by Holly Hook
Then I realized. "Oh. But we have that curse removing dagger. You should be okay." My arm wasn't pounding as much as before. The healing process had already started. I was glad for it.
"Well, as long as we're here in Fable, I don't want to have to take breaks from us being together all the time. I'll think about it once we find a way back to the other world."
"You're saying you don't want us to take off the curse."
But before Tate could say anything else, Macon returned with the blanket. "Let's get her on," he said. "We're going to take turns carrying her out of here." He set the blanket on the ground just as Grandma's shape started to change. She had fallen asleep. In seconds she would be the Grandma I knew.
"Is Alric dead?" Tate asked him, clutching his injured arm.
Macon paused.
"Well, is he dead?" I asked.
Macon shook his head. "I don't know. I rechecked the kitchen, and he wasn't there."
* * * * *
We headed back towards the lighter areas, leaving the false cottage and the darker parts of the forest behind. It was slow going, carrying Grandma while she slept away on the makeshift hammock and we almost dropped her a few times, but she remained out. Perhaps this was why Mary had supplied the sleeping draught.
For Grandma's sanity.
The woods got brighter and more green the farther we went. I hoped Grandma would wake up soon. Walk on her own. Talk.
But what would she say?
Grandma and I had a lot of fixing to do either way.
Tate kept his arm cradled as we walked. He managed a smile at me once in a while. Grandma got heavy, and we took turns carrying her. She slept more peacefully now, and the sun got brighter and brighter.
Where would I go now?
And then I spotted a lone wolf standing in the middle of the road ahead as if welcoming us out of the border region. Her eyes were black and soft. When she spotted Grandma on the blanket, they lit up with joy.
It was Gray.
And this was a reunion.
Gray bounded forward, and Macon jumped back, reaching for his bow.
"Stop," I told him. "This wolf isn't evil. Only the ones with red eyes are evil. You don't need to shoot at any more of them." Macon said nothing and went still.
We set Grandma down, and Gray sniffed her, then gave her lots of sloppy wolf kisses. Grandma groaned and turned her head away.
You've brought back my sister, Gray thought. Her words swelled with more gratitude than I could imagine. You're both safe.
I struggled to hold the tears back. Alric might have gotten away. Macon shot him, but he vanished.
Of course, he did. Until his story catches up with him, Alric will continue to live. Mary knows this.
I let my mouth fall open, shocked that Mary and Gray knew each other.
But that is not for you to worry about, Gray said. Your story is over. You are free. Russet and Ebony have been looking forward to seeing you again.
Free.
Grandma had no reason to hide things from me now. We were in Fable, and the truth was out. Until we found some magic mirror--and I had the feeling it would take a while--we were going to stay here. But what if Grandma wanted to go back to the kale-eating, safe life she'd put us through?
I had a feeling I'd say no.
Exhaustion overtook me, and I leaned against Tate, limbs shaking. If it hadn't been for Russet and Ebony, I wouldn't be here right now. We might all be dead. No. We would all have died, with our throats ripped out by Alric. And Alric would be a raging beast, unstoppable.
And I found that I did want to see them again. And I would.
And on the blanket, Grandma continued to snore.
Come on, Gray said. Let's get her home. See if we can't give her the chance to come around.
Tate and I picked up Grandma again and followed Gray off the trail.
Chapter One
"Someone stole the fetal pigs."
Mr. Godfrey walked into the classroom, dingy lab coat hanging over his body. He sucked in a slow breath and continued. "We will not be doing our planned dissection lab today. Instead, we will need to do a special assignment to keep up with our curriculum."
I shifted in my seat.
A special assignment. It couldn't be good. It never was.
I hated Mr. Godfrey's fifth-hour Zoology class.
I didn't hate any other class more.
It wasn't the homework, the smell of formaldehyde or even the aquariums scattered around the room. It wasn't the creatures ranging from harmless beetles all the way up to the foot-long millipede that inhabited a tank very close to my desk.
The problem was Mr. Godfrey and Shorty, who I had to work with in lab today.
Shorty scooted his chair closer to me and grinned. The guy was annoying, and he always managed to hang around my locker at the end of the school day, standing in a creepy manner while I deposited my books.
"Hey, Candice," he said, sliding his chair another inch towards mine. He was close to violating my personal space. "How are you today?" He flashed his trademark grin. Shorty was the guy who would manage to smile in an apocalypse. It was all he'd done since moving here six months ago.
"Fine," I told him. "Dissecting stuff isn't my thing, though." Shorty might try to touch my thigh. Ew. My skin crawled.
"It's not mine, either," Aimee said from behind us. "I need one more science credit, and I can graduate and get the heck out of here."
Pencils tapped and backpacks zipped open as people took out their books. Nobody looked thrilled about whatever was coming. One guy in the back was sleeping, and a girl I didn't know was texting. Mr. Godfrey was great at keeping the class engaged. Not.
"But dissecting things is fun!" Shorty said. Sarcasm? I could never tell. He shifted and pulled at his black jeans. His palms were damp with sweat. Maybe he was trying to pull my leg after all.
"Are you sure?" I asked. "Your happy mask isn't holding up right now." It was the first time I'd ever seen Shorty drop his act.
"I have a reputation I need to keep up," he whispered to me, smiling again. "As I said. It'll be fun!"
"I don't think cutting open things that should have had a chance to live qualifies as a joyous activity." I thought of the fetal pigs we were supposed to take apart, and a bitter taste rose in my mouth. I didn't get why someone would steal them, except for use in some sick prank. We'd find them hanging from the school sign tomorrow.
Shorty turned away and closed his Zoology book. His brown hair was slick and wet from hanging by the door at lunch, telling everyone how great the rain was. Shorty tapped his pencil on his desk, and his grin faded for a second. Yeah. He was nervous about the lab and not hiding it well.
Had he stolen the pigs?
"We will have to resort to Plan B today," Mr. Godfrey said in his best monotone. He shuffled around to the storage room behind his desk. The rain roared, and thunder crashed. The whole room was dark and gray except for the dim lights coming from fish tanks. Shorty shifted in his seat but grinned again when he caught me staring.
"Dude, are you always this happy?" Chris asked. "Go frolic in the rain or something."
"Sure!" Shorty said, getting up from his desk and pretending to skip a few paces to the door. He studied the storage room door to make sure Mr. Godrey wasn't coming back out. But then he caught a glimpse of our teacher's backside sticking out of the doorway, scrambled to his desk, and sat down.
I watched the clock on the wall.
Plan B couldn't be as bad as dissecting a fetal pig--right?
I hoped that our dissection lab would go quick. I wished I was assigned to work with Aimee-or better yet, Josh on the other side of the room. That guy was serious eye candy.
But Shorty? I always wondered if he was half accordion. My lab partner looked almost smashed. Of course, his appearance didn't factor into my opinion of him. I would not be shallow just because I had the rich dad. I didn't want to be the squeamish one, either. I sat up and tried to look relaxed.
&nb
sp; Mr. Godfrey emerged from the storage room, belly first. He held a terrarium full of frogs.
Amazingly, his horrible breath hadn't killed them, considering that he had his face almost smashed onto the mesh lid. The frogs were alive. Hopping. One of them stood against the glass wall, pawing at it with its green hands. It croaked as if it were pleading for help.
My stomach turned over.
We were going to dissect live animals.
Mr. Godfrey cleared his throat and spoke in the monotone that he reserved for every occasion, including yelling. Our teacher was the opposite of Shorty. "We are investigating the fetal pig incident," he informed us, placing the aquarium on his desk. "I needed to procure another lab for you today. Thankfully, our supplier made a strange mistake today and we got a delivery of frogs a couple of hours ago. We haven't done this lab at our school for a long time, but it is still perfectly legal. This will fulfill our dissection requirement. We will be doing a vivisection of these frogs with the help of an online tutorial video which I will start shortly. There are enough of them for every table."
Aimee gagged. "Live frogs?"
Josh frowned. "Isn't there some law against that? That's animal cruelty."
"There has to be," I said. At least I wasn't the most squeamish person here. Poor Aimee was taking on a pallor. The texting girl had pocketed her phone. People shifted in squeaky chairs. Becca whispered to her partner.
Mr. Godfrey showed no emotion. He faced the class, and that one frog kept pawing at the edge of the tank, trying to escape. I couldn't stop watching it. "We must keep up with our curriculum. It is quite simple. We will use pins to hold the frogs in place while we make our incisions down their undersides."
"There has to be some law against this," Aimee said. "It would be one thing if the frogs were already dead."
"We can't kill them first?" I asked. "You know--with some gas or something?" I was too grossed out. An urge to get up and leave the room washed over me, and I started to get out of my chair.
Shorty spoke. "There are laws, but they don't cover frogs or rats or things like that." He tried to smile, but all the color had gone from his cheeks. What was with him? He couldn't be that desperate to maintain a reputation that wasn't even worth keeping.
"Shorty is right," Mr. Godfrey said. "What we are doing is legal. Shorty, can you pass out the pins to the rest of the class? We will be paralyzing the frogs by pushing the pins through their spinal cords."
"What?" Aimee asked.
"But won't the frogs feel that?" Aaron asked from the back corner. "I mean, I wouldn't want a pin pushed through my neck."
Shorty sprang up from the desk and brushed past me. Mr. Godfrey handed him the pins.
I raised my hand to ask to duck out but Shorty blocked the teacher's view of me.
Aimee was already standing. "Isn't there also a law saying we don't have to do this if it grosses us out? In some states, we have the right to bow out of this on moral grounds." She looked around at everyone, expression pleading.
"She might be right," I added. The poor frogs kept hopping around in the terrarium. I knew that they didn't know better, but I imagined that the one trying to climb out knew what was coming to it.
Shorty held his hands out, and Mr. Godfrey handed him a plastic box of needles. He wasn't smiling.
We were supposed to hold the frogs still with those.
"Can we just take a zero on this?" Josh asked. "Or do another make-up project?"
Shorty faced him for a bit but didn't dare argue.
But Mr. Godfrey did. "The frogs will feel no pain from this," he said. "We will be able to watch their hearts beat, and identify key parts of their inner anatomy."
I waited for Josh and Aimee to say something, but Josh sat back down. Aimee gathered her books. I'd leave with her. This was gross. The frogs couldn't tell us what they were feeling. How did we know this wouldn't cause them agony?
A memory tickled the back of my mind.
Help us.
A soft voice, one barely louder than my own thoughts, echoed in my mind.
I stopped, sucking in a breath. That one frog was still clawing at the side of the tank.
Was it facing me?
No. Not again.
This hadn't happened since I was six.
Please. Help us.
The other frogs all crowded to the edge of the tank, trying to climb out. I had the sense they were all making a group effort to escape.
Shorty faced me as if expecting me to do take action. He tossed the container of pins hand to hand, hesitating.
Candice. Get us out of here.
It was the one frog. The leader. It hopped towards the top of the tank. The terror in its voice was so much that my heart started to pound.
Aimee brushed past me and left the room. She was out of here. Josh got up and followed. They were giving up and leaving the frogs to die.
Help us.
I thought this would never happen again. That I would never hear another frog.
I had even reached the point where I'd convinced myself that it had never happened at all.
Get us out. Please.
Please. Please. Please.
The voices intensified. No one else paid them attention. Only I could hear them. I turned away and looked out the window, but the other frogs were joining in. Shorty was passing out the pins to each workstation, taking his time. No one else got up to protest. The vivisection would go as planned.
I don't want to die.
We will suffer.
The dark one will triumph.
The pleas turned to screams in my head. Lightning flashed. I turned towards the tank. Shorty set the pins down on our desk. "Candice," he said.
I strode past him. The frogs scrambled over each other now, trying to climb, and their cries all blended together in a mournful, desperate concert of despair. I had to shut them up. I had to make it stop.
I ran to the tank, grabbed it, and tipped it onto its side.
Glass cracked. Everyone went silent. Frogs flew out and onto the floor, hopping towards any hiding place they could find. They scrambled under the teacher's desk. Others made a beeline for bookshelves and cabinets. A few more fled through rows of tables.
The voices all silenced.
Mr. Godfrey backed up a bit, shocked. His eyes got huge as he studied me. He must have never had something like this happen before.
And Shorty stood there, mouth falling open, along with the rest of the class.
A straggling frog hopped over my lab partner's shoe. The teacher cleared his throat. "Candice, go down to the office."
I swallowed.
What had I just done?
Those voices shouldn't have been there.
My stomach turned. Mr. Godfrey stood there, expressionless, while Shorty shook his head in what might be an effort to regain his senses. He dropped the rest of the pins on Aimee's table and scrambled after one of the amphibians. He picked it up, studied it, and set it back down again. "Wrong one," he muttered. "Where is it?"
"Candice," Mr. Godfrey repeated. "Go down to the office. I will send down a discipline slip shortly, as soon as we have this mess cleaned. Shorty, you will take her there. I need everyone else to have their lab partners for this." His voice remained as monotone as ever.
Shorty balked. "But don't we need to get all the frogs back before I go? We can't have them hopping around the school."
Mr. Godfrey turned on him. "Take Candice down to the office."
"But the frogs!" Shorty yelled. He was almost in panic.
I had to hold back a nervous laugh. What room did I have to talk? I'd just run up here and let all of them loose. What made it worse was that voices echoing in my head had commanded me to do the deed.
I had to get out of there and go home. There was no way I could come back here tomorrow. The only consolation was that Josh had left. But he'd hear about my stunt. I'd forever be the psycho girl. It was even more horrible than being the rich girl.
Shorty sighed an
d walked away from the bookshelf, letting the meter stick fall to the floor. "Come on," he told me, in a hurry. "Get down there so I can get back here and...and finish my assignment."
"What is with you?" I asked. I had no room to say that, either.
I grabbed my backpack, zipped it up, and followed him. Shorty just waved me out into the hall. Everyone watched as I left, and I felt my back prickling under everyone's stare.
I'd screwed up.
Once out in the hall, Shorty stared at me. His eyes shone with terror. Was he that worried about his grade?
"Why did you do that?" he asked.
"I don't think it's right to cut up frogs that are still alive," I told him. I couldn't give him the real reason. No one knew about that.
"Candice, you never get in trouble. You always follow the rules." Shorty walked, waving me along. "Come on! I have to get back to class. Why did you do that?"
I hated my reputation. Candice knows nothing about real life. Having a ball at your house this weekend? What's in your lunch? Caviar? Why aren't you in some posh private school?
"I told you," I snapped. We walked past the senior benches. My jeans flapped. I wore my baggy ones today with the holes in the knees. They matched Franco's. I made it a point to only wear thrift store stuff. It stopped some of the snide comments and the stuffy rich accents that people used around me.
"Maybe your dad will call the school and fix this all up for you," Shorty said. He quickened his pace. Then he lowered his voice and did a cruel imitation of him. "Hello, school. Can you be light on my daughter? I'll pay you if you get her out of detention."
I caught up with Shorty. My temper was building, and now I didn't care if I did get detention. I'd deal with it. Dad wouldn't even figure it out for weeks. "What is your problem? I do one thing, and you're all over me. Do you have some sick fascination with torturing animals and I ruined your fun? I'd rather be the rich guy's daughter than some freak who's going to end up in some documentary about psychopaths."
"You don't know anything about me," Shorty said.
I ran out of breath following him to the office. My blood sang. I hated arguments. They always got my pulse going, making me feel sick afterwards. But this called for it. The stress was getting to me.
