Foretold (22 page)

Joanna only made it a few steps inside the restaurant before she heard arguing coming from the kitchen. Sounded like Helen and Willy. To be sure, she checked their table by the window. Nobody. Then she heard a loud crashing sound in the kitchen.

Joanna stood there stunned.

Maybe this was the crime she sensed was coming. Maybe Willy was in there hurting Helen. Joanna had read on the Internet how common it was for women to go from one abusive relationship to another. She had to save Helen.

Joanna marched toward the kitchen, pushed through the saloon doors. It was Helen and Willy, all right, but they
weren’t fighting. They were making out on one of the kitchen counters, surrounded by scattered slices of lime.

When Helen looked up, Joanna took off.

She was so confused. And so drunk. She stumbled back to their table by the window and sat down to think. She was more convinced than ever something awful was going to happen. She just didn’t know what. And she didn’t know where to look or who to keep an eye on. Maybe she was wrong about Ronny. Like she was wrong about Helen and Willy. She pulled out her fortune and read it again. “The hour has finally arrived.” The words seemed to swim around on the slip of paper, like they were alive.

She shoved the fortune into her mouth.

Maybe if she swallowed it whole she’d get rid of its power. But that was too crazy, so she pulled it from her mouth and held it over the candle flame, watched it slowly catch fire and then twist and shrink into blackness.

The embers reminded Joanna of her cigarettes, and she reached into Helen’s bag for the car keys. Even though her stomach was off, and the room was spinning, she had to have something to calm her down. If she was still alive tomorrow, she’d throw away the pack.

Just as she stood up with Helen’s keys, though, she heard screeching tires in the parking lot. Through the window she saw Ricky’s tricked-out Civic.

Her heart climbed into her throat.

She had it right from the beginning. Ricky and his gun. Marcus from Venice and his thugged-out friends. Suddenly things grew clear for Joanna. She had to save Kelly’s life.

She raced out into the parking lot as Ricky revved his engine and inched toward Kelly and Marcus. His tinted windows were all down. Hip-hop thumped on his system.

“No!” Joanna shouted, but her words were drowned out by the rattling bass.

“Yo, Kelly,” Joanna heard Ricky shout out his car window. “Who’s this guy supposed to be? You think I’m stupid?”

Soon as Joanna saw the look in Ricky’s eyes, she understood.

Her entire life had been moving toward this very moment. She didn’t faint like she always thought she might. In fact, she grew stronger. And things slowed way down, like she was seeing everything before it happened.

She knew Laura would rush over to tell Kelly, and she knew Tessa would duck behind a black SUV. She knew Marcus would let go of Kelly’s hand and shout back at Ricky. She knew Willy would come flying out of the restaurant holding his cell phone, screaming for everyone to leave before he called the cops. But most of all, Joanna knew she’d sprint over to Kelly, grab her by the arm and start pulling her toward Helen’s car.

She hurriedly unlocked the passenger door, shoved Kelly into the bucket seat, then raced around to the driver’s side and dove in and started the engine.

All she knew was she had to get Kelly away from danger.

Fast as she could.

Before Ricky could pull his gun and fire on her out of jealousy.

Kelly was sobbing and shouting at Joanna to slow down, but now was not the time for conversation. Joanna flipped the car into reverse and jerked it out of the tight parking space, then gunned it for the lot’s only exit. Just as she was pulling into the road, though, she had to slam on the brakes. But the car didn’t stop fast enough and she plowed right into a pedestrian.

The last thing Joanna saw before cracking her forehead against the steering wheel column was Ronny’s terrified face.

• • •

When Joanna came to, she was on a stretcher, surrounded by cops and paramedics. Her friends were all holding each other and they looked like they’d been crying. Kelly was there. She was okay. Over Kelly’s head, Joanna saw the slow spinning lights of multiple cop cars. Then she saw Ronny.

There was a huge gash on the side of his face and his head was taped down to the stretcher so he couldn’t move. His right pant leg was covered in blood. Joanna’s heart broke. She’d run over the one person who made her feel safe. How could she have ever thought he had bad intentions? Two paramedics were wheeling him toward the open doors of an ambulance.

“Wait,” Ronny said as they passed Joanna.

The paramedics slowed to a stop.

Joanna’s head was still in a fog from the booze, and from the accident, but she clearly saw Ronny trying to reach for the bulge in his right pocket. He couldn’t get his hand down far enough, though, because of the way he was secured in the stretcher, so one of the paramedics had to help. The man reached into Ronny’s pocket and pulled out a wrapped package. He asked what he should do with it, and Ronny motioned toward Joanna.

The man placed the package on Joanna’s stretcher, then they loaded Ronny onto the ambulance and drove off.

People were leaning over Joanna, asking questions. Cops with their notebooks and paramedics. Her friends. Auntie Helen. But Joanna couldn’t focus. Her forehead was throbbing where it had slammed against the steering wheel. And the world was still spinning. She managed to pick up the package and pull apart the poor wrapping job. And when she saw what it was, she immediately started sobbing.

They wheeled her toward a second ambulance. Two paramedics lifted her stretcher and slid her toward the back, and one of them hopped in with her. The last thing Joanna saw before they closed the doors was the paramedic handing the iPhone box Ronny had given her to Tessa, who looked at it and then looked at Joanna, tears running down her cheeks.

Joanna was still crying, too, as the doors shut out all the outside sound. She felt the engine start, and she stared at the blurry ambulance ceiling, imagining the fortune that would be imprinted in her mind forever: “The hour has finally arrived.”

It had taken running Ronny over in a car to understand what those words actually meant. Not that she would be hurt, but that it was time for her to stop pretending. She’d wanted to be Ronny’s girl all along. And tonight she was supposed to tell him. On her birthday.

She shouted his name. “Ronny!”

Again and again she called for him.

But nobody could hear her.

And nobody could take back what she had done.

I suppose there’s nothing to distinguish Vernal, except that it’s my home, and it has a prophecy. It starts like this:

There are also bits about three flaming witches, the Breathless Reaches, and an Earthenwork Defiler. It doesn’t sound like much, does it? Though admittedly, it only rhymes in the original tongue.

Nevertheless.

Like Vernal, there’s little to distinguish me, except that I am myself and no one else can claim that.

My father is the king, my half-sister, the crown princess:
respectively, the head of the kingdom and its burgeoning heart. I am nothing. I rolled out of the wrong side of His Majesty’s sheets. Consequently, I can’t be acknowledged, but neither can I be entirely ignored.

I’m close to the court, but not in it; cared for but never coddled. The king is a wise man and knows enough to walk a balance with me. I have nothing to resent, and I never feel entitled to anything more than the pleasant position I have: my sister’s bed mistress. I dress her hair and hear her secrets, and I love her completely.

Everything about her is exquisite, from her coiled black hair to her curved ankles. Likewise her voice of spices and honey, which she uses to beckon me.

“Corvina—”

I glance over my shoulder, still busy polishing her bronze mirror. It takes a fine touch—too much sand and the face will go hazy. Too much acid and it will go dark. “Yes, Lucia?”

With a smile, and a net made of her dark lashes, she casts for me. “Come sit awhile. Come talk.”

“Oh no, I can’t. I’m slaving for you,” I say, with my own smile.

“I’ll rub your feet.”

I put the mirror aside and turn, scrubbing my hands clean on a cloth. Though I pretend reluctance, I have my sandals half-off before I reach her side.

“If you insist,” I say, and sprawl in her linens.

And she does, the crown princess of Vernal, rub my feet. She’s quite good at it, and cheerful, too. Hints of lavender and orrisroot waft around me, perfume from the herbs folded into the mattress. I taste bliss, and sigh with it.

“Yes, sweet?” she prompts.

I curl a hand over my head and beam at her. “Perfect.”

Lighting with that, Lucia doubles her effort and resists
the temptation to tickle. Over my toes, she peeks at me and whispers, “I’ve figured out my Betrothal Quest.”

“Then tell me.”

“It will be a Decade of Conversations,” she says. She digs her thumbs into the arch of my foot, on purpose, I think, just to make me collapse. She’s pleased with herself, all but humming now.

Melting in dozy pleasure, I smile at the canopy and tell her, “Somehow, I don’t think Father’s going to let ten years pass before you pick a consort.”

“I knew I should have used another word,” she mutters. “What I mean is, I’ll choose my suitors, and they’ll each have to have ten conversations with me.”

Teasing, I say, “Last one standing takes your hand?”

“Hush.” She flicks me, just hard enough that her fingers snap against my heel. “They’re supposed to take clues away from our talks. After all ten, they’ll go questing for the thing that will win my hand.”

I lift my head again. “And what thing is that?”

“Whatever I like. A perfect quince from Queen Vatia’s garden. A Lycean bone spoon. I don’t know. It doesn’t matter.” She shrugs. “Because I’ll tell nine of them, ‘Good luck unraveling my clues. Go forth and seek my prize!’ ”

Warming all over, I push onto my elbows. I see precisely where she’s gone with this, and it couldn’t amuse me more. “Then your favorite you’ll tell to fetch a Lycean bone spoon, and be quick about it.”

“Exactly. It seems like it rewards cleverness, and you know how Father admires that.”

I tug the ribbons on her sleeves. “So you know, I admire
you
.”

“Flattery gets you nothing,” she says, but then her hands still. The weight between us shifts, heavier as something
troubles her. With a halfhearted squeeze, she asks, “Will you come with me?”

The weight lifts, at least from me. If she weren’t so entirely serious, I’d joke with her—bother her with demands and impish conditions. But this matters; it’s written in the depths of her eyes and the set of her lips.

Quickly, I say, “Yes, of course.”

“In my court,” she promises, “you’ll be allowed to do what you please.”

What she means it that she’d let me get married. All the stars in Lucia’s eyes are for romance, though I suppose she’d let me become a sea captain or an oratrix or actress, if I really wished it.

Still, for her, it comes back to love, always love. It doesn’t matter that the accident left me with no eyelashes to bat, no eyebrows to darken with kohl. She couldn’t care less that I’m bald and mostly earless and mottled. I look like a brown egg, oblong and unnatural. Yet, in her mind, I am her lovely little sister; any suitor would be lucky to have me. Her stars leave her blind.

No one else shares that sentiment; no one knows that better than I. I’m seventeen, the king’s bastard daughter. My mouth is unscarred, and my lips full—but no one’s ever tried to kiss me, not even for machination’s sake. The rest is too disturbing to try.

Most days, I wind scarlet silk around my head, to give the impression that I might have hair. That way I merely startle people coming and not going. I can’t help that. I’m melted and molten; I don’t like it, but that’s my face.

Nothing will change it.

But because Lucia believes the only thing keeping me from romance is our father’s strategies, I loop my arms around
her and press my forehead to her temple. She’s been eating candied quince again. I smell it when she sighs and shifts her weight into me.

“It’s a kind thought,” I say. “But hush now.”

“I mean that,” she insists. “You can do anything you like.”

Petting her, I swear, “I already do.”

My sister has been poisoned.

Or cursed, or taken ill—none of the royal physicians agree. I stand at her bed, bathing her fevered brow with ginger water, and try not to resent each expert for being stupider than the last.

“It’s all wolves,” Lucia says. She turns her face toward my hand. A thick, raised rash spreads over her body—she looks like a coal crusted with fire and ash.