Winter's Tale (7 page)

“That’s terrible!” December exclaimed. “Her
daughter made her own choices. What an awful woman.” She sat up to
look at him. His softened body remained in hers, his graceful hands
moving to caress her thighs. “The land of Faerie sounds
dangerous.”

“It can be. There are balances if your luck
runs true.”

“Will you go back there if you’re freed?”

“I’m not sure. I think I’d like to explore
your world. I’ve grown interested in it since I’ve been trapped
here.”

He didn’t mention taking a companion.

“December,” he said, his manner serious. “I
want to thank you for what you did today. To share pleasure after
all these years . . . I’m not certain I can express the gift that
was to me.”

“It was my pleasure too.”

His strong silken fingers rubbed warmth into
her knees. “Will you return to me again?”

He looked at her through his lashes, his
sudden diffidence startling her. “I suppose you get lonely when no
one comes.”

“There are stretches,” he admitted. “Great
yawning gulfs of silence. On my own, I don’t dream of people. I
only dream of this.”

He spread one hand to indicate the pristine
woods. December tried to imagine so much solitude, but it was
beyond her power. That he hadn’t gone insane was abruptly
impressive.

“Your face,” he said, touching her chin so
she’d look at him. “It’s not
any
company I wish, it’s
yours
. Solitude is preferable to some visitors.”

That she believed—and maybe the rest as well.
He can’t lie
, she reminded herself.

She pulled her thoughts together with an
effort. “Won’t I come back automatically the next time I fall
asleep?”

“I can try to summon you, but the magic that
rules these matters is unpredictable. If you call to me before you
slumber, your return is likelier. If you . . .” He hesitated. “If
you knew another of my names, I expect you’d come whenever you
wished to.”

“Another of your names? How many do you
have?”

He smiled foxily. “Nearly as many as a
pureblood faerie. My mother was chary as well as brave.”

“Okay,” she said, wanting to be casual but
not too. “I’d be honored if you’d entrust me with another of your
names.”

He reached up to clasp her face, catching all
her attention. “William,” he said. “Hans William Winter.”

She repeated what he’d said.

“Think it before you go to bed,” he advised.
“Don’t whisper it aloud and don’t write it down anywhere.”

“I won’t,” she promised, glad she was good at
keeping secrets—and at remembering. She bit her lip, wondering if
she ought to trust him a little too.

“My last name is Worth,” she blurted.

His hands stroked her face, his blue eyes
glowing with emotion. “December Worth is a good name for you.”

A
miniature golden wishbone swung
above December’s face: back and forth, back and forth like a
metronome.

Wake up, December Worth
, said a voice.
Wake up and tell me everything
.

December’s eyes snapped open. The redhead
Brianne stood beside her bed, hanging over her. Had she been the
one who spoke? She was watching December intently.

“What the hell are you doing?” December
demanded.

She guessed this wasn’t the reaction Brianne
expected. She jolted away in shock. “N-nothing. You were making
noises. I thought you were having a bad dream.”

Had December talked in her sleep? Her jaw
ached like she’d been clenching it. God, she hoped she hadn’t said
anything she shouldn’t.

“Just stay away from me,” she said, covering
alarm with anger.

“Sure.” Brianne retreated nervously, fingers
clutching her dainty gold necklace. “No problem.”

December heard the girl get back into her own
bed. She looked at her night table. The apple Brianne had given her
earlier sat there. Maybe because there wasn’t much light in the
dormitory, the places she’d bitten looked like they had turned
black.

Had the girl drugged her? Maybe with
something to induce dreams? Hans had said his ability to summon
December was unpredictable, but December had traveled to him twice
now with no problems. Perhaps Brianne had been trying to eavesdrop.
Perhaps she was another of the girls Miss Westin claimed fell for
the school’s statue.

Reluctant to touch the apple, December
grabbed it with a wad of tissues. Her skin protected, she carried
it to the hall bathroom. The overhead light revealed bite marks
gone black as pitch, as if the flesh alone had rotted while somehow
leaving the red outer skin perfect. If she’d been prone to booting,
December would have done it then. Luckily she wasn’t. She flushed
the disgusting thing instead. Then, her willies settling, she sat
in the stall to think.

She was no expert, but she didn’t think a
crushed-up sleeping pill could have done what she’d seen happen to
that fruit. It had looked and tasted normal, though it was so
pretty it had been hard for her to resist.

Snow White had ended up in a coma from eating
her apple.

December grimaced. Snow White was a fairytale
. . . but then so was Hans. If fairytales couldn’t exist, neither
could cursed statues.

Hans is real. He’s really trapped in that
marble. I truly made love to him in a dream
.

Was the fact that she believed this laudable
or disturbing?

December gripped her head in both hands,
hoping to squeeze more sense into it. She wondered if she should
confront Brianne. The girl was no badass. She wouldn’t withstand
much pressure, but maybe December should dig up more info. Weren’t
interrogations supposed to go better if you knew some answers?

She stared at the graffiti inside the stall’s
old door. Evidently, someone named Bridget had a rep for being a
big fat liar.

If December wanted to sort truth from lies,
she knew only one place where finding it seemed likely.

~

December took way too long picking Miss
Westin’s upgraded lock. If she didn’t learn to do better, her
future as a cat burglar was in jeopardy.

Closing the office door behind her, she ran
her penlight across the shelves of old fairytales. The number of
books was daunting. Even glancing through all of them would require
many nights breaking in. For now, she chose three that had less
dust and looked more handled, then sat on the floor with them. She
found a greater variety of monsters in the illustrations than she’d
anticipated. Princesses and dragons were just the start of it. Will
of the wisps lured unsuspecting travelers off their paths. Trolls
hid under bridges and ate people. Mandrake roots took creepy human
form as homunculi. Most unnerving to her were the black demon dogs:
red-eyed beasts who snapped people’s necks if they knelt down to
pray. She didn’t see how that was fair—not that she prayed all that
often.

Finding something interesting, she turned a
book sideways. Miss Westin had scribbled in the margin beside the
entry on black dogs.
The hounds of Queen
Araun?
the
pencil scratches said. After that, she’d written
Woden
,
Dip
, and two question marks.

December puzzled over that. Were these the
names of the dogs who’d killed Hans’s mother? Was Queen Araun his
faerie nemesis?

If Miss Westin had uncovered this, her
research was leagues ahead of December’s. December should have
asked Hans if he’d met the French teacher. Or Brianne. December
knew far too little to understand what she was up against.

That thought drew a realization after it.
Miss Westin had been piecing together what other students at
Rackham knew. That’s why she’d been taking girls’ journals. Chances
were, the teacher had rifled December’s nightstand to see if she
had one.

Relieved she didn’t, December jumped up to
dig the diaries out of the paper piles on her desk.

None belonged to current students, but all
were well thumbed through. Conveniently, the teacher had folded
down the pages that dealt with Hans.

Tonight, he told me his name . . .

I wish I knew how to make myself dream about
my mystery man more clearly . . .

He seems lonely. I’d give anything to save
him . . .

Oh, he’s so beautiful. No other boy can
measure up.

By the time December finished reading, her
cheeks were hot with embarrassment. These girls had written some
god-awful goopy stuff. Miss Westin had been right to call Hans a
rock star. Rackham’s female students were fangirls, desperate to
claim a connection to an unattainable romantic figure. December
wasn’t at all sure she was less pathetic.

The journal writers wanted to escape their
humdrum lives, to feel they were loved and special. If a person
craved that badly enough, how many ridiculous things might they
convince themselves were true?

Fuck
. December closed the last
bedazzled pink diary. She wanted to believe she was smarter and
more independent than other girls, but when it came to wanting to
feel loved, she knew she was vulnerable. As she forced herself to
face this, her stomach clenched and her spine shivered. Hans
claimed only a “true” lover could break the curse. Was her doubt a
betrayal of his hope or one last glimmer of sanity?

Oh, whatever,
she thought, tossing her
curls in dismissal. Just because she might be deluded didn’t mean
the real deal behind Hans’s statue wasn’t worth unearthing. She
owed it to herself and the him she’d imagined not to give up just
yet.

Footsteps sounded in the long corridor
outside, kicking a surge of adrenaline through her. Trying not to
panic, she hurried to put everything back where she’d found it. It
wasn’t yet 4 a.m., but teachers lived in at Rackham. If Miss Westin
had decided to burn some midnight oil, December had no explanation
for her presence.

As she shoved the journals under their
respective piles of paper, a post-it note that had lost its
stickiness fluttered out. December recognized Miss Westin’s chicken
scratch.

“B has the crystal,’ it said. “She may be
summoning
Her
.”

B
as in Brianne? And who was the
Her
who warranted a capital letter and an underline?

The heeled footsteps clacked closer. They had
to be Miss Westin’s. As vain as the French teacher was of her legs,
she probably slept in stilettoes. December slipped the sticky note
back among the clutter. God, why had she found this clue at the
last minute? As silently as she could, she climbed the shelves that
had been built under the square window. Stacks of books wobbled but
didn’t fall. The window’s mechanism cranked open with mouselike
squeaks. December squeezed halfway through and glanced around
quickly. To her left was a drainpipe, beneath her a narrow ledge.
Giving thanks for a brief flirtation with gymnastics, December
rolled out and onto it.

Her curvy hips
just
fit through the
opening. Heart pounding, fingers sweaty, she caught her balance on
the drainpipe and pushed the window closed.

She nearly plummeted the full story when the
office light snapped on.

If her nerves hadn’t been in shreds, she’d
have risked peeking in. As it was, she hoped she was steady enough
to descend the building without falling.

She didn’t fall, but she was shivering like
crazy by the time she hit grass. It was freezing out, and she
didn’t have a coat—just her usual men’s pajamas and wool socks.

“Shit,” she hissed through chattering teeth
as she hugged herself.

A creak from above warned her Miss Westin was
leaning out her window. She must have noticed her stuff had been
touched.

Her
stolen
stuff
, December reminded, shrinking out of sight closer to
the wall. She refused to feel guilty for breaking in to study
it.

Guilty or not, now she was stuck outside the
school. She could try sneaking in through the graveyard’s gate, but
that meant crossing the inner courtyard where she risked being
seen.

The library might make a good entry point. It
was on the ground floor, on the opposite side of the school’s
rectangle from where she was. Hopefully, she’d find a window she
could open.

Running in a crouch across frosted ground got
her chilled blood pumping. She was almost warm as she rounded the
corner to the front of the building.

Crap
. The library’s lights were on.
Didn’t anyone at Rackham sleep through the night like normal?

But that was fine. More people up and about
meant more opportunities for spying.

She crept to the first tall Gothic window and
peeped in.

Mrs. Blake wasn’t alone in her domain.
Brianne was with her. December couldn’t hear what they were saying,
but the girl looked worried. December seriously envied her the
lumpy knitted sweater she’d wrapped around her pink negligee.

Though it wasn’t good spy behavior, December
gasped when plump and jovial Mrs. Blake suddenly slapped Brianne
across the face. The redhead cringed and began crying. December
couldn’t help feeling sorry for her. She was relatively sure
corporal punishment was frowned on, even at Rackham.

Hoping for a better vantage point, she moved
farther down the line of windows. Luck was with her. An empty soda
can sat forgotten on the ledge. By pressing it between the glass
and her ear, December was able to create a sound transmitter.

“You failed me,” Mrs. Blake was saying.

“She didn’t fall asleep good enough,” Brianne
pleaded. “That bitch Nina kept her from eating the whole apple. I
promise, Mom, I did exactly as you said.”

Mom?
December’s eyebrows rose.
Obviously, she should have been paying more attention to school
scuttlebutt. She’d had no clue these two were related.

“I got you two more names,” Brianne wheedled.
“That’s not nothing.”