“Beware the mirror,” echoes in my head.
The mirror? I don’t know what to make of that. Is she saying the girl is a mirror, a body-snatcher? Is that really Yvonne, not her daughter? Or is she talking about my mirror, my identical twin, who told my mother where to find me? When I ask, Doralice doesn’t respond. I turn to Haven, but she just shrugs. As we tread through the snow, now ankle deep and still falling steadily, I turn to her. “She told me to beware of the mirror,” I tell her. “She’s not a mirror, right?”
Haven laughs. “Of course not. The spirits in the enchanted forest are people who already died. Doralice’s body is buried under that tree.”
I remember my mother telling me the same thing. At least she told the truth about something, as insignificant as it was.
We hurry back to the hive, huddled inside our clothes against the chill. The night is lit with an eerie brightness from the snow as we swing up through the familiar trees to our nests. I notice Haven slipping through the branches towards Uzula’s nest, and I shiver against a sudden breeze. More than anything, I wish Harmon was here to hold me through the long, cold night. But like every night, I go to bed alone except for the memory of his body beside mine.
Chapter 15
Sometime in the night, I wake to the sound of the wind shrieking through the trees. I sit up, my heart racing. Something woke me. For a minute, I listen, trying to control my breath, praying it was a nightmare. But I hear the scraping of something against the bark of my tree. What if that crazy girl in the lighthouse decided I’m still a threat, and she needs to get rid of me?
Quietly, I pull down the zipper of my fur-lined hammock and step out. Stripes of snow cut across the branches of my nest, blown in on the howling wind. Slipping my shoes on, I clamber out the opening and look down. A shadowy figure clings to the base of my tree, scrabbling to climb up.
Instantly, my tiger stirs inside, growling to get out. I reach for her, but she sticks there, like something caught in my throat. I want to scream in frustration as the figure scrapes shoes down the tree trunk, searching for purchase. If it was someone from the collective, they would come to my nest from the canopy, traveling by branch and vine, as we all do. For a minute, I watch, my heart hammering. But I cannot dislodge my tiger, bound tight inside me.
A punishing wind streams through the trees, swaying the dead branches, twigs scraping and clicking together like skeletal fingers. Below, a tendril of hair escapes the hood of the climber’s coat, and I know it’s a girl, not Harmon coming to surprise me.
“Who is it?” I ask, my voice harsh against the howling wind. “I have a weapon.”
“Stella,” my mother says, sounding relieved. “I didn’t want to yell out and wake the others. Come down.”
“What do you want?” I ask, more sharply than I expected. I’m still boiling with resentment that she’s trying to displace Harmon. Not to mention the fact that she kept me a chained up in her attic, refused to let me join the pack, and treated me like a disease.
“I wanted to talk to you,” she says. “We’re friends now, aren’t we?”
“Why are you sneaking around in the middle of the night?”
“What? I can’t hear you over the wind. Come down so we can talk.”
“What do we have to talk about?” I ask, but I step down onto the next branch. I hate her, but for some reason, I am drawn to her. She’s my mother, a part of me. She holds the key to who I am. I’m made up of equal parts her and my father, a mixture of coldness and cruelty, hedonism and irresponsibility.
And if I’m honest, a part of why I take the branch and swing down to the ground isn’t just curiosity. I want to punish her. I want to shove it in her face, the way she treated me, the way she always made me feel less than my sisters, less than human. I want her to see how much it hurt me, and to feel guilty for it. And I want it to hurt.
“So, what do you want to talk about?” I ask when I reach the ground. The snow no longer falls in big, soft flakes. It rakes across my cheeks, mean little pellets. It only makes it easier for me to be angry at my mother for dragging me out of bed.
“Let’s walk a little,” she says. “So we don’t disturb your little band of merry misfits.” She’s wearing a fur-lined navy parka and jeans tucked into tall, lace-up snow boots. I’m wearing a pair of patchwork pants that I slept in and my mother’s boots. She doesn’t mention it, if she notices.
“You make it sound so fun and frivolous,” I say, turning away from her. “In case you forgot, I’m only living here out of desperation, because I have nowhere else to go. Because you told me if I came back, you’d kill me.”
She laughs, that weird, nervous laugh. “Surely I didn’t say that.”
“Not in so many words,” I admit. I find myself leading her away from the hive, towards the clearing. The snow is deeper than my ankles now, almost halfway up my shins. It swirls in patterns in front of us, kicked up by the wind, making shapes like ghosts. I shiver and huddle into the black trench coat Haven brought in a bag of clothes last week. I don’t ask where she gets things, but I don’t think it’s by entirely honorable means.
“I’ve apologized,” my mother says behind me. “I never meant to hurt you.”
“You just never cared if you did,” I point out. “You only care about yourself. You’re just like dad.”
“Oh, he’s not all bad,” she says with that high laugh, almost carefree. It’s not something I think she’s capable of, and it comes across as a lunatic laugh.
“You’ve seen him?” I ask, unable to stop myself. My time of running away is over. Now I want answers.
“He does live just over the mountain,” she says.
I slow as we reach the clearing. “Does he…did he have another daughter?”
“Why do you ask?” she says, sounding more like her old self.
I’m not sure I should tell her, but if I don’t tell her, I won’t find out what I want to know. It’s a risk I’m willing to take. “I saw a girl in the woods,” I say. “She’s a shifter. She says she’s the heir to the shifter throne.”
Mother steps past me, approaching the fire pit, where the snow has melted, leaving a bare ring of black stones. She bends and stirs the ashes until an ember glows. “Let’s get this going,” she says. “I’m sure we could both use some warmth. We can sit and talk.”
“Who’s the girl?” I insist. “Is she Yvonne’s daughter? That’s why you hate Yvonne—not because she’s dangerous, but because Dad cheated?”
Ignoring me, she goes to the edge of the clearing. The wind has swept the snow from every branch, so the trees are stark and bare. She begins to break limbs and twigs from a pile of fallen trees Kale hauled into the clearing with his freakish faerie strength.
With a sigh, I give in and help her. I can’t make her talk. I can only hope she knows the answers to my questions, that she’ll share them now that I’m not a threat. I can’t see what she’d gain by hiding these things from me. It only strips me of importance, if I don’t have the option of being a shifter leader someday, and my powerlessness is something she’s never hesitated to reinforce.
When the fire is crackling, she throws on more wood, until it’s blazing higher than I’ve ever seen it. This is not a cooking fire, it’s a roaring bonfire. We stand next to it, warming our hands as the wind whips the smoke and sparks across the clearing towards Doralice.
“Tell me about the girl,” I say. “You obviously know who she is.”
“Why does it matter?” she says, casting a hateful glare in Doralice’s direction. “Shift into a tiger and eat her for all I care.”
I take a step back, appalled. Yes, I know, that’s what I was about to do when she put the spell on me in the first place. But it was different then. My human side was buried deep down inside. I was a tiger, hunting on instinct. And even then, if I had known she was a person, I wouldn’t have eaten her.
But my mother hasn’t only been an animal for a few months. She’s been a vicious wolf all her life, and killi
ng is part of that. I shiver, thinking of Harmon down there, refusing to give his position to her. What if she gets tired of waiting and goes for the kill?
“I can’t,” I say, shoving my hands into my pockets. “She took away my ability to shift. You could have warned me she was out here. I had no idea. And now I’m stuck like this, because she feels threatened by me.”
“She is your father’s daughter,” she says after a long pause. “But she was raised by witches. That’s how she knows such sorcery.”
“Why didn’t you raise her?” I ask. “Or why didn’t Dad, if she was his kid?”
“Oh, you know your father,” she says, as if this is some inconsequential matter. When will I stop finding out these horrible things about my family? I have another sister, a half-sister like Zora. A sister my father abandoned, the same way my mother abandoned me. Except she wasn’t left with one of her parents. She was left with strangers.
No wonder she’s pissed that I’m around. I had a father all those years, and she didn’t. And why—because he couldn’t be bothered?
“If she’s a shifter, too, why didn’t he take both of us when he moved to Oklahoma?” I ask.
“Why don’t you ask her?” she says, sneering at Doralice. “It had nothing to do with me.”
She’s my sister. I have another sister. Three years ago, I didn’t even know I had one, and now I have three. Granted, they all kind of suck, but still. Sisters. My whole life, it was just me and Dad. Now I have this big, complicated family.
“How do I break her curse?” I ask. “Should I ask Mrs. Nguyen?”
My mother’s lips twitch in a strange way, like she’s trying not to laugh. “If you can’t shift, why don’t you try projecting into an animal?” she asks at last.
“Harmon says it’s dangerous.”
“Oh, what does he know?” she asks scornfully. “It probably would be for him. But he’s weak compared to you.”
“How do you know? I’ve never done it.”
“You’ve done it,” she says with a sly smile.
Mrs. Nguyen told me the same thing. She said I was a natural. “Maybe when I was a baby or something,” I mutter.
“You’re naturally gifted,” Mother says, her golden eyes glittering with some strange emotion. In the firelight, they seem to glow from within. “It would be easy for you. As easy as shifting. Try it.”
“I don’t know how,” I say slowly. “Plus, what would I try it on? Doralice?”
Her eyes sparkle even brighter. “Not a tree, stupid girl,” she snaps. “There’s an owl in that tree over there. Think of it. Feel it, and push yourself into it.”
“But I’d kill it, wouldn’t I?”
“Do it,” she commands, grabbing me roughly by the shoulders and shaking me. “If you’re so good at it you can be a mirror from near infancy, this should be a piece of cake for you. Stop being so stubborn and just project.”
“Get off me,” I cry, jerking away. “What’s your problem?”
She stares at me, breathing hard, her eyes shining. “When you were barely more than a baby, you took over an adult’s body and wouldn’t give it back. Don’t tell me you don’t know how.”
“No,” I say, stumbling back a step. “I didn’t do that. I couldn’t have. I’d remember.”
“But you did,” she says, spitting the words at me with such hatred I flinch. “You are the most gifted projector I’ve ever seen. I’ve spent my life trying, and I can barely do it even now. But you…oh, you’re just so special. So why won’t you show me how?”
“Who did I kill?” I ask, my voice cutting through the cold air. The clearing seems to fall silent. The shrieking wind, the crackling, blazing fire, it all freezes around us.
“You were strong enough at three years old to hold out an adult when they wanted their body back,” she hisses. “I can’t do that. So how did you?”
“Who?” I ask, my voice hard. “It was Doralice, wasn’t it?”
Her laughter pierces the momentary stillness, even more hysterical than before. “Not Doralice, you imbecile,” she says. “Your grandfather. Your Alpha.”
A shock wave rolls through me, through the clearing. And suddenly, it all makes a terrible, chilling sense. I want to deny it, to scream that it’s not true, to cover my ears and push the words out so I never heard them. But I know.
This is why she hates me. Why she distrusts me, why she said I was dangerous and kept me locked up in the attic. This is why the pack treated me like a poisonous freak. Because I am. I killed their leader, their god, before I even knew how to speak.
They will never let me walk among them. Not only did I wound their last Alpha and make him too weak to fight back, so that he was killed in a battle with the shifters. Not only did I seduce their current candidate for Alpha. I murdered the one before.
My own grandfather. My own blood.
No wonder everyone was wary of me, no wonder they all wanted me locked away. Without even meaning to, I killed their leader, the most powerful wolf in their pack. Probably without much effort at all. They have reason to hate and fear me.
I don’t just look like a mirror because I’m an identical twin. I am a mirror. I killed someone in a gruesome way, ripped his soul from his body and stole the body for my own use. For how long—a day? A few hours? Minutes? I was three. I probably thought it was a toy.
No one should have that much power.
But now, not it all makes sense. My mother has every right to hate me. I am truly my mother’s daughter. I am a monster.
Something loosens inside me, and this time, I grab her shoulders. “Why didn’t you tell me?” I scream, shaking her. “You let me think they hated me for no reason.”
“I’m giving you this power now,” she says. “You could thank me for it. The power of knowing you have this amazing, rare gift. Now you know what you’re capable of. Use it wisely.”
“I don’t want this gift,” I scream at her. “It’s not a gift at all, it’s a curse.”
She yanks away from me, stumbles, and topples into the plume of fire shooting up from the pyre she built in the fire ring. Sparks explode into the night, mingling with the pelting icy snowflakes. Logs topple from the ring, sizzling in the snow. My mother screams, leaping from the fire. Flames lick along her jacket. Her eyes are mad with pain and fury.
Stunned, I don’t move until she grabs me and hurls me towards the fire. I cling to her arms, wrestling to stay on my feet. Twisting in my grip, she forces me towards the fire, even as flames consume her quilted coat. “I bet you’ll remember how to project if I throw you into the fire,” she growls, digging her nails into my arms and dragging me closer to the flames. “Then you’ll have no choice. Do it or die.”
She hurls me towards toward the pit, but I spin away at the last moment. I fall to my knees at the edge of the stone ring, my knee slamming down on one she dislodged from the ring when she fell. With a scream, I roll away just as she leaps at me like a flaming devil. Without thinking, I kick a blazing log from the edge of the fire into her path. She falls hard, her flaming jacket snuffed by the thick snow.
“I didn’t mean to kill your father,” I say, scrambling away from her. “That was an accident. You are choosing to do this.”
“I don’t care about that, you stupid whore,” she screeches, staggering to her feet. She kicks the log back at me, still ablaze. If only Haven were here, she could throw fire with her bare hands. But there are no witches here to save me, no fae, no wolves. It’s just me and my mother.
I step aside as the charred and smoldering log rolls across the clearing. The murderous look in her eyes reflects back my own fury. All this time, she could have told me. All this time, she hated me for a reason.
Well, I have plenty of reason to hate her, too.
As she lunges at me, I grab an unburned branch sticking out of the fire and yank at it. The log attached to it is heavy, but I drag it free amid a shower of sparks and coals. I hardly notice them raining at my feet as I heave it towards my mothe
r. She ducks, then reaches in and grabs the end of another branch, drags it from the flames, and thrusts the burning end at me.
“Is this your idea of friendship?” I taunt, dodging the glowing coals forming along the log. “Gee, Mom, I don’t know why we didn’t try it before.”
She raises the branch over her head and hurls it at me. “You stupid child,” she sneers. “You think you’re something special because you can project? You killed the wolves’ last two Alphas. Do you really think they’re going to let you anywhere near Harmon?”
“Too late,” I say, darting in to knock her away from the fiery blaze. “He’s already Chosen me.”
“Don’t be naïve,” she snaps. “It’s not cute. They’ll never let you go through with it, not after what you’ve done.”
“Then we’ll do the ceremony without the pack.”
She laughs, snatching another piece of wood from the fire. “Are you really so stupid as to believe Harmon loves you? The only reason he Chose you is to fulfill that asinine prophecy. The moment he finds out you’re not the heir, that you can’t unite the pack with the shifters, he’ll be sniffing around her back door. Just look at yourself. You’re a waste of space. You won’t project, you can’t shift, you’ve let yourself go until you’re not even pretty anymore.”
“You’re lying,” I growl, dragging a long, thick branch from the fire. But somewhere inside me, something flips. What if it’s true?
“I’m sure you were good for a little fun while he was healing,” she says, her lips twisting into a cruel mockery of a smile. “But don’t deceive yourself. You’re not the only girl who’s warmed his bed while he waited for his turn on the throne. And trust me, you won’t be the last. I know how wolves work, for all their talk of mating for life. There is plenty of mating going on before they choose a life partner.”
“Shut up,” I scream, hurling the branch at her. She ducks, and it sails over her head and smashes into Doralice. Sparks burst skyward, and the needles of the juniper begin to crackle and pop as they catch, but I hardly notice. What she’s saying, it’s true. Harmon told me he’d been with other girls before me. Has he been with others since?
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