by Sarah Cross
ALSO BY SARAH CROSS
Kill Me Softly
Twin Roses: A Beau Rivage Short Story
EGMONT
We bring stories to life
First published by Egmont Publishing, 2015
443 Park Avenue South, Suite 806
New York, NY 10016
Copyright © Sarah Cross, 2015
All rights reserved
www.egmontusa.com
www.sarahcross.com
Cross, Sarah.
Tear you apart / Sarah Cross.
Sequel to: Kill me softly.
Summary: Teenager Viv, who is constantly escaping her “Snow White” fairy-tale curse, meets the prince who is supposed to save her, but can not fall out of love with the young man destined to kill her
ISBN 978-1-60684-592-9 (ebook) — ISBN 978-1-60684-591-2 (hardback)
[1. Fairy tales. 2. Characters in literature—Fiction. 3. Blessing and cursing—Fiction.
4. Love—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ8.C8845
[Fic]—dc23
2014038276
Book design by ARLENE SCHIEFLER GOLDBERG
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher and copyright owner.
v3.1
For my readers.
Contents
Cover
Other Books by This Author
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
Chapter Twenty-six
Chapter Twenty-seven
Chapter Twenty-eight
Chapter Twenty-nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-one
Chapter Thirty-two
Chapter Thirty-three
Chapter Thirty-four
Chapter Thirty-five
Chapter Thirty-six
Chapter Thirty-seven
Chapter Thirty-eight
Chapter Thirty-nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-one
Chapter Forty-two
Chapter Forty-three
Chapter Forty-four
Chapter Forty-five
Chapter Forty-six
Chapter Forty-seven
Chapter Forty-eight
“I want you to bring me her heart.
Her heart—that’s what you want, too.…”
CHAPTER ONE
VIV STOOD IN FRONT OF THE MIRROR, painstakingly sabotaging her appearance. She needed to look presentable, but not attractive. Plain enough not to upstage her stepmother, neat enough not to embarrass her dad at the party.
She ran her fingers through her shoulder-length black hair instead of brushing it, until she was satisfied that it looked sort of tame, sort of wild. She put on a shapeless white dress that was only slightly more flattering than a hospital gown—then turned to make sure it looked like a sack from every angle. As a bonus, she had red scratches on her arms from getting nicked by thorns in the woods—that had to detract from her so-called beauty.
She looked younger than seventeen: petite and waifish. Her lips were the color of a cherry Popsicle. Her skin was ghost-pale, and when she stared into her own eyes, she felt like she was staring into two dark holes.
“So, Mirror,” she said, gazing warily at her reflection, “what’s the verdict?”
The glass rippled slightly, considering; and then its oily voice filled her ears:
“Fairer than she is. Like a forest nymph … beautiful.”
Viv swore and started over.
It never mattered what she did.
The mirror looked at Viv in the same warped way her stepmother, Regina, looked at her.
Viv threw open her closet, startling a chipmunk that was sleeping on a stack of T-shirts, and started rifling through her clothes, pulling dresses off hangers and flinging them onto her bed. Nothing was right. None of her clothes would make Regina forgive her for being herself.
She tried on a boring black cocktail dress, a prissy white lace dress, a slippery red wrap dress that was borderline hideous—and modeled them all for the mirror.
It answered in its typical slick, ingratiating tone: “Divine … so innocent … gorgeous. More beautiful than she is.”
Viv sank down into the pile of discarded dresses and called her dad. He was already at the clubhouse at Seven Oaks, where the party was being held. He was rarely home these days. He didn’t even bother to lie to them anymore. By now, Viv and Regina understood that he stayed at his girlfriend’s place or in a hotel and he wasn’t going to talk about it, and they weren’t supposed to ask about it, and he just wanted to steer clear of them until the curse was over. At which point, Viv would be out of the house or dead.
“Do I have to go tonight?” she asked when he picked up.
“What?”
She could hear activity in the background. The party was under way. “Do I have to go to the party? I don’t feel good.”
“Just make an appearance, Vivian. You sit around all day; I don’t ask you to do anything.”
“Well, are you coming home first? I don’t want to be alone in the car with Regina.”
Her dad sighed. “No, I’m not coming home. You two can ride in a car together. Stop being so dramatic.”
He hung up.
That was about the extent of the support she could expect from him. He knew how Regina felt about her. He didn’t want to be bothered. Sometimes Viv felt like it made no difference to her father whether she ended up poisoned by her stepmother or gutted by a Huntsman. Just as long as he could show her off in the meantime.
A brown mouse climbed onto Viv’s knee. It held a wilted daisy in its mouth and made sure that she saw the present before dropping it onto her leg. Viv took the tiny, bitten-off flower in one hand and stroked the mouse’s back with the other. “Thanks,” she murmured. “Although if you really loved me, you would have given Regina a disease by now.”
When Viv was a baby, a fairy had gifted her with animal magnetism—fairy blessings were de rigueur for Royal babies in Beau Rivage. Birds, butterflies, chipmunks, and other woodland creatures were drawn to her, and sometimes they found their way into the house and stayed, like the mouse, and the rabbits in her closet who were always shedding on her clothes.
Finally, she decided on the black cocktail dress, since the loose rabbit hair clinging to the fabric kept it from looking chic, and headed downstairs. Dread filled her, and a sense of helplessness. Usually she opted for being nasty to Regina, but nastiness worked best when she could leave afterward. Tonight they’d be stuck together for hours.
Just before Viv stepped off the staircase and into the front hall, she heard the same oily mirror-voice she’d heard upstairs.
“Your stepdaughter grows more beautiful each day. And each day, your beauty fades.”
Viv wondered whether Regina had asked the mirror, or the mirror was
offering its unsolicited opinion. All the mirrors in the house were like this. There was one truly magic mirror—the one in Viv’s bedroom, which couldn’t be broken—but as soon as another mirror was brought into the house, it became part of the network.
Regina capped her lipstick, bared her teeth to check for smudges, then swiveled around to face Viv.
Regina was twice Viv’s age, but they could pass for sisters. Regina’s hair was the color of black coffee; Viv’s was black as ink. Regina’s skin was creamy white; Viv’s was the stark white of snow. And while Viv’s lips were a natural reddish pink, Regina wore berry-red lipstick. Their bodies, however, were completely different. Viv had the slight, boyish figure of a ballerina, without the grace or strength. Regina was toned, voluptuous in a Hollywood way, and had a good four inches on her stepdaughter.
Tonight they were both wearing black dresses. Regina’s was flashier, sexier, low-cut, and tight. Diamonds sparkled in her ears and her chest was so shimmery with lotion that Viv couldn’t not stare at Regina’s boobs. She often had that problem. Regina had lived with Viv and her dad for twelve years; Regina’s breast implants had been with them for three.
Regina was looking Viv over, too. She could examine every inch of her in about three seconds.
“Don’t your parents feed you?” Regina said. “I’m kidding.” She tipped Viv’s chin up to the light before Viv jerked her face away. “I don’t think you have any pores at all. You could be a model if it wasn’t for those dead eyes.”
“Keep your hands off me.” Viv hated when Regina touched her. She used to like it when she was a kid—it had felt motherly then, and she’d craved that affection. Now the memory was a reminder of how naïve she’d been.
“So touchy,” Regina said. “Shall we get going? I know you’re looking forward to this evening as much as I am.”
Viv hesitated a moment too long and the mirror caught sight of her.
“Stunning. Perfection. Your stepmother doesn’t compare.”
Regina’s cool dissipated for an instant; something raw took its place. Viv stepped out of the mirror’s view so it wouldn’t say anything else.
“I’ll take my own car,” Viv said.
“Oh, please. What do you think—I’m going to run us off the road? I wouldn’t crash my car for a chance to break your arm. I’ll wait for your boyfriend to do that. Now let’s go. We’re late.”
You’re such a bitch, Viv thought. She could have said it—had said it, plenty of times—but saying it would mean dragging out the conversation, and she didn’t want to hear anything else about Henley potentially breaking her arm, cheating on her, or killing her. Regina’s favorite topics.
So Viv popped her earbuds in and turned up the volume on her iPod until she could see Regina’s mouth moving but couldn’t hear her voice. She buckled her seat belt in case Regina did run the car off the road, and let Curses & Kisses’ fiercest songs shield her from her stepmother’s commentary.
Viv’s friend Jewel, Curses’ lead singer, was singing one of her revenge songs. Viv tried to let the bass, the drumming, the screaming push all awareness of Regina from her mind. Tonight, elsewhere in Beau Rivage—in the city, not the green, suburban fringes where Viv lived—Jewel was probably getting ready to go to Stroke of Midnight, the city’s evil-fairy-owned nightclub. Wicked stepsisters were forcing their feet into shoes that didn’t fit. Villains were angsting; spurned princes plotted revenge. Princesses shook sand out of their bikinis; Match Girls starved in alleys. Wolves spied on girls in red hoodies, and hunters sharpened their knives.
That was Beau Rivage: grime and glitter, magic tucked into shadows and hidden in plain sight. Normal people went about their own dysfunctional lives while the Cursed ran the city, and the strangeness went largely unnoticed. People believed what they wanted to believe.
Once, cursed lives had been turned into fairy tales, repeated, recorded, and passed down. Now, most people thought of the curses as stories—just stories—and even the Cursed of Beau Rivage grew up reading about their destinies in books. There were no new curses anymore, just variations on the same classic roles. Sleeping Beauty’s spindle might be swapped out for an earring, Cinderella might ride to the ball in a limo instead of a carriage, but the heart of the curses never changed.
Somewhere, a frog was being kissed, a Rapunzel was detangling her floor-length hair, a thief was sniffing an enchanted rose. At the shore, a mermaid might be crawling out of the sea, her glistening body colored neon by the lights from the casinos. Somewhere, someone’s dream was coming true. And someone’s was ending.…
Viv laid her hand on her arm, feeling how thin the bone got toward the wrist and how easy it would be to snap it. Even with the music filling her ears, the crack Regina had made about Henley breaking her arm was still bothering her. Henley had never physically hurt her … but Regina made her feel like it was imminent. Like she knew something Viv didn’t.
Viv was full of doubts. Regina was the one who was always sure.
Dark trees bordered the road leading to Seven Oaks. The whole stretch was woodsy and undeveloped, as if to distract from the highly tamed nature of the golf course, and all the poison the country club put into the earth to keep the grounds looking like an emerald paradise. Viv and her dad had argued about it when she was younger, when she first found out from Henley what kind of chemicals Henley’s dad’s landscaping company used. Back when her dad had been around to listen to her opinions.
“Don’t be mad at your dad,” Regina had told her. “You should be mad at Henley’s father—he’s the one putting that stuff in the ground.”
“It’s not his fault,” Viv had insisted, unwilling to be angry at Mr. Silva. That would have been like being angry at Henley, and back then her loyalties were with Henley, always. “It’s his job—Dad tells him to do it, so he has to.”
Regina had sucked the cherry out of her drink and said, “Interesting argument.”
Henley hadn’t been cursed then. He’d just been her best friend, her other half. But the conversation must have stayed with Regina, because she brought it up from time to time to get at Viv. She’d say things like, You shouldn’t fight with Henley. Even if he is going to kill you, it’s not his fault. It’s his job.
Viv hated that Regina thought that was funny.
She hated most things about Regina.
Jewel’s revenge song ground to a halt, then blasted into an angry love song—and Viv heard a muffled explosion, a burst of noise that had never been part of the music. The car started swerving and Viv’s head jerked toward her stepmother, whose fingers were locked around the steering wheel. Her red mouth was open; her arms were rigid and the car was shuddering and thumping like they were driving over rocky ground. Viv braced herself, unsure whether Regina had done this on purpose, until the car came to a stop.
Viv ripped her headphones off. Her heart was pounding the way it did when she woke from a nightmare—still alive, two seconds from having her heart cut from her chest.
They got out of the car. Tire scraps littered the road behind them. Regina walked around back to survey the damage and Viv scanned the trees, nervous that she was being set up. There were no other cars on the road. The woods were a black tangle, perfect for hiding someone. Everything was dark, except for the car lights and the moon. Even though she couldn’t see anyone, she could imagine someone watching her. Someone who’d been waiting for just this moment.
While Regina lamented the state of her car, Viv dug through her purse for her phone and called Henley.
Henley, who still came to her aid.
Henley, the person she’d be most afraid to see walk out of the woods.
CHAPTER TWO
HENLEY.
She’d known him forever.
He’d found her one day when she was lying in her glass-coffin pose in the woods—a decade ago, when they were both seven—and he’d seemed fascinated by her, as captivated as the animals were. She’d liked him because he liked her so much—it was hard not to like tha
t—and because he knew the forest as well as she did, and never got tired of being there.
They’d spent their days running through the woods, battling imaginary monsters and hanging out in an abandoned cottage they’d found. It had been a hunting cabin once, and they’d cleaned it up, filled the cupboards with books and treasures, and turned it into their secret hideout. It was there that Viv had showed him her dead mother’s fairy-tale book, the pages of “Snow White” spotted with bloody fingerprints from the day her mother had cut her finger and wished for a daughter as black as ink, as white as paper, as red as blood.
And it was there that Viv had shared the rest of her secret. There really is a monster after me, you know. The Huntsman. He’s supposed to cut my heart out.
She’d showed him the märchen mark on her lower back: the pink, apple-shaped mark a fairy had put there as a sign of her Snow White curse. He’d recognized it instantly—she’d known he would; his bloodline had curses in it, too. Henley had made fists and sworn: If anyone tries to hurt you, I’ll kill them. I don’t care who it is.
He was so fierce about it that she’d believed him—messy hair, skinned knees, and all. He’d instantly shot up in her estimation, secure in his spot as her favorite person in the world.
Years had gone by. They’d moved from pretend games in the forest to kissing in that same abandoned cottage, letting the sun slide lower in the sky until at last it was time to go home. She’d fallen in love with him a little on the day he’d vowed to protect her, and as they grew older, that love had become more real. Now it lived in her mind like a story she’d read. The kind of fairy tale that kids saw on a movie screen, filled with hope and happy endings.
The kind of story she didn’t believe in anymore.
In Beau Rivage, fairy-tale curses were punishments, rites of passage bestowed by fairies who’d long ago decided that mixed blood was reason enough for a curse. Somewhere in Viv’s past, in Henley’s past, in Regina’s past, was an ancestor who’d been born from a human-fairy union. Once there was magic in your blood, it never left. And it left you wide open to fairy retaliation—or blessings. Gifts from kind fairies. Hardship from cruel ones.