Valentine Read online

  About the Book

  Strange and terrible things begin to happen to four teenagers – all born on the same Valentine’s Day. One of these teenagers is the Valentine: a Seelie fairy changeling swapped for a human child at its birth. The Unseelie have come to kill the Valentine – except they don’t know who it is.

  Pearl shares a birthday with Finn Blacklin. She’s known him all her life and disliked every second of it. Now Pearl and Finn must work together to protect themselves from the sinister forces that are seeking them out.

  But there's one more problem: the explosive chemistry between them . . .

  CONTENTS

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Ironheart: Sneak Peek

  We might have been at the old stables, but the last thing any of us had expected to see was a horse.

  No one’s gone and changed the meaning of the word ‘abandoned’ on me, have they? Because I was pretty clear that it meant deserted, vacant, empty, assorted other shift+F7 adjectives. Abandoned stables = devoid of horses. There is not some super-secret hidden meaning everyone forgot to tell me about, right?

  And yet there it is.

  A moment before, Tillie Nguyen’s seventeenth birthday party had been raging, doof-doof music blaring out of the sound system at a teeth-chattering volume, people talking and singing and dancing, glass bottles chinking against each other. I’d been engaged in an argument with my friend Marie over the relative merits of Taylor Swift versus Lorde while wishing my bestie Phil and her boyfriend Julian would tone down the PDA and also wishing that Cardy would show so that I’d have a shot at some PDA of my own. But then suddenly Marie yells and points, the music dies and the only sound is the rain against the corrugated iron of the shelter roof and everyone’s staring at this random black horse that’s appeared from nowhere.

  Nobody moves. Nobody says anything. Nobody does anything, except stare.

  The horse dances just at the edge of the light, occasionally flirting with it, but never stepping into full illumination. I’m no connoisseur of horse behaviour, but this cannot be normal. Can it? It’s jumping and snapping its hooves in the air like a shadow-boxer, ducking and weaving like a snake charmer. It’s so glossy it looks like it’s been brushed a hundred times and a hundred times again, the pouring rain running down it like a waterfall of silver. It’s the shiniest, blackest, prettiest thing I’ve ever seen.

  I want to touch it.

  It must feel like heaven, running your hands over that velvety coat . . . that same feeling you get if you sleep in satin sheets, or when you drink too much Fruity Lexia too quickly and it goes straight to your head and everything in the world seems a little bit pink.

  ‘Wow,’ I hear Tillie breathe.

  I want to reach out and touch it.

  But I can’t move.

  It’s like my feet are rooted to the cement. I wonder if I’m drunk, even though I haven’t had a thing to drink except lemonade.

  There’s obviously some explanation for this. Of course there’s some explanation for this. It must be one of those dressage horses trained to do weird tricks, kept out in the paddock for, I don’t know, off-season or something. It’s definitely a show horse, at any rate. No everyday regular horse would be as beautiful as this.

  Nothing has ever been as beautiful as this.

  ‘Come here, boy,’ Marie croons. ‘Come here. That’s a good boy.’

  Everyone else still seems to be frozen, but Marie walks towards the edge of the light. The horse stands, waiting. I’m amazed that no one has yelled at her to stop, that it might be dangerous. Hell, I’m amazed that I haven’t yelled at her to stop, but the moment is so still, so perfect, breaking it seems somehow criminal.

  Marie extends her hand. The horse extends its nose. She reaches towards it, and –

  ‘Get away!’

  Something comes hurtling through the air and hits the horse right between the eyes. It rears, screaming, and I can see the whites of its eyes and OMFG this is not a nice horse anymore and it’s going to come galloping right through the party and mow us all down and I want to run but my feet still won’t move –

  – but it screams out another neigh and gallops off, away from us, into the night.

  No one speaks. Everything is quiet again, like we’re all trapped in a photograph. And then Marie wheels around and yells, ‘What the hell did you do that for?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Finn says, and throws up – all over the ground, all over himself and all over my shoes.

  Charming.

  I could be curled up in bed right now. I could be snuggled under my doona with a book. I could be working out the bridge on that song I’m supposed to have done for Mr Hunter by Monday. I could be eating chocolate and watching bad TV with Disey or arguing with Shad about whether or not INXS is the greatest band ever.

  But instead I’m here in the middle of nowhere at Tillie’s stupid birthday party, freezing cold, dressed completely inappropriately and covered in Finn Blacklin’s vomit. Just the way I wanted to spend my Saturday night.

  ‘Oh my God, Pearl, are you okay?’ Phil asks me.

  I don’t answer her. ‘Thanks,’ I snarl at Finn instead. ‘So much.’

  He doesn’t reply. He’s on his knees, dry-heaving. Part of me feels sorry for him, but it’s a really, really small part. Friends throwing up on your shoes is one thing. My friends and I have dealt with our fair share of spew over the years. But when mortal enemies get in on the vomcano action, it’s a whole different scenario.

  I stomp around the corner to what passes for the bathroom in this stable. I have to tersely evict Cam Davidson and Annabel Young before I even get the opportunity to try and clean myself up. (Ugh, why is everyone at this party making out with everyone else?) It’s not working so well. I’m pretty sure my shoes are ruined. Awesome. Which means Cardy will never see me wearing them. He was the only reason I even dragged myself out here to this stupid godforsaken stables party, and the only reason I wore this ridiculous little, little dress in which I am totally freezing my arse off, and he didn’t even turn up.

  This is the lowest point of my life to date.

  ‘S’rry, Pearl,’ Finn slurs, swaying on his feet as he lurches in. ‘I didn’t mean –’

  ‘Save it,’ I snap, shoving my ruined shoes onto my feet.

  He manages to make it to the sink before he throws up violently again. Because I am a nice person (some of the time), I grab his stupid long black hair and hold it back for him before he can make an even worse mess of himself. It’s soft and silky under my hands. If I liked him more, I’d ask him what kind of hair product he uses. It is so not fair for such a dickhead to have such nice hair.

  ‘Thanks,’ he mumbles.

  I let go. He slides to his knees on the (gross) floor, resting his forehead against the cold porcelain of the sink. I think about leaving him there but there’s a solid chance he’ll end up drowning in his own vomit, and I really don’t want that hanging over me for the rest of my life. ‘Are you okay?’ I ask.

  He groans incoherently. I kneel down beside him. ‘Finn. Finn. Are you okay?’

  He turns his head to look at me through half-closed eyes. (He has spectacular eyes, big and bright piercing green, even when they’re bloodshot. Arsehole.) ‘That dress looks awesome on you,’ he mumbles.

  Of all th
e freaking people to notice. ‘Who did you come with?’ I ask him. ‘Holly-Anne?’

  ‘Cam,’ he says.

  I sigh. There’ll be no extricating Cam from Annabel anytime soon. ‘Come on,’ I say. ‘I’ll take you home – oh my God, what did you do to your hand?’

  His left hand is a red, angry sea of blisters. Some are leaking a sick-looking yellowy fluid, oozing down his wrist. I don’t know what leprosy looks like, but I bet it’d be something like this.

  ‘I dunno. Threw something. At the horse. Horseshoe.’

  ‘Well, congratulations, I think you’re allergic,’ I say.

  His eyes are rolling back into his head. Not only has he got random leprosy, it looks like he’s also totally wasted. Typical. I poke him hard. ‘Stay awake,’ I order him. I look around for something to bandage his hand, but come up empty. ‘Take off your shirt,’ I order him.

  He smiles lazily at me, a smile that, even through his current vomit-scented splendour, is spectacular. ‘I always knew you’d ask me that one day.’

  ‘Want me to slap you?’

  ‘Yes please.’

  ‘Just take off your shirt, Finn.’

  He obeys, but drunkenness has made him unco, so I have to help him. They always tear off strips with their teeth in the movies, but I don’t fancy putting anything that’s been near Finn Blacklin in my mouth, so I just tie the whole shirt round his hand. He looks like he’s wearing the worst boxing glove ever. ‘You can kiss it better if you want,’ he says.

  ‘Shut up. Get up.’

  ‘You’re so hot when you order me round.’

  ‘I said shut up, Finn. Can you stand?’

  He manages to get himself upright but he’s swaying dangerously, so I have no alternative but to wrap one of his arms round my shoulders and try and support him as I half-lead, half-drag him out. ‘If you wanted my body, Linford,’ he mumbles, ‘all you had to do was ask.’

  I don’t dignify that with an answer.

  I don’t understand why everyone is all, ‘Ooooh, Finn, he’s sooooo hot!’ He’s disgusting. I mean, sure, he’s intensely beautiful to look at, but when you’ve been tormented by someone mercilessly since you were five and have a relationship of total mutual hatred, that becomes irrelevant. And them vomiting on your shoes doesn’t tend to make matters any better.

  ‘Where’s Marie?’ I ask Tillie and Phil when I’ve dragged Finn back outside. Tillie’s eyes are wide at the sight of our shirtless class Casanova draped over me like a scarf. I am never going to hear the end of this. Why, why do I have to be so regrettably responsible?

  ‘Dunno,’ Phil replies. ‘What’s with him?’

  ‘He’s trashed,’ I reply.

  ‘She ripped the shirt from my body,’ Finn slurs. Tillie tries to hide a smirk, but is spectacularly unsuccessful. Ugh.

  ‘Want me to get Jules to take him home?’ Phil asks.

  I should take her up on it – Phil’s boyfriend Julian and Finn are friends, which Finn and I are decidedly not – but I shake my head, because apparently I’ve developed some kind of martyr complex while I wasn’t looking. ‘I’m going anyway,’ I say. ‘I’m freezing and my shoes are ruined. I’ll take him. Happy birthday, Tillie.’

  ‘Thanks,’ Tillie says. Approximately five seconds after I’ve turned away, I hear a burst of wild laughter.

  I’m going to kill someone. Maybe Phil or Tillie. Possibly Finn. Probably myself.

  I dump Finn unceremoniously into the front seat of the car before getting in the driver’s side. ‘Don’t you dare throw up,’ I warn him. ‘This is my brother’s car and if you spew in it, you’re paying the cleaning fees.’

  ‘Whatever.’

  ‘No, not whatever,’ I snap. ‘I mean it, Finn. Don’t you dare.’

  ‘I promise, I promise,’ he says, putting his hands up. ‘Don’t stress, Linford.’

  I navigate my way up the dirt track back to the main road. The light reflects off the eyes of something in the bush and I think for a moment that it’s the black horse, but it’s only a possum. ‘Where do you live?’

  ‘Turn right,’ he directs, his head lolling back.

  ‘Don’t fall asleep.’

  ‘I won’t,’ he says, giving me a look like I’ve just asked him to do my maths homework for the rest of the year.

  There’s a long silence, but it’s not awkward. You can’t have awkward silences between people that hate each other. It’s just not possible when you’re busy plotting someone’s demise.

  Which is why I’m surprised when Finn speaks. ‘What was with that horse?’

  ‘I don’t know. Left or right?’

  ‘Left. Where do you think it came from?’

  ‘I don’t know, the bush? It got out of someone’s paddock? Who knows? Who cares?’

  He’s quiet for a moment. ‘Didn’t it freak you out?’

  I think about it. I can’t remember the horse clearly – I mean, I remember it being there, but it’s like the memory’s blurred around the edges, in greyscale or sepia. ‘I suppose it was a bit weird.’

  ‘But where did it come from?’ he says. ‘And why were we all standing there like idiots?’

  We’re stopped at an intersection, so I turn and look at him. ‘Is that why you threw the horseshoe?’

  He shrugs. ‘It was out of my hand before I knew what I’d done.’

  ‘Didn’t you realise how dangerous it could have been? What if the horse had run into the party instead of the other way?’

  ‘I just told you I didn’t even think!’

  ‘Well, why didn’t you think?’

  ‘I don’t know! I didn’t exactly stop to wonder, “Hmmm, why aren’t I thinking here”, did I?’

  I shake my head in disgust. ‘You’re an idiot.’

  He exhales noisily and folds his arms over his bare chest. ‘Left up here.’

  ‘Yes, Your Majesty.’

  We don’t speak any more, except for him to give me directions. ‘Thanks for the ride,’ he says when I pull up out the front of his house.

  Under normal circumstances, with normal people, I’d say ‘you’re welcome’ or ‘anytime’ or something like that, but this is not a normal circumstance and it’s Finn, so I don’t say anything. I just want to get out of there before I have to spend any more time pretending not to notice his abs.

  He opens the door to get out before turning back to me. ‘Hey, Pearl?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Close your window tonight.’

  ‘What?!’

  He shakes his head. ‘I just have a feeling . . .’

  ‘A feeling that, like, an evil black horse is going to jump through my window?’

  ‘Well, sorry for caring!’ he says. ‘See you at school.’ He slams the door. I drive off immediately.

  I have to turn around at the end of his street, and when I drive past his house again I see him throwing up in a flower­bed. Gross. But at least he didn’t do it in Shad’s car.

  I wonder if Holly-Anne would like him as much if he puked all over her shoes. Or Marie, or any of the other seven thousand girls (conservative estimate) he’s dated. He may be, as Tillie once described him, totally smoking hot, but no one is attractive once you’ve walked a mile in shoes covered in their vomit.

  Not even him.

  Disey is still up when I get home. ‘You’re home early,’ she says, looking up in surprise from her laptop when I come in through the back door. ‘I told you you’d get cold in that dress.’

  ‘I froze,’ I reply honestly, dropping my ruined shoes outside the back door, ‘but it was more the getting-spewed-on aspect that drove me away.’

  ‘Yuck,’ she says, wrinkling her nose.

  ‘What’s this I hear about spew?’ Shad says, emerging from his study. ‘What crazy shenanigans have you been up to, rebel rebel you tore your dress?’

  ‘Projectile. It was gross. And I didn’t tear my dress. But my shoes are history.’

  ‘I remember projectile vomit,’ Shad says, with mock-wistfulness. ‘M
ake the most of these opportunities, Pearlie – you’ll miss fun things like vomit when you’re old like me and Dise.’

  Shad and Disey are my older brother and sister (and you can immediately tell that we’re related, because all three of us have the same brown eyes and blonde hair you need to maul with a straightener before it’ll even begin to do what you want it to). They’re twins, exactly twice my age, and have raised me since I was four. I wouldn’t hesitate to nominate either of them for Best Person In The Universe if it wasn’t for the fact that their favourite habit is making fun of me.

  ‘Anything else interesting happen?’ Disey asks. ‘How’s Phil?’

  ‘She and Julian are attached to each other at the mouth,’ I say sourly. ‘Sometimes when I look at them I think he’s trying to eat her face.’

  ‘Maybe he is,’ Shad says.

  ‘That’d be awesome,’ Disey says. ‘“Cannibal Teenage Boy Eats New Girlfriend’s Face” would be a much more interesting story than the crap I’m writing about right now. But then “Man Watches Paint, Discovers It Dries” would be more interesting than that.’

  ‘I’m obviously deeply pleased that you would sacrifice my best friend’s face in the service of your journalistic career,’ I say.

  ‘Was Cardy at the party?’ Shad asks. His tone is innocent, but there’s a twinkle in his eye.

  ‘Nope,’ I reply, forcing myself not to turn red. ‘But you know what was? This weird horse.’

  I tell them the story of the horse while Shad makes tea and Disey makes toast. They both agree that it’s totally bizarre and come up with a range of explanations for it, each crazier than the last, and after a while my stomach hurts from laughing so much and my Saturday night is not so bad after all.

  I don’t tell them about Finn, though. I tell them almost everything about everything in my life, but the only thing I ever, ever tell them about Finn is how much I want to punch him in his stupid (perfect) face.

  The rain continues all Sunday and it’s still pouring when I get to school on Monday. My first class is modern history with Ms Rao and the whole classroom smells like wet dog.