Tear You Apart (20 page)

“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 upstairs 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.

This wasn’t how she wanted to die—if she had to.

She didn’t want it to be at this Huntsman’s hands.

She wanted—

The old Huntsman took a thin rope from his belt and looped it around her neck, pulling it tight like a leash. When she tried to run he yanked the rope to cut off her air supply. While she was gasping and choking, he tied her to the trunk of a tree, winding the rope in a crisscrossing pattern around her throat, across her shoulders, behind the tree to bind her wrists, and then around her hips and thighs before securing it with a firm knot.

The way he looked at her let her know what was coming. He’d bound her tightly, but he’d left her chest and abdomen an open canvas for his blade.

“It’s not supposed to be you,” she said. “Henley’s supposed to do this. You’re retired.”

“Looks like I’m back in business.” The old Huntsman grinned. He looked even more savage in the daylight. “I must say it feels natural getting back to this. It’s been a while since I used these blades on anything human. Last girl was little like you. Younger, though. Eleven. Little heart, little lungs. When I cut them out of her body it was like holding a doll’s organs. I could’ve fit three of those hearts in that box. Men think women like diamonds.… I’ve never seen a woman happier than when you present her with the heart of her rival. She’ll stroke it like a kitten. It’s the sweetest thing.”

“You’re sick,” she choked.

“No sicker than a fairy godmother. This whole world is sick. You’ve had seventeen good years. Never cold, never hungry. All those years and your only hardship is that you have to die today. And dying’s not even hard.”

He held her white dress by the neckline, pulled it taut, then slashed it open from throat to hem. “There,” he said. “Nothing in the way now.”

“You’re not supposed to do this. You have to let Henley do it! This is his curse. Ours. You have to—”

“Sorry, Princess. Your stepmom called
me
. The woman knows what she wants.”

He placed the blade against her collarbone and drew it down slowly, barely exerting any pressure. A hot line of pain opened on her chest—and a trickle of blood followed. She heard the squawking of crows as she cried out, the beating of wings as they took to the sky. Then quiet. The hush of a vast stretch of woods that would swallow every sound.

Viv cried as he cut her again—another surface cut, designed to hurt. By the third cut she was sobbing, her body jerking with emotion, chest rising toward the knife when she wanted to shrink away from it.

“Come on,” the Huntsman said. “Beg me to spare you. Let’s make this fun.”

Viv gritted her teeth. Tried to make her body go rigid. If she had to die, she didn’t want to be his entertainment.

Her head drooped, just enough for the rope to choke her, and as she lifted it she thought she heard someone running. Hard footsteps smashing through the underbrush.

The Huntsman was turned away from her, facing … 
Henley, who was coming toward them.

She might have thought she’d imagined him, if his face hadn’t been so coldly angry. Henley’s anger had always been hot, burning under the surface, a struggle to contain. This looked closer to resolve. He wasn’t fighting with himself; he’d made a decision. He had the jeweled knife in his hand.

“Henley—”

He barely looked at her. His focus was on the old Huntsman. “This is my curse. I don’t need you stepping in for me.”

“That’s not what I hear,” the Huntsman said.

“Then you heard wrong. Viv’s mine. She’s
been
mine. Regina promised me I could have this.”

Standing there, watching them square off, it was clear that although the old Huntsman was an experienced killer, Henley posed a threat. He was taller, more muscular, and had youth on his side—and he was furious. The Huntsman gave him a curt nod. “Go on, then. I’ve already got her trussed for you.”

“I don’t need that. She won’t run from me. Will you, Viv?”

She made a sound that was neither a
yes
nor a
no
, but a
help
, and Henley cut the rope with his jeweled knife, the blade scraping the tree as he slashed her bindings. Viv fell into his arms as the rope dropped away, her body trembling with fear and adrenaline.

Henley tipped her chin up to look into her eyes. There was no tenderness in his face. His gaze was hard, as if he barely saw her, as if that was what it took for him not to waver.

He turned her around and held her body against his, not roughly—almost like a caress. His right hand held the knife. His left arm was holding her body, keeping her close, and she
gripped his arm as tightly as she could—the way she used to hold Regina’s hand at the doctor’s, for courage before a shot. Her fingers slid over veins and hard muscle. She imagined she could feel his heartbeat. As rapid as hers.

“This will be over fast,” Henley told her. “Just listen to me and it won’t hurt, okay?”

“Okay,” she said. She took deep breaths, and closed her eyes so she wouldn’t have to see the old Huntsman. She tried to focus on Henley’s arm … tried to remember the first time he’d put his arms around her, surprising her—like a boyfriend, not a playmate.

She breathed in, out …

Henley folded Viv’s fingers around the handle of his knife, then closed his hand around hers. He drew the knife up to her throat, gently, as if the blade were a bow and Viv a violin, and they were about to coax a single, fragile note from her—together.

“I made a promise,” he said.

“I love you,” she said.

Henley’s whisper brushed her ear like a kiss.
“Run.”

The warmth of his body left her, but the knife was still in her hand.

She opened her eyes to see Henley lunge at the old Huntsman, to see them both hit the ground as Henley tackled him. Leaves flying up from the dirt. A smear of blood on the Huntsman’s face.

Startled, she dropped the knife—then quickly snatched it up. “Henley!”

They were wrestling, fighting for control of the Huntsman’s blade.

Viv hesitated. She still had the knife. Maybe she could help him.…

The two Huntsmen rolled over, faces flushed, tendons straining—and Henley saw her.

“Run, goddamn it!” he yelled.

So she ran.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE