Claws (9780545469678) (8 page)

“She hissed at me! Did you hear that? I think I should tell Ms. Keyes that she's got some kind of ratter disease or something.”

“You better not touch me again,” Emma said. “I wasn't a crag before, but I'm a Pride-Heart now.”

“A Pride-Heart?” Matt laughed. “What's that supposed to be? Some kind of dork club you joined?”

More laughs. Emma felt her face grow hot. Her hand was hurting again, and everything she said came out dumb. But she kept talking anyway. “It's like a queen of cats. It means they do whatever I tell them, and I can do all sorts of cat magic.”

They all laughed harder. This wasn't going the way it was supposed to. They weren't afraid of her at all, and they
should
be. Deep down, for no reason at all, she was certain of it.

Just as Matt was about to say something else, the bell rang. “I'll see you inside, Your Majesty,” he said, and he hissed and clawed the air in front of her face, while his friends laughed. Then he went to join the main line through the magic detectors.

“Sorry, kids, you know the rules: No breakfast after first bell,” Mr. Shuttleworth called as he closed the doors to the cafeteria line.

Emma stared at the closed doors as the few remaining stragglers grumbled and moved to the main line of kids waiting to get inside. It was all right if they missed breakfast, but she was hungry. She wasn't supposed to be hungry. She was important. They should be bringing her food and hoping she didn't feel like . . . like . . .

Emma shook her head. Why was she getting so annoyed all of a sudden? She didn't even like school breakfast, and she'd skipped it plenty of times. It was just Matt, and her stupid hand, and everything else going on. She felt like taking a nap, too, and that wasn't helping her feel any less irritable.

She'd forgotten to worry about the magic detectors until she stepped through them. A series of runes began to glow a bright blue on either side, and the detector beeped loudly.

“Please step over here,” the elderly security guard said. He took a piece of paper out of his pocket, and read from it. “Do you have any grimoires, spell books, amulets, charms, dreamcatchers, dreammakers, luck stones, holed stones, animal remains, or other items exhibiting or intended to exhibit magical properties that you wish to turn in at this time?”

“Does a chicken sandwich count as animal remains?” Emma asked.

“I'm going to have to search your bag,” the security guard said, holding out his hand.

“There's nothing in there but books,” Emma said, but she handed her bag over. She could feel everyone's eyes on her.

The security guard carefully laid her things on a small table off to the side: books, papers, old gum wrappers, one squashed and melted candy bar, and her old house keys. “Please step through again.”

Emma did as she was told.

The runes glowed again, even brighter this time, and the beeping was erratic. Thin curls of smoke rose from the detector.

The guard frowned. “Must just be acting up,” he muttered. “All right, collect your things and go on to class.”

Behind her, she could hear Matt's voice. “I told you she was a crag.”

Emma went to homeroom hoping that was the end of it, but of course it wasn't. By the time the second bell sent them to their first class, people were meowing and hissing at her as she walked down the hall. In second period, a girl pulled a bunch of hair off her hairbrush and threw it on Emma's desk, then yelled, “Look, Emma coughed up a hair ball!” Everyone around them giggled.

By third period Emma was thoroughly miserable. She never should have opened her big mouth, especially today. Knowing it was Helena's birthday just made everything worse. The teacher took them to the library so they could look up stuff about faerie influence on art during the Renaissance, but Emma didn't feel like it. She went to CragWiki so it looked like she was doing work and searched for “Cat Pride-Heart.”

The school's computers were old, and it took a minute for the page to load:

She scrolled down and stopped when she saw the heading “Humans as Pride-Hearts in Myth.”

Emma stared at the screen. Someone had edited the article. The pain in her hand grew worse. She clicked around, trying to ignore it, until she found the edit button. Then she selected the entire article and hit delete.

Click
. The article was gone.

But it didn't make her feel any better. She just felt angry, and the more she thought about what they'd done, the angrier she got and the more her hand hurt.
It's probably Matt. It's just the kind of stupid joke he'd think was funny. And now he might have made me delete something that could help me find Helena
. She was furious with him.

When the bell rang, Emma made her way to the cafeteria with her head held high. She got her food and sat down at an empty table. She drank the milk first and immediately wished she could get another. The fruit she'd gotten tasted weird, and she didn't like her fries, but the chicken sandwich tasted amazing. She didn't even bother with the bread.

“If you're so good at cat magic,” Matt said from behind her, “why don't you turn yourself into someone that isn't such a dork?”

“Does Her Majesty want some milk?” said one of Matt's friends.

Emma looked up right as they all emptied cartons of milk on her tray. She stared for a moment, watching her chicken sandwich turn into chicken soup. The milk sloshed onto the table. She stood, trying to keep from getting milk on her jeans, but Matt's friends had her boxed in.

She wanted to hit him, to wipe that smirk off his face, to make him pay for making her hate Marie, make him pay for turning everyone against her, for her having to move to the trailer park, for Helena's disappearance. He should be afraid of her. They all should.

Emma tried to curl her hand into a fist, but she couldn't: The pain in her palm grew worse and worse — and suddenly she knew why.

Because a sharp, curved claw protruded from the base of each finger.

The pain was gone. The fear was gone. Everything became simple, animal fury.

Matt leaned in close. “You shouldn't be eating human food anyway, cat-freak. We'll bring you some nice troll food tomorrow and make you eat that, okay?”

Without even thinking about it, she swiped at his face, a quick flick of her hand. And then she felt her claws dig into his cheek.

Matt pulled away in surprise. For a moment it almost looked like he was going to laugh at her. His friends giggled. Then he reached up to touch his face, and all at once the blood began to pour out between his fingers. He started to scream.

“Matt, are you okay? What happened?” One of his friends tried to pry his fingers away from his face, but couldn't get a good grip. Another friend shouted for a teacher.

“What did you do to him?” asked someone else.

Nothing
, Emma meant to say.
I was just trying to punch him.
But then she looked down at her hand. It was covered in blood. The metallic smell of it overwhelmed her. Her stomach heaved and she had to take a deep breath to stop herself from throwing up.

People were pointing at her, shouting, but she couldn't hear.
I have to put them away,
she kept thinking. They had to retract somehow. She tried to flex her hand, but the claws just twitched dangerously.

Mr. Shuttleworth, the algebra teacher, shoved through the crowd and pushed Emma aside. “Back off,” he yelled, and he knelt beside Matt. “Stop crying, I have to take a look.” He swore under his breath and pulled out his cell phone. “Everyone quiet down. I need to call the nurse's office. He'll need a couple of stitches.”

Stitches? She couldn't have hurt him that badly. It wasn't her fault. It was an accident.

Mr. Shuttleworth was off the phone now and talking to Matt's friends. They pointed at her and made clawing motions. Emma tried to cover her bloody hand with her shirt. The points of the claws were like needles against her skin.

Then she felt a hand on her shoulder and turned to see the principal, Ms. Keyes, looking down at her. Her voice seemed to come from very far away.

“Please come with me, Miss Vu,” Ms. Keyes said, and pushed her steadily out of the cafeteria to the main office. A cop was waiting for them, holding a pair of heavy iron handcuffs inscribed with runes.

“You'll have to wear them as long as you're armed,” Ms. Keyes said. “We've called your mother. She's on her way.”

“I didn't mean to hurt him. I mean, I wanted to hit him, but not . . . I didn't mean to.” Or had she? It had all happened too fast. Her hand had felt strange just before she hit him, but not in a bad way. It had felt right. Hitting him felt right. If he'd just backed down, if he'd been afraid of her, she wouldn't have had to do anything. He made her do it. He'd threatened her.

The cop and Ms. Keyes were both staring at her, disgust on their faces. To her horror Emma realized she was grinning. What was happening to her? Was she becoming like Jack, like every other cat, not caring about anyone?

“Do you think this is funny?” Ms. Keyes demanded. “Because let me assure you, this is deadly serious. You're in a lot of trouble.”

“No, I don't,” Emma said miserably. “I'm sorry. I really didn't mean it.”

“I'm sorry, too,” Ms. Keyes said. “Now if you don't mind, I have to go call Matt's mother to tell her what's happened.” She went into her private office, leaving Emma alone with the cop.

The cuffs made Emma's hands and arms feel numb. She fidgeted in the hard plastic chair. The cop kept looking at her like she was some kind of rabid animal.
Maybe I am
, she thought.

Emma's mom came into the office. Her eyes were puffy and bloodshot. The cop pointed at the empty chair next to Emma. Her mom went to sit down, but stopped short.

“Are the handcuffs really necessary? She's only twelve.”

“I'm sorry, ma'am, but we have to in situations like this,” said the cop, but he didn't sound sorry at all.

Emma's mom sat beside her. Emma tried to hide her hand, but it was no use. Her mom's eyes went wide when she saw the claws. “Emma, what's happened to you? Why didn't you tell me?”

Emma didn't answer. She didn't know what to say. She looked at the floor.

“What if you go to jail? Did you think about that before playing around with magic? Did you have any clue at all what you were doing?”

“They don't send kids to jail,” Emma said softly. She knew that much.

“They don't send
human
kids to jail,” her mom whispered. Then she started to cry.

The cop sighed.

“I'm sorry. I didn't know about the claws.” Emma didn't know what else to say. She wished they'd go away so she didn't have to look at them. So that her mom didn't have to look at them. So that the cop would stop scowling at her. She didn't want to hurt anyone, they had to believe that. Maybe she could get them taken out, or filed down. She forced herself to look at them. Why was it so hard to remember what her hand had felt like without claws? She tried harder, recalling what it was like to move her fingers, to curl her hand up and open it again.

Finally, the claws slid back into her palm, leaving ugly slits where they'd pierced her skin.

The door to the principal's office opened. “Mrs. Vu?” Ms. Keyes called. “Please come in.”

Emma, her mom, and the cop all followed Ms. Keyes into her office and sat down in front of her desk.

“We've just heard from the nurse that Matthew's eye wasn't damaged in the attack. He may, unfortunately, have scars, though she doesn't know how bad they'll be. As I'm sure Emma has told you, Mrs. Vu, we have a strict zero-tolerance weapons policy. The consequences of that are expulsion and a mark on her permanent record.”

Ms. Keyes held up a hand to stop Emma's mom's protests. “I may be able to convince the board to overlook the weapons charge, since the claws are clearly part of Emma's hand: She couldn't very well leave them at home. So I'll see what I can do to keep this incident off the record,
if
you agree to withdraw Emma from school. We pride ourselves on running a simple school, Mrs. Vu. We're not equipped to deal with a . . .” Ms. Keyes hesitated “. . . child like Emma. I have the paperwork all ready.” She slid a stack of forms across the desk. Her voice softened. “I think this is best for Emma and the other students, don't you?”

“But where's she supposed to go?” Emma's mom asked, her voice fierce. “She still has to go to school. She still has the right to an education.”

“Homeschooling is one option,” Ms. Keyes said. “There are also alternative schools for children like Emma.”

“Crag schools, you mean,” Emma's mom said.

“I never used the word crag, Mrs. Vu. However, clearly an all-human environment such as this is not the best place for Emma. Think about it, please. It's a better alternative than expulsion.”

“Mom, let's just go,” Emma said before her mom could argue more. “Dad can homeschool me.”

Emma's mom glared at Ms. Keyes, then looked down at Emma. Her mouth was tight with anger. “We'll talk about it when we get home,” her mom said. She turned back to the principal. “Just tell me where I need to sign.”