Love Me, Love Me Not

  “Thorn tree,” he said, nodding to the edge of the pond. There were red splotches on his sleeve.

  “Let me fix it.”

  “It’s no big deal.”

  “It’ll get infected and your knuckles will fall off and you’ll die,” I pointed out, borrowing a threat from Aunt Felicity. According to her we were always in danger of having various body parts just fall right off. “Hold still and let me do this.”

  I was always prepared for small healing. Usually my backpack was full of pouches of herbs. If it was ever searched it would look really bad. Currently, my cargo pants pockets were stocked with mint, marigold petals, salt, and plantain leaves.

  Pierce looked slightly nervous. “You know, I think I have antibacterial cream in the truck.”

  “Don’t be a baby. You love magic.”

  “Yeah, when it’s aimed at my idiot little brother, and not me.”

  “Better hope I’m better at this than the cupcakes of doom, then.” I cradled his hand, his skin warm against mine. I sang softly because you never knew who might be listening. And family tradition didn’t exactly run to Top 40. “John Barleycorn was a hero bold, Of noble enterprise; For if you do but taste his blood, ’Twill make your courage rise.”

  “Cannibalism?” Pierce asked dubiously. “How exactly is that healing?”

  “I can sing the one about the guy who’s hanged by his own entrails.”

  “I’m good, thanks.”

  A tiny electrical shock sparked between us. I jumped, fingertips tingling. There was a small gasp, like a sob. “There’s no need to cry.” I rolled my eyes. “It can’t hurt that much.”

  His eyebrows rose. “That wasn’t me, Ana.”

  It had sounded like weeping, but it might have been the wind.

  Footsteps, a small shriek.

  Or not.

  Pierce angled his body in front of mine even though I was the one with the paranoid aunt who had trained in the army. I could protect him better than he could protect me. Though I didn’t think either of us needed to be saved from the girl stumbling out of the trees. She clutched her head and I expected to see blood drip between her fingers, but it was only her hair. The blond strands were ragged and hacked. Her eyes were wild.

  “Jamie?” Pierce asked gently, but his expression was stone and ice. “What happened to you?”

  I reached for my cell phone. It smelled like the mint I kept in that pocket. “Should I call 911?”

  Jamie shook her head, trying to speak through her tears. “No, I’m okay.”

  “You don’t look okay.”

  Her friends rushed toward her. One of them screamed. Another snapped at her to get a grip. There was a burst of chaos, punctuated with lots of hugging and swearing and threats that would have impressed even Aisha.

  “Who did this?” someone asked Jamie.

  “I don’t know.” She hiccupped, trying to force back a sob. “I was in the woods waiting for… Well, I was in the woods. Someone grabbed my ponytail.” Fear and fury chased each other across her face. “And then they just chopped it off.”

  When three guys took off into the trees, Pierce joined them. He was a better tracker than anyone else here. His grandmother had forced her three grandsons to learn to hunt even though Pierce was more interested in books.

  He came back shaking his head. “Nothing,” he said as everyone scattered back to the bonfires. “A few footsteps but it’s pretty dark in there.”

  I felt something hard and cold in my stomach. I knew exactly who stole hair. The Renards. My aunts all had stories of girls like us having their cloaks stolen, their hair stolen, everything stolen. I thought of Henry Renard and his dead eyes before Aunt Agrippina shot him in the ass with a crossbow.

  But Jamie wasn’t Vila; she was just a girl who happened to have blond hair. What game were the Renards playing now?

  I searched for my cousins again, and they were still all here, looking as grim as I felt. We didn’t want to give them the satisfaction of thinking they’d scared us, but it was time to go home. The party was no longer remotely fun.

  We had no idea we were being watched from across the pond.

  Not until much, much later.

  Chapter Three

  Ana

  On the third and last night of the full moon, we danced.

  But it wasn’t enough.

  Ana

  Cygnet House was the main building on the farm. Part stone and part Victorian gables, it was built over two hundred years ago by a Vila grandmother. A swan curved over the front door, creating a small alcove with its huge wings. Every feather was painstakingly carved. The cheerful red door concealed a surprising number of rooms and a huge kitchen with its own espresso maker.

  I really, really wanted that espresso maker.

  I also wanted two more hours of sleep, but I dutifully made my way behind the main house. Training started before dawn because I’d insisted on keeping after-school hours for homework. To say my cousins were unimpressed with me was a mild understatement. Rosalita glared at me, still annoyed. I glared back, equally annoyed. I made sure to keep Sonnet and Mei Lin between us. Aunt Aisha didn’t like it when we beat each other up without her say so.

  Swan girls learned archery, hand-to-hand combat, and parkour. The usual girl stuff. When we got our cloaks, we learned other things, but no one would tell me what those were. For now, with morning dew soaking into our shoes, we ran laps around the field. Aisha’s black gaze was more than enough to propel us forward. If you lagged, or you dared look bored, you’d have to do it all over again. I’d once had to run the field seven times in a row because I was thinking about Edward.

  “Jamie’s ex-boyfriend copped to chopping off her hair,” Story told me between gasps for air. No one could gather gossip like she could. “He was jealous of the new guy she’s dating.”

  Relief prickled through me. “So just a stupid prank then.”

  We’d been raised on warnings about people wanting to steal our magic. Our hair could be used in spells, even spells against us. Maybe only a few people knew magic existed, but it only took one asshat with power to cause a lot of problems. If it fell into the wrong hands, it could be deadly. None of us wanted that on our conscience.

  Still, after all of this running and memorizing tactics and strategy, I wondered if anyone had bothered exerting that much effort on maintaining some kind of peace. There was a treaty of course, but it was just words on paper.

  We ran in jagged confusing lines to practice being a harder target to hit. Renards were supernaturally good at tracking, both as foxes and as humans. We had to run as if we were flying, leaving no part of ourselves behind. When we were all coughing and red-faced, Aunt Aisha let us stop. We lined up with our bows, shooting arrows into lumps of moldy hay. The magic arrows wrapped in our hair disintegrated on contact. Sounds like a great weapon, and maybe two hundred years ago when Cygnet House was brand new, it was. But try walking around town with a bow and a quiver of arrows strapped to your back without getting arrested. I’d asked about throwing knives, but I always got the same answer: arrows are tradition.

  Tradition, tradition, tradition. Everything is tradition with us.

  Well, I was starting my own traditions and they included graduating high school. If I ever got enough time to study. Last I checked, dodging fists wasn’t exactly on the curriculum.

  “Focus,” Aunt Aisha snapped behind me.

  When I was sick she was the first to bring me soup and blankets, and she was the one who went to my parent-teacher meetings when the single teachers wouldn’t stop hitting on my dad. Even my math teacher, and I was pretty sure he was married. But on the training field, she was as vicious as a, well, as a swan.

  I focused harder because I wanted her to be proud of me. I was a decent shot, but not as good as Sonnet. And Mei Lin could outrun a horse. Rosalita could sing a breeze delicate enough to lift a single petal off a rose. I wasn’t particularly skilled. Aunt Aisha studied my last arrow. “Not bad. You just need to pra
ctice more. You study too much.” I felt sure Ms. Pritchard would not agree.

  The sun was rising, glittering in the windows of Cygnet House and on the ponds scattered around us like dropped coins. Another half an hour, I calculated, and I could go to school. If I was really lucky, Pierce would give me a lift. He snuck us lattes from work when there was time. I was going to need about eight of them.

  “Hand to hand,” Aunt Aisha called. “Who’s up? Ana?”

  I tried not to groan. She might make me run more laps.

  “I’ll go.” Rosalita stepped in front of me with a smirk. She was clearly still pissed off about me stopping the boys from fighting over her. Well, fine. I wasn’t too thrilled with her either.

  “Begin,” Aunt Aisha said, frowning slightly, as if she could smell the acridness between us.

  We inclined our heads in a short but formal bow of acknowledgment. Tradition again.

  Formal manners went out the window when Rosalita tried to scratch my eyes out. I blocked her, but she left angry welts in my forearm. “Don’t be such a cliché,” I told her.

  “You’re not going to stand between me and my wings,” she said.

  I paused, surprised. She hooked her foot behind my leg. I landed hard, but I flipped back up before she could press her advantage. “Is that what this is about? You don’t love Jackson, idiot.”

  “He loves me.”

  “So what? That’s not how it works.” I shoved back.

  “The more people love me, the more the right one will take notice. I won’t have you getting in the way and ruining everything!”

  Our songs slammed against each other until the air rippled. Wind tore through the grass. Tree branches creaked warningly. Aunt Aisha was shouting something at us, but I couldn’t hear her. I was trying not to let Rosalita’s song stab me in the ears. She was better at this part. Her mother had trained as an opera singer for God’s sake. My dad taught me how to camp and chop wood and grow my own food—all the things that didn’t require magic. He didn’t want me becoming complacent. Which was great, except I didn’t see how building a campfire out of dryer lint was going to help me with Rosalita’s temper tantrum.

  My voice cracked, but I sang louder, louder. My hair whipped around my face, stinging my eyes. Our songs collided again, like comets. The air singed, everything went white, and I flew backward. When I managed to sit up, I could only hear a muffled throbbing. Everything hurt. When I touched my ears, my fingers came away bloody.

  Mei Lin and Sonnet gaped at us. When Rosalita and I both tried to stand up on wobbly legs, Aunt Aisha sang a burst of wind to knock us back down. She stared at us with the sharp disdain of an offended queen. I winced inwardly.

  “A waste of magic,” she spat. I could mostly hear again, but my head ached. “You’ll run yourself dry on pettiness and pride. And then what will you be when the Renards find you? Useless, that’s what.

  “Sisters don’t fight sisters,” she added fiercely.

  “She’s not my sister,” Rosalita snapped, stalking away. “And you’re not my damned mother.”

  Aunt Aisha watched me push to my feet. Half the forest appeared to be trapped in my hair. “Anastasia Vila, do not tell me you’re fighting over a boy.”

  “Not like that,” I assured her.

  “Good. I don’t—” She was interrupted by a flurry of sound from inside the house that sounded a lot like wailing. We turned to see Aunt Sarafina running out of the sunroom, half a dozen swan girls trailing behind her. She was naked and covered in mud and dead leaves. They looked like blood from a distance. The sweat on the back of my neck chilled instantly.

  She saw Aunt Aisha and started to sob, harsh panicked gasps muffling her words. Aisha touched her shoulder. “What’s happened?”

  But we all knew what had happened. One look at her was enough to tell us.

  “They’ve stolen my cloak.” She gagged on the words. She already looked haunted. This is what would happen to me if I never got my feather cloak.

  “Where? Where were you?”

  She named one of the ponds on the west side of the forest, close to the Renard house. Aunt Sarafina trembled so violently Aunt Agrippina had to hold her up. Aunt Felicity hovered on the threshold, wearing a white dress as usual. “I’ve made you some tea,” she offered tremulously.

  Aunt Aisha whistled for Morag who burst out of the trees already wearing her swan. She grabbed a bow from the training pile, her expression so cold I shivered.

  “I told you,” Aunt Aisha said. “Never let your guard down.”

  Things only got worse at school.

  I’d planned to hide out in the library and get started on my paper, but Mei Lin burst in and whispered furiously in my ear. “Come on.”

  “I’m studying. Romeo and Juliet. Family feuds—’cause you know I’ve never heard of those before.”

  “I’m serious.”

  “So am I!” I replied, but she was already hauling me out of my chair. I grabbed at my knapsack as the librarian shook her head.

  “Don’t piss off Ms. Angevine,” I hissed at Mei Lin. “This is the only place I can study without a fox fight.” And Pierce generally lived in the library; he’d be pissed off too if I was banned.

  I grumbled as I raced down the stairs and out into the back field beside the parking lot. I didn’t immediately see anything worth giving up my study time. “If this is about Rosalita again I’m going to throat-punch her. She already owes me for that history quiz.”

  “It’s not Rosalita.” Mei Lin led me to the small cluster of maple trees. I could hear the trouble before I ducked under the branches. Sonnet had found her way to school. Never mind that she’d been expelled last year.

  We had so much more to be worried about. For one she had an arrow aimed at Liv’s chest. They tensed when we stumbled into the vicious tableau. An older Renard pointed the business end of a seriously long hunting knife at my cousin Soliloquy. It was more like a sword. There was another fox boy, Liv’s older brother Jude. Aunt Ellie, Mei Lin’s mother, was up in the tree, with her own arrow nocked.

  “Oh my God,” I snapped. “I am trying to graduate high school here. What the actual hell?”

  “Go back to class,” Aunt Ellie ordered.

  “Mom,” Mei Lin said in that tone reserved for acute parental embarrassment.

  “Why don’t you all go away instead?” I shot back, incensed. “We agreed school was off-limits for the adults.”

  “That was before,” Sonnet said.

  “Before what?” I edged closer, wondering if I could block her target.

  She shifted, glaring. “Don’t.”

  “This is ridiculous. Again. Still.” I glanced at Liv, hoping she would at least back me up. She was wearing a white swan feather in a braid in her hair. “You’re making it really hard to save your life.”

  “Who asked you to?”

  “You’re welcome.”

  “She’s not in danger,” her brother said smoothly. I felt the poke of a dagger entirely too close to my kidney. “But you might be.”

  Mei Lin sucked in a breath, dropping immediately into a fighting stance. Aunt Ellie’s arrow sliced by Jude’s arm. The dagger poked deeper, drawing blood. I held up my hands. “Let’s just calm down.” I may as well have asked the sun not to shine. Sonnet began to sing. The hunting knife aimed at Soliloquy touched her throat. Sonnet went silent.

  “What is this about?” I asked, trying again for distraction, defusion, anything. I refused to die with a failed history test on my record.

  “It’s about Sarafina’s stolen cloak,” Aunt Ellie spat.

  “It’s about this!” Liv answered at the same time, shoving a severed bloody fox tail at us. I recoiled.

  “We didn’t do that,” Sonnet insisted. And she’d have owned it proudly if she thought we had. That didn’t actually make me feel any better. She was barely two years older than me but she’d already been fully indoctrinated into the aunts’ madness.

  “And we didn’t steal a cloak,” Jude
returned. Taking advantage of the tiny second when his eyes flicked toward her, I backed out of reach of his dagger.

  “Why don’t we all just back off?” I suggested.

  It was no surprise at all when they decided to full on battle in the school yard instead.

  Aunt Ellie sang a song I’d never heard before and it had static electricity shivering in the air. Leaves tore off the branches. Her arrow caught Liv’s uncle in the shoulder. Two Renards shot by two of my aunts in such a short time. It wasn’t exactly a good habit to start.

  The arrow didn’t disintegrate with magic, but it did make him drop his sword. Sometimes regular arrows were better. Soliloquy shrieked like a banshee. Liv dodged Sonnet’s arrow, which definitely would have made her forget everything. She was in too-close quarters, though, and it thudded harmlessly into a tree trunk. Bark splintered. Liv punched me, just because I was there. I punched her back because I was there and I was pissed about it. I kicked at her knee to buy myself time to stagger back out of the melee.

  I was so going to get suspended for this.

  I looked around wildly, trying to think of a way to stop this before it was too late. We couldn’t count on the adults to have clear heads, they were murkier than anyone’s. And I still had homework to do.

  I wondered briefly if Romeo and Juliet had any useful advice on dealing with insane families, but drinking poison didn’t seem particularly helpful.

  Instead I remembered the time the gym teacher had to dump a cooler of melted ice over two girls fighting in class. Okay, over Liv and me fighting in class. But there was no water nearby, no hose or handy cooler. I wasn’t sure it would have been enough anyway. They wanted the fight; it made everything feel controllable for some reason. But they needed secrecy usually, especially with Aunt Ellie singing and Liv’s brother growing fox ears even as I stood there staring.

  So I’d take the only thing away that I could: secrecy.

  I rushed out onto the path, gathering handfuls of pebbles and lobbing them at the cars parked in the student lot. I only managed to set off two alarms, but it was better than nothing. The horns blared in a constant annoying tempo. I hoped the cafeteria windows were open, especially when I texted Pierce to stop eating his lunch and shout that the student parking lot was being vandalized.