Love Me, Love Me Not

by Alyxandra Harvey

  “This way,” Aunt Felicity hissed at me. She waved her arms, shawls fluttering like her stolen wings. I wasn’t sure what she was actually trying to do until I saw one of the aunts sneaking behind her through a hole in the undergrowth. They were escaping to circle round and attack the Renards from the back. We’d circle all night, beaks and teeth and blood and fur. I was so tired I wanted to lie down in the chicory flowers and give up.

  I clenched my teeth against the hundred little betrayals attacking my body and edged closer. The grass slapped at me, caught in between too many different songs. A few of the Renards were walking in circles now, bewitched. Darts flew from behind Aunt Felicity, but none of them hit her as she swayed in her own strange flying-dance. I moved slowly, trying to stay invisible. I had to see who was using us against each other, who was winning. I climbed a tree, noticing a van idling in the field at the bottom of the slope.

  I jumped down, crawling first toward Liv and Jude who’d been beaten back by giant wings. There were bruises already forming on their faces. Blood dripped from Liv’s hair. “What are you doing out here?”

  She spun, snarling. “Well, we’re not here to chat, Vila.”

  “I get that, but why now? How’d you find us?”

  “We always search on moon nights. And your wards must be down because we finally found you, swan.”

  I stared at her, momentarily forgetting the battle boiling around us. Our wards were never down. “Don’t you think that’s a little strange?” I finally asked. I needed her to listen before she was lost entirely to the fight.

  Because I knew what I had to do.

  “Are you going to talk me to death, Ana?” Liv snarled, eyes flashing green.

  I used the pain constricting inside me as fuel. I wondered if my eyes were burning, because they felt hot in my skull.

  “You couldn’t track Pierce,” I said. “So track me instead.” I tossed my bow aside. “Do it now.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Ana

  I couldn’t make sense of what I was seeing.

  I thought the Vila who were being taken away must be too injured to fight back. Instead it was the aunts who had dashed through the bushes. They were shot in the back as they climbed down the hill. They crumpled unconscious and were piled into the back of the van.

  They were stealing swan sisters under our noses.

  And we were too busy fighting a paper enemy to stop them. I couldn’t stop them by myself. I could barely stand with the weight of invisible wings pressing on my spine. But I could follow them. And hope to hell Liv followed me.

  I forced myself out of my hiding spot, even though it went against everything inside me. My heart flung itself at my rib cage.

  “This way,” Aunt Felicity said. “Hurry.”

  There were two hunters with tranq rifles too close behind her. “They’re right behind you,” I whispered. “It’s a trap.”

  She turned, smiling. And then she hit me so hard on the back of the head I staggered and lost my footing.

  “I know, dear.”

  Pierce

  “Jackson you have to snap out of it!”

  I wasn’t sure how long I’d been out, but I woke up groggy and dry-mouthed in the cage next to Mei Lin. Jackson was leaning against the wall as if he was having fun. I didn’t even recognize him anymore. Behind him, two other men were dragging hospital equipment out from behind the partition and into the middle of the barn. “What’s going on?”

  “You’ll see soon enough. I’m not the bad guy here,” he said.

  I slapped at the bars of the cage. “Wanna bet?” My fingers curled around the iron. “Why are you doing this? Is it about Rosalita? You have to know how insane that is.”

  “She never looked twice at me,” he said coldly. “And do you know why?”

  “Does it matter? Let it go.”

  “Of course it matters. Money’s always tight. Sometimes we can’t afford food and power at the same time.”

  “So what?”

  “So, I’m sick of it. And if nothing else, we Kents are resourceful, right? A few swan freaks and now I have almost enough for my own car and apartment.”

  “You find out there are magical people in the world and your first thought is to sell them?” I stared at him, disgusted. “Get a job. Or go back to shoplifting. Not this.”

  “But this is working. Some might call it ambition, you know. You could be proud instead of being such a wuss.”

  I wanted to believe this was all the result of being shot with a magical arrow, but I knew it wasn’t. This wasn’t a different Jackson, like I’d assumed. It was just more Jackson.

  “Don’t bother,” a man with swan feathers tied in his long red hair interrupted Jackson. “Family never understands.”

  Mei Lin scrambled to the back of her cage, looking terrified. The man grinned at her, sauntering closer. “Recognize me, do you, sweetheart?”

  “Hey,” I said, kicking at my cage door to get his attention. “Back off.”

  He didn’t move away but he did glance in my direction. “This your older brother?” he asked Jackson.

  Jackson smiled. “Pierce, this is Henry.”

  “Henry Renard,” I said, going cold with useless rage. I needed to get out of this freaking box. He’d attacked Ana. I wanted his blood on my hands.

  “I’m famous,” he chuckled. “Jackson can be, too, if he doesn’t let you hold him back.”

  I tried to meet my brother’s gaze. “You’re working with murderers now?” He shrugged. “As well as Pritchard?”

  He tilted his head. “Not as stupid as I took you for, Pierce.” He shrugged. “She saw potential.”

  I thought back. “She saw you get punched in the face over Rosalita,” I said flatly. “Then she saw you creep on her and get detention for stealing. Again.” And between the magic and a psychotic teacher, all the worst parts of his personality had propagated like mushrooms in the woods.

  He shrugged again. “She helped me. I helped her.”

  “Why attack the Renards then?” I asked, mostly because weren’t you supposed to keep people talking when they were about to do something horrible? “If you’re working with them?”

  “They’re not working with them,” Henry snarled. “They’re working with me.”

  “Besides, if they caught Pritchard’s scent they’d be able to find her again. And anyway, we had to make sure they kept the swans busy so neither of them would fight us. Pretty smart, huh?”

  “Please, Jackson. These aren’t just birds. They’re girls.”

  “You’re boring me,” he replied. “Keep talking and I’ll shoot you again.”

  Henry snorted a laugh, turning to unlock Mei Lin’s cage. I tried to reach him between the bars. “Leave her alone!”

  He reached in, hauling her out even as she struggled and fought. His fingers clamped in her hair. I kept kicking at the lock but it wouldn’t give.

  Some hero I was.

  Ana

  I half slid down the hill, seeing stars. There was a throbbing in the back of my head and when I touched it, my fingers came away bloody. Anger and adrenaline battled with dizziness. Neither won; I just staggered between them, feeling ill. I had just enough presence of mind to go limp as I stumbled closer to the van. The plan was to play at being unconscious, not actually pass out. Tell that to Aunt Felicity.

  I didn’t know what she was doing and I didn’t know how to warn the others. I could barely move, disoriented and betrayed and terrified that I was now too weak to fight the swan. I could have sworn I felt feathers slide between my shoulders.

  I was tossed into the van. I landed on Aunt Agrippina and tried to stifle a mew of surprise. It was one thing to know what they were doing, and another thing altogether to lie sprawled on a pile of your drugged aunts. I made my breaths shallow when the hunter poked his head inside the van. He muttered something then raised his voice to shout at the others. I jumped, and then froze, waiting for him to stick a dart in my neck. “We’ve got lots,” he y
elled. “Running out of space.”

  When he went around to climb into the driver’s seat, I rolled to my side, propping myself against the door. It was locked, of course. Not that opening the door to push my passed-out aunts onto the road seemed like a terribly good plan. My head throbbed acidly. I was trying too hard not to throw up to be able to memorize the route.

  It didn’t take long to get to where we were going, though, and it felt like we took mostly back roads and fields. When the back doors opened again, I went as limp and heavy as I could make myself. If I kicked our captor between the legs, well, what did he expect from deadweight limbs? He cursed, nearly dropping me. “Give me a hand.”

  Someone took my weight off the hunter. “Hey, it’s Ana,” Jackson said. I tried not to tense. Or bite him. “Put her with the others. Make sure Pierce sees her.”

  That meant Pierce was alive. And he was here.

  My plan had worked.

  In as much as planning to get captured actually counts as a success.

  Because at the moment, it was all I had.

  I cracked my eyes open, just enough to see the ground swing by as I bumped upside down against Jackson’s hip. The guilt I’d felt for shooting him with an arrow was quickly fading. Very quickly. Especially when he tossed me onto the concrete floor. The pain robbed me of breath, which was good because otherwise I would have screamed.

  When I heard him walk away, I risked opening my eyes a little more. I was in a barn that smelled of hay and disinfectant. There was a table to my left with a laptop and beyond that the gleam of metal cages. I couldn’t see well enough to be able to tell who, if anyone, was inside. Not until there was a harsh shout. “Jackson, let her go.”

  My eyelids popped open of their own accord. Pierce threw himself at the cage wall and it rattled alarmingly, sliding across the floor by a few inches. Jackson dropped one of my aunts next to me and laughed.

  I met Pierce’s eyes briefly. My spine arced, prickling and jagged.

  Of course I loved him.

  I’d always loved him. Maybe I might have continued to ignore it if he hadn’t kissed me until I felt it burn through me like a forest fire. But I was stubborn and too scared to see it for what it was. I was too scared to admit he might love me even without the magic, or that I might love him. I was so focused on growing wings as proof. But that was magic in the end, and love was a different kind of spell. I should have recognized it when I was willing to give up my cloak instead of risking our friendship. Risking Pierce. But even then I hadn’t understood what that meant.

  That I loved him. More than my feather cloak. More than magic.

  More than anything.

  I couldn’t believe that he knew himself because I didn’t know myself. I’d taken him for granted. Talk about not seeing the forest for all the trees.

  I was an idiot.

  And I was too late. He’d eaten the cupcakes I’d made him. He’d gotten kidnapped. His brother was a mess. And I was destined to be a girl with her swan missing. Half whole.

  And I really should be concentrating on the fact that Jackson was currently trying to kick my ass.

  I panted through the pain, and used my contorted position to scissor-kick his legs out from under him. He landed on his tailbone with a crack. Later, I’d be smug about his cross-eyed gasp of pain. Right now, I tried to crawl to Pierce’s cage. He let out a shout of warning just before Jackson’s hand clamped around my ankle. I twisted, slamming his hand into the ground instead of trying to kick free as he’d expect. He howled.

  A boot pressed down on my lower back, pinning me down. “This one’s awake,” Henry Renard said. “Get the others.”

  A man in a lab coat injected my aunts with adrenaline, shocking them into screaming consciousness. We were rounded together at gunpoint. The darts were replaced with regular bullets. “If you sing, you die,” the hunter from the van warned us, as if he could read my mind.

  “What’s this about?” Aunt Agrippina demanded.

  “Shut up.” The end of his gun slammed into her face and she staggered back, blood oozing from her nose. I caught her by the elbow and we held each other. I hunched, my back curling into itself like a dead leaf.

  On the walls hung three feather cloaks and a fourth with bits of dusty crochet woven through the feathers. Aunt Felicity’s cloak. There were chains as well, binding Mei Lin to the wall. She looked freaked out but relatively unharmed.

  In the center of the room was a cot and a little boy wearing Spiderman pajamas and a breathing tube. Ms. Pritchard sat beside him, holding his hand and vibrating with impatience. There was a gun on the nightstand. I thought of the Spiderman figure in the empty house. “I knew it,” I muttered.

  She smiled thinly. “Anastasia.”

  “You did this,” I spat. “Not the Renards.”

  “Yes. But they were certainly very useful in keeping you sidetracked,” she said. “And can you blame me?”

  I stared at her. “Uh, yeah. I really can.” I hope my aunts were paying attention. If anyone survived this, they had to remember this part.

  She stroked the little boy’s hand, the knuckles looking skeletal under his grayish skin. “Would you do any less for someone you love?”

  “You want us to heal him,” Agrippina stated, expressionless. The barrel of a gun nudged the back of her neck. I knew she was remembering her own daughter. She looked closer at the boy. “Simon.” She closed her eyes briefly. “You saw me heal him that night at the hospital, didn’t you?”

  “I was in the bathroom.” She nodded, eyes shining. “He was so happy for a few hours. He was a little boy again. But then it faded.”

  “So you slashed my tires.”

  “I had to keep you there. You left him.”

  I remembered the day I’d picked her up from the hospital, the same day she’d shot Henry Renard. “And that’s when you met Henry Renard.”

  “He didn’t think I was crazy.”

  I really wanted to tell her that was because he was drunk all of the time. Also? Insane.

  “I did try to do this gently, you know.” She pulled braids of gold hair from a basket at her feet. I knew my own hair must be in there.

  “Jamie’s hair,” I said.

  “Useless, regrettably. But I was still learning about you.”

  “And the swans at the river,” Aunt Agrippina said. “And the dance.”

  “You left me no choice. Hair only works for so long. Simon needed more.”

  “You’ve only used the hair of young girls,” Aunt Agrippina said. “Try mine.”

  Ms. Pritchard nodded and a man approached with a knife he used to saw roughly through Aunt Agrippina’s hair. The hair was braided and looped around Simon’s wrists and round his brow like a crown. He took a single deep breath, one that didn’t rattle. It didn’t last. Cut-off swan maiden hair could only do so much; it was always up to the girl. A branch could only grow so long in a jug of water.

  “It’s not enough,” Ms. Pritchard said, her own breath hitching. “So heal him. All of you. Now.”

  The guns cocked like a choral round of a staccato song you only heard once. My mouth went dry. We’d have tried to heal him if he’d asked, but it wouldn’t have worked. This wouldn’t work. Our magic didn’t cure diseases, not when they’d taken hold like this. Some weeds had roots even we couldn’t kill. Soliloquy stifled a sob. There were razor burns on her scalp.

  “You will sing your song for him,” Ms. Pritchard ordered. “And if you sing it to any other purpose I will shoot you in the head.”

  We stood in a circle around the bed, some of us in white dresses and blue cloaks, some of us in chains. Our voices wobbled at first. The air in the barn moved, kicking up the dust dormant in the walls and the cracks of the concrete floor. Our hair lifted as if we were underwater. Someone behind us sucked in a breath. I felt every word of the song in every tiny bone of my back. They melted, shattered, were reforged. We poured magic into the frail body in front of us, trying to get it to latch on, to grow and b
loom. Light poured out of us like a thousand fireflies. Simon’s cheeks went pink, for just a moment. His eyes opened.

  We tried as hard as we could, but it was no use.

  Simon was still sick.

  We were still captured.

  And now I had wings.

  The magic called them out and I couldn’t suppress it anymore. My skin prickled and tingled. Everything felt stretched. They unfolded from my back.

  “You.” Ms. Pritchard aimed her gun at me. “Try again.”

  I felt drained and electrified at the same time. Violent rattling came from Pierce’s cage before it went silent. I couldn’t see him. I didn’t know what was happening to him. Or what was about to happen to me. Because I didn’t have any magic left in me, certainly not enough for healing of this magnitude. I was stuck between two parts of myself. And no feathers to make a cloak to control it.

  Ms. Pritchard only saw the wings. “Heal him or I will shoot your boyfriend. Your aunts. Your cousins.”

  I reached my hands out, hoping to buy us time. I didn’t know for what, it’s not like any of us had a backup plan. Simon was so pale and limp in his bed. I felt bad for him. But I didn’t know how to help him. How to help any of us.

  I sang because it was tradition. Here’s a health to all lovers that are loyal and just! Here’s confusion to the rival that lives in distrust! But I’ll be as constant as a true turtle dove, For I never will, at no time, prove false to my love.

  There was a small glow of light, and energy shot up my spine and through my wings. But that was it.

  Until Ms. Pritchard shot me in the leg.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Ana

  Pain was fire and salt and acid. I crumpled, blood running down my leg and spattering on the ground. Pierce was screaming something. Blood pooled between my fingers. Aunt Agrippina moved toward me but was forced back. “Press on the wound,” she told me. “Use both hands.”