Sansa, my German shepherd, is stretched out on the other side of him. She barks at something only she can hear.
“Shh, Sansa, we’re watching an idiot in his natural habitat,” I tell her, earning a snort from Elias.
On the screen, the two judges rush over to Darien as he stands, that big dumb smile on his face, taking off his wig and flicking his sweaty black hair out into the crowd. They howl. He winks at them.
Jessica Stone, who is also my costar and who plays Princess Amara of the Starfield kingdom, lounges on the spectator couch in a bedazzled golden dress. She stares at Darien, openmouthed, and I can’t tell if she’s actually surprised Darien did that split, or pretending.
“What a performance!” the female announcer cries.
The male announcer agrees. “And that was Darien Freeman as the sexy Goblin King! How do you feel after that performance?”
“I feel like I’m going to win this,” Darien says to the audience, grinning, and then turns to Jess to add, “Sorry, ah’blena,” with a wink. She sticks out her tongue at him. The teen girls in the front row squeal as he says ah’blena like he just hit the sweet spot of their souls. “I couldn’t ask for a better opponent.”
“Or a better costar,” she adds.
“Or a better costar.”
“Speaking of costars, now I’ve got to know,” the announcer says, leaning toward Darien a little, and I can feel a chill curl up my spine. “Do you think you could ever get Vance Reigns on the show?”
“Never,” I reply, putting my feet on the coffee table. I steal a piece of popcorn from Elias, and one for Sansa, before Elias bats my feet off the table with a glare because it’s not our house.
It doesn’t matter—if I ruin something, I’ll just buy the owner a new one.
“I mean, after he returns from his break, of course,” the female announcer agrees with a smile.
“My break?” I mutter. “More like exile.”
“That’s a little dramatic, don’t you think?” Elias says.
Darien laughs. “I’ll see what I can do. No promises. But! I can give you one thing that I know you’ve been waiting for.”
Jess nods from the sofa. “The first-ever look at Starfield: Resonance!”
I finish off the last few kernels of popcorn and roll off the couch. “All right, I’m heading to bed—”
“Let Sansa out first,” Elias reminds me.
“How could I forget my good girl? My best girl!” I scrub Sansa behind the ears. Her pink tongue lolls out happily, and she slides off the couch and follows me to the back door. Sometimes it feels like Sansa’s the only girl who doesn’t care that I’m Vance Reigns. It’s because she doesn’t understand the concept of an A-list film star with a track record for bad ideas, but I’d like to think it’s because I give her extra treaties when Elias isn’t looking. I slide the door open, and she trots out as I find the floodlights and flip them on. Sansa’s ears whirl around, and she darts out into the darkness beyond the pool and the shed and into the backyard.
I shove my hands into my pockets and kick a rock into the pool, and watch it sink to the bottom.
Everyone keeps calling this a break, but it’s not.
I didn’t choose this.
My stepfather did. “If you can’t grow up, then you’re going to learn the hard way,” he’d said.
He thought that by taking away all of my toys, my cars, my friends, he could somehow punish me for—for what? Having a little fun? As if he could throw me into some nowhere town to teach me a lesson.
Well, joke’s on him.
The only lesson I’m learning is how to absolutely ignore him the second I turn eighteen on October 11. As soon I do, I’m out of here. Just a month more.
I can endure this for a month.
* * *
—
THE MOMENT MY FLIGHT FROM LA ARRIVED, I hated this place. Four hours in an airplane, and it seems like I landed on another world. Into the tiniest airport imaginable. One terminal, twelve gates. Outside, it wasn’t much better. Too many trees, all still somehow green even though it was September. A hired driver in an old tweed suit drove me to the middle of nowhere and deposited me in front of a house that looked like a castle, though, complete with a drawbridge and two turrets and a mazelike rose garden in the back, built of gray stones and some recluse’s pipe dream. I came with my suitcase and nothing else. My driver pulled away without even a second glance. He left me to be murdered by goats or cows or whatever the hell is in the middle of farmland.
I slung my duffel bag over my shoulder and squinted up at the place where I’d be living for the next few months.
“You can’t keep doing this, Vance,” my stepfather had said when he sentenced me here. “Maybe some time away will help you see things differently.”
And it just so happened that the director of Starfield: Resonance—my stepfather’s best friend—had a house she wasn’t using.
The front door was unlocked, so I let myself in and took my Lacostes off in the foyer. I was expecting swords on the walls and skeletons hanging, mouths agape, but the inside of the castle looked right good, really. The floors were a dark wood and while the walls were bare stone, they were decorated with paintings from IKEA and Better Homes and Gardens.
It would have to do.
“Elias, I’m here,” I called as I dumped my duffel bag in the hallway and made my way into the living room. It was wide and open, with two long couches and a TV, and in the corner there was a baby grand piano. The back wall was nothing but glass windows that looked out onto the hedge maze and a pool. I found the drawstring to the curtains and drew them closed.
The refrigerator was stocked, so Elias had to be somewhere. I grabbed an apple from the fruit bowl and bit into it as I wandered through the rest of the house. Bathroom, laundry room, abandoned study—
The last door on the first level was ajar, so I eased it open.
Shelves and shelves of novels lined the walls, those cheap dime-store extended-universe sci-fi books you used to be able to find at petrol stations and grocery stores. There must’ve be hundreds of them—Star Wars, Star Trek, Starfield, at a cursory glance.
A library.
Such a pity books were a waste of time.
Footsteps came from the hallway, and Elias, my guardian, popped his head into the library, brown-gray hair and a cheerful face. He threw his hands up when he found me. “There you are! I heard someone come in, but I thought for a moment it was a nosy neighbor or something—Sansa! No!”
Suddenly, a brown and black blur zipped past his legs. The dog leapt at me, pink tongue slobbering over my face. “Ooh, you missed me? You missed me, good girl?”
“She has not been good,” Elias pointedly replied. “She tore up three rosebushes already. Three!”
I scrubbed her behind the ears. “Why don’t we make it four, good girl? Huh?”
“Vance.”
“You know I’m having a laugh,” I told him, and then whispered to my sweetest thing, “Destroy them all.”
Elias rolled his eyes. “How was the flight?”
I shrugged. “Fine.”
Sansa went off to sniff around a box of even more books and snorted, as though it wasn’t anything of interest.
Elias folded his arms over his chest. “Fine, huh.”
“Oi, yeah, fine,” I replied, and pulled my hood up over my head as I left the library. “The bedrooms upstairs?”
“All three of them—Vance, it went viral.”
I paused. Debated my words carefully. “…What?”
“You flipped off every single journalist at the airport.”
“Oh, that.” I spun back to Elias and spread my arms wide. “Just appeasing my fans. And they were hardly journalists. All paparazzi from what I can tell.”
Elias massaged the bridge of his nose. “You can’t keep do
ing this—”
“Or what?” I laughed. “I’ll be banished to hell? News flash, I think we’re already there.”
“This isn’t hell.” He sighed. “It’s a charming little town, really, if you’d give it the chance—”
“I’m tired,” I interrupted, turning out of the library. I gave him a wave. “Nice chat,” I added as I left for the stairs. The flight had been long, and the car ride to my prison had been a good deal longer, and I was tired and hungry and I just wanted to close myself into a room and sit in silence.
My head was pounding.
* * *
—
IT STILL IS A WEEK LATER.
As Sansa finishes up her business near the rosebushes, my phone vibrates. I fish it out of my pajama pocket. It’s a headline from one of the gossip magazines I follow. Though they usually publish shite, sometimes it’s good to have a leg up on the rumors circulating around.
HOLLYWOOD’S FAVORITE COUPLE ON THE ROCKS?! it reads, showing a picture of Darien and Elle from the set of Starfield: Resonance. It was a candid shot, taken as Darien’s girl plants a kiss on his cheek. Photoshopped question marks flutter around them like bats.
Well, at least the tabloids have stopped pestering me for the moment.
The less the press talks about me, the sooner I can get out of this damn town.
Sansa comes back with a stick and sits at my feet. I pocket my phone again and scrub her behind the ears. I take the slobbery stick from her mouth.
“The car wreck wasn’t my fault,” I tell Sansa, but she only wags her tail, looking from the stick, to me, and back to the stick. She doesn’t care.
Neither did anyone else.
In anger, I throw the stick—hard. It arcs high into the darkness and disappears somewhere beyond. Sansa takes off running, vaulting over those stupid rosebushes.
I wait for a moment. Then another.
“Sansa?” I call.
But she doesn’t come back.
“AND WE REACH THE STARS, THE STARS, FOREVER IN THE STARS, THE STARS,” I howl with the music, sobbing as I clutch my Sond figurine to my chest, trying to figure out what the hell I’m going to tell my dad so that I’m not the glaring disappointment that I most certainly am. I had one job—one!—to keep my job at the grocery store to save for college. And yet here I am driving through the back streets of Haven’s Hollow, North Carolina, so I can avoid going home and telling my dad that yes, his daughter did get fired and therefore will never be able to earn enough money for room and board, not to mention tuition.
I am an utter failure. But at least I finally got Sond.
And so, I sing.
“REACH INTO THE STAAARS WITH ME, FLYYYY WITH ME, FOREVERRRR—”
A bear of a dog darts out in front of my car.
“—OH SHIT.”
I slam on the brakes. My poor hatchback squeals to a stop, and by the time it does, the dog’s gone. I couldn’t have imagined it, could I? No, there was definitely a dog, but there aren’t many houses around here. The poor thing’s probably lost.
I pull over to the side of the road and pop on my hazards before I get out of the car, my keys between my knuckles like my dad taught me. Not to defend against a dog, obviously, but from everything else.
Always be prepared for zombies and murderers.
Perhaps not in that order.
I wipe my eyes dry and look about the road. The evening is humid—on par for September—and fireflies spark to life as night descends. It’s the kind of evening that’s ripe for a murder.
I can see the headlines now—LIBRARIAN’S DAUGHTER KILLED WHILE TRYING TO RESCUE GHOST DOGGO.
How mortifying.
Gravel crunches behind me, and I whirl around—
There, standing at the edge of my car by the rear bumper, is the same large brown-and-black dog. Her tongue flops out as she wags her tail.
“Oh, hey there, girl,” I croon, clicking my tongue to the roof of my mouth to get her to come closer.
It’s super effective!
The dog bounces up to me and begins to give me kisses on the face. I laugh, about to tip over from the very force of her, and scratch her behind the ears. “What’re you doing around here? Are you lost? Where’s your owner?”
The dog doesn’t answer, and there’s no one on this road. She must’ve escaped from someone’s backyard, because she has a pretty pink collar with a dog tag. But when I try to get a closer look at it, the dog shies backward. I can’t grab hold of her quickly enough before she darts across the street and down a dirt road.
“Hey—no, wait!” I cry, and follow her, aiming my key behind me to lock my car. The horn beeps, lights flash, and I tell myself that this is not how I’m going to die, being led down a dirt road after a runaway canine. Besides, most terrible horror movies don’t have nice dogs that lead you out into the middle of nowhere—but that would be a good beginning to one of those Saw movies.
…Don’t think about that.
“Hey—slow down! I’m not going to hurt you!”
The dog doesn’t seem to care. She darts across the street and into the lawn of…
I come to a stop at the edge of the driveway.
Oh.
It’s the old abandoned castle-house. It’s not really a castle—it’s too small—but whoever built it made it look like one. It’s kinda notorious in our town; the castle-house is tall, at least three stories—maybe four with an attic—with two turrets that may or may not be just for show and stained glass around the large wooden front door. There’s a moat that cuts in front of the house, fed from a small stream in the woods, and a drawbridge to the front steps. The house is a weird blend of medieval and modern. There are even lions on the cement posts at the end of the driveway.
When I was little, Mom used to tell me that the house was built by fairies for a very special prince. His parents sent him to live there, hoping to hide him away from the rest of the world and protect him.
“But doesn’t he get lonely?” I had asked her when she first told me the story. “In that house all alone? Why would his parents send him there?”
She wrapped me in her arms and said, “Because the world is big and terrible sometimes, and parents want to protect their children.”
“Then I’d visit the prince! I’d make sure he wasn’t lonely!”
My mom laughed. It was a silly, stupid story, but somehow it stuck with me. Even though there are no such thing as princes.
And fairy tales are a bunch of bullshit.
If they weren’t, then my Dead Mom plot twist would’ve given me the ability to speak with animals. Or something else suitably Disney-esque.
The truth is, the house was built by some eccentric millionaire back in the mid-’90s, who moved away because they probably realized nothing changed in this small town, with one road in and one road out. They probably got sick of being in the middle of nowhere and left to have grand adventures in the great wide somewhere.
It’s been rented out over the years, but I’ve never met anyone who lived there, and as far as I know, it’s vacant now, too.
“Dog!” I hiss, quickly following the shadow of the mutt down the driveway, but then I lose her in the dark of the house. Cursing, I quietly make my way up to the front door. It’s ajar, so I push it the rest of the way open and sneak in.
Strange. Why is the door unlocked if the house is empty?
I should leave. My common sense is telling me not only to leave, but to hurry back to my car and go home and just break the news to my dad. At least then I won’t be murdered.
But…for some reason I can’t get Mom’s story out of my head. About the prince alone in the castle. It’s not real—he’s not real.
But…
I’ve never been in this house before. And it doesn’t look like there’s anyone home.
As a precaution, I
pull out my phone, turn the flashlight on because the sun is beginning to set, lengthening the shadows in the house, and press record. If I die here, at least there might be physical evidence.
“Dog?” I call again, and my voice echoes through the house.
There are dozens of cardboard boxes piled everywhere. It looks like one of those houses perpetually between one renter and another, constantly changing, never quite a home for anyone. I know that kind of look. Since Mom died, Dad and I moved from one place to another, hopping to where rent was cheapest.
Dad always reminded me that it was never the house that mattered, because home is never really a physical place.
But jeez, someone could at least move into this place and gussy it up a little. The interior is beautiful, with exposed stonework and steepled wooden roof beams. I don’t know half of the architectural jargon, but it’s pretty, and at least—unlike most of the houses around here—it doesn’t use antlers in all of the decorating.
I step into the foyer and ease the door shut behind me.
“Dog!” I whisper a little more urgently.
Something clatters to my left, and I whirl toward the kitchen and an open hallway that leads, probably, down to the garage. But there’s a door to the left, just across from the kitchen, that’s slightly open. Maybe the dog went that way.
Quietly, I creep toward the door and slowly push it open.
There are shelves of worn paperbacks and dime-store novels and gilded hardbacks, and boxes stacked high with even more books in them. The last bits of sunlight spills in from the two room-height windows, illuminating the books, catching the gentle sparkle of dust.
My breath catches in my throat.
I can recognize these books from anywhere—even ten, fifteen feet away. I know their spines. I know their titles. I know their thirty-year-old smell. In a few quick strides, I am at those books, my fingers running down their broken, well-loved spines, lingering on the Starfield insignia on each one.
Bookish and the Beast Page 3