Sneak Peek: Fairest
My latest novel, FAIREST,is available now on Amazon. It’s the latest in my contemporary fairy taleseries, and while the setting will be familiar if you’ve read Seeing Red andCinders, it’s a Snow White story that can be read as a standalone novel.
Read the first chapter below.
I can’t believe he took my phone.
That was the detail Luma White was focused on as she sat inthe passenger seat of her Audi, hands bound in front of her and a blindfoldslipping down around her nose. Her phone – how much of an eighteen-year-oldgirl could she be? That was what she was most concerned about, but onthe other hand, it was easier to fixate on the phone than on everything else.
She’d been in the car for about three hours now. Theblindfold – made of some ridiculously silky fabric, definitely notkidnapping-grade – had begun sliding down her nose about an hour into the tripand she was grateful for that. Riding in a car with her eyes shut always madeher feel sick, and when her captor noticed that she could see again, sheconvinced him not to cover her eyes again.
“I’m already lost,” she said. “Isn’t that why youblindfolded me? So I wouldn’t know where we’re going? Mission accomplished.”
The man driving Luma’s car was her stepmother’s bodyguard,Antonio. Slave would have been a more appropriate word for how that womantreated him, but he’d always been nice to Luma.
Well, until today.
At least she was going to get through this without beingsick. Silver linings and all that.
They were driving on a narrow, somewhat primitive road withtall, evergreen trees on either side. It was dark thanks to the forest’s densecoverage even though they started driving around noon. Antonio had appeared inthe doorway of Luma’s room and told her he needed help running an errand forher father – that was a little unusual, but nothing to raise her suspicions. Bythe time he was opening the passenger door of Luma’s car for her, telling herthey were going to pick up some files at her father’s office, Luma startedasking questions.
How did you get my car key? was the first one, butshe never got an answer to that.
Once she was in the car, Antonio locked the doors and toldher to put the blindfold on. Luma objected, and that’s when things got scary.He’d forced the blindfold over her eyes and she’d spent the first whole hour ofthe trip frantic.
The errand to her father’s office was a lie and Luma shouldhave seen it coming – Antonio worked for her stepmother, and her father was outof the country. Luma hadn’t even questioned it when Antonio said it was for herfather.
If Luma was thinking clearly, she should have beenmemorizing the turns of the car, paying attention for sounds outside that couldhelp her, and keeping better track of the time. But she’d known Antonio eversince she was a kid – since her stepmother, Tabitha, did her Vogue modelingspread and picked up a stalker in the process. She hired Antonio to keep hersafe, and Luma always felt safe around him, too.
Now, she was just scrambling to try and figure out what hadchanged.
Was he kidnapping her?
“Where are you taking me?” she’d asked before she realizedthe futility of demanding that sort of information from someone who’dblindfolded her. When she got her wits about her a little more, she asked, “Whydo I have to be blindfolded? Did Tabitha ask you to do this? What are you goingto do to me?”
Antonio didn’t respond to any of her questions. He wasdeadly silent from the driver’s seat, and when Luma’s blindfold began slippingdown her nose, she could see that his eyes never strayed from the road ahead. Pleasejust look at me, she thought. What are you doing?
Her last-ditch attempt to snap him out of whatever hadovercome him was a threat that sounded weak even to Luma’s own ears. “Waituntil my father hears about this.”
“Shut up,” Antonio said. “Please, just keep your mouth shut.”
It wasn’t a favorable response, but at least he’d saidsomething. His words sounded almost as pleading as Luma’s own questions, likehe was frantically trying to find a way to justify all of this. Tabitha had tobe behind it. Of course – Tabitha had always hated her.
So Luma shut up, and she waited.
She tried to be patient and wait for Antonio to come to hissenses. He’d do the right thing – she just had to give him time to come to hissenses. He’d abducted his boss’s stepdaughter while her husband was out of townon business. Antonio was probably just trying to figure out how to take Lumahome without letting her father know what he’d done.
Or rather, what Tabitha had ordered him to do.
It had to be the stupid modeling contract, Lumathought while Antonio drove them deeper and deeper into the woods. Damn it.I don’t even want to be a model.
Tabitha had blown up at her yesterday. She’d gone downtownin the morning to get her lips plumped and the aesthetician had used a new typeof filler. Tabitha’s lips had blown up like balloons and she came home lookinglike she had a pair of plump red hotdogs beneath her nose. They looked painfuland she was irritable, and then she’d seen the contract that Luma had left onthe desk in her father’s study.
Luma wanted him to review it when he came home from hisbusiness trip. She’d never imagined herself as a model, never wanted that kindof attention, but people kept saying she was beautiful and it was a natural fitfor her. She’d gone to the modeling agency mostly to humor the agent who kepttrying to recruit her, and because she was eighteen now and she still didn’tknow what she wanted to be when she grew up.
Why not a model? she thought when they offered herthe contract. So she brought it home and promised the agency an answer just assoon as she had a chance to discuss it with her father.
Then Tabitha saw the contract and lost it. Luma had neverseen her so angry, actual spittle flying from her over-puffed lips as sheslammed the contract down in front of Luma.
“You don’t even want to be a model,” she said,narrowing her eyes at Luma. “You don’t want your trust fund, either. You don’tappreciate anything you’ve got, and it’s all just been handed to you.Ungrateful girl!”
Tabitha hadn’t spoken to Luma since yesterday, but thelonger Antonio drove, the more certain she was that this was all Tabitha’sdoing. Am I ungrateful? she was wondering for the hundredth time whenthe car hit a pothole and she could no longer ignore the fullness of herbladder.
“Antonio?” she asked softly.
“Don’t talk,” he said.
“Antonio,” she insisted, trying not to anger him. “I reallyhave to pee. I can’t hold it much longer.”
She looked at him, and for once, he looked back at her. Shewas begging him, wordlessly. Please. On top of everything else, please don’tput me through the humiliation of wetting myself. He hadn’t listened toanything else she said so far, but the desperation in her eyes was what finallycracked him.
He sniffed, then looked at the clock on the dashboard –probably trying to figure out how far they’d come from the house. Far enough –Luma’s father loved to be in the middle of the action and he’d built hismansion in the center of the city. Luma had never even been this far into thewilderness and it might as well have been a whole other country.
“Fine,” Antonio said. “Hold on a minute.”
“Thank you,” Luma said. “Thank you, Tony.”
He scowled at her. Was that too much, calling him by hisnickname? He never minded it before, but he’d never abducted her before,either. Antonio found a dirt road that branched off the two-lane highway andturned onto it. Road was pretty generous, actually – it was barely more than acouple of grooves worn into the dirt. He drove the car just far enough so thatit wouldn’t be seen from the road, then turned off the engine.
The passenger door unlocked automatically and Luma reachedfor the handle, but Antonio locked it again with the push of a button on thedriver’s side door. “I’m coming around to get you.”
“Okay,” Luma squeaked. When he opened the door from theoutside, he extended his hand to help Luma out – probably more through instinctthan anything else. She took his hand, shaking her head so the blindfold fellall the way down to her neck, and she said hopefully, “You know, Tabitha getsin her moods all the time. I bet by the time we drive home, she’ll haveforgotten what she was mad about.”
“Do you have to pee or don’t you?” Antonio asked.
“Yeah, I do,” Luma said. “But-”
She wanted to know what he was thinking. There was a wild,cornered look in his eyes that she really didn’t like, and things suddenly felta whole lot more dire now that the two of them were standing alone in the greatsilence of the forest.
“Go, then,” he said. “There’s a bush right over there.”
“Okay,” Luma said meekly.
Her bladder really was aching – she’d just finished a prettybig smoothie when Antonio came into her room and she’d been squirming in herseat for quite a while. Trying not to think about how badly she had togo was the only thing that had been distracting her from the awfulness of thesituation, but she couldn’t ignore it anymore.
She went behind the bush, the heels of her shoes sinkinginto the soft earth and pine needles poking her bare legs as she lifted herskirt. Just as she was beginning to feel a bit better – about one thing, atleast – she heard the Audi’s engine roar to life.
Oh God, he’s leaving me out here!
Luma rushed to rearrange her skirt and darted out frombehind the bush just in time to see Antonio floor the gas pedal. The tires spunin place for a moment, kicking up dirt and moss from the forest floor, and thenthe car gained traction and Antonio drove it straight into a tree.
“What the hell?” Luma shouted as the hood crumpled slightlyand the engine died. A small tendril of steam was rising from the car and Lumaran around to the driver’s side. “Antonio, are you okay?”
She got there just in time for him to open the door – he hadto put his shoulder into it since the collision had bent the frame of the car.He got out, unscathed, and Luma looked at him wide-eyed and speechless.
Antonio put his hands on her shoulders, their eyes lockingas he said, “Your stepmother ordered me to bring you out here and kill you.I’ve been going over it in my head for the last three hours, trying to imaginea world in which I could do that, and I just can’t.”
Tabitha wants me dead?
A jolt of fear ripped through her, followed by a twinge ofrelief. Antonio said he couldn’t do it – so where did that leave them? Standingnext to the smoking remains of Luma’s car, that was where. No matter what elsehappened, they weren’t going to be driving out of there.
“Listen carefully,” Antonio said. “You met with the modelingagency yesterday. They sent you on a go-see and that’s where you were goingtoday – you were driving alone, a deer jumped in front of your car and youcrashed. You must have been disoriented – maybe you hit your head. You wanderedinto the woods and no one heard from you again.”
“But Antonio-”
“Tabitha has her eyes on your trust fund,” he continued.“You know that, right?”
“I know she hates getting an allowance from my father,” Lumasaid, swallowing hard. “But this is about the modeling contract, isn’t it?” Heshook his head and Luma had never seen him so serious. “She really wants medead?”
“I’ve been her right hand for ten years,” Antonio said. “Iknow her better than anybody and I know when she’s serious about something.Luma, you have to disappear or she will kill you.”
“What about my dad?” she asked. “Let’s call him, or-”
Or the police, she thought.
“I can’t do that,” Antonio said, glancing at the car. “Youdon’t know what she’s capable of.”
“I think I have some idea,” Luma said, crossing her armsover her chest. She had no phone, no money, and no idea where she was. If shescreamed at the top of her lungs right now, no one but the birds and otherforest animals would hear her – and Antonio, who’d already made up his mind.
“No,” he said, shaking his head. “You really don’t. Trustme, Luma, for your own safety – and mine – you have to let Tabitha think you’redead. If you come home, she’ll kill you and then she’ll kill me for not doingthe job myself.”
Luma’s mouth dropped open as she attempted to process all ofthis, trying to formulate a response that never materialized.
“Just disappear, Luma,” he said. A tear ran down his cheekand he added, “I’m sorry.”
He turned and started walking back toward the road, and Lumacalled after him, “Antonio.”
When he turned around, she asked, “Are you planning to walkhome?”
“I’ll figure something out,” he said. “So will you.”
Shit. Antonio turned around and headed back up thedirt path to the highway, and Luma just stood in the forest for a minute,trying to wrap her mind around what just happened.
She tilted her head back, feeling a headache coming on. Theforest was actually kind of beautiful, shafts of sunlight breaking through theevergreens and highlighting the pine needle-carpeted forest floor.
A bird chirped, unseen, in a tree somewhere close and Lumathought it sounded like a cuckoo. Her high school biology teacher had beenobsessed with birdsong and Luma had a lot of them memorized even though she’drarely heard them in real life. Cuckoos weren’t city birds.
“What the hell am I supposed to do now?” she asked theforest, and because the trees didn’t talk and birds rarely sang their songs inEnglish, she received no answer.
She went over to the car and tried the key in the ignition,but the engine was shot and it wouldn’t turn over. She went through the glovecompartment and the trunk, looking for anything that could help her, but she’dnever been more than a phone call away from AAA.
The glove compartment held nothing helpful and Luma was allbut useless without her phone, anyway.
She was stranded and she had no choice but to start walking.Her heels kept sinking into the loamy forest floor as she picked her way backup the overgrown dirt path and she was actually relieved when she got to apaved road. Her kitten heels weren’t made for hiking, but at least she couldget her footing on the road.
At least I’m alive.
That was not a thought she expected to have that day. Shekept walking, trying not to focus on all of the questions stretching out on theroad in front of her. Where am I going? What will I do when I get there? DoI go to the cops? Will Tabitha retaliate against Antonio – or even my dad – ifI do?
They were all unanswerable, insurmountable problems.
And then Luma started to hear pine needles crunching in theforest beside the road. She turned her head and for a fleeting moment, shewondered if Antonio had a change of heart and was coming back for her.
Or coming back to finish the job. Tabitha always didhave an otherworldly ability to know when her demands were not being met. Shewas a woman of means and beauty – or at least she used to be – and it waspretty rare that anyone dared to disobey her. Did Antonio call her after hecrashed Luma’s car? Did he cave already and admit that he hadn’t done whatTabitha asked of him?
Then all of those worries dissipated and Luma’s heartarrested in her chest.
A fat black bear was lumbering toward her out of the forest,no more than thirty feet away. It turned its head sideways at her, wonderinghow it had gotten so lucky that its next meal had delivered itself to thewoods. Its mouth opened, a hint of long, sharp teeth poking out from under itslips, and then Luma was running.
The bear emerged onto the road, looking like it didn’t mindchasing down its dinner. Luma ran as fast as her feet would carry her, and whenone of her heels fell off, she barely gave it a thought. She limped a few stepsand then kicked off the other shoe, hardly losing speed.
She made it about fifteen yards away and then a second bearemerged from the woods, standing in front of her. If a bear could speak, thisone would have said, Gotcha.
Are you freaking kidding me? Luma thought.
When the bear in front of her growled, she ducked off theopen road and through a tangle of what turned out to be pricker bushes. Theycut into her bare arms and legs, but Luma fought her way through them. Herstepmother put a hit on her, her father was away on business, and Antonio hadjust smashed her car. She was not about to be eaten by bears on top ofeverything else.
Luma didn’t turn around to find out if the bears were givingchase. She didn’t acknowledge the pain of each pine needle stabbing into thetender soles of her feet, or the scratches and pinpricks of blood covering herarms and legs. She just ran until her lungs burned and her thighs ached, untilshe had to stop or else she’d fall down in exhaustion.
When she finally did stop, leaning against a tree andpanting to catch her breath, Luma looked back. There was no bear, and there wasno visible path back to the road. She couldn’t see the road at all anymore, andshe couldn’t even say with any certainty which direction she’d come from.
“I’m lost,” she said to the forest, tears springing to hereyes. “I am lost in the woods.”
She might not have spent much time in the forest before, butLuma knew from her schooling that it went on for hundreds of miles. People gotlost in the forest every year, some of them died, and Luma was no Girl Scout.
She sank to the ground, her skirt riding up her thighs asmore pine needles jabbed into her skin. She put her head back against the treeand her long black hair snagged against the rough bark. She looked up. The onlything she had going for her was the fact that it was spring, the days weregetting longer, and she still had a good five hours of daylight left – not thatshe had any idea what to do with it.
Then, above the tall trees, she noticed a thin tendril ofsmoke in the distance.
Luma watched it for a minute or two, expecting it todisappear, but it persisted – it was a sign of life and her best shot atsurvival. She got up, brushed the pine needles off her skin, where they werestuck to her by a thin sheen of sweat, and started walking.
Limping was more like it, and she winced with every step.Her shoes were lying on the side of the road, or perhaps had become the bear’snew chew toys. She had no choice but to pin all her hopes on that tendril ofsmoke.
If she was lucky, it was the smoke from someone friendly’sfireplace.
What she found, at least an hour and many, many painful pineneedles later, was a cottage in a clearing. It was all by itself in the woods,no sign of civilization nearby, and the smoke trail Luma had followed wascoming from a large brick structure outside the cottage. It was about six feetsquare – a fireplace of some sort, closed on all sides with a large steel plateon the front that looked like a door, plus a chimney on top.
“Hello?” Luma called. Her voice echoed softly against thetrees but no one answered.
She left the fireplace and walked around to the cottagedoor. Someone had swept the dirt around the perimeter of the building, awelcome reprieve from the pine needles that had rendered Luma’s feet numb.
She knocked on the door, waited and listened for a minute,then called, “Hello? Is anyone home?”
No one answered. Luma tried to peek in the windows, but theywere covered with a film of dirt and she couldn’t see inside. If it wasn’t forthe smoking fireplace, she would have thought the cottage was abandoned.
She knocked again, then tried the doorknob.
It turned easily and the door swung inward. Luma calledagain, “Hello? I’m sorry to intrude, but I could really use some help.”
There was still no answer, and she glanced back toward theforest, then down at her own scraped and dirty limbs. It was either stayoutside and risk another encounter with that bear, or go inside and hope thecottage had a telephone. At the very least, she could get cleaned up and digthe pine needles out of her feet.
Luma inched her way inside.
