I rolled my eyes. I drank the rest of my coffee before I could trust myself to speak again, then noticed a laundry basket on the bottom of the stairs full of folded shirts and jeans. “I have to get my knapsack,” I said as casually as I could. “I can take that up for you.”
“Thanks,” Abby said, sounding surprised.
Clare winked at me. “Are you sweet on Ethan, honey?”
I nearly choked on frosting. “No!” And why did everyone keep asking me that? I had bigger problems to worry about than whether or not Prince Charming thought I was cute.
Like whether or not he was even human.
See what I meant about algebra? Just. No. Room.
“What?” I said when I reached for the basket under the scrutiny of three middle-aged women. “Stop it.”
I raced up the steps to get away from the speculation. As far as stealth went, it wasn’t my best. But at least they had no idea what I was really doing. I crossed the expensive Persian rug, passing the locked gates of Ethan’s dad’s museum. The strange artifacts pulsed at me, like a bad tooth. I went down the quiet hall, hearing nothing but my own footsteps and the scratch of the laundry basket on my hip against the heavy wool of my school kilt. I stopped in front of Ethan’s door, listening. Nothing. This was as good a time as any to snoop. I turned the knob and pushed the door open slowly and soundlessly.
I wasn’t the only one being silent.
Ethan sat at his piano in his white school shirt, sleeves rolled up. His head was slightly bent, his honey-colored hair falling into his eyes. He wasn’t moving. He was sitting there staring at a silver ring resting on one of the piano keys. The photograph of Summer watched him.
He looked sad. Torn.
And then very, very angry.
“What the hell are you doing?” he snapped at me, snatching the ring away into his palm. He didn’t so much as stand as uncoil, like a snake. Or a wolf in the winter woods.
Mauled to death by a wild animal.
I took a step back. I’m not proud to admit it, but under the wild fear and fury in his eyes, I considered bolting.
Mauled to death by a wild animal.
That alone made me stand my ground. I wasn’t going to be the rabbit to his wolf.
“I said, what are you doing here?” He advanced. There was pain in his face, a kind of suffering that didn’t make sense. I couldn’t let it distract me.
Mauled—
“Doing Abby a favor.” I shoved the basket at him, and it collided with his sternum. He made a very gratifying oomph sound when he caught it. I was already stalking away when his bedroom door slammed shut. There was an uncomfortable kind of warmth in my belly, one I couldn’t identify. My hands weren’t hot, and my eyes felt normal. There was no smoke, no fire.
Just the flare of Ethan’s eyes when he saw me. Just the burning gold of his hair, like the archaeological Viking burial grave goods my dad was always making us watch stories about on the Discovery Channel. Old gold, broken inside the earth, but still beautiful. More beautiful, actually, because of the dents and jagged edges.
Damn it. I was dangerously close to losing my badass rep.
I blamed Clare and Sloane for asking me if I liked Ethan. And Ethan for being Ethan. And this castle for being plain weird. You know what didn’t help? Not even a little bit?
A big-ass red parrot swooping down at me from the antler chandelier in the balcony space outside the trophy room.
I yelped and covered my head with my arms. “I hate this stupid place!”
When the back of my head wasn’t instantly pecked at, I risked an upward glance. The chandelier swung lightly under the weight of the red bird perched on one of the curved tines. It watched me curiously, as if it hadn’t scared the crap out of me.
Now that I had a better look, it wasn’t actually a parrot. It had the same type of bright plumage, but it was the size of a large hawk. My dad liked to watch a lot of nature shows, along with his archaeology shows, so I knew a parrot from a parakeet and a hawk from an eagle. This bird was unique, with feathers so bright it was like it was made of sunlight and blood and fire. And it looked intelligent as it tracked me, as if it were thinking important bird thoughts.
Or maybe it was thinking of pecking out my eyeballs.
The bird swooped down, landing on my shoulder. Talons dug painfully into my shoulder through the thin layer of my blouse. I squeaked; I couldn’t do anything else. If I upset the bird it could easily rip through my shoulders or my cheek. It was close enough that when I cracked one eye open I could see the soft downy feathers on its chest. “Oh, God,” I muttered. “Please don’t eat my face.”
It turned its head to look disdainfully down at me, black eyes like crystal beads. I shifted slightly, and its talons dug deeper, painfully. One of them bit through cotton and flesh, blood seeping into my shirt. “I don’t want to barbecue you, bird. But I totally will.”
I lifted one hand slowly, willing fire to flicker from my palm. My skin itched painfully, a tiny spark burning through my skin.
“Kia,” Holden said softly, calmly from behind me.
I startled. So did the bird. I clamped my fingers around the tiny flame. The fire died, turning to raw welts. I smelled smoke and could only hope that Ethan’s father was too preoccupied with the big-ass bird inside his house. “Kia, don’t move.”
“You think?” So not how I should be talking to Abby’s boss. So didn’t care right then.
“Don’t panic,” he said, as if I’d been polite. “You’re doing great.”
“Get this thing off me,” I said. I was suddenly remembering those nature shows linking birds to dinosaurs. I basically had a raptor inches from my face.
Holden moved slowly and carefully, like a hunter. He reached behind him without looking and punched his code into a security panel set into the wall. The lock on the museum gate clicked open. “I need you to keep doing what you’re doing,” he said, shrugging out of his silk dressing gown so he was only wearing pajama bottoms. For someone’s father, he was ripped. God, the Blackwoods were a menace to women.
“What’s that? Nothing?”
“Yes.” The robe dangled from his hand, catching the light. “Are you ready?”
I swallowed. “Yes.” No! No, no, no!
He flung the robe, draping it over the bird’s head. He pulled as I stumbled backward and the disoriented bird didn’t have a chance to clamp harder onto my shoulder. It squawked indignantly, flapping. Holden took the robe sack filled with annoyed bird into the museum while I darted forward to shut the gate again. The bird shook free and landed on the windowsill, cawing.
I slumped, catching my breath. My shoulder stung. Holden frowned down at my hand, still wrapped around the gate. “Did you burn yourself the night of the forest fire?”
“Yes.” I yanked down my sleeve.
“We should have that looked at.”
“It’s fine.” I had to get the hell out of here.
He turned to eye the bird. “I don’t know how it got in here, but it’s rather beautiful, don’t you think?”
I smiled weakly. “Not right now.”
He smiled back. The light gleamed off his perfect teeth and tanned muscles. “You did wonderfully, Kia. I’m proud of you.”
“I should get to school,” I said before bolting down the back stairs.
My day did not improve.
Everyone at school stared at me, and I had to carry all of my books in my bag. I hadn’t been reassigned a new locker, and I didn’t want to ask. I was pretty sure I only narrowly passed the history quiz I’d had no time to study for because I’d been too busy stalking Ethan online and sneaking around the castle, which was bad enough, but then Justine cornered me in the hall.
“I can’t believe they let you back in the building when your transcripts read like a juvie hall record,” she said. “Enjoy your last day at this school.”
Everything narrowed down to her smug, beautiful face. Her words seemed to echo around me, as if we were in a cave.
<
br /> “What?”
“Will you do to Sloane what you did to Riley?”
“What the hell do you know about Riley?” When she shifted suddenly from foot to foot, I felt sure the soles of her shoes had gone hot. I wondered if I was the only one who could smell smoke and roses.
“Too bad you didn’t learn from your mistakes.”
Everything glowed as if outlined in fire, like burning paper. The air went hot around my face. “You set the fire in my locker.”
She smirked. “Prove it.”
“Why?” I asked, stunned. “Over Ethan? That is the lamest— You know what? I don’t care why.”
I punched her.
It wouldn’t occur to me until much later that she’d let me punch her.
The bell rang, and students poured into the hallway around us. Justine stumbled back, shrieking. She fell into a teacher, knocking them both into an open door. Justine’s lip was cut, already swelling slightly. There was blood on my fingerless gloves. Arson and assault—my infractions were piling up like sandbags, but there was no holding back this particular flood.
“Kia Alcott,” a teacher snapped. “Office. Now.”
The headmaster marched me down to the nurse’s office to have my knuckles iced, even as he had his secretary call Abby. Justine was already there, holding a blue ice pack to her face. Before I could stop her, the nurse peeled off my gloves.
I knew the exact moment she saw the burn scars on my palms.
Abby wouldn’t be able to talk me out of this one.
Chapter Eighteen
Ethan
I was patrolling when I heard it.
I’d have known that sound anywhere. It was more chilling than the hiss of a basilisk or the shriek of a Harpy, worse than the crunching of bones re-forming themselves from human to wolf. Worse even than Colt whimpering when we found him in his own blood.
It was the sound of a new cage being built.
It had been nearly a year since we’d needed a new kind of enclosure. Dad used the same fencing and iron cages used in zoos, rotating his “collection.” He was most proud of a vintage elephant cage from a circus in the 1920s. He kept a blind troll in there, feeding it mice and raw fish. When one creature died and went to the museum as a trophy, another was brought in. Sometimes it took years to find them, never mind trapping and delivery.
The whine of machinery and welding equipment shivered through the silent trees. It masked Dad’s footsteps so that I thought I was alone until he turned the bend in the trail, coming toward me. He looked confident again, excited. There were two men with him wearing expensive business suits totally wrong for the forest. They had knives on their belts, at least.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
Dad slapped my shoulder in the kind of camaraderie Cabals and knightly courts excelled at. It made me clench my back teeth. “This is my son, Ethan.” He didn’t introduce them, just squeezed my shoulder until I moved out of the way. “I have a plan. Don’t mess it up.”
I shoved my hands in my pockets so I wouldn’t give in to the urge to shove him. “Colt’s never going to walk again,” I reminded him.
“He was brave.”
“He’s still brave,” I snapped. “He’s not dead, for Christ’s sake.”
His smile slipped, and I could see beneath the mask. It made me pause. “Careful, son.”
I didn’t back down. After a long moment, he smiled again and strolled away, whistling.
Fantastic. My own father was sliding from obsessed to batshit creepy.
My phone trilled discreetly in my pocket but I didn’t answer it until I was sure he was out of earshot. “Ethan, I won’t do it.” It was Justine, her voice trembling with furious tears.
I pinched the bridge of my nose. The whole day was disintegrating around me. “What now?”
“Your dad.”
I groaned. “Shit.”
“And mine. They’re both trying to convince me to take my Trials now, or at least let Justin take them ahead of me.”
“They can’t make you.” I wasn’t entirely convinced of that.
“Justin’s on their side,” she said, hiccuping on a sob. “Not about Ariel, but about me letting him prove himself. He wants to show everyone he could get through them.”
“He’s been saying that for years now.”
“I know, but he didn’t mean it before. Not like this, not after Colt. He thinks he can have vengeance or something. As if that will help Colt walk again. What am I going to do? I’m the only thing standing between Ariel and the Trials.”
“Yeah, what’s with that?” I asked. I still didn’t really get the rules for twins. It didn’t make any sense. Siblings had to go in order of age but only children had no such luck. We went whenever our loving parents threw us into the woods with a spear, a stupid medallion, and a monster. In large families, the eldest went in that way and the rest followed. “That was Mom’s doing,” Justine said. “It’s not Cabal tradition, but when she was pregnant she made Dad take a blood oath that he wouldn’t force us into the Trials. But then we have to go by age like everyone else.”
“She was trying to buy you time. Give you an edge. Your mom rocks.”
“I know.” She took a deep, wavering breath. “Will you talk to Justin?”
“Sure. But he won’t listen to me.” My cell phone reception started to go fuzzy. “Look, I’m in the forest, I gotta go.” I hung up, giving a quick glance in all directions, including up. I used my code on one of the gates. Electricity buzzed through the barbed-wire fencing on either side that stretched across like a dome. Agitated animal sounds momentarily displaced the clatter of construction. The troll roared and threw fish bones at me. The sad-eyed yeth hound curled lethargically in the corner of his pen. I tossed him a handful of dog biscuits.
The new cage beside him had the usual iron bars but a more sophisticated water system.
A new cage meant a new acquisition. That’s what Dad called them. Acquisitions.
There were moments when I actually hated him.
Chapter Nineteen
Kia
I drank a triple-shot latte with extra cinnamon syrup, waiting for the sugar and caffeine to make me feel normal again.
There wasn’t enough sugar or caffeine in the world.
“Now there’s a face to scare small children,” Sara said.
“Gee, thanks.” My palms itched again.
“I’ve just the thing for a wretched temper,” she added, ignoring my tone and petulant grimace. “Come here.”
I sighed. “Sara, I don’t want to waitress or fry up goose livers or any more disgusting things today.”
“Do I look the type to eat goose livers?” She motioned me closer with a sharp flick of her wrist. Flour drifted through the warm yeasty air. “I’m making bread,” she said. “And there’s nothing like kneading dough to clear your mind.”
I was skeptical, but a clear mind sounded like a nice change.
“Wash your hands, you savage.” Sara clucked her tongue.
I went to the sink, muttering. I turned back to the wide counter and stared at the lump sitting on a bed of flour. “Now what?”
“Get your fingers in there.”
I poked it. It was sticky and cool. Sara rolled her eyes. “It’s not going to bite. Grab hold and roll it.” She paused, watching me gingerly squish the dough. “Pretend it’s one of Ethan’s friend’s heads.”
I punched it.
Sara guffawed so loudly I jumped. “Attagirl,” she said. “Now roll it into a ball and fold it in half. Use the heel of your hand.”
After a few more minutes of kneading the bread, I did feel better. I was still confused as hell, but I could breathe again. There was space in my head between the frantic whirl of thoughts. Sara put the dough into a bowl and covered it with a towel. She slid a second bowl, already covered, toward me. The dough inside had risen into a perfect curve, delicate and smooth.
“Punch that down, will you?”
It was the best
part of my day. I think I might have made one of those warrior shouts you hear in karate movies. The ball of dough punctured and fell in on itself. Sara grinned as I wiped sweat off my forehead. “Better than all that yoga Tobias is always doing.”
I was momentarily distracted. “Tobias does yoga?”
She chuckled. “Sounds like a lost cow with all that mournful ‘om.’” I chuckled, and she patted my shoulder gruffly. “Now get out of my kitchen.”
“That’s what I like about you, Sara,” I said. “You’re such a people person.”
“Takes one to know one, sunshine.”
Still, I wasn’t going to figure things out by drinking lattes, making bread, or sitting in my room. There was only so much stalling a girl could do. Besides, if I waited too long it would be dark, and I wasn’t quite that stupid.
The lake was so still and smooth I was tempted to walk along the beach, but I made myself head to the woods. The trees turned mostly to red pine, standing tall as spears. There was barely any undergrowth, nothing for any creature to hide behind. Downside was, there was nothing for me to hide behind, either.
I held a thick branch in one hand, my Swiss Army knife, a cell phone programmed to 911 in my pocket, and a backpack stuffed with flashlights, water, three paring knives from the kitchen, and bolt cutters from Abby’s tools. I also had a can of wasp spray because I’d read somewhere that it worked better than pepper spray. I was prepared.
Stupid, but prepared.
When I got to the barbed-wire fence, I snipped the metal and peeled it back like the rind of an orange. I crawled through to the other side, my palms burning hot enough that it was uncomfortable. Sweat soaked into my hair despite the cold air. The sun leaked light pale as chamomile tea through the branches. I walked so far I got lost. The shadows stretched longer; my calves ached. I had no idea where I was.
I expected werewolves, Ethan, ice monsters. Not another fence, this one electric. I stumbled to a stop, peering up the length of a chain-link fence topped with barbed wire and electricity. Something was definitely being locked out of this area.
Or locked in.
Smoke lifted from the grass under my boots. I jumped, heat licking up my ankles. I stomped the sparks out quickly, glancing all around. There was bound to be a gate somewhere. I caught a glimpse of iron and crept closer, staying hidden in the downward-sloping branches of a cedar. I smelled animal: fur, hay, sweat. It was primal, wild, cloaked in sweat and blood and raw meat piled in some of the pens. “A zoo?” I said to myself. “The Blackwoods have a stupid zoo? I’ve been freaking out over a zoo?”