew what else she’d seen?

I barged inside and stumbled to a halt when everyone turned to stare at me, including Mr. Bhandari who was, most decidedly, not Ms. Pritchard. “Oops,” I said weakly. I turned and fled without bothering with an explanation. Whispers trailed behind me.

“We’ll come back at lunch and search her desk,” I told Pierce, marshaling my more bloodthirsty thoughts. I pinched the bridge of my nose, picturing swans flying overhead, able to pick out the rest of the pattern I was missing. “I have an idea!”

Pierce groaned. “I’m afraid to ask.”

“We’re doing a feature on our new teacher Ms. Pritchard for the school paper,” I informed him. “Which means we can ask lots of rude, nosy questions.”

The receptionist was at her desk in the main office, looking bored. I smiled my most academic smile. “Hi, sorry to bother you,” I said. “We’re doing a piece on Ms. Pritchard for the paper. Can we ask you a few questions?”

“Sure, honey.”

“What’s her first name? And is she local? Did she go to this high school when she was younger?” There, that sounded vaguely journalistic, didn’t it? So I didn’t take journalism and I didn’t even know where the school paper office was; it would have to do. The receptionist didn’t seem to think I was insane, so that helped.

We found out her first name was Leila. She had a son, around eight years old. She wasn’t from the area and really there were no other details. She was friendly and polite and she made the best coffee in the teacher’s lounge. She had no family in town. And she was out sick with the flu, possibly all week.

“She’s not sick,” a teacher I didn’t recognize corrected from where she was fiddling with the office printer. “She quit.”

“Do you know why?” Pierce stood behind me, brushing the small of my back. The heat of his body was grounding.

“No idea.”

The lunch bell rang and we decided to question Reed, Jamie’s ex, next. He just kept looking from side to side, guilty as hell. Pierce frowned at him. “Dude, you’re a terrible liar.”

It’s not like Reed was the one skipping classes to interrogate people. Reed shifted from foot to foot. “I have to go.”

I blocked his way. “It’s not like we can give you detention. We just need to know why you’d chop her hair off. It’s kinda weird.”

He looked at Pierce again, looked away. Pierce narrowed his eyes. “What?”

“I don’t want to tell you.”

“And I don’t want to hurt you,” I returned pleasantly. “But I’m having a really bad week, Reed. Trust me, you don’t want to piss me off right now.”

He sighed. “Jackson paid me a hundred bucks to take the blame. I was drunk and jealous and it seemed like a good idea at the time.” We stared at him. He took a step back as if we were about to take a swing at him. “I changed my mind when I sobered up, but Jackson nearly dislocated my shoulder.”

“Okay,” I said. “Thanks.” He hesitated uncertainly, as if I was a teacher who had to dismiss him formally before he could leave. I waved my hands. “Shoo.”

He took off at a run.

Pierce raised his eyebrows at me. “Where the hell would Jackson get a hundred bucks?”

We waited until the hall was clear before slipping into Pritchard’s classroom. I went straight to the desk. It was covered in textbooks and pens. The top drawer held more pens and a pound of paperclips. I didn’t find anything personal, just ordinary teacher detritus.

“Nothing,” I said.

Pierce put his arms around me. I let myself lean into his hug. I felt right for the first time in days. I hoped he never let go.

“We’ll figure it out,” he said. “I promise.”

When I found Rosalita she was practically camped inside the fridge at Cygnet House. She raised her eyebrows over a stack of empty puddings cups. “What? I’m stress eating, back off.”

Sonnet rolled her eyes. “You should try stress-working-out instead. It’s more helpful.”

“Shut up.”

“There’s something we have to do,” I said.

“If it doesn’t involve chocolate I’m not interested.” She opened another pudding, shoving a huge spoonful into her mouth. “Samuel is being an ass.”

“Think breaking into the school would distract you?” I asked, biting into an apple.

She paused. “Actually, that sounds like fun.”

“Good, wear black.”

“Black is not my color.”

“How about prison jumpsuits? Is that your color?” Sonnet asked drily. “Because this is extremely illegal.”

Rosalita didn’t look worried. The security guard was straight and male, and she already knew she could sing her way out of trouble. He let her off campus all the time, even though it was against the rules. Still, she went to change and tied her hair up in a ponytail.

“Are the aunts okay with this?” Rosalita asked as we climbed into the van. “If I decide to care about that?” She took the front seat because she always did, and Sonnet drove because she always did, even though she hated the van. She wanted a muscle car, always had.

“Aunt Felicity caught me and fluttered, but she always flutters,” I said. She’d threatened me with wings that wouldn’t grow and cloaks stolen by foxes in the middle of the night. I didn’t tell her that was an empty threat. Instead I snuck away while Agrippina dosed her with whiskey. “Anyway, you’re the best with computers, and we need to find anything on Pritchard before it’s deleted or shredded or whatever they do when teachers quit abruptly.”

Rosalita looked smug. “I am pretty good.”

Sonnet and I exchanged a glance in the rearview mirror. I spent the rest of the ride clutching the holy-crap-bar as she decimated the speed limit with extreme prejudice. She only slowed down when we got to the edge of town and I reminded her that getting a speeding ticket right now would be the opposite of stealthy. I googled how to pick various kinds of locks until Sonnet pulled into the parking lot and turned off the engine. “Arrows at the ready,” she said. “We already know this is enemy territory.”

Rosalita shivered but her eyes were narrowed. “If they try anything again I will shove an arrow straight up their—”

“Just learn to duck tranquilizer darts first,” Sonnet cut her off. “And stow your pride. This is serious.”

“I was trained just as well as you were,” she snapped back.

“Prove it.”

I sighed. “Would you both shut it? This is the least James Bond thing we’ve ever done, arguing before we even start.” I pulled my hoodie up over my hair and double-checked my pocket knives, the arrows in my bag, and one of the tranquilizer guns Aunt Aisha had ordered after I was kidnapped. No one asked her where she got them.

The school was dark, as expected, except for the security lights. There were no other cars parked inconspicuously or silhouettes of hunters on the roof. I didn’t know if they even did that. “Ready?”

Rosalita and I went first, Sonnet following with an arrow nocked to her bow. We circled around back, trying all of the doors. I wasn’t relying on an overlooked unlocked one, but I double-checked anyway. All of the windows were secured too. We ended up having to break one. Sonnet wrapped her elbow in her jacket and took great pleasure in the crack and clatter of glass. We pulled our hoods tight, covering our hair and faces. I didn’t know where the security cameras were, but I assumed there were a few, even in a small country town school. Luckily for us, there was no alarm system and no security guard at night.

The school echoed around us as we headed for the main office. The emergency exit lights over the doors and lockers gleamed off the linoleum floor tiles. The furnace hummed loudly with no other noises to mask it. Sonnet closed the window blinds in the office and then took up her position on the threshold. We ducked into the principal’s office attached to the main reception area.

Rosalita booted up the computer on the desk while I went to the file cabinet. I checked the websites I’d saved and ended up using my pocket knife to jiggle the lock open. Rosalita muttered and typed so fast on the keyboard she sounded like she was shaking a rattle. I opened up all of the drawers, but most of them were filled with permission slips and letters to the parents and report card templates.

“Pritchard takes a lot of personal days,” Rosalita said. “But I can’t really find anything suspicious.”

Frustrated, I slammed the last drawer shut. “There has to be something about someone somewhere!”

“Teacher’s lounge,” Sonnet called out. “They hang out and gossip or whatever. And keep it down, ninja.”

“You’re homeschooled,” Rosalita pointed out. “By an English literature fanatic nurse. How would you even know that?”

“I watch movies.”

We shut everything down and went up to the second floor. The lounge smelled like old coffee and cherry disinfectant. We searched everything, including the couch cushions. It wasn’t until I noticed the message caddy behind the door that we had any luck. The cubbyhole with Ms. Pritchard’s name had only a note with the dates of the next parent-teacher meeting and a scrap of paper stuck in the back corner. It looked vaguely familiar.

“Got something,” I said, wiggling it out. I finally got it free and held it up. It was a parking pass for the hospital. Aunt Agrippina’s car was littered with them. My stomach clenched nervously, positive this was something, even if I didn’t know what. “On the night of the dance, those guys who attacked us took off toward the hospital.”

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

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

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

Pierce

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Gotcha,” I murmured.

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

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

It only got worse when I saw the cage.

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

Mei Lin.

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

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

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

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

When I couldn’t even save myself.

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

Too many tranquilizer darts.

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

I was so screwed.

Ana

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

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

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

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

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

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

“That’s not our hair, Liv.”

“You would say that.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

“You kidnapped me,” Liv pointed out.

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

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

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

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

“You Vila started this.”

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

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

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

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

“They’re using us. All of us.”

“Why?”

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

“Because I don’t like you.”

“I meant our families, asshat.”

“Because you killed one of ours.”

“Who? What was her name? His name?”

She hesitated, stumped.

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

“I remember my aunt.”

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

She lifted her chin. “No.”

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

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

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

“Why would she do that?”

“You tell me.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

But then Soliloquy went missing.