Tear You Apart (28 page)

“Yes, I do. I want to make him so angry that he rips his body in half—because I just spoke his true name.”

Owen sighed. “I don’t want it to be my fault if something happens to you.”

Viv flashed her engagement ring. “
Something
is going to happen to me whether I look for his name or not.”

“Princess, marriage to a guy you don’t like is not the worst thing that can happen to you down here. Don’t give the king an excuse to show you.”

“Can you just tell me when he’s likely to be out? He has a fixed schedule for meals. Is there a certain time when he leaves the underworld, to go make deals, or … go to strip clubs, or something?”

“I forgot about Strip Club Saturday. That’ll give you a good six hours to search.”

“Seriously, Owen. Is there any kind of schedule? It might take me a long time to figure this out. I need to start as soon as possible.”

“He’s not there during meals, but the maids do their housekeeping then.… They’d notice if you were snooping around. When he leaves to do a deal, he’s usually gone all night, but you can’t really anticipate that. You just have to notice and take advantage of it. He might announce his plans at dinner. I really don’t know.”

“Thank you,” she said. “I mean it.”

“Yeah, well, try not to get caught.”

“That’s the plan.”

She heard an intake of breath, like he’d been about to speak but stopped himself.

“What is it?”

Owen was quiet. Finally, he said, “You look so sad. I hate that. You look like one of us. I hope you can be happy again … like when I first met you.”

“I seemed happy then?”

“Well, maybe not the
first
time I met you. But the second time you came here, yeah. I thought so.”

She tried to remember. “I don’t know if I was happy. Maybe excited. I thought this place might mean something good for me. I still thought—
ugh
.”

She closed her eyes, angry at herself.

“I used to think my prince would be a freak. A sicko who liked dead girls. But then I met Jasper, and he was different. He told me he could protect me and I believed him. I wanted to believe there was
someone
who could keep me safe.

“But
I
have to keep me safe. My prince already came. There’s not going to be a second prince riding up on a white horse to save me from this one. Finding that name … that’s the only control I have.”

Three nights went by before the troll left the palace.

He announced his departure at dinner, spinning a jade bracelet around his finger. It had been another uncomfortable meal, everyone eating until the serving platters were empty, just to keep from drawing attention to themselves. Although,
since Viv had joined them, the troll seemed to have lost interest in harassing his family. Viv was the novelty, a blank canvas on which to inflict fresh emotional wounds. It didn’t take her long to abandon her plan to win him over. He didn’t want her to kiss up to him. He wanted to watch her squirm.

“Dreams will come true tonight,” the troll said. “What do you think of that, Vivian? Am I ruining lives?”

“You mean, besides ours?”

One of Jasper’s brothers started choking. He held a napkin to his mouth and coughed until he was red in the face.

The troll’s mouth stretched in a thin smile. “Ah, yes. A seven-course banquet. A luxurious palace. Clothes made of the finest silk. How cruel of me.”

The prince’s coughing fit made Viv think of Jewel—the constant flow of flowers and gems, the handkerchief she caught them in. Homesickness hit her when she least expected it. She missed Henley constantly, and that pain was lodged in her chest, hard and tense like a fist clenched around her heart. But her longing for her old life was something she fought to push down, so she could focus on escape. She told herself not to miss her friends—she would see them again. She would find the troll’s name. She would get out of here.

“I wonder what else she’ll need,” the troll mused. “The young lady I’m meeting tonight claims she only needs my help this once, but that’s rarely the case. Hunger intensifies the more you feed it. Like in the old tale. A room full of straw spun into gold? Not good enough. Once that feat is proven possible, one room is insufficient; the king requires another. And then another. Although we’re hardly dealing with straw-to-gold these days. What father would make that boast about his
daughter? Spinning has gone out of fashion. But greed hasn’t.”

The troll directed his attention to the queen. “Do you remember that worthless lout you married before me? Do you remember how important his dreams were to you?”

“I wish Malcolm could dine with us,” the queen said.

“My dear queen stumbled upon her ‘madly ever after’ in a roundabout way. I won’t get into the details of our bargain—they’re about as interesting as her first husband—but it started with a simple request and quickly escalated. In the end she had nothing to offer but her firstborn.”

Viv’s gaze flitted to Jasper’s eldest brother.

“Oh, no,” the troll said. “The princes you see at this table are my sons. That unfortunate savage is someone I own, not someone I would ever share a table with. He’s useful in his way, but his bloodstained clothes would ruin our appetites. Well, not my queen’s. The atrocities he commits don’t faze her. She’s come a long way since she first came crying to my bed.”

“Do you mind if I vomit?” Viv said.

“Vivian.” The troll clicked his tongue disapprovingly. “So squeamish. Do you know why I had to break my queen’s firstborn son? Why I kept him in my dungeon for the first few years of his life, taught him that his only respite would come if he pleased me, if he did exactly as I commanded? Pay attention. This should be edifying for you. You see, I’m a jealous man. What’s mine is mine, and what’s mine I keep forever. Perhaps you’ve noticed. I couldn’t have my wife favoring her firstborn son over the children we would have together. I couldn’t have her gazing at him adoringly, remembering the boy’s father, using those memories to keep her hope alive.”

Viv could see where this was going.

“It’s very juvenile and impolite to cling to the past. There’s no sense in longing for a life you chose to leave. Once you’ve made a commitment, you try to make it work. If you can’t try—like an adult, not a spoiled child—I’ll be forced to help you. It’s in my power to break people. You may think it’s in your power, too, but I assure you, that’s a delusion on your part.

“Now.” The troll treated the table to a toothy grin. “Who’s ready for dessert?”

Viv responded to the troll’s threats with a blank stare. She knew he liked upsetting her, and she wasn’t going to give him evidence that he had.

Instead, she thought of names, running through them like a song in her head. All the names she could guess.

After dinner there were preparations for the troll’s departure—more cologne, a new obnoxious suit. Viv slipped inside the deserted dining room, sat with her back against the wall just to the left of the door, and listened. The dining room was near the troll’s chambers; he’d have to pass by it to leave. And once he had, she’d wait a few minutes more, and then slip down the corridor to his rooms. If she was lucky, no one would even notice.

The click of his shoes preceded him. Then a cloud of scent—that special blend of bergamot and rancid troll—floated under the door. He lingered there—adjusting his tie? Grooming his hairline with a just-licked finger?—and called for a servant to clean up a scuff he’d seen on the floor. Then he left, humming as he went. Viv waited until the squeaking of the cleanup was over, before slipping out into the corridor.

First stop: the troll’s bedroom.

* * *

The lights were on. Everything was neat: most of the belongings put away in closets or drawers, only the furniture and a few pieces of art on display. Viv’s hope was that the troll’s name was hidden somewhere in his lair, that he wouldn’t have been able to resist writing it down. Scribbled onto the wall behind a dresser, carved into the wood of a table, or finger-painted into the steam on the bathroom mirror, only to reveal itself when the glass fogged up. Or maybe he had a notebook where, camouflaged by to-do lists and daily journal entries, he practiced his autograph. A man that full of himself had to have left his name somewhere.

If it was anywhere in this room, Viv would find it.

She searched under his mattress—feeling around for a scrap of paper, a secret journal—and after a few minutes, deciding she was going about this the wrong way, she decided to strip the bed entirely and push the mattress onto the floor. If she left a single piece of the room unexamined it would keep her up at night, imagining the name there, hidden in the one place she hadn’t looked.

It took a lot of heaving and straining, but eventually she shoved the mattress off the bed and was able to check it for the faintest trace of the troll’s handwriting. She examined the box spring; wriggled under the bed—glad for once that she was small enough to fit there—and felt around for a fold of paper wedged into the frame. Next time she would bring a flashlight. Assuming they had flashlights in the underworld.

She crawled out, dust-covered and sweating, and pawed through the sheets, in case they’d been embroidered with a
name. Even a monogram would give her something to go on.

She opened all the drawers and sorted through the objects inside—carefully, because she wanted to put them back in the right places. The maids might rearrange his pillows, but she figured the troll would be pissed if he thought anyone had been messing with his stuff. He had so much jewelry—cheap and expensive, much of it the kind that came with sentimental value: engagement rings, lockets, heirloom tiaras. Pieces his victims had traded away before the troll upped his demands. More wallet-sized photos—ones that hadn’t made it into the collage in his gallery. A stash of fountain pens, none engraved with a name. A few journals where the troll recorded his deals: his victims, what they wanted, the high and then higher prices they paid, plus musings in his typical self-congratulatory fashion. Viv skimmed the troll’s nauseating observations in the hope that she’d stumble across a
Luckily she didn’t guess my true name, Grimbletoes!
But there was nothing like that.

She kept checking the clock, careful not to overstay. The troll wasn’t due back until morning—or so he’d said—but she didn’t want to cut it that close. Three hours had passed. She’d searched the bed and still needed to put it back together. She’d gone through all the drawers, and was midway through a third journal, pinching herself to keep her eyes from glazing over, when the door opened behind her. She turned—

It was Jasper. He shut the door behind him. Then his eyes flicked to the bed. “How in the world were you going to explain that?”

“You’ve picked an unfortunate time to start talking to me again.” She resumed skimming the journal. “I’m busy searching for the key to your father’s destruction.”

“Yes, I see that. And you’re the one who’s been avoiding me.”

“I guess I didn’t feel like getting hit in the face again. For being such a slut.”

“I didn’t say you were—I never said that.”

“No, you just made it very clear that it was wrong of me to have a boyfriend before you.”

“That’s not—” He sighed and came over. “What are you looking at?”

“
The Rumpelstiltskin Diaries
. Your father keeps track of the people he’s scammed. I thought his name might be in here somewhere. So far, I haven’t found anything.”

“You won’t. Do you think you’re the first who’s tried?”

“Do you know something? Names that have already been guessed? Has he ever told you? Do you know his name?”

Jasper laughed bitterly. “Why would he tell me? Don’t I have plenty of motivation to use it against him?”

“I don’t know. You guys seem pretty tight, despite the sadistic shit he’s put you through. He threatened me on your behalf tonight. That must have made you feel loved.”

“I didn’t ask him to do that. I don’t want him to threaten you.”

“And yet, he seemed to know the crux of our problems.”

“I didn’t go to him. I would never do that. But he knows everything that happens here. The servants are his eyes and ears—the ones who want his favor, anyway. Anyone could have heard us arguing, or noticed that we weren’t together. Anyone could have told him about your past. It’s hardly a secret.”

“Hmm,” Viv said disinterestedly.

“Would you put that book down for a minute and listen to me?”

“Fine, but help me fix this bed while you talk.”

Viv set down journal number three. Together they wrestled the mattress back into place.

“I want to apologize,” Jasper said. “I would have done it sooner but I didn’t think you wanted to speak to me.”

“I didn’t.”

“I never should have hit you. I’m not trying to excuse what I did, but I was jealous. Hideously jealous from the moment I found out about your relationship with your Huntsman. I hated thinking that you might still be in love with him. That you might want him more than you wanted me. I was—I was happy when you told me he was dead. I’m sorry, but I was. It meant I didn’t have to compete with him anymore. And then, when you said he was better than me, because he’d protected you—I snapped. I’m sorry. I promise you, if you give me another chance, I’ll never lay a finger on you without your permission.”

The worst thing that’s ever happened to me makes you happy
.

It hurt Viv worse than the slap. If you cared about someone, weren’t you supposed to hurt when they hurt? If Jasper loved her at all, it was a selfish love, more about himself and what he wanted than it was about her.

Was that the way she’d loved Henley? She bit her lip, sorry all over again for everything she could never take back.

“So, next time, you’ll ask first before you slap me in the face?”

“If you like.”

She glanced up at him, alarmed.

“I’m joking! Sorry. It’s just—it’s so tense with you. I thought a joke would help.”

“Your sister’s not the only one whose jokes are bad. Maybe you should stop trying.”

“Maybe. Will you forgive me?”

“What choice do I have? I need your help. You know I do. And I don’t want your father locking me in a cell when I forget to bat my eyelashes at you.”