Claws (9780545469678) (24 page)

“J
ack . . .” Emma said. “What are you doing?”

Jack turned to her. “Haven't you been paying attention?” he said. “I'm nothing without magic. A Heart-Killer. Not even a real cat.” He met her eyes. “I gave you the Heart's Blood. I helped you find your sister. Now this is what I want. What I always wanted.”

“As if what you want matters, Heart-Killer,” Cricket growled.

“You don't deserve magic. Even becoming a faerie is too good for you,” said Fat Leon.

“So it was never about me. It was all about getting your magic back.” Emma felt tears well up. Human tears. “You didn't care about me at all. You were just pretending to be my friend so you could get what you wanted.”
Heart-Killer,
she thought.

“I told you caring for things was a trap,” said Jack, but his voice sounded small.

“You have your sister. Take her and your cats and leave us alone,” one of the humans screamed. “Leave us alone!”

“Yes, take your Helena and go,” the honeysuckle faerie said. “You can't turn everyone here into cats. I can hear the exhaustion in your voice, Emma. What'll happen to you when your magic finally runs out? When your cats can't protect you anymore?”

Emma's pride hissed.

“This is getting boring,” said Nissa. “If your cat wants to take his chances with the tree, he's welcome. Otherwise one of these other humans will serve well enough to keep the numbers right.”

Emma gritted her teeth. “They think they love you, but they don't,” she said. “How can they when they don't even know what you are?” But she knew the honeysuckle faerie was right. The Heart's Blood felt faint. The threads of magic connecting her to her cats were weakening. Some of them were struggling to hold their shape.

“As if mere sight can tell you what we are,” the honeysuckle faerie laughed. “We've never turned a cat before. And such a dark heart. I wonder what kind of creature he'll become?”

“Who cares?” Nissa said.

“Jack, please,” Emma said. “Don't do this.”

Jack looked at the faeries, then back at Emma. His tail snapped back and forth.

“Please,” Emma said, so quietly she didn't think he would even hear.

Into the silence of the clearing came an odd sound, like the jingling of a bell. It was so familiar, and so out of place, that for a moment Emma didn't recognize it. Then she did. It was a ringtone. The phone that Cricket had knocked to the ground was ringing, its screen lit up with a text message.

Then another phone rang out, and another, until a chorus of phones sounded all over the clearing. The humans glanced around nervously and fingered their pockets. Emma hesitated, then took two steps and picked up the phone.
WANT TO SEE WHAT FAERIES REALLY LOOK LIKE?
the message said, and beneath it was a video. Emma tapped it and the image of a grinning ratter popped open on the screen:

“You think you know something about magic,”
it squeaked.
“You think you know something about faeries. But for hundreds of years they've toyed with humans, and you've loved them for it. You give them everything, and they take everything — even your children. But secrets and knowings want to be free. They want to be discovered . . .”

Here and there the humans were sneaking glances at their phones and tapping on the screen. Soon the ratter's voice filled the clearing.

“All it takes is a little cat magic to break through the enchantment, and a lot of clever ratter tricks to get you all to see it. Want to see what becoming a faerie really means? Watch!”

Then the video jerked, and instead of the ratter's face, it showed the clearing as it had looked before Emma and her cats had stormed in: the faeries sitting in front of the stage, surrounded by their human eye-puppets; Corbin talking into his microphone. Just as Emma had seen them.

And now she understood. Just as
she
had seen them. As a Pride-Heart. Not as a human.

For a moment she was back in the ratter tunnels, her tail fused to the ratterking. She remembered the feeling that she still had a tail, even though there was nothing there, that something remained when she had sliced through it. Something
had
remained. An implant. A wire.

“We want to be there when you find your sister . . . you are part of the ratterking always.”

The ratterking had wanted a spy, and not just any spy. They had known she would be able to see through the faeries' glamour before she knew it herself. And now they were using that ratter-tail implant to look at the faeries through her cat eyes, recording what she saw and beaming it out to the whole world.

Faeries without their glamour. It was the ultimate secret, and now it was out in the open.

The faeries screamed. Humans began to shout and cry out.

The video ended with the text
Pass this link to 10 people and have a magical year!
followed by a link to a CragWiki article on faeries, hacked to include a link to the same video Emma had just seen.

“Do you even realize what you've done?” Corbin cried, his head swiveling as he tried to find Emma. “The humans will come after us, and their own children will try to protect us.”

“Let them all go, then,” Emma said. “Let them go and leave the city forever.”

“Liars! Faeries are all liars!” someone shouted.

And then all the humans started to run every which way.

“Leave them!” Emma shouted to her cats. “Help me free the others from the tree!”

Out of the corner of her eye she saw Jack racing toward the sacred tree, followed by the rest of her pride. The wooden stage buckled and creaked as they all leaped up onto it. Jack stood between her and the cocooned teens, next to the vines that had held Helena so tightly. As tightly as Emma held her sister now, clutching her to her chest with one arm. But her other arm was free.

Emma flicked out her claws. So did Jack. For a moment each stared at the other.

“You can't fight me,” Emma said.

“I've killed a Pride-Heart before over magic,” he spat. “Try me, or stay out of my way!” He backed up toward the tree. The vines hissed and slithered, reaching for him greedily, hungrily. As if the ritual wanted to complete itself.

Above their heads, the television that had been showing the stage flickered, and suddenly it, too, was running the ratter's face while his voice squeaked from the speakers:
“You think you know something about magic!”

“We'll find some other way to get you magic, there has to be something else out there,” Emma said. “But not this. Please. Magic isn't what's important.”

Please don't leave me.

“What do you know about it?” Jack whispered. “You still think like a human. You don't understand what it's like for me.”

“I can't let them turn these kids into faeries. They have brothers and sisters, too. Parents. People who love them and don't know where they are. Jack, please. Don't ask me to pick between helping you and helping them.”

His eye met hers, and he seemed to look into her. Just then one of the vines snaked out and wrapped itself around his leg. He spat in annoyance and jumped back, clawing the vine away. Then he stopped suddenly. There was surprise in his eyes. Shock.

For just a moment, without realizing it, he'd chosen her over his magic.

It was enough for Emma.

She leaped forward, slashing at the vines that held the other teens. The tree's branches rattled angrily and the vines struggled, but they were no match for Emma's claws. Her pride surrounded Jack, hissing and spitting in case he tried to hurt her or stop her, but he only stood and watched, wide-eyed.

The teenagers in the vines struggled, crying in despair at being freed. All of them seemed part-faerie already, their flesh shimmering strangely, and one of them had turned green, his skin as silky as a flower petal. But they all still had their eyes. She expected tears, attacks, but they seemed disoriented — frightened, even. They staggered away, following the crowds.

Emma hugged the little brown cat that was Helena. “We need to get out of here,” she said to her pride, then turned to Jack. “Thank you.”

He shook himself. Then he spat at her and leaped to the tree, scratching at it desperately. But the vines hung, slashed and lifeless. The ceremony had needed four. He'd missed his chance.

“I don't know why I hesitated,” he said. He seemed confused.

“Because you're my friend. And you do care. You cared about those kids.”

Jack stopped and looked at her. “No. I didn't care about them. And I wasn't supposed to care about you, either. Don't you get it? I didn't do any of this for you. I brought you the Heart's Blood because I knew you'd try to help your sister. And by trying to get her back, by taking on the faeries, you'd help me get my magic back. And I was right! It was an insane plan, and it worked! But I let myself become your pet, as if you really were my Pride-Heart. I let you put a leash around me even without magic. Now what good am I? Sooner or later you'll get tired of having me around, and then what?”

“That's not true!” Emma cried, reeling from everything Jack was saying to her.

“What happens when your parents decide they're tired of the trailer park? I won't be able to go with you then. Maybe the others won't mind if you turn them into mice and hide them in little cages, but a cat without magic will just make things harder for you.”

“We'll think of something!” Emma said. “I won't let my mom kick you out. You're still my friend.”

“I don't need friends!” Jack hissed. “I don't need a Pride-Heart! I don't need a pride! I don't need anyone. I don't need
you
.”

Then he turned away from her and ran.

“Jack!” she yelled.

He stopped. He looked back, his eye flashing yellow in the darkness.

Her voice caught. Whatever she had meant to say was gone. “Even if you didn't mean to be, you were still my friend. Weren't you? That's why you didn't let the tree take you, wasn't it?”

“I don't know,” he said. “I don't know.”

Then he was gone. Emma called after him again, but it was no use. She had to let him go. And she had to find her way home, which, thanks to Jack, she knew how to do.

She gathered her pride around her and held Helena-the-cat close. Then, looking up, she found the tiny red star above the trees and began to walk.

“Cat-girl Emma!” echoed Nissa's voice behind her. “I know your name! I'll find you again one day!”

CRAG FACT OF THE DAY:

“The discovery of a crag plot to turn human teens into faeries has led to a nationwide increase in anti-crag and anti-magic feeling. Some government officials have even called for a ban on all media showing faeries in a positive light.”

CragWiki.org

T
wo weeks later, Emma stood at the edge of the forest, the Toe-Chewer at her side. Watching. Waiting. There had been no sign of Jack. Now that she was back, what had happened in the Deep Forest almost didn't feel real. Like it hadn't really happened. But sometimes she thought she could feel the sting of Helena's slap on her cheek, and her chest still ached from the things Jack had said.

Jack's red star had led them home, just as he said it would. She'd turned Helena back to herself on the metal steps of the trailer and her sister had crumpled there, her hands over her face, sobbing. Then her parents had come running out of the trailer, falling to their knees beside Helena. Emma thought there would probably be a lot more crying to come. And a lot of explanations, too. But for the time being, she was just happy to have her family back.

Her mom came up to stand behind her now. She put a hand on Emma's shoulder.

“We've been making some calls. We might be able to find a private school for you. They won't even consider you as long as we're living here, but I thought once we moved —”

Emma shook her head. “We can't move. My pride is here, and they need me.”

Her mom was quiet for a while. Then she sighed and pulled Emma closer. “Emma . . . he might not come back. You know that. He was never your friend.”

“He was,” Emma said. “He just didn't realize it. He'll come back, I know he will. He has to.” But if the things he said were true . . . No. She couldn't believe that. He was coming back.

“Your sister has something to say to you,” her mom said as Helena stepped out of the trailer, and she gave Helena a pointed stare.

“Thank you for saving me,” Helena said, but her voice was flat and emotionless. She'd hardly looked at Emma since she had come home.

“She just needs time,” her mom murmured in Emma's ear. “I'll leave you two to talk, okay?” Then she gave them each a quick hug and went back inside.

“I'm not sorry for rescuing you,” Emma said.

“You'll never understand,” Helena whispered. A tear rolled down her cheek, sparkling like dew. Helena smelled different since Emma brought her home, too. She smelled like rain and earth and the Deep Forest. She looked like the same old Helena, but there was something not quite the same anymore.