by Sarah Cross
“You don’t have to rush things,” Jewel said. “You don’t have to break up with Henley one day and move in with your prince the next. You know you’re welcome to stay with me. If you end up being a messy houseguest we’re going to have problems, but …”
“We’re going to have problems,” Viv said.
Jewel smiled. “Yeah, I figured. But compared to my sister, I’m sure I’ll barely notice. As long as you’re not puking up toads in my kitchen, we’ll probably be fine.”
Jewel stopped to cough up an orchid that seemed stuck in her throat. Tiny flecks of blood speckled the snow.
“You okay?” Viv said.
“Fine.” Jewel wiped her watering eyes with her handkerchief. She spit out a few wet pearls, then took a deep breath and said,
“I don’t think you need to make a decision about Jasper right now. I really don’t. The decision you need to make is about Henley. He has a decision to make, too. And I’m not saying he would hurt you—but you don’t want him to be reeling from your last fight when Regina calls him and asks for your heart.”
“I know. I keep telling myself to just do it, let him go. But once I do, it’ll be over. And I don’t know how to let it be over. I know it is, in a sense—it has been—but for it to be completely gone … We can’t be friends, there’s no way we could just be friends.…”
Viv had let her gaze drop to the ground, and now she saw footprints appearing in the snow like magic. Viv stopped breathing, scared that someone else would notice—and then was shoved sideways as a trio of guards raced down the path in pursuit.
There was a scuffle, the guards grappling with the air, struggling with someone they couldn’t see; and then one of them got his hands on the invisibility cloak, and ripped it from the shoulders of the twelve princesses’ would-be rescuer—who was suddenly there, where no one had been before.
Viv barely had time to register the man’s features—the stain of wine on his lips, dark curly hair—before the guards forced him to his knees and pushed his head down, exposing his neck, readying it for the blade.
One of the guards raised his sword—
Viv screamed as the head was severed from the body. There was a sloppy wet sound, like someone had emptied a bucket of water. Gasps from the crowd. Jewel doubled over, retching cherry blossoms that broke apart like confetti.
The suitor’s head lay at the edge of the path, a river of red streaming behind it. One guard knelt to examine the neck, and drew the guests’ attention to the three black hash marks tattooed on the skin.
“See this? Volunteers get one mark for each night they spend trying to break the curse. This was his third night. His time was up either way.”
“No use crying over spilled blood,” another guard said under his breath. A third guard snorted, like this was a joke he’d heard before.
The two joking guards lifted the still-bleeding body off the ground. The guests shuffled out of the way, and the guards carried the corpse to the shore and flung it into the lake. Another guard grasped the suitor’s head by a fistful of hair, and lifted it from the path so the blood could be mopped up. The stench of bleach filled the air as pink blood sluiced into the snow.
At last the guests were allowed to continue to the checkpoint. Viv had probably said “Are you okay?” to Jewel about twenty times, and now she took Jewel’s arm and led her past the bloody slush, down the path, and back to the surface. She was trying to stay calm, but no matter where she looked, she saw the murder superimposed over everything: over the guests as they mounted the staircase, on the walls of the alley, and hovering in the street as they waited for a cab, while the snow in their hair melted and ran down their faces.
Viv had been afraid of death before, but her basis for comparison had been fairy-tale death. Words. Ink on paper. Final, but clean. She’d imagined it as a sort of darkness, an end to everything. Loss more than pain. Now … she realized what it would be like to die. Not just oblivion, but the agony of being butchered. There would be more than just her death; there would be all the slaughter that led up to it.
She couldn’t play this game anymore.
She couldn’t keep toying with Henley, pushing him away and then pulling him back, breaking his heart and then running into his arms. They both had their reasons for letting this go on, but none of that would matter if he killed her.
It had to end.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
BLOOD STAINED THE HEM OF HER DRESS. Rose-red light streaked the horizon. The air was as hot and damp as an exhaled breath.
As Viv made her way from the cab to her front door, she rubbed her tired eyes and tried to hold on to her resolve.
Birds were greeting the morning. They flew down from the trees and hopped across the porch as Viv let herself in.
She knew it was stupid to come back. She had an overnight bag at Jewel’s, so it wasn’t like she desperately needed anything. But there were a few things she wanted to pick up—like her mother’s fairy-tale book—and she wanted to clear the animals out of her room.
The house was quiet, still. There was a noxiously sweet smell in the air—like candy and overripe fruit. The floor creaked softly; the hall mirror slept. Viv hurried up the staircase, eager to get her things and leave. Regina usually woke around seven, and it was earlier than that—but Viv didn’t trust things to work the way they always had.
She opened the door to her bedroom—and recoiled as the stench of rotting fruit stuffed her mouth like a gag. Regina must have left her a present, then shut the balcony doors so the odor would get worse. Viv wasn’t sure what or where it was, and didn’t feel like searching for it, so she just yanked the balcony doors open—and breathed the fresh air with relief.
“You guys can come out now,” she said, figuring the animals had gone into hiding when Regina showed up. “I won’t yell at you if you crapped on the carpet. It’s okay just this once.”
She picked up the receiver of her red princess phone, and listened to the tone for a few seconds before she dialed Henley’s number. She rarely used this extension, but she’d left her cell phone at Jewel’s, and she needed to do this before she lost her nerve.
It rang—but then his phone went to voice mail and she wasn’t sure what to do. She hung up.
She wiggled her fingers near the floor, trying to attract some animal attention—for moral support—but none of the animals emerged from their hiding places. Sighing, she called Henley again, and this time when she got his voice mail, she left a message.
“Henley. I need to see you. To say good-bye. I’m at home, but—I’m leaving. For good. It’s”—she glanced at the clock—“a little after five in the morning. Please come see me if you can. I won’t be here long.” Her eyes stopped on a shallow dish on her nightstand, about the size of a saucer you’d use to give a cat cream. She hung up the phone and went to see what it was.
The dish was filled with a sticky red substance—like lip gloss, or strawberry syrup. The smell, when it wafted up to her, was sweet and sort of metallic.
A line of tiny red paw prints led from the dish to the edge of the nightstand, then vanished into the black of Viv’s bedspread. She dropped to her knees. “Mouse?” She checked the animals’ hiding places—beneath the bed, the dresser … until her missing pets revealed themselves. They were curled up, or stretched out, and very, very still.
She touched one of the chipmunks with her finger, and it felt as stiff and fragile as an autumn leaf. Dead.
Poisoned.
All of them had red syrup on their faces. She found two more dishes of poison—one on the floor under her desk, and one beneath her bed.
In the space between her dresser and the floor, she found the mouse that was most fond of her—along with its stash of wildflowers: daisies bitten off at the stem. The mouse had gone to the place where it felt safest, and it had died there, alone. Viv hadn’t been there to protect it or comfort it. She cupped the mouse’s body in her hand, feeling how light it was, how precious and frail.
&n
bsp; Regina’s fight was with her. There’d been no reason to do this. Tears ran down Viv’s face until she could smell the salt and the skin around her eyes burned with it.
“I’m so sorry,” she whispered. She kept saying it as she took a shoe box from her closet and lined the bottom with a silk scarf. She laid the mouse and its flowers in a fold of the silk, then laid the rest of the animals beside it.
She wished she could see them breathing, feel their whiskers flicker against her palm. And apologize—for leaving them behind, for not realizing that they might be in danger, too.
She needed to get away—but she couldn’t leave without seeing Regina. She’d avoided confronting her stepmother for so long.… Now she wanted to fling a dish of poison in her face and watch her choke on it.
Cradling the shoe box to her chest, she grabbed a dish of poison and headed downstairs. The kitchen sink was piled with pots and pans, all glistening with syrup—some red, some green, some burnt black. All Viv’s life, Regina had never made more than a sandwich—and now she was brewing death.
Viv balanced the dish on top of the shoe box, and tried Regina’s door. It was locked.
“Regina!” She pounded on the wood until the hinges rattled. The sweet candy smell was making her sick. A hiccuping sound escaped her throat and she started crying again. The dish of poison fell and splattered at her feet.
“Why did you do it? Why did you do that to them?”
She set the shoe box down to try to force the door open, jiggling the knob and jamming her shoulder into the wood—until she heard the lock slide free on the other side. She stumbled in, her momentum carrying her as far as the bed, where Regina sat, directly across from the mirror. Her makeup and hair looked freshly done, and her smile was baffling: smooth and slick, like the smile of a wax figure. She’d had hours to regret what she’d done, but she showed no sign that she even cared.
“Tell me. Tell me why,” Viv said. “You used to love us. You used to want to be here.”
“What does that have to do with the rats in your room?”
Viv grabbed a container of powder off the vanity and flung it in Regina’s face. It exploded around her in a cloud of white, while Regina sat there calmly, watching. Viv knocked every container of blush, eye shadow, eyeliner, and perfume off the vanity, then twisted open Regina’s favorite lipstick and crushed the creamy red cylinder in her hand. All the while Regina—and the mirror—stayed silent.
“What is the point of this?” Viv raged. “Is it really because you’re getting older? Because the mirror says you’re not as beautiful? Why don’t you just throw acid in my face and be done with it?”
“Now there’s an idea.”
Viv’s red hand was trembling, greasy with the smashed lipstick. She felt like someone had reached in and ripped out her heart. She wished there was some way to touch Regina’s. “We’re trapped in this curse, I know, but you didn’t have to … they didn’t do anything to you!”
Regina just sighed, like this was becoming tiresome. “In the grand scheme of things, does it really matter? They would have died of heartbreak when Henley killed you, anyway. Oh, and don’t try kissing them awake—they’re dead. It’s not worth getting a disease over.”
“Don’t make a joke of this.”
“The way they adored you …” Regina murmured. “What is there about you to adore? Who in this world do you care about, aside from yourself? You’re a pretty face, but you’re empty inside. You don’t even know what you want. You’re just waiting for someone to give it to you.”
“I’m empty inside? You killed them! You killed them and they were innocent!”
She wanted to hurt Regina the way Regina had hurt her—but she didn’t know how. Regina seemed invulnerable, whereas Viv had a hundred weaknesses and Regina knew them all.
Regina … Regina had one weakness.
“Mirror,” Viv said. “Who’s the fairest of them all?”
“You are.”
“And what about Regina?” she said, stepping aside so Regina was caught in the mirror’s gaze. “What is she?”
Regina kept that same cool look on her face, but now that the mirror had her in its sights, she shifted her posture, sitting up straighter, raising a hand to brush some of the powder off her hair.
The mirror rippled, and when the glass cleared, the reflection of the bedroom was gone, and in its place was a garden. A teenage Regina and a boy with blond hair. Viv had never seen anything but reflections in the house’s mirrors, but Regina whimpered as if she knew what was coming.
In the glass, teenage Regina held out her hands, pleading. The blond boy spoke fiercely, his body half turned as if he was about to walk away.
“I told you, I was never in love with you. What we had—it didn’t mean anything. So stop coming here. Stop calling me. You’re upsetting my princess. And she’s the one I’m meant to be with.”
The mirror rippled a second time, and when the glass settled it showed a white cake topped with a black graduation cap, buffet tables, a bunch of teenagers at an outdoor party. She saw teenage Regina again. Pretty, but lacking the princess polish of the girls around her—girls who, Viv could see, were all paired off: a Cinderella on the arm of her Prince Charming, a drowsy Sleeping Beauty clinging to her prince, and a few other Royal couples practicing the obnoxious custom of wearing T-shirts emblazoned with their matching märchen marks: glass slippers, spinning wheels, golden braids.
Regina was the only girl alone, wearing the anxious expression of the late bloomer, the outcast. She held a paper plate piled with apple slices she probably hoped she’d choke on. She’d still believed she was Snow White back then.
“Wasn’t your prince supposed to come?” Cinderella asked Regina.
“Some … day,” Sleeping Beauty replied languidly. “Who thought she’d be the one waiting a hundred years for her prince?” The Regina in the mirror flushed with embarrassment. One of the princes, whom Viv recognized from the last scene the mirror had showed, looked away but didn’t speak.
The princesses and princes began to laugh—and then their laughter grew louder, as if there were a hundred people laughing instead of ten.
As the glass rippled, the laughter faded. Now the mirror showed Regina and Viv’s father lying in bed—but the bedroom was decorated the way Viv’s mother had left it, as it had been in the early days of their marriage. Regina snuggled close to her husband, saying, “You were worth waiting for. You’re better than a prince. Our love is going to last. I just know—I can feel it. I’m so happy.”
The glass rippled once more and, finally, Viv saw her own reflection, her face drawn with shock; and she saw Regina, as still as a statue except for the tears rolling down her face.
“Everything you struggle for comes so easily to the fairest,” the mirror said. “Love. Beauty. Admiration. No one has ever loved you the way she is loved. No one ever will.”
“Shut up!” Viv shouted. But the voice went on.
“Your beauty was never enough to make them stay. Beauty: the one thing you had. Now look at you. Look what you’ve become.”
Viv regretted ever encouraging the mirror; this was so much worse than anything she’d imagined it might do. She picked up a heavy perfume bottle and bashed it against the mirror once, twice, again and again, until the glass broke up into fang-shaped shards and slivers. Some of the glass fell away; the rest clung stubbornly to the backing, reflecting dozens of tiny Vivs and broken, crouching Reginas.
It wouldn’t change anything. Regina would hang another mirror in its place, like she did every time she destroyed one. She hated the mirror, but she needed it.
Regina crawled to the phone, and stayed on the floor while she dialed, trembling.
“Regina …” Viv took a few steps toward her, then stopped. She wanted to comfort her, but she couldn’t forget the shoebox coffin in the hall. She couldn’t put her arms around her and say I’m sorry you’re hurting after what Regina had done.
Viv picked up the shoe box and went up
stairs to get her mother’s book of fairy tales and a few other mementos. Now that her animals were dead, most of the things she’d come back for seemed unimportant.
As she packed, she remembered that Regina had been calling someone; she lifted the phone to listen in. But there was only a dial tone. So it had been a quick call, or no one had answered. It didn’t matter, anyway; she was leaving.
Viv grabbed her car keys, her bag, and the shoe box, then went downstairs and straight to the garage where her car was parked.
She piled her things on the passenger’s seat and started to back down the long driveway. She went slowly, checking to make sure there weren’t any animals about to dash under the car, and also watching the house, in case Regina came out. Viv almost wished she would—to show that she was okay, cold again instead of devastated. Not broken like the mirror.
As she backed down the last part of the driveway, she heard the roar of an engine—an angry, impatient sound that made her hands tense on the steering wheel.
She turned her head and saw a pickup truck speeding down the road. Not Henley’s. She started to pull forward; and then the truck swerved into the driveway and rammed the rear of her car. Her body smacked the steering wheel; she felt like someone had wound up and smashed her with a plank. She blacked out for an instant—and came to as the passenger-side window exploded, pelting her with shattered glass. The old Huntsman reached his hand in to unlock the door, and then he grabbed her and dragged her out of the car while she kicked and screamed, the shards of glass digging into her skin, pricking her like a hundred thorns.
The Huntsman carried her across the road and into the thick woods that had always made the property feel private. Now Viv wished they had neighbors, or even a gas station across the street. Anything with people. Anything to make this harder for the Huntsman to get away with.
Blood dripped down her arms and she smeared them against the trees as they passed, hoping to mark their path—just in case—but Henley wasn’t scheduled to do the lawn today, and he hadn’t answered when she’d called. She knew, deep down, that he wasn’t coming, and in a few minutes she was going to say good-bye to this world without saying good-bye to him.