She hesitated for just a moment, and I realized that there was something most people didn’t know about Hook. I mean, was she the type of girl who even had friends? It seemed like she was always mad or upset about something. She was constantly irritated. Besides, she really only helped people when it suited her. Even when Belle had gotten trapped, Hook had only helped us after we’d given her something she wanted: fairy dust. I still don’t know what she used that for.
“You know Tinkerbell likes him, right?” I said, pointing out the obvious.
“I’m not dating Peter.”
“Then what’s going on? I didn’t know you were friends.”
“There’s a lot you don’t know about me, Jessica,” she said with a sigh, and I suddenly got the impression that what Hook really wanted more than anything else was to be left alone.
Unfortunately, I couldn’t do that.
“Yeah? Like what?” I lived in foster care way too long to let someone just push me around or silence me with their words. Like a dog with a bone, I wasn’t going to back down until I found out exactly what Hook wasn’t telling me.
We were standing outside of the dormitory just under the overhang. There were vines covering the entire building and somehow, they almost seemed to glow in the rain.
“It’s none of your business.”
“Try me,” I said. “Hook, this is Peter we’re talking about. If you know something, then you need to tell me. You don’t owe me anything, but apparently, the two of you are friends. Shouldn’t you do everything you can to help us find him?”
“Jessica, he’s lost, okay? Something took him.”
Hook looked distraught, quite suddenly, and I think it was the first time I’d ever seen her bravery falter. For the first time, she looked completely scared and totally afraid that something bad was going to happen to him.
“Hook, we can find him.”
“You don’t know that.”
“We have to try.”
She bit her lip and looked around. There was nobody around. Our friends were already inside of the dormitory building and everyone else was busy studying for tests.
“He has a secret,” she finally said, shaking her head.
“Don’t we all?”
“Not like this. Peter isn’t exactly what he seems.”
“Not a student at Enchanted Academy who likes theater?”
“Well, okay, so he’s exactly what he seems,” she chuckled a little, but then seemed to remember that this was a serious moment.
“What is it?”
“He’s...Look, Jessica, he’s not human. He’s a fairy.”
She spit the words out all in a rush, and for a second, I was so shocked that I couldn’t even speak.
A fairy?
Pan?
“But he looks like a human.”
“Yeah, I know.”
I looked at her for a minute and finally shook my head.
“Let’s tell the others.” I grabbed her hand and rushed inside. Our friends were standing over in the cookie corner: a place where you could get just about any kind of delicious snack you might need to get you through a long day of studying. We hurried over to them.
Beast smiled at me when he saw me and nodded to me. A shiver of excitement shot through me, but I tried to push it down. We’d only just sort-of started dating, and I’d never exactly had a boyfriend before. This was all new to me and I didn’t really know how to handle it.
Mostly, I wanted to play it cool.
“Peter’s a fairy,” I blurted out.
Everyone just stared at me. Hook looked pissed, but nobody else looked surprised.
“Yeah,” Wolf finally spoke. “We know.”
“What?” Hook screeched, and I slapped a hand over her mouth. Okay, there might not be other students around, but if anyone did happen to be lurking or wandering around, we didn’t exactly want them to know about Peter’s secret.
“Beast knew,” Belle explained.
I looked at him, surprised. He was a shifter, and it gave him certain powers that other people or magical beings didn’t necessarily have. One of them? Incredible scenting. Wolf was a shifter, too, but her powers didn’t seem to have quite the same strength that Beast’s did.
“I smelled him,” Beast shrugged.
“So what does this mean?” I asked. “Would a ghost want to take him because he’s a fairy?”
We all looked at Tink.
“Just because I’m your resident fairy friend doesn’t mean I have all of the answers,” she whispered. She looked distraught, and I felt bad for putting her on the spot like this, but who knew how much time we had?
“Ghosts don’t have any need for fairies,” Wolf said thoughtfully. “I mean, even if a ghost had snatched him up – and we don’t know that Enchanted Academy even has ghosts – why would a ghost want a fairy?”
“And why would one impersonate Hook?” I pointed out.
“You all are missing something big,” Red piped up, and I turned to him. He was a quiet boy who always wore a red hood. He was a good fit for Wolf, who was a little wild and kind of angsty. She wanted to be a writer one day, so she always had her nose in a book and she was constantly looking for ways to have adventures. She’d grown up with a rather overbearing mother to boot. Enchanted Academy was, in many ways, her escape from reality.
Red provided further escape.
“What are you talking about?” Hook waved her hands around for a second and finally settled on running them through her short dark hair. “I mean, we know something took Peter. We know it looked like me. We know the ghost lamp is gone. Unless Tinkerbell made it all up-”
“I didn’t!”
“Yeah, I know. I’m just saying that unless you made it up, those are the things we have to go off of.”
“You’re making the mistake of thinking that a ghost is the only creature that can take the shape of something else,” Red pointed out.
“It couldn’t be a shifter. We only have two forms and those are decided before we’re even born,” Wolf said.
“Oh no,” Tinkerbell’s mouth formed a tiny “o” and we all looked to her and then back to Red.
“Dark fairies can take the shape of whatever they want,” he said. “They cast a glamour, which is their most powerful ability.”
“Tinkerbell can’t do that, though, can you?” I turned to her. She shook her head, and her eyes looked scared.
“There’s something else, isn’t here?” Hook asked. She looked like she was going to be sick and I think it was because we all knew that whatever Tinkerbell said next was going to solidify the reality that Peter might not be coming back.
“Dark fairies are rare. They’re banished from normal fairy communities because they’re so evil. Their numbers are dwindling and there are no male dark fairies left. In fact, there are almost no male fairies left at all.”
“You think a dark fairy took him because he’s a boy?” I asked.
“Not took him,” she said. “Hunted him. And if that’s what happened, then he’s in grave danger.”
Chapter 8
Peter blinked, opening his eyes. He was no longer in the same place. He would have known it right away if he was.
“Hello?” He called out, but like before, his words seemed to fall out into nothingness. He sat up and looked around. He was in a sort of holding cell. Before, it seemed like he was in a large bubble-like contraption. Now the cage looked more like, well, an actual cage.
He stood up, trying to figure out why he was here. Of all of the places in the world he could be, why was he in some sort of dungeon-like cell? The bars of his little cell were thick and made of metal that was rusted over. It looked old. So he wasn’t in a modern prison, not that he thought he was. He stretched and turned around in a circle, trying to figure out what he was dealing with.
Was there any chance he could escape?
The cell he was in was quite small: maybe four feet wide and six feet long. It had a hard metal floor and top. He could sta
nd up straight, but only because he was kind of a small person. If anyone else had tried to stand up in this cage, their head would bonk against the top of the little cell.
Peter gripped the bars of the cage.
Crap.
He’d really done it now.
Somehow, he’d managed to get into the most trouble possible and he hadn’t even been doing anything. The last thing he remembered was practicing on stage with Hook. She’d shown up out of the blue and asked if they could run lines, and he was down for it. Mother Goose was opening in a few weeks and their fight scene still needed quite a bit of work. They needed to get it together, and fast, if they were going to make the show exactly what it should be.
Dr. Rogers, the director, wasn’t exactly the type of person you wanted to irritate. She was a petite woman with dark hair and dark eyes and perhaps the fiercest work ethic Peter had ever encountered. He’d been in shows before, but no director had ever seemed to work them quite as hard as she did.
Rogers always carefully considered her casting options and then chose the people she thought would be best. Peter would be the first to admit he’d been surprised to be cast in a lead role. He had some acting experience, but not much. He’d been excited about the opportunity to move forward in the world of theater, but now?
Now it seemed like he’d dug his own grave.
“Hello?” He called out again.
This time, he heard rustling. He peered out into the darkness, but couldn’t see much beyond his own cage.
“Hello? Is someone out there?”
“Shut up,” someone hissed. A boy. It was another boy.
“Who is it? Who are you? Let me out!” Peter called.
“For real,” a different voice said. This voice was deeper and more masculine, but it was definitely a boy. “You have to shut up, man.”
Peter heard the urgency in the man’s voice, and he fell silent. Probably, he shouldn’t have. He could have kept talking and made a scene until whoever had captured them came back, but he knew enough about people to know that when someone’s voice sounded like that they weren’t being mean: they were scared.
So he wasn’t alone.
Peter sat down in the cell. He wished he could see who else was out there. He wished he could see who had been captured like he had. The other voices definitely belonged to victims. They belonged to people like him who had, for some reason or another, been captured.
He was hungry and he was cold and he was lonely, and more than anything else, Peter was regretful. He had managed to get kidnapped before he’d had a proper chance to talk to Amy Tinkerbell.
He’d been kidnapped before he got to tell her how he felt.
He looked up at the top of the cage and suddenly, he noted some faint writing in the corner. He stood up and reached, running his fingers over the words that had been etched into the top of the cage. The room was dark, but there must have been a window above him or some sort of dim light because he could see enough to read the words.
LOST BOYS.
Is that what Peter was now?
Was he a lost boy?
Was anyone ever going to find him?
Or was he destined to just...stay?
Chapter 9
The storm was raging and we were no closer to finding out where Peter had gone or what had taken him. After two hours spent talking and sharing ideas followed by another two hours of pouring over books in the library basement, we’d all gone back to our rooms with plans to meet up the next day.
Everyone went back to their rooms except for me. I went to Tinkerbell’s room with her. On the way, we passed Snow White, who shot us a haughty look.
“Look what the cat dragged in,” she sneered. Obviously, she was talking about our disheveled appearances. I’d gotten caught in the rain, but Tinkerbell hadn’t slept. We’d both managed to lose any semblance of “normal” looking during the chaos of the day.
“Leave us alone,” I said. Sometimes, Snow seemed really normal and fine. Other times, she seemed like the bitch from hell who couldn’t seem to cut anyone a break.
“Why? You going to cry if I don’t?” She said sarcastically. She shook her head and started to walk past us, but then she stopped and looked back over her shoulder. “I heard you got the world’s tiniest role in the play, Tink.”
Tinkerbell balled her hands into fists, but didn’t move. She stood perfectly still, obviously unwilling to engage in Snow’s behavior. I never really understood why Snow was so crabby one day and so normal the next. Her mood swings were unbearable and her bullying was unmanageable. Helena Hex was aware of the situation and had warned Snow of the consequences of such behavior, but she usually managed to slide below the radar.
“That’s right. Apparently Dr. Rogers took pity on the world’s tiniest little fairy.” Snow was speaking in a baby voice, so it came out like wittle fawwy. The sound made my skin crawl and she wasn’t even talking to me. She was talking to my friend, and Tinkerbell had been through more than enough. She didn’t need to deal with Snow’s crap.
“Leave her alone.” I stepped forward, maneuvering myself between them.
“Or what?” Snow stepped closer to me. Our noses were practically touching. “What are you going to do about it, human?”
She spat out the word like it was an insult. Since when was it bad to be a human?
Since when was it bad to just own who you were?
“I’ll fight you if I have to.”
I would, too. Tinkerbell seemed just as shocked as Snow by what I said. Tink gasped loudly and Snow started laughing.
“Fight me? Really? Human you wouldn’t stand a chance.”
Now, it was true that Snow White had helped us save Belle.
Sort of.
She hadn’t wanted to ask Helena Hex for help or any other teacher, which was part of the reason I was pushing so hard for us to talk to Helena now. Snow White had waited, not wanting to ask anyone for assistance, and Belle had suffered quietly and alone because of it.
Well, Peter wasn’t going to suffer.
We were going to find a way to save him.
But I needed Snow to leave, like, now, because I couldn’t think straight with her up in my face.
“Human or not, I don’t like bullies.”
“I’m not a bully.”
“You are literally a bully. You’re bullying me right now!”
“Talking to someone isn’t the same thing as bullying them,” Snow said diplomatically. “You and I are just having a little chat is all.”
“No, a chat is something you do with a friend,” I told her. “This thing between us?” I gestured between us even though she couldn’t see my hand. Her face was too close to mine, and her breath smelled a little like garlic. It was kind of gross.
“What about it?”
“It’s not something I want. I don’t want to talk to you and I definitely didn’t do anything to provoke you, so if you don’t mind, you can just leave.”
“You don’t even live on this floor,” Snow said. “Why don’t you go back up where you belong?” She gestured up to the ceiling, apparently trying to reference the fact that I lived on an upper floor.
“Your insults could use some work.”
“Your face could use some work.”
I sighed. This interaction was stupid and pointless. I turned to Tinkerbell.
“Come on. Let’s go to your room. We can talk there.”
Apparently, that was the wrong thing to say because Snow grabbed my shoulder, spun me around, and punched me hard in the belly.
I probably should have seen that coming, especially after years of fighting my foster brothers and sisters, but I didn’t.
Instead, I fell to the floor in a pile. Groaning, I held my stomach. I don’t know what magic she had behind that punch, but it didn’t feel normal. It definitely didn’t feel human.
I pushed myself up off the floor. I couldn’t just lie there indefinitely, after all, but before I even stood up, Tinkerbell was walking past me
.
What was she doing?
“Tink, don’t,” I said. “You’re-“
“What? Too small? Too tiny to fight?”
I managed to get all the way to my feet. Tinkerbell was walking toward Snow, and she was jabbing her in the chest.
“Tink...”
She was glowing.
Snow White saw it, too, because her pale skin seemed to lighten even more.
“Look, it’s not a big deal,” Snow said. “Jessica and I just don’t always see eye-to-eye.”
“Well, from where I’m standing,” Tinkerbell jabbed Snow’s chest again. “It seems like you don’t see eye-to-eye with very many people, Snow.”
“Let’s talk about this.”
Tinkerbell seemed to change. I’d never seen her so much as raise her voice. Now she was practically glowing with rage, and suddenly, her wings were pushing out of her back.
They started to move, jerking back and forth. Flutter was too gentle of a word to describe what Tinkerbell’s wings were doing.
“Leave my friends alone,” she said. She reached up and grabbed Snow’s shoulders and shoved her – hard. Fairy dust fell from Tinkerbell’s wings as she pushed Snow.
“I wasn’t bothering your friends.”
“Leave them alone.”
“I wasn’t bothering them!”
“LEAVE THEM ALONE!”
Tinkerbell screamed, and her voice came out shrill and high pitched and horrifying. The entire building seemed to shake, and both Snow and I dropped to our knees and covered our ears from the sound.
I didn’t know fairies could make a sound like that.
I didn’t know fairies could fight back like that.
I looked up at Tinkerbell. She was standing over Snow, but she looked different than the Tink I was used to. She looked angry. She looked sad. She looked like she’d lost someone very special to her, and she looked like she was going to do anything to get that someone back.
A few heads peered out of their dormitory rooms. I knew exactly what everyone was thinking. They wanted to know what had just happened and who had managed to piss off a little fairy so bad that she’d go totally crazy and wild.
Enchanted Academy Box Set Page 24
