But slowly, I stop noticing what Harmon looks like. Over the next weeks, I grow accustomed to my imprisonment. After being Mother’s servant for years, I almost feel indulgent when I sit around reading all day. And it’s nice to have a toilet again after years of using a bucket. Nice to have a shower without having to first heat the water on a stove. The dresser is full of clean, comfortable clothes, and the shelves are full of books.
Every morning when I wake, there is food in the basket hanging above Harmon. Usually, we sit in silence on the dirt floor, sharing the meal, our backs turned to each other. If it’s not exactly gourmet, it’s a step up from the food I ate at Mother’s. In the evenings, we either eat what’s left or find food on the small table in the next room.
Despite the comfort of our prison, I check the doors every day. They are always locked.
One day, as Harmon emerges from the tunnel into the little room, he catches me playing the Memory Game.
“Are you playing Memory by yourself?” he asks, a note of scorn in his voice.
“Who else am I going to play it with?” I ask when he doesn’t stalk off like usual. “You?”
He glowers, which is his usual response. It doesn’t bother me so much anymore. I’m used to it. “I may look like a mutant, but I didn’t hit my head,” he says. “My memory is fine.”
“Okay. If you want.”
He scoots in opposite me at the table while I politely avert my eyes to avoid embarrassing him as he struggles to do something so ordinary and human.
“Deal me in,” he says, but he won’t meet my eyes. Despite his surly, bitter attitude about everything, I can’t help but feel sorry for him. I’d probably be just as insufferable if I was in his place. “You’re staring,” he growls.
“Oh—I’m sorry.” I sweep the cards off the table and into my lap, then lay them out in rows, face down. This time, I’m the one who can’t look at him. “I wasn’t staring,” I say after a minute.
“I told you, I didn’t hit my head,” he says. “I’m not stupid, Stella. I know what I look like.” His lip curls in disgust. “You pretending otherwise doesn’t make me forget. It only reminds me.”
“I’m sorry,” I say again, laying the last card and meeting his eyes. “What do you want me to do? If I pretend you’re normal, it reminds you. If I’m staring, you snap at me.”
“Stop feeling sorry for me,” he growls, flipping over two cards—smack-smack!—like he’s settling a score. He scowls at them and turns them back over.
“You make that easy,” I say, flipping over two more cards.
For just a second, I think I see a smile playing on his boy lips. But instead of answering, he flips over two more cards. I’ve seen one before, and I try for it when it’s my turn, but I get the wrong one. “And you thought I had a bad memory,” he says, collecting the matching pair.
“I don’t have a bad memory. I just got them mixed up. You’re distracting me.”
This time, I’m sure the corner of his mouth pulls up for just a second. “Okay,” he says, taking his next turn. “Tell me what you remember.”
“About…?” I ask, wary of what he’s asking.
“About anything,” he says, seeming not to notice my cautious answer. “How you got here, or the night it happened, or your life before. I don’t really know you, Stella.” He looks at me steadily, though I see the flinch in his eyes when my eyes move from his human mouth to his dog eyes, and then away.
“Why would you want to do that?” I ask. “You never bothered before.”
“You were in someone’s attic. I made an effort.”
“You didn’t make an effort to get me out.”
“Would you have, if you’d seen me in the attic of my house?”
I make my first match despite his distracting line of questions. I remember the thumps I heard coming from his house one night. “No,” I admit, flipping over two more cards.
“And why would you? You don’t know me, so why would you risk yourself for me?” He makes another match. “I didn’t save you. There it is. The truth. Now here we are. So what are we going to do?”
I stop with my hand on a card. “There’s no we here, Harmon. You made that clear from the day we woke up here.”
“I’m sorry I bit you,” he says seriously. “I wasn’t myself. But now I am.” He gives a small, ironic smile and shakes his head. “So let’s remedy this. One day, maybe I’ll be Alpha and you’ll be in the pack. So tell me something. Anything. What else do we have to do?”
I know he’s hitching himself to me, the way I thought of doing at first. He wants me to know him so I’ll take him with me when I go. I’m the strong one, the healthy one. It would be a huge risk to try to take him with me.
But he’s right about one thing. I have nothing else to do but talk. So I tell him.
While we finish the game, I tell him about my life before magic. Before werewolves and shifters and witches. I tell him about Emmy, and how we wanted to be models. To my surprise, it doesn’t embarrass me. Now that years separate that girl from this one, I can laugh about it. Those wounds are no longer painful. Time has made my childhood into scars, my dreams into silly stories. Three years ago, I was a child playing dress-up, as out of touch with reality as a five-year-old saying she wants to be a princess when she grows up.
“Do you miss it?” he asks when I finish.
I shuffle through my stack of matched pairs. “No. I don’t let myself think about it anymore.”
“Why not?”
“Because it made me sad,” I say simply.
“It sounds happy to me.”
“It was. That’s why it makes me sad. I know I’ll never have that now.”
“What if you could? Would you go back?”
I give him an incredulous look. “Of course I’d go back. I was happy there. Here, I’m a prisoner and an abomination. In case you’ve forgotten, your people don’t look favorably on identical twins.”
“What do you miss most?” he asks, like this is some kind of game.
I sigh. “Emmy. Clothes. Food. Freedom. I don’t know, being normal, I guess. Being happy. It’s hard to explain.”
“I think you did okay.”
“It’s not one thing,” I say. “It’s all of it. Having a simple, carefree life. Going to school, boys, friends, makeup, a phone. Those are things from that life. But what I miss most is that life itself.”
“And you could only get it back if you lived there again?”
I shrug. “I’ll never get it back. I know about werewolves. I’ve been a prisoner for three years. I’m never going to be normal.”
“What if you could have one part of it here,” he says. “What part would make you happiest?”
“My dad.” I wait, my heart beating, for him to rage against the man who made him into a monster, wounded him so badly he can’t transition. I haven’t asked him about it once. All this time, for almost a month, I’ve been waiting for this moment. A moment when he might tell me something real.
“What was he like?” His voice is casual, but I can hear an undercurrent of calculation to that apparent disinterest. He’s a liar, like all of them. I have to remember, even when we’re talking like friends, that he’s not a friend. He’s an enemy.
“He was a great dad,” I say. “I miss him more than anything. I guess he’s the only thing I still miss. It doesn’t help to know he’s still alive somewhere close by. That there’s a possibility I’ll see him again. That makes it hard to let go.”
He takes the cards and begins to lay them out again. “How do you know he’s close by?”
“Mrs. Nguyen told me.”
“Witches are notorious for twisting the truth to suit them.”
“You’re one to talk.”
He hesitates and then nods. “You’re right.”
“She had no reason to lie,” I say after a tense moment. “I thought he was dead. She could have let me think that forever.”
“You were close to your dad?”
“I thought so
.” A trace of bitterness creeps into my voice, and I check to see if Harmon noticed. He did. His eyes are intent on me, curious. It strikes me how ridiculously doglike he looks, and I have to stop myself from laughing.
“What?” he asks.
“Nothing,” I say. “It’s just funny, you know? My whole life, I thought I knew my dad so well. And now I find out he had this whole other life. He’s a shifter. He married a werewolf. Our neighbor was a witch, and our doctor was a shifter. And he knew it all along. I know he did.”
“And that’s funny?”
“It’s ridiculous that you even exist. It’s the stuff of fairy tales, not real life.”
“Here I am,” he says. “In real life. To me, there is no other world. I can’t imagine that world you talk about. I don’t know your dad, Stella. If that’s what you’re hoping I’ll tell you. About what kind of person he was, how he led this life you never knew about. I’m older than you, but not by much. I don’t remember him from back then, before you left.”
“Oh.” I look down at the blue design on the backs of all the cards, and suddenly, playing silly kid games is the last thing I want to do.
“But I know something about him,” he says.
I swallow hard, my throat aching. Maybe he doesn’t know my dad is the one who attacked him at all. “What do you know?” I whisper.
I’m sure as hell not going to tell him.
“I’ve heard stories about him.”
“Really?” I ask. “Why would anyone tell stories about my dad?”
Harmon shifts in his seat and switches around a few cards without looking at them. Apparently he’s not in a hurry to play again, either. “What do you know?” he asks at last.
“Nothing,” I say before I have time to think through it, to be crafty and get him to reveal information that he thinks I already know. I’m good at that after a few years of using it to find out any scrap of information I could glean while in my mother’s attic. “But my sister doesn’t even remember him,” I add. “So that means my mother is telling the stories? The woman who let him take me away and pretend my whole family was dead, so I’d never know and come back to find her? I’m not sure she’s the most impartial storyteller.”
“You formed a certain picture of him when you were growing up,” Harmon says. “I’m not trying to taint his memory.”
“Taint his memory? So it is bad, what my mother said?” I don’t know why I’m surprised. She’s never had a good word to say about anyone. Still, my anger bubbles at the thought of her lies. He was a good parent, which is galaxies from what she is.
Harmon looks so miserable under my glare, I almost feel sorry for him. But not sorry enough to let him off the hook.
“What did she say?” I demand.
“Your mother never talks about that,” he says, sweeping all the cards into a pile before we’ve even started. He sets his hands on the table, then notices the furry paw and moves them into his lap, where I can’t see them.
“Then how do you know?” I ask slowly. All I want to do is reach across the table and shake the information out of him.
“I only know the story,” he says. “It was an arranged marriage. And your mother either didn’t want it, or didn’t agree to it at all.”
“How’s that my dad’s fault?” I ask. “If it’s an arranged marriage, and he loved her and she didn’t love him, that doesn’t make him the bad guy. I feel sorry for him. She’s cold and heartless, and she’s probably incapable of loving anyone.”
A frown creases his forehead as he drops the cards into the box and replaces the lid. “Maybe there’s a reason she is that way.”
“I was a baby when we left. And as far as I can see, it was the best thing my father could have done for me. At least I have those fourteen years of good memories. If I’d lived with her all my life, I’d have nothing but the memory of being a prisoner in an attic.”
“I’m sure it would be different if you’d grown up here.”
“Yeah, well, I’m not so confident of that,” I say, pushing back from the table. “You can defend my mother all you want, but in my eyes, there’s no defense for the way she treated me. If she said something nasty about my dad and you want to believe that, fine. But I know the truth.” I step away from the table and walk to the tunnel with my head held high. But I’m glad my back is to him so he can’t see the hot tears welling in my eyes. I hurry to my spot under the window, thankful that he doesn’t follow me. I don’t want him to see me curled up on my blanket, crying like a baby for my daddy.
9
I sit bolt upright, startled out of a dream about Dad. I haven’t dreamed of him much in the last few years, but knowing he’s alive has reawakened the memories. Now he comes to me in my sleep almost every night. In this one, it’s the day I found him dead, but instead of dying, he’s trying to wake me up because I’m going to be late for school.
“Psst. Stella.”
My head whips around, even as awareness sinks in. This is not my father’s voice. The room is brighter than usual, which means it’s late afternoon, when the sun hits the window above me. Mrs. Nguyen is sitting up in her potato bin. Or onion bin.
“Come here,” she says, gesturing with one hand. “I’ve got to stay here. I need to be able to hide if they come down to check.”
“Okay, okay, I’m coming.” I scrape myself off the floor and shuffle over to her, still half asleep.
“You know what’s coming up in just a few days?” she asks, a twinkle in her eyes.
“No, sorry,” I say through a yawn. “I’ve lost all track of time.”
“The full moon, dear child.”
“Oh.” I glance at the empty spot under the ladder.
“It’s our chance,” Mrs. Nguyen says. “He’ll be completely preoccupied with transitioning. Though if you ask me, that’s not gonna happen. But he’s going to be trying, don’t you doubt it for a minute. He’s going to be trying from dusk ‘til dawn. Which means, my dear, it’s the perfect opportunity to sneak out while he’s caught up in his own fruitless striving.” She gives a smile of great satisfaction, her adorable grandma face as radiant as if she’d just baked a pan of cookies she’s especially proud of.
“We’re just going to leave him here?” I ask.
“Of course we’re going to leave him,” she says. “What use is he to us? His own pack won’t have him for a leader, not with a face like that. You expect to go out in public with that thing when we leave the Second Valley?”
“No, of course not,” I say quickly. “You’re right. So what’s the plan?”
“It’s not to marry him off to my daughter,” she says with smug satisfaction. “She wouldn’t marry that beast if her life depended on it.”
“Can I ask you a question?” I say. “How do you have a daughter who looks like she’s my age? I mean, she can’t be older than twenty, and you’re…”
She grins, her slightly yellowed teeth and wrinkled skin pulling into a picture of grandmotherly pride. “My dear, I told you. I occupy different forms.”
“Yes, but you said you didn’t kill people to do it.”
“I didn’t kill Mrs. Nguyen,” she says. “I simply took up residency the moment she jumped ship. Think of it like…a squatter. This building wasn’t being used, so I’m using it.”
“So…she was old and died, and you took her dead body?”
“If the heart is still beating, it’s up for grabs,” she says merrily.
I try not to shudder at the thought. “So how old are you really?”
“A lady never tells,” she says, shaking a finger at me.
“Young enough to have a teenage daughter.”
She gives me a wink. “Let’s just say, I’m younger than I look.”
“Well, I guess that explains how you and Dad had so much to talk about. I always thought that was weird.”
“That has nothing to do with age,” she says. “We always got along well, your father and I.”
“I’m guessing you knew my father
before we moved next door.”
“Of course,” she says. “We call this the Three Valleys. One belongs to shifters, one to werewolves, and one to witches. We both grew up here.”
I take in this new information, and though I have a million questions I want to ask her, I decide they can come later. When we’re free. Already, I can hear Harmon moving around in the next room. “So how do we get out of here?” I ask. “On the full moon?”
“There are two ways,” she says. “The easy way, and the hard way.”
“What’s the easy way?”
“The easy way, assuming you still have the natural ability your father has, is to do what I do.”
“Oh,” I say, shrinking back a little. “Leave my body here?”
“You think I like living in this old arthritic trap?” she snaps. “Of course not. You take what you can get. I keep my other body alive and protected, but there’s always a chance someone could find it. Or this one, when I have to go back to the other one. You can come back to your body and check on it if you’re worried Harmon’s going to do something untoward with it.” She winks like that’s a great joke.
“He wouldn’t do that,” I say. Harmon may be a lot of things, but he’s not that bad.
“If you say so,” she says, her eyes still twinkling merrily.
I narrow my eyes. “How can I come check on my body?”
She sighs. “You’ll understand when you do it. You have a natural tie to your body. It snaps you back when you get close.”
“What if I leave my body here, and someone moves it? What if they give it back to my mother? Or…” I shudder, imagining my dad waking up in a coffin, buried in the ground. “Or bury it.”
“No one here is going to do that,” she says. “They know about projecting. They’ll know you’re not dead.”
“What if I can’t find my way back?”
“It’s up to you to decide if it’s worth that risk. How badly do you want to get out of this place?”
In the next room, a hollow clunk sounds. A book being replaced on the bookshelf.
“What if I can’t do it?” I whisper urgently.
“You can.”
Beastly Beauty: A Fairy Tale Retelling (Girl Among Wolves Book 2) Page 6