by Shelby Bach
Grinning, Amy ran around the car and hugged me, too. “Touché. Besides, Maggie, we don’t have time. We need to get you to that hair appointment. It’ll take too long to get you out of the airport.” Amy nodded at the crowd behind her.
Walking me to the gate wasn’t the problem. Signing autographs would slow her down. Already she’d drawn a crowd—their camera phones poised and ready. Mom donned her “business face”—a smile that showed all her teeth—and waved. The gesture was welcomed with a flurry of flashes.
I hoped those pictures wouldn’t make it into one of Madison’s magazines by the time I got back.
“Okay, okay.” Mom gave me another quick hug, and Amy handed me my duffel. I promised again to call when I got there. I looked back once as I passed through the sliding doors: Mom looked about as tragic as she had in her last movie, when her character had found out that her beloved husband had cancer. Amy squeezed her shoulder sympathetically and pointed to the passenger seat at the same time.
Sometimes it felt like Mom didn’t want me to grow up, but I couldn’t help it. No one could stay a little kid forever.
Security was shockingly fast because I didn’t have a computer. I didn’t even bother to tie my shoes before collecting my bag from the conveyor belt, and I shuffled off toward the bathroom marked on the map Ellie had given me.
When I found the bathroom, it was easy to tell which stall door would take me to EAS. The one on the end was red. Every portal door Ellie had ever set up for me had been that color. An OUT OF ORDER sign was taped to it.
Poor Ellie. I knew that setting this up had been pretty involved. First she’d needed my signature, so she could bind the Door Trek to me—that part of the spell made sure no one else could come through accidentally. Later Ellie had come back for a copy of my itinerary so she could enchant the airline, its computers, and its flight attendants to think I was flying over to North Carolina as scheduled.
Her map only gave me one last instruction: WAIT UNTIL YOU ARE ALONE TO USE THE DESIGNATED STALL—with lots of stars. I figured if Ellie had broken out the all caps, then I’d better pay attention.
I washed my hands five times in a row. The teenager doing her hair—the last person in the bathroom—finally stuffed her brush back in her ginormous purse and sauntered out. I sprinted for my exit before anyone else could come in.
I pushed the red stall door open. A familiar tunnel stretched out in front of me—cool and dark after the fluorescent brightness of the bathroom. I walked forward, my fingers brushing along the familiar grooves and bumps on the wall.
My hand found the doorknob, and then I stepped out into the courtyard.
It was so quiet. I had never seen it so empty. The doors that lined the outer wall were still. The Tree of Hope seemed bigger than usual, without its usual swarm of EASers, and underneath it the Table of Never Ending Instant Refills was bare, looking naked without all its platters.
The courtyard was beside an ocean today. The air was full of seagulls and wind, and the Tree’s leaves swished back and forth, like they were keeping time with the waves. The beach started about twenty feet beyond it. The sand sparkled cobalt in the sun, like someone had sprinkled blue glitter all over it.
The landscape magically changed every few days. Last week we’d had a maze of trees, and then some awkward swamp land had driven Ellie crazy trying to supply each door with the right number and size of rain boots.
I’d heard my dad say this in an interview once: Walking onto a movie set was like walking into the very best dream of your life. You could become anyone, make anything happen.
That probably described EAS much better than any studio lot.
At EAS, I didn’t need to be pretty or fashionable. I’d slain a chimera the day before. I was one of the best fighters in the whole North American Chapter.
At least . . . when I had my sword.
I needed to find Chase. I pushed through the iron-studded door that led to the training courts. The old hinges squeaked, echoing over the mats, and the training mirrors reflected my face.
I sighed. My right eye was even more purple than yesterday.
“Chase?” I called, but the room was still.
Not here.
I dumped my duffel and went to search.
An orange-gold door in the courtyard led straight to another smaller courtyard, where the walls were lined with instructors’ apartments, including the one where Chase and Jack lived. Unfortunately, EASers couldn’t get through it anymore—ever since some tenth graders had TPed Hansel’s house on All Hallows’ Eve.
But Chase had shown me and Lena a shortcut. I remembered the first part: The door beside the weapons closet led to a corridor where two pigs were carved, huddled in a hut made out of sticks, and a wolf stood on its hind legs, getting psyched to huff and puff and blow the house down. When I reached it, I passed silver doorways numbered one through seven in scarlet ink.
But I couldn’t remember where to go after I turned left and found myself on a torch-filled corridor. I remembered the spinning wheels inlaid on the floor, but not which of the twelve doors I needed to go through.
Making a mistake might take all afternoon.
EAS was a lot bigger than it looked from the outside. Sometimes if you closed a door behind you and opened it again, you might find yourself in a completely different hallway.
If Lena had been there, she would have reminded me that this was a magic building, one where we kept dragons in the dungeon. Unsupervised areas could be dangerous.
But I had never explored EAS on my own before, and I might never get another chance.
Behind the first door I found aquarium tanks big enough to hold small whales. Most of them were empty, but in one a goldfish as big as my mother swam in circles. Its long, drooping tail had stitches.
In the next room, behind a plain oak door, I stumbled straight into someone. In the dark all I could tell was that he was tall and unyielding—and human.
“Sorry!” My voice must have activated the torches. They sputtered on, and I saw the dude I had run into: at least six and a half feet tall, dressed in some sort of soldier uniform centuries out of date, and covered with a dull gray sheen from the top of his hat to the tips of his pointy shoes.
Other people surrounded us, so lifelike that at first I thought I had stumbled into a meeting. But none of them were moving. Three girls in fifties skirts and bobby socks stood in a circle, their hands linked, their faces looking outward, scowling fiercely at some unknown bad guy. A little bronze dog stood, paw up, frozen mid-bark. A bunch of stone statues looked like they were running, including one guy wearing a baseball cap and shorts who had fallen on his side. A woman wearing a bustle, a muffler, and a hat as big as a car tire hunkered down awkwardly, her hands pressed over her eyes, hiding from something.
The uniformed guy had been turned to stone. Enchanted.
They were all enchanted.
The stone soldier was looking sidelong, a sad smile forever frozen around his mouth, his shoulders hunched forward—he’d been protecting something when the spell had hit him, something precious. Or maybe someone.
I circled the soldier, eyeing the long old-fashioned rifle, the brittle stone bayonet. He wore a tag around his other wrist. I stepped closer to read it, and my hip grazed something—a weird wooden pedestal. It toppled.
“Crap!” I automatically steadied it, but when my hand brushed the object on top, something crackled up my arm—like static electricity, if static could smell and taste like a ball-point pen exploding as you chewed on the end. I nearly dropped it in surprise. Magic.
I put it back on its pedestal and stared at it, rubbing my fingers. It looked like some sort of old-fashioned heavy metal can, with holes in the top, kind of like a saltshaker but dented—clearly ancient. I thought about shaking it to see what was inside, but it didn’t seem like a smart idea. It could be the saltshaker of doom, a weapon that could turn whole armies to stone, or wood, or quartz.
Instead I turned back to the st
one soldier and read the tag around his wrist, yellowed with age: WOLFGANG SEBASTIAN BRUHM, 1788–1804.
He was only sixteen when he got enchanted.
A shudder ran through me. It would suck so much to get trapped in an unmoving body for two centuries—never breathing, or speaking, or growing up. To be frozen while the whole world changed around you.
Maybe he could even sense me staring at him, the way they say people in comas can hear you talking.
I took a step back. Being all alone at EAS was getting creepy.
I hurried out and closed the door behind me.
And two more tries later, after a sky-blue room empty except for three chandeliers made out of spoons, and a black door that opened into an obsidian wall, I finally found the garden in front of the EAS apartments. Relieved, I wove through the tulips and Japanese maples and headed straight for the brownstone with a flashy red-and-gold door—Jack and Chase’s place.
But someone was singing, a lone voice rising in high trills, a few notes away from shattering glass.
It was Chase. He was standing in the gazebo, which looked like a wrought-iron wedding cake, surrounded by fairies. With their backs to me all I could see were bright wings and long skirts. Then Chase met my gaze, and his voice dropped a couple octaves.
Well, I’d finally found him.
But Chase didn’t smile, or wave, or stop singing, or give any sign like he was happy to see me. He just stared at me hard and kind of angry. He obviously would have preferred me waiting for him in the training courts.
veered toward the gazebo, grinning.
The tallest Fey woman—the one with white wings threaded with palest pink—noticed where Chase was looking and turned around. Weird gray dots lined her face in horizontal rows. She sprang into the air, and in two wing beats she latched her hand over my wrist.
The dots on her face weren’t tattoos. The blackish freckles were slightly raised and circular, and her skin had a silvery sheen. “He’s nearly finished.”
Then she dragged me across the garden. I was kind of too shocked to pull away.
The appearance of one fairy was enough to keep EASers talking for weeks. I hadn’t seen three together since the Fairie Market.
The cobalt-skinned Fey and the third, very short one didn’t glance our way when we came up the gazebo steps. Chase sang a long note that sailed out into the garden. I hadn’t known he’d had it in him.
When his voice died away, the three Fey clapped, and so did I. “That was really impressive,” I told him.
“I didn’t actually have a choice.” He glared at me. Not his don’t tease me right now glare. It was the kind he shot me as a warning when I’d run straight into a dragon’s lair or something else dangerous.
The Fey were known to be touchy.
I made a mental note not to call them fairies to their faces. “Fairy” was technically slang. Characters had started calling the Fey that about a thousand years ago, and the nickname caught on. The Fey had been known to enchant a kid stupid enough to say “fairy” in their presence.
“Yes. Let’s all remember: I gave him that voice,” said the cobalt fairy.
“Yes, but I gave him these curls.” The smallest Fey grabbed a fistful of them, like she would like to cut them off and pocket them again. Chase flinched.
“No, you gave him grace of movement,” said the fairy with dots on her face. “Remelda gave him the curls.”
“Oh. You’re right. But I suggested the curls to Remelda. She did not know which blessing to bestow upon the babe,” she added with a wide smile.
“It is the custom.” The Fey with dots had very green eyes, slightly too large for her face. It made her look constantly surprised. “Each of a child’s godmothers bestows a gift upon the child at the time of his christening,”
So they were Chase’s godmothers. That had happened to a Character three grades above us. Her father had had an extra boon from a Fey, left over from his days at EAS. He’d used it to make the fairy his daughter’s godfather. Pretty much everyone expected her Tale to be “Cinderella.”
This was too weird for me to start teasing Chase with glass-slipper jokes. Jack hated the Fey. He wouldn’t have asked any of them to be his son’s godmothers.
Chase said something in Fey to the fairy with dots, something that started with “Amya” and ended with “Rory.”
“Chase, my dear, don’t be rude. Speak English for the guest’s sake.” But her eyes widened even more.
The shortest Fey glided closer. “Rory?”
“Aurora Landon?” The cobalt fairy stepped nearer too, and suddenly I was surrounded.
The hairs on the back of my neck stood up.
Even here, among magic people who had never heard of Eric Landon and Maggie Wright, I was more famous than I liked to be. Maybe we were in danger. Maybe they were allies of the Snow Queen, and—
The Fey with dots—Amya? Was that her name?—let out a laugh. “I meant no offense! Chase has told us so much about you. I could not help being curious.”
Chase didn’t give me any clues on how to react, so I pretended I was Mom. She was always good with strangers, whether they happened to be fellow mothers at Parents’ Night or up-and-coming actresses on set. She looked them straight in the eye and put on a megawatt smile like she’d wanted to meet them for months.
The Fey with dots on her face shook my hand. “I am Ayalla Aspenwind.”
I smiled my most charming and Mom-like smile. “Nice to meet you, Mrs. Aspenwind.”
The other two Fey hissed a little.
“It’s Lady Aspenwind, actually,” Chase whispered to me.
That was the problem with the Fey. You never knew what would insult them.
“I’m really sorry, Lady Aspenwind,” I said, eager to apologize and change the subject before she turned me into a dove or something. “What brings you to EAS?”
“Today is Chase’s birthday,” said Lady Aspenwind.
“It is?” My voice rose about a million times too loud for the little garden. It couldn’t be his birthday. If it was, Chase would have talked about it for weeks beforehand. He would have dropped a thousand hints about the presents he wanted—
Chase wouldn’t meet my eyes.
“Of course. That is why we are here to visit.” The huge smile vanished from her face, and her eyes glittered brightly. “Chase, he is growing so old.”
Old was clearly a tragedy to her.
“Amya,” Chase said softly. There had to be a reason he kept calling her that. Maybe that was Ayalla’s nickname.
She smiled again. It was a little forced now. “A happy occasion. A happy birthday.”
“A happy birthday,” echoed the other two Fey mournfully.
“Thank you,” Chase said, clearly relieved. “Don’t you need to head back now?”
Hurt flashed in her eyes. She had come all this way to see him. She turned to me, like she hadn’t heard. “Rory, he speaks of you so highly, but my son did not mention his birthday to you?”
“No, he—” Then I realized what she’d said.
Son.
This weird fairy was Chase’s mother.
If you ignored all the dots on her face, you could see the resemblance. The broad, high cheekbones. The smile that took up half her face. They even had the same sunshine-yellow shade of blond hair.
“Clever human,” whispered the shortest fairy. “Now you’ve discovered it.”
Nobody knew much about Chase’s mom—except that his parents weren’t together anymore, so she didn’t live with Chase and his dad. Chase almost never mentioned her. Now I knew why.
Chase was half Fey.
I closed my mouth. This was why he didn’t want me here. This was the secret he wanted to protect.
I glanced at Chase. His face was turning red, a sign he was really mad.
“We should return, Lady,” murmured the cobalt-skinned Fey.
Lady Aspenwind nodded, her eyes on Chase. Her mouth quivered. I was just thinking how weird it would be to
see a fairy cry, when she actually started sobbing. So loud it echoed in the small chamber.
Her tears were green, solid, and shaped like tiny aspen leaves.
I froze. Watching grown-ups cry in public always made me feel panicky, like I should join in.
“You are turning out just like Cal. You shouldn’t grow up so quickly.” She buried her face in Chase’s neck, which looked awkward since she was taller than he was. With a huge sigh, Chase patted her back lightly and murmured something in Fey.
The other two fairies looked faintly embarrassed for her, like she had sneezed and a big undignified gob of snot had come shooting out.
“Come, milady. We have no time for this.” The cobalt fairy tugged on Lady Aspenwind’s arm until she gave one last shaky sob, kissed Chase wetly on the forehead, and let herself be drawn away.
“You will think about what I said? If you want to live with me again?” she asked Chase.
Live with her? As in move? He couldn’t leave.
“I’ll think about it,” Chase said.
Lady Aspenwind half smiled, comforted.
The two Fey steered her over the garden’s gravel paths and through a midnight-blue door with silver hinges. Then they were gone.
I wanted to ask Chase if his mom always cried when she told him good-bye, but he was scowling at me.
So of course I blurted out exactly what came to mind. “Is it really your birthday?”
“Yeah.” Then he turned and strode away. “You coming? You wanted to train, right?”
Sure, I wanted to train, but at the moment I wanted to address the strange development that one of my best friends was half fairy and that he’d never told me. I hurried after him.
He slammed through the door I’d just exited, stalked down the hallway, and stomped around the corner to the Three Little Pigs corridor without looking back once.
I trotted past the scarlet doors, trying to keep up and wondering what his problem was. I had caught him keeping a major secret from everyone. I had every right to be mad, but Chase acted like I had done something wrong.
I turned to Chase, all set to tell him off.
