Liv smiled. “I actually think I do.”
“Besides,” Shannon continued, “I can totally use all this for motivation when I’m cast in the next Peter Jackson movie.”
Liv laughed, then turned and looked again at the group sitting outside. From this distance, they looked so normal. Well, aside from the sword resting against the table. Cedric was talking, his hands making large but calculated motions. For a moment, Liv just watched him, the intensity of his movements, the way his mouth moved when he spoke. Her mind wandered to the night before . . . to the two of them alone on that motel bed . . .
She shook the thoughts from her head and turned to Shannon. “So what do you think—have some free time to accompany me to Beverly Hills?”
“Like you have to ask.”
Liv grinned.
Shannon’s gaze shifted to just over Liv’s shoulder, and her eyes narrowed. “Who’s that?”
Liv whirled around. Through the other kitchen window that faced the side yard, she saw a quick-moving blur. Liv moved closer to the window to get a better look and saw a thin girl with long, snarled hair moving along the side of the house.
Liv threw open the window. “Hey,” she called out.
The girl’s head snapped up. Her face was pale white and streaked with dirt, and her eyes were round as marbles. Liv saw the shabby clothes she was wearing, recognized the desperation in her eyes. A runaway. Before she could say anything, the girl darted away, moving toward the street.
“Hey!” Liv yelled. “You don’t have to go—” She cut herself off. Ordinarily, she would welcome the young girl to the squatter house. After all, she’d been in that same position before. Lost, torn, alone. She looked at a box of half-eaten pizza and felt guilty.
But then her gaze moved past the pizza boxes to the backyard, and she realized there was more danger for the runaway here than anywhere else.
“Who was that?” Shannon asked, joining Liv at the window.
“Just a street kid, looking for a place to crash probably.”
“Anyone you know?”
“No,” Liv said. “She could have been anyone. Once upon a time, she could have been me. Or my sister.”
Except that wasn’t true, not anymore. Liv no longer had to wonder where her siblings were, or worry that they were living on the streets. They were alive, and they were cared for, and she was going to see one of them.
Today.
THE STORMING OF THE CASTLE
Liv drove slowly westward, watching as the lawns became greener, the houses larger, and the palm trees more neatly tended on the sides of the streets. With every mile they passed, her rusting clunker of a car stood out more and more amid the BMWs and Priuses.
Liv thought about Maisy growing up in this world. She tried to imagine what her sister might look like now, as a thirteen-year-old girl, but all she could see was the tiny child in pigtails who used to eat bubblegum-flavored ice cream until half her face was stained pink and blue.
Cedric stared out the window at the houses as they passed.
“They’re kind of grossly excessive, aren’t they?” Liv nodded to one giant mansion situated far back on a manicured lawn and fronted with a Greek-style colonnade.
Cedric continued to stare, and Liv wondered if he was icing her out for basically forcing him to change his catch-a-wrath plan. He was sitting as close to the window as possible, his body angled away from her. The moment they’d shared at the hotel seemed so far away, almost like it had happened between two different people.
Then Cedric turned to her, and his mouth lifted on one side, into its customary half-smile.
“I have seen grosser.”
“Don’t expect him to be impressed,” Merek said from the backseat. “He does live in the largest castle in Caelum.”
“You want a castle?” Shannon asked. “Wait till we get to the Ratners’ house; now that place is a palace. It has, like, gold-plated everything. Even the plungers are platinum. Can you imagine?”
Merek stared at her blankly.
“Guess not,” Shannon breathed, turning her attention back out the window.
Liv looked down at the Map to the Stars guide she’d picked up at a 7-Eleven. The Ratner-Cole residence had a giant yellow star marking its location.
“I think it’s here,” Liv said. She slowed the car down.
Everyone turned their head to look out the right-side windows, but all they could see was an eight-foot-high hedge. Liv eased the car along the side of the road, finally stopping just before an enormous iron gate with an intercom.
“What do we do?” Shannon asked, catching Liv’s eyes in the rearview mirror.
Liv shrugged. “You’re the resident celebrity stalker. Any ideas?”
“Would you stop with the stalker talk already? Geez, you try to get backstage to see Justin Timberlake one time . . .”
“Maybe we should just go up and ring the buzzer?” Liv asked.
Cedric craned his neck upward. “I could vault that gate.”
“Yeah, I’m not sure that’s the best idea . . .” Liv began.
Her words were cut off by a rumbling sound. She turned in her seat and watched as a red double-decker bus crested the small rise in the road and slowed as it approached the Ratners’ front gate, eventually coming to a wheezing stop. A sign on its side read “Star Tours” in glittery letters, and Liv could see the faces of tourists pressed up against the windows.
“Ooh, I’ve always wanted to go on one of those things,” Shannon said. Liv raised an eyebrow in her direction. “Okay. Maybe I am kind of a stalker.”
“What is it?” Cedric asked. His gaze rose to the second story of the bus, which featured more tourists sitting on plastic seats in the open air.
“It’s, um . . .” Liv struggled to figure out how to explain the nature of Hollywood celebrity to Cedric, who was looking at her expectantly. “You see, there are people here who are really famous, mostly for being in movies. And then other people come in from out of town and take these tours to see where the movie stars live. . . .” She let her voice trail off and shrugged, thinking she wasn’t explaining it right. But instead of staring at her blankly, Cedric gave a knowing nod.
“Like petitioners.”
“What?” Liv asked.
“In Caelum, petitioners come to our palace on a daily basis. They are often townspeople making complaints, and my father sets some time aside every morning to hear them. But sometimes, they don’t have legitimate complaints. They just want to get a look at the inside of the throne room or gossip about what my mother is wearing.”
Shannon leaned up from the backseat. “Whoa. You have a throne room?”
Cedric gave a sheepish shrug and turned his attention back to the tour bus. Merek scoffed. “Nice false modesty, Highness. It is most becoming.”
Shannon rolled her eyes at Merek. “Jealous much?”
Liv looked back at the bus, where a tour guide with a microphone was talking animatedly to the tourists on the top deck. With a sweeping gesture, she pointed toward the Ratners’ house. Liv rolled the car window down to hear.
“. . . and as you all know, Michael Ratner and Shana Cole have come a long way since they met on the set of Meteor in 1995 . . .”
“Ooh, I love that one,” Shannon said.
“The Ratners married in 1997 and moved to this mansion in 2000. They also have homes in Malibu, Rome, Hawaii, and Austin, Texas. Since their marriage, they have adopted seven children from all over the world—”
“Yeah, and changed their perfectly good names into stupid flowers,” Liv muttered. Shannon leaned up from the backseat to shush her.
“Look,” Cedric whispered.
Liv followed his gaze through the iron bars, where two security guards dressed in white polo shirts and pressed black pants appeared seemingly out of nowhere to man the gate. They looked over the bus with bored but watchful expressions.
“Whoa, where did they come from?” Liv asked.
“Just there.” Cedric poin
ted to a small structure to the left of the gate. It was covered in ivy, and Liv had previously taken it for an extension of the hedge. But looking closer, she could see that it was actually a well-disguised guard hut.
“Well, there goes our vault-the-gate plan,” Shannon said.
“Not necessarily,” Liv said, her eyes bouncing between the guards on one side of the gate and the group of tourists snapping photos on the other.
Liv put the car into drive and eased it around the group of tourists. She followed the hedge for another hundred yards or so until it came to an abrupt stop, then pulled the car over once again.
“Look there.” Cedric pointed to the edge of the hedge. It turned a ninety-degree angle at the corner of the yard, running up the side of the lawn toward the house. But between the edge of the hedge and the neighbor’s fence was a narrow gap of space, maybe eight inches wide.
“You want us to go in there?” Shannon asked, eyes wide.
Liv cast a glance to the bus, which revved back to life as tourists began to put their cameras down and look away from the house. She knew another tour bus would come along and distract the guards eventually, but didn’t want to wait that long.
“It’s the best shot we have. And we have to go now.”
She pushed open the door and ran quickly around the edge of the car, stopping in front of the narrow gap. On her left, the wooden fence rose up maybe eight feet, so it was nearly level with the hedge. The two ran parallel to each other down the entire length of the yard, so when Liv stared down the gap she could see only a constant stretch of white and green, white and green, with no end in sight.
Merek cast a dubious glance into the gap. “That looks a bit tight . . . are we sure one of us should not wait here?”
Shannon pulled on Merek’s arm. “Come on, oh complain-y one.”
Liv sucked in her stomach and took sideways steps into the narrow gap. Her back pressed against the hard wooden fence on one side, while the leaves from the hedge tickled her face and arms. Still, she tried moving quickly through the passage and ignored the pain as little sticks and branches tore at her clothes and skin.
She also tried—less successfully—to ignore how close Cedric was pressed in on her right side. He had his sword-in-a-garbage-bag clutched in one hand.
“I think we should go up this way,” Cedric said, his voice low. He put one arm up against the hedge and pushed on it. It held firm. He crouched down and laced his hands together, then held them out flat, motioning for Liv to step into them.
Liv settled one of her Chucks into Cedric’s hands. She gripped handfuls of leaves from the hedge as Cedric lifted her up past the top of it. The moment she could see the entire house, her breath caught in her throat.
It was enormous. At first glance, it really did look like a castle out of a fairy tale—one covered with satellite dishes and enormous bay windows, of course. In the back of the house, a clear-blue pool sat next to the tennis courts.
Liv pulled herself up and over the top of the hedge, counting to three before dropping down to the other side. Shannon and Merek followed. They landed heavily next to Liv on the bright green grass. Cedric pulled himself up and over the hedge last.
Liv saw one of the guards start to make his way down the front walk of the house.
“Get down!” she hissed, pulling Shannon to the ground as Cedric and Merek dropped behind her.
But the guard didn’t even look in their direction as he paused beside a giant fountain to speak into a walkie-talkie. His eyes were still on the front gate.
“Now,” Liv said. She crab-walked over to a row of lemon trees that bent low to the ground and lined the entire left side of the massive house. The others followed her, and they waited as the guard scanned the yard, put his walkie-talkie back into his holster, and walked back to the small hut near the gate.
“What now?” Shannon whispered.
Cedric’s eyes were trained on the back of the retreating guard. He gripped his sword through the plastic garbage bag. “There are only two of them. I can disable them easily—”
“No!” Liv whisper-screamed. “We’re already trespassing. I don’t think we should add another assault and battery to your list of charges.”
Cedric wrinkled his forehead in confusion, and Liv rolled her eyes. “No. Swording.”
“What are we going to do, just go up to the door and knock?” Shannon asked.
Liv shrugged. “Guess so.” She slowly rose. “On my count . . .”
“What are you doing in my yard?” A clear, girlish voice rang out across the grass.
Standing near the corner of the house was a short teenage girl. She wasn’t the same pigtailed girl with ice cream smeared around her face that Liv remembered. She had the same eyes, the same round face and spattering of freckles, but she wasn’t the same Maisy. Her mouth was set in a scowl; her hands were on her hips. She tapped her foot in its designer shoe impatiently against the ground.
This was Daisy.
And she was a total stranger.
THE REUNION
“Daisy . . . Ratner?”
Daisy raised her eyebrow expectantly, seemingly not surprised that complete strangers would know her name. “Yes?” she asked, impatient. “How the hell did you get in my yard?”
“Um.” Liv struggled to come up with something to say. The whole ride over, she’d tried to figure out how she was going to explain to her sister that she was in fact a secret scroll who could open a portal between worlds. She hadn’t thought that this part, the introducing-herself part, would be just as hard.
Daisy crossed her arms and looked toward the front of the yard and the guard hut. “You have three seconds to explain yourselves before I call over Andre and Tim—”
“Wait! I—I’m Olivia Phillips.” Daisy’s expression remained blank. Liv took a deep breath. “But it wasn’t always Phillips. They changed it, when . . . well, when our parents died . . . I’m your sister. Your, um, biological sister.”
Daisy’s lips parted in surprise, and for a moment, the tough expression dropped from her face. Then she shook her head slightly, as if trying to clear something from her mind. “That’s . . . no way. Who are you really? What do you want?” Daisy peered at each of them, but especially at Cedric, who held his Hefty bag behind him. “You can’t just sneak in here to get photos, it’s private property—”
“I’m telling you the truth,” Liv continued. “I can explain everything if you give me a chance. But you have to believe me. You do remember me, right? Even just a little?”
Daisy’s eyes dropped to the ground, her forehead wrinkling. Then she reached into her pocket and pulled out a small, square device. She pushed a button on it and raised it to her mouth. “Andre, it’s D. I need you to come up here—”
“Wait!” Liv said, desperate. “I know about the tattoo.”
Daisy’s mouth fell open in surprise, then snapped shut again. Cedric’s eyes darted to Liv, his eyebrows raised. Liv could just barely hear Shannon mutter “oh crap” under her breath.
“The one on your back,” Liv continued. “It’s written in a strange language, isn’t it?”
For a moment, Daisy just stared at her, shaking her head. “No one knows about that. My parents made sure of it.” Her face burned red.
“I have the same one,” Liv said. Turning quickly, she slipped down the shoulder of her T-shirt, revealing the top of her markings to Daisy. When she pulled her shirt straight and turned around again, Daisy was looking at her with wide eyes.
“Daisy? Daisy, you copy?” A male’s voice cut through the air, and it took Liv a second to realize that it was coming from the small walkie-talkie in Daisy’s hand. Daisy brought the box up to her mouth slowly, her eyes never leaving Liv.
“We mean you no harm,” Cedric said.
“Just give me ten minutes to explain, please,” Liv said. “I don’t want anything from you. Promise.”
“Daisy?” The voice came through the walkie-talkie again.
Daisy paused
for a few long moments before she pressed her finger on the button again. “Never mind, Andre. Everything’s cool.”
Daisy pocketed the device and turned to Liv, beckoning her toward the massive front door of the mansion. “Ten minutes. And if you try anything funny, we also have a guard dog.” She shot a side-eye glance at Merek and Cedric. “A hungry one.”
They turned a corner of the house and climbed a set of wide marble steps lined with different kinds of flowers. Liv spotted a set of cameras mounted on stakes in the rosebushes. They swiveled to follow her as she reached the front door of the mansion. Behind her, Shannon let out a low whistle.
Daisy pushed open one of the heavy double doors, stepping into a brightly lit foyer. Once inside, Liv couldn’t keep from looking up, down, and all around at the stark white walls, the marble-tiled floors, the chandeliers hanging from the ceiling, and the pieces of expensive-looking modern art framed on the walls.
Daisy ignored the group’s gawking stares and kept walking, into the largest kitchen Liv had ever seen in her life, complete with shining wood floors and a kitchen table that might have easily seated sixteen people.
Cedric, Shannon, and Merek filed into the room after Liv. Daisy’s attention fixed on Cedric as he moved through the doorway, her eyes roving from his face to his arms and back again. She tilted her head and blinked her eyes, which Liv could see were covered with glittery glue-on lashes.
“So, what’s in the bag?” Daisy asked Cedric. Liv froze, but then she realized Daisy’s voice wasn’t so much suspicious as . . . flirtatious?
“A camera stand,” Liv answered, a little too quickly. “We’re making a movie.”
Daisy rolled her eyes. “Who isn’t? Is it about me?”
“No, it’s about . . . something else.” Liv tried not to make a face at her own terrible lie.
But Daisy’s eyes were on Cedric. “Why’d you bring it with you?”
The Marked Girl Page 20