Maybe things with Giovanni would go the same way: out of sight, out of mind.
Time to change the subject before I got too angry to speak. “I need to ask you a few questions about my father.”
“This again?”
“This again?”
“You found him once, Mom. Don’t you think we owe it to whatever family he has to try to find him again?”
“For someone who dislikes hunting so much, you are terribly eager to consign your potential half sisters to the lifestyle.”
I clenched my jaw. My potential half sisters would be sitting ducks unless they were informed of their power to attract killer unicorns.
“You have to make up your mind,” I growled into the phone. “Either you want me to come home and be safe or you want me to be your unicorn-hunting rock star of a daughter.”
For that was the real reason my mother refused to hand over information about the other half of my gene pool. If there were other descendants of Clothilde out there, then they might be the ones to possess the super cool, descendant-of-Clothilde-lewelyn unicorn-hunting skills that had, so far, failed to manifest themselves in me.
It was so ironic. The people at the Cloisters thought I was supposed to be the best hunter because I was a Llewelyn. My mother thought I was supposed to be the best hunter because I was descended from Clothilde Llewelyn, in particular. The Llewelyn who had killed the karkadann. Even the karkadann had come to me instead of to one of the other hunters, because he held a similarly misguided belief about Clothilde’s legacy that if he could talk to her as easily as he’d once talked to Alexander the Great, he could talk to me as well. And he could talk to me—but I think he could talk to the other hunters, too, if they tried.
What did I believe? That it was all a lie. The facts were incontrovertible: I was not the best hunter in the Order. Why was it that the only people who seemed to recognize this besides me were Melissende and Grace? Grace was the best hunter here. Ilesha was a close second. I liked my place farther down the list.
My mother sighed into the phone. “Sweetie, you made your position quite clear before I left Rome. It’s you who wants this now, not me. And you who reserves the right to whine about it, too. I gave you the chance to come home. You gave me a long-suffering speech about duty. You’ve caught a fine case of holier-than-thou from these priest friends of yours.”
How was it that she could do this to me? How did she always manage to turn everything around like that? Her dismissal of Father Guillermo and his support of the Cloisters almost had me on the priest’s side, camouflage habits and all.
“Oh yeah?” I said. “And what would you say if I told you I wanted to come home now?”
“Whatever you want, dear,” my mother lied, her tone both blithe and bored. She knew I was bluffing. I wouldn’t come home because of my duty, and if I did, she wouldn’t like it because of the supposed glory involved.
“Fine,” I said. “Book me a ticket. Or I’ll book it. Give me your credit card number.”
My mother hesitated. She wasn’t the only one who knew how to call a bluff. “Certainly. Of course, you know you can’t come here as a hunter. The danger aspect would cause far too many complications. You’d need to give up your … eligibility.”
I swallowed. “Fine. I’ll … do that, too. I’ll stop by … New York on my way home.”
“How very unsentimental of you,” my mother responded.
“You’re one to talk,” I snapped back.
“I hope you won’t regret it when you see people in danger of dying from unicorn attacks. Knowing you could have saved them but would rather just come home and live a small and useless life.”
I gritted my teeth. We had all the steps to this dance down pat. Sometimes I wondered if I was to blame for my mother’s disregard. If Phil and I hadn’t kicked her out last summer, would she still worry for my safety? Had I killed that off in her? And if I had, how strong could her love have been?
Sometimes I wondered. Other times, I was too busy fighting for my life and the lives of those I’d pledged to keep safe. “Mom,” I said. “You have to tell me where my father is. His family is in danger. You just admitted it!”
“Oh, darling,” she said. “It was so long ago. I hardly remember.”
That was utterly untrue. Once upon a time, my mother had been a historian, a Ph.D. candidate whose research had uncovered our hunting legacy and awoken in her this monomaniacal obsession with Clothilde Llewelyn and our magical legacy. She had notes—somewhere—about my father’s family.
“Can’t the Bartolis do something? They’ve been so good about finding all the other hunters. Too bad they’re so bad at everything else. By the way, how is the search going for that horrible boy who raped Phil?”
I slammed the phone down. My fingers itched for a bow to shoot. My arms ached for a sword to swing. My hands reached for the knife usually strapped to my side, and found only the leg of my pants. I twisted the material in my fist, breathing hard, choking on rage so strong I could almost scream. I leaned over the desk, pressing my palms hard into the wood. In the corner of my eyes, I could see my arm muscles flexing beneath my skin. Though I’d never been as athletic as Phil, since coming to the Cloisters, my body had changed. It wasn’t just the scars that twisted along my back and my arms, wasn’t just the magic that coursed through my blood and my bones. Back home, I’d been soft, with slim, round arms that never did more than carry books or push wheelchairs during my candy-striping volunteer hours at the hospital. Now, my arms were muscled, defined like the curves and kinks of an alicorn.
I looked like a bodybuilder. It wasn’t feminine. It wasn’t beautiful.
The anger condensed into tears that boiled from my eyes, and I sank to the floor behind the desk and crawled into the darkness underneath. Screw duty. Maybe my mom was right that it wasn’t worth all this.
With shaking hands, I grabbed the phone and stretched the cord into my little cave. I took a deep breath and dialed his number.
“Hello,” said a stranger in New York.
My mouth refused to open until I could speak without shuddering.
“Hello?” the guy repeated.
“Hi,” I said, and it came out like a squeak. “Can I speak to Giovanni, please?”
“Uh, he’s in class,” the guy said. “Can I take a message?”
Tell him I miss him. Tell him I love him. Tell him I can’t take this anymore and he needs to come back to Italy and get me out of this hunting gig once and for all.
“Can you, um, tell him that Astrid called?”
“Who?”
I caught the sob in my throat before it could escape. “Astrid,” I somehow managed to get out. This was going to go poorly, I could tell.
“Ass trig?” The guy sounded utterly skeptical.
I heard someone else in the background. “That’s the girlfriend, man. The nun?“
And, under the desk in the convent in Rome, my face turned the color of spaghetti sauce.
“Right. Astrid!” the guy said, his tone turning merry. “How are things with the unicorns?”
“Fine,” I blurted, more out of surprise than anything else.
“You keep up the good work,” he said. “I’ll tell G you called. I’m Steve, by the way.”
“Hi, Steve,” I said.
“You know, he’s practically living at the studio these days. You’d probably have a better chance of getting in touch with him on his cell phone.”
“Oh,” I said. Giovanni had a cell phone?
“You take care! Bye now.” Steve hung up before I could ask for the cell phone number. Which I didn’t want to do, because that would mean admitting that my boyfriend had a phone I didn’t know about.
Why wouldn’t Giovanni have told me about his cell phone? Would it mess with his calling plan? Maybe I couldn’t make international calls to his cell without racking up some sort of ridiculous charge.
Or maybe he didn’t want me crying to him all day and night about how much my life s
ucked. Maybe he was living it up back in New York City, and thoughts of me were a downer.
No, that wasn’t fair. After all, his roommates seemed to know who I was. They’d called me his girlfriend.
Though they’d also called me a nun, which wasn’t entirely accurate.
I reached up to replace the phone on the desk, then buried my face against my knees. Back in America, my mother was turning into a TV star and my boyfriend was fulfilling his artistic dreams. Here in Italy, I was a high school dropout, a fake nun who weekly risked her life in battles against poisonous monsters.
What if, last spring, I’d done what all my friends at school thought I should? What if I’d done what my ex-boyfriend Brandt had wanted me to do? What if I’d slept with him? I’d never have been a unicorn hunter. I’d still be in school, still candy-striping at the hospital, still the youngest girl in AP chemistry, still applying for college science scholarships, still imagining becoming a doctor.
It wouldn’t have been just me, either. If I hadn’t been a hunter that night in the woods, Brandt and I would never have been attacked by that zhi. Brandt would never have taken my mom’s only dose of the Remedy. Maybe he wouldn’t have run away from home as the publicity of being the only known survivor of a unicorn attack started to weigh on him. Brandt wasn’t my favorite person in the world—what with publicly dumping and humiliating me in the lunchroom after I’d saved him from a “rabid goat”—but he’d been a nice enough guy while we were dating. He’d been a champion swimmer, likely to get a college scholarship. And who knew what he was doing now?
Then there was Phil. If I hadn’t come to the Cloisters, there’d be no way she’d have followed me here. If I hadn’t come, she’d be back in college, kicking butt on the volleyball court. She’d have never met Seth. She’d never have been raped.
I’d have never met Cory or the other hunters; I’d never have met Giovanni. But then, I’d never be here. I’d never have understood magic or know what it felt like to kill. I’d never be scarred. I’d never be alone in a convent, hiding under a desk, terrified of what the next hunt would bring.
6
WHEREIN ASTRID DISCOVERS A SECRET
“This is a rather bad time for a trip.” Neil’s voice drifted into my brain.
“Any time is a bad time for a unicorn attack,” Phil replied. “But the fact that there was a survivor? That it was a teenage girl? That says ‘hunter’ to me, and so do some of the other details in the report. One of us needs to investigate this, and bring her here if we can.”
I blinked my eyes and lifted my head, neck muscles protesting. Somehow, I’d managed to cry myself to sleep beneath Neil’s desk.
“I already have a responsibility to Cory,” Neil said. “I must get her away from here.”
I began to crawl out, intending to alert them to my presence, but Phil’s next words stopped me cold.
“Oh, sure. Run away again, just like last time. Whenever things start to get hard—is that your MO?”
I froze and retreated.
“Not hard” Neil said softly. “Confusing.”
Phil was silent. I imagined them staring at each other. “Admit it,” she said at last, her voice harsh. “Cory is an excuse.”
“She needs my protection.”
“Protection?” Phil repeated. “You’re not a hunter. They’re the only ones that can protect her. Or this—” “Put that back on!” Neil ordered.
“You put it on!” Phil ordered back. “Stop acting like a martyr for me!”
There was a thunk, and the don’s ring fell on the floor, rolled a few inches, and stopped. I could see it, shining red and gold, in the gap between the bottom of the desk and the floor.
“I’m not playing games with you, Pippa,” said Neil. “You put that ring on this second or …”
“Or what?” I could almost see Phil staring him down. “We keep Bonegrinder chained. We have to, with two dons around and only one ring.”
“Bonegrinder isn’t the only unicorn on Earth. And with the number of hunters we have here, we’re in the epicenter of a storm. You’re in danger.”
“You’re in danger every single day we’re both here. Don’t you think I know that? Don’t you think it weighs on me whenever I see that ring on my hand?”
“Which is why it would be better for me to leave.”
“But not the only reason, huh?”
I clapped my hands over my mouth.
Above me, everything was silent for several long moments, but the blood in my ears roared. Had they heard me?
“No,” said Neil at last. “Not the only reason. Are you happy now?”
“Of course not.”
“Then what was the point of forcing a confession?”
“So that we can talk about it!” There was a thump on the desk above my head. I curled into an even tighter ball, unsure whether to announce my presence now or try to will myself into deafness. I should not be hearing this. “So we can maybe do something about it.” Another thump.
Come out? Stay hidden? Rip my ears off with my bare hands?
“There is nothing to be done,” said Neil. “I’m going back to London. It will all be forgotten.”
“Why?” Phil asked, and for the first time, I heard the hurt in her tone.
“You know why.” And the hurt in his. Heck, even I knew why. There was, for starters, the age difference.
“I’m not a child,” said Phil. “I’m in college. You’re barely out of it.”
There was the fact that when she’d first come here, she’d been under his guardianship.
“I’m not a hunter anymore,” said Phil. “I’m a don, just like you.”
And, worst of all, there was Phil’s all-too-recent experiences. “What’s really bothering you?” More of an accusation than a question.
I squeezed my eyes shut. Some things I should never, ever hear.
“I’m sorry!” I shouted from beneath the desk. I scurried out and stood, taking in their astonishment and humiliation. “Astrid!” Phil gasped. “I’m sorry,” I repeated. “I’m sorry! I—”
“Good Lord.” Neil’s expression was stricken. He turned and beelined for the door.
Phil didn’t even watch him go. She stared at me, eyes wide, chest heaving. “Astrid. What were you doing under the desk!”
I hung my head. “Sleeping?”
“What were you doing sleeping under the desk!” she cried again, her tone even more exasperated. “Why were you sneaking around? Why were you—” She dug her fists into her eyes. “Why were you in our office?”
“I am sorry,” I parroted. “I had no idea. I would never try to spy on you—”
“It doesn’t matter,” she said, hands still covering her face. “It doesn’t matter.”
“What’s going on with you two?”
I instantly regretted asking. She fixed me with a glare that would make a kirin quake in fear—hunter powers or no. “I’m sure you eavesdropped enough to hear the answer to that. Absolutely nothing.”
“I can’t apologize any more than I already have, Phil,” I said, coming close to her. I reached for her hand. “I wish I’d just stayed down there.”
“What, to hear more?”
“No! So I wouldn’t have embarrassed you. Or interrupted you,” I added. Because it sounded as if they were about to hit some sort of breakthrough.
“How thoughtful of you,” Phil drawled, and pulled away. “Just … don’t tell anyone about this, okay? Especially not Cory.”
No worries there. Half the Order suspected it, anyway. I’d always thought their relationship was inappropriately flirtatious, but I never figured there was anything more to it—especially on Neil’s behalf—until the night Phil was attacked by Seth.
Then, of course, we’d all had far more important things to deal with than who had a crush on whom. And now, well, I suppose we still did, but that didn’t mean it didn’t matter. “But Phil,” I said. “If you care about each other—” Phil slammed her hand down on the desk and sno
rted. “My God, Astrid, you’re such a child.” She shook her head, tendrils of her blond hair falling into her face. “Please leave.”
So I did.
I didn’t go down to dinner. I was way too embarrassed. I hid in my room, cuddled up tight with Bonegrinder, my face buried in fur that smelled of flood and fire. And a bit like pepperoni.
My stomach growled.
“There you are,” said Cory. I took in her form, crutches and all, highlighted in the hall, and curled even more tightly toward Bonegrinder and the wall. “We missed you at dinner.”
I doubted that.
She came into the room then stopped dead. “I didn’t realize she was here.”
Bonegrinder and I both sat up. “Seriously?” I asked.
Cory tossed a package wrapped in napkins at me then plopped down on her bed. “Rub it in, why don’t you?”
Bonegrinder nosed at the napkins, but I yanked them away from her and pulled out a sandwich.
“Sorry,” I said between bites. “I just don’t get it.” Bonegrinder blinked at Cory. Inside her head, her thoughts were mild, adoring, and certainly of the I-heart-unicorn-hunters variety. There was none of the latent bloodlust I usually sensed whenever she was around Phil or Neil or even Father Guillermo. And yet, unlike all the other hunters, Cory couldn’t feel Bonegrinder’s presence, or sense her thoughts.
“Well, that makes all of us.” She looked around our shared room. “Will you miss me?”
Since her injuries, Cory had mostly chosen to sleep in the don’s quarters rather than brave the treacherous spiral staircase up into the dorm. We’d already packed most of her things in preparation for her trip back to England.
“Are you kidding?” I replied. “All I ever wanted was a single.”
Cory chuckled. “Don’t get too used to it. We’ll be getting more hunters soon.”
I wasn’t so sure about that. Neil had returned from his last few recruitment trips empty-handed. It was difficult to convince teenage girls or their parents that their best course of action to protect themselves from the threat of killer unicorns in their neighborhoods was to send the girls off to a convent with a gorgeous twenty-something British man and stick a bow and arrows in their hands.
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