Kill Me Softly (11 page)

“What's Layla's märchen mark?” Mira asked, leaning toward Blue, keeping her voice down.

Grudgingly, Blue abandoned the comic he was reading—a
Peter Pan
retelling, full of ethereal girls and fey lost boys. “Layla's Beauty, from ‘Beauty and the Beast.' We all feel bad for her because she has to put up with Rafe.”

“Oh my god, Rafe is the Beast,” Mira said. She felt stupid; it was so obvious.

“Yep. Beastly on the inside, soon to be beastly on the outside, once a fairy sets the curse in motion. He's supposed to be redeemed by the end of it, but we have very little faith in him. It'll take a miracle to get Layla to fall in love with Rafe. We just hope he can still play bass with monster paws. Otherwise, we'll have to find a new band member.”

“You say that like you think it's funny.”

Blue shrugged. “Isn't it? It's what he deserves. Not that we don't like him, but sometimes you have to learn things the hard way.”

Mira glanced at him. “And you? Did you have to learn something the hard way?”

“Nice try,” he said. But the smile on his lips didn't quite reach his eyes.

What Mira
really
wanted to ask was what Blue's heart mark meant—and what Felix's mark was, if he had one—but Blue seemed to be going out of his way
not
to tell her. His reticence made her uneasy. She knew there were bad people in fairy tales: wolves that swallowed women whole, stepmothers who treated their daughters like slaves, tricksters who struck impossible deals—and so many more. Could Blue be one of the wicked?

She didn't want to fight with him. Not when they were finally getting along. So instead of pushing him, she asked, “What about Viv? Is she Snow White?”

“Bingo. She's a Somnolent, too—you guys have enchanted comas in common. Henley's the hapless Huntsman. One day, Viv's stepmom will order him to cut Viv's heart out and bring it back to her. That always adds an extra dimension of hilarity to their hookups.”

“Oh my god.” Mira recoiled. “He won't do it, though, right?”

“Who knows? She's such a bitch to him and he's so obsessed with her that he just might. He freaks out whenever he suspects some guy around here could be her prince; he's definitely not eager to hand her over to someone else. He'll be relieved when he finds out you have a claim on Freddie.”

“I don't—” She shook her head, not ready to accept that. It was too weird.

“Freddie's not so bad.”

“Nothing against Freddie, I just …”

“You don't like feeling trapped, like your future is already mapped out for you.”

“Right.”

“Trust me, no one does.” Blue picked up his comic again, like he'd decided now would be a good time to avoid her. His head was bowed, and a maelstrom of blue spikes stared back at her, stiff from the salt water.

Mira batted the comic out of the way. “What about you? What's your trap?”

“I don't want to talk about it. Curiosity killed the brat.”

She stuck her tongue out at him. It seemed appropriate.

“Sexy,” he said, flicking his own tongue at her. She kicked him in the shin in response. Blue bent forward to grip his leg, cursing.

“Still sexy?” she asked. “What was that you said about learning things the hard way? Maybe that's your curse.”

She let him read for a while, figuring she should give him a break, and she stared out the window, watching people go by and wondering how many were cursed. Had that old woman been a damsel in distress once? Would that boy grow up to slay a giant? And was that girl, the pretty one with the dirty face and the careworn clothes, heading home to clean house for a wicked stepmom and two greedy stepsisters?

It was strange to think of another world being hidden behind the regular world. An entire society where destiny ruled.

A triumphant “aha!” from the stacks caused Mira to glance over. The police officer with the baby name books was scribbling madly in a notebook, like he'd made some great discovery.

“Mix in some numbers and symbols,” Layla advised as she whisked by. “They're savvier now at picking unguessable names. They learned it from Internet passwords.”

The officer hissed through his teeth. “Damn it! This will take forever!”

Layla patted his shoulder. “Sorry, Leo.”

Mira's forehead wrinkled with confusion. Sometimes this place was just too weird.

Finally, the young officer hustled out the door with his notebook of names, calling out a quick “Thanks!” as the jangling bell announced his departure. Layla flipped the C
LOSED
sign on the door and came over to join them. She had a thick leather-bound book balanced against her hip.

Layla had been yanking books down from dusty shelves all day, but there wasn't a speck of dirt or a drop of sweat on her. Her sleek, black hair was as frizz free as a Barbie doll's, and her dark eyes sparkled, even when she wasn't smiling. She was like a Renaissance painting—flawlessly beautiful—and there was a warmth to her beauty, too.

“I feel bad for Leo,” Layla said with a sigh. “True names are much harder to crack these days. The troll is almost definitely getting that baby.”

“Troll?” Mira said.

“Rumpelstiltskin curse,” Blue explained. “Leo's the guy charged with finding the troll's true name, so the queen can save her baby from his clutches. Sucks to be him.”

“Um, maybe someone should tell him it's
Rumpelstiltskin
?” Mira said.

Blue laughed. Layla gave her a small smile. “
Rumpelstiltskin
is the name in the tale,” Blue said. “It's not the name of every troll. That would be too easy.”

“Oh,” Mira said, disappointed.

“Anyway,” Layla said. “We're not here to talk about poor Leo's curse. We're here to talk basics. Are you ready, Mira?”

“As ready as I'll ever be.”

Layla placed the leather-bound book on the table in front of them and opened it with a
whump
. The pages were gilt-edged, printed with dark brown ink. It seemed to be a sort of encyclopedia. The text was laid out in two columns, and each entry began with elaborate cursive—a work of art in itself. Some entries were accompanied by symbols—an apple, a braid, a crown—all inked in the same deep brown. Line drawings of fairy-tale scenes illustrated the text.

“I grabbed this from the back,” Layla said, her expression colored by mischief for a second. “I'm
not
supposed to touch it—it's an antique. But my boss isn't here today, and I think Mira deserves something special for her introduction. If you spill coffee on it,” she added, looking pointedly at Blue, “I will kill you.”

“Understood,” Blue said, shifting his iced coffee out of the way.

“What is it, exactly?” Mira leaned forward to peer at the pages. Layla had opened the book to a seemingly random place, and the first entry read:

The Changed

“It's a taxonomy of curses,” Layla said. “It explains our roles, our marks, lists the tales … and also the categories we fall into. For example, your
mark
is the wheel….” Layla flipped ahead to the “Sleeping Beauty” listing, which was illustrated with the same wheel shape Mira had on her back. “Your
tale
is ‘Sleeping Beauty,' your role is the princess, and your overarching
category
is Somnolent.”

“That's a lot to keep track of,” Mira said.

Layla shrugged. “It's mostly intuitive once you get the hang of it. Viv is also a Somnolent princess, but her tale is ‘Snow White,' and her mark is an apple. So there's some overlap.”

Layla leafed through the book, her fingers turning the pages almost lovingly. “Originally, this book was made as a reference tool for young fairies so they could learn the various curses and make the right choices about whom to bestow them upon. But now it's more of a collector's item. Fairies have easier ways of sharing information.”

“But aren't we born with these marks?” Mira asked.

Layla shook her head. “Did someone tell you that? We're usually cursed when we're children, or older, once our personalities have made themselves known. There
are
some hereditary curses—curses that run in a particular family, that is,” Layla said, glancing quickly at Blue. “And—”

Mira turned toward Blue, to ask him about it—but he just held his coffee up and away from the book, like that was the issue here.

“I'm not going to spill it,” he said. “Don't look at me like that.”

“Um, anyway,” Layla continued a little awkwardly, “you were probably cursed as an infant, Mira—most Sleeping Beauty Somnolents are. Viv was cursed when she was a baby, too. But my curse was bestowed when I was ten, and Jewel was cursed only a few years ago. So it varies. Anyone with magic in their blood has curse potential, but it takes a fairy to awaken it.”

“There's magic in my blood?” Mira swiveled her wrist to look at the cluster of veins there, suddenly nervous about what they contained.

“It just means that somewhere in your family's history, there's an ancestor who wasn't fully human—a fairy, perhaps—whose magic was passed down to you,” Layla said. “In a very diluted form, of course.”

“Fairy-human relations are generally frowned upon,” Blue said. “And by
relations
, I mean—”

Mira cut him off, heat spreading across her cheeks. “I get it.”

“So our curses are punishments for those forbidden trysts,” Layla said. “Fairies feel they have a right to test us—to make us undergo an ordeal. Although some fairies have a soft spot for us. Some are good. And these days, they don't curse everyone—lots of people get skipped. We call that having a dormant curse.”

The talk of fairies brought Mira's thoughts back to Elsa and Bliss. Were they
both
fairies? Bliss she could sort of see as a fairy godmother, what with the frilly dresses and the bouncy steps and the charm shop. But Elsa seemed too practical to be magical. And she couldn't imagine either of them
punishing
someone.

Well … except maybe her. For disobeying them. And lying to them.

Thinking about her godmothers made her eyes well up. She could call them, tell them she was in Beau Rivage and knew the truth now—but what if they were furious with her? What if they overreacted and took her away again?

She wasn't ready to leave. Wasn't ready to surrender her independence either.

Layla was still explaining. “It's not just a matter of having magic in your blood—there's a social dividing line, too. Prince and princess curses are reserved for the people we call Royals. We call them that because their families were members of the nobility, once upon a time. They're usually rich—”

“Marrying the peasant who spins straw into gold—always a good move,” Blue said.

“—and they're considered to be the fairy-tale elite, although their curses aren't necessarily more desirable—as I'm sure you and Viv would attest. But that's all subjective anyway,” Layla said. “Traditionally, what's viewed as a bad curse is bestowed by an evil fairy. Rafe's Beast curse, for instance. Whereas my curse, which is
supposed
to be a good one—because I'm destined to break the Beast's enchantment,” she said, rolling her eyes, “was bestowed by a good fairy.”

“In other words, a fairy could view your curse as a reward, and you might still hate it,” Blue said.

“Good and evil are
our
descriptors for fairies, by the way,” Layla said. “It's best not to call a fairy evil to her face.”

“I'll remember that,” Mira said with a smile.

Someone banged on the glass then, startling them. It was an old woman whose hair hung down in matted orange, black, and white strips, like ragged cat fur. She was carrying a wicker basket and looked slightly crazed. Layla pointed to the C
LOSED
sign until the woman scowled and went away.

“We
do
have some power over our lives,” Layla added, turning thoughtful. “We make our own decisions—it's just that fate has a way of twisting our efforts to meet its expectations. So there have been Cinderellas who've run away from the ball, fled their princes, and kept running until their glass slippers cracked. And there have been Wolves who chose not to devour Red Riding Hood or her grandmother and were accepted into the Hood family with gratitude, only to turn feral again weeks later and slaughter everyone—because murder is a Wolf 's nature.”

Blue's fingers curled around the armrest of his chair and dug in. Mira studied him, wondering—was he a Wolf ? But a heart mark didn't make sense for a Wolf.

His head was bowed, so she couldn't read his expression. His knuckles were white.

“So … is it worth trying?” Mira asked. “To have anything the fairies don't want you to have?” She hoped Layla said yes. Layla
had
to say yes. Because Mira couldn't imagine giving up and accepting that Freddie was her future, prince or not. She wanted to believe she could fall in love and have it matter, not just fall into place like a puzzle piece.

Layla offered a commiserating smile—in a way, her fate was worse. She didn't have to worry about plunging into a hundred-year coma—but she was destined to be trapped in a house with beastly Rafe, putting up with his crap until “love” taught him not to be an asshole.