by Shelby Bach
It sounded like she was trying to justify the poisoning. But from the look on her face, I would say Kezelda was just as terror-stricken at finding herself near death as everyone else.
“We have to keep them sedated,” Jenny explained to me.
It couldn’t have been the witches.
No, I told myself. It couldn’t have been all the witches. Because if it wasn’t the witches, then who could it have been?
Rapunzel tried again to push the medicine past Kezelda’s lips. Remembering why I’d come, I told Jenny that I’d assigned a dummy to Melodie.
“Good. Thanks, Rory,” Jenny said.
At my name, Rapunzel looked up, and a little weariness lifted from her face. She handed off the medicine and came to hold both my shoulders, smiling. “I knew you were not dead. I was not sure how you could be saved, but too much of the future I have seen contains you. How did you survive?”
The real answer wasn’t something I could say in front of sick Characters. “Um—” I glanced back at the door, hoping she would take the hint.
“Yes, I could use some fresh air,” Rapunzel said smoothly, leading me back outside. I waved to Jenny and trotted after her.
The bed-bound patients watched us leave, staring so hard that I felt my face burn. I wondered if they suspected Rapunzel like Lena did.
“Did Chase use his wings?” Rapunzel asked when the door closed behind us. We were alone in the courtyard. I nodded, trying to figure out a graceful way to bring up what I really wanted to talk about. Rapunzel smiled wider, a laughlike catch in her voice. “Interesting. That child is extraordinary. His Fey gifts are weak by fairy standards, but he uses them so masterfully—”
“Are you really the Snow Queen’s sister?” As soon as it burst out of me, I wished I could take it back.
The shock on her face faded, and then she reminded me of Chase on the beach, negotiating with Fael when Ori’an was about to kill me. No, she looked exactly like the Snow Queen—Solange’s carefully composed, chilly expression. “Yes.”
I had expected her to say no, it was just a rumor, the Director had misunderstood. But now a new feeling crept in—the same guarded watchfulness I felt when Madison and the KATs walked into homeroom.
Rapunzel was the grown-up I trusted most at EAS. What could I do without her?
“Aren’t you going to say anything?” I snapped, frustrated. Rapunzel always said something. Sometimes it didn’t make any sense, but it still helped.
“I don’t know what else there is to say,” Rapunzel said, not looking at me. “She is my sister. We share a father. Her mother was a French noblewoman killed in the Revolution. Mine was a peasant Character with mermaid ancestry.”
“What was she like?” But that wasn’t what I really wanted to know. “How do you feel about her?”
“I love my sister,” Rapunzel said, and I couldn’t believe she used the present tense. “She was the witch in my Tale. She was my whole world for my first fifteen years. But my sister is gone—the Snow Queen is heartless. I love a ghost.”
I couldn’t stand listening to her talk about Solange like she was a good person. The Snow Queen had deceived Iron Hans. She had killed Chase’s big brother. “You aren’t telling me anything useful.”
“You sound like Mildred, Rory,” Rapunzel said wearily. I recoiled. That was definitely an insult. “My life was not designed to provide information to you, or the Director, or the Canon. The beginning of my life was manipulated toward one end only: an immortality I never wished for. Solange sliced my neck when she cut my braid away. She left me, bleeding, in the path of the Rapunzel before me. The previous Rapunzel gave me her apple and brought me into the Canon. Else she would have watched me bleed to death.”
“But you didn’t have to take it,” I reminded her.
“I was pregnant. My twins,” Rapunzel said shortly, almost impatiently. “Is this what you wanted? Does this tell you a thing you didn’t know about my sister?”
She had never mentioned kids before. She looked about sixteen, so it never crossed my mind. “Why—why would she do that?”
Rapunzel sighed, and her temper gusted out too. “Solange believed she was giving me a gift. She believed I would thank her and stay beside her forever. When I did neither, she punished me.”
“What happened to your, um, twins?” I asked, worried that they were part of the Snow Queen’s punishment.
Rapunzel shrugged, fresh pain in her face. “They were born. They grew up. They lived their lives, had their own children, and they died. Centuries ago now.”
Chase might have told me I was being gullible again, but Rapunzel’s grief felt real. “You truly did not know? All this time?” she asked.
I shook my head.
We were quiet for a moment.
“I can say nothing to make you trust me.” Rapunzel spread both hands palms up between us. “That decision must come from you. Regardless, you must arrive in Los Angeles in ten minutes. But I would ask the mother of the four winds what happened the night Iron Hans escaped from the Unseelie Court.”
“Oh,” I said, a little stunned by how quickly we had moved from tragic backstory to this-is-what-you-need-to-know-to-survive-the-next-few-days mode. “Okay.”
Then Rapunzel disappeared back into the ballroom infirmary. She didn’t say anything else. She didn’t even wish me luck.
Across the Courtyard, the workshop door creaked open, and Lena spotted me. “Rory! Where the hiccups have you been? We only have nine minutes left, and it’ll take me four to explain how to do this spell.”
I didn’t want to go. I didn’t even want to cross the courtyard. I wanted to go find a quiet corner and try to process at least one thing that had happened that morning before I had to go face my dad. Everything was happening too fast.
But I jogged over and picked up my luggage, hoping that my dad would be too busy to notice that it didn’t have any airline tags attached to it.
“Another new carryall.” Lena pushed a neon-green backpack to me as soon as I was close. I tried not to notice how she was leaning heavily on the courtyard wall, too weak to stand up straight. “Put your sword in here, so nobody asks questions about it. A new magic mirror and your cell phone are already inside. Your battery died, by the way. The transport kit is in here too. And some water bottles. They’re magic. They’ll contain the water of life’s essence. Now pay attention,” said Lena, still in Jenny mode, as I unbuckled my swordbelt, “because you’re going to need to do this for yourself after you find the scepter in the Hidden Troll Court.” She showed me what looked like a baby food jar of greenish-gold paint. “First you need to find a doorway. It can be to a closet, anything, it doesn’t matter, but isolated is probably better. Then you need to paint this solution on the frame, including the floor.”
We faced a familiar-looking green-and-white-striped door. “I thought this was the door back home for you, to Minneapolis.”
She pulled a brush out of her back pocket and began painting. “It is. This spell will reroute the portal to L.A. for you, and once you’re gone it’ll revert back to normal. I have to go to the library across the street from this exit. I have the coordinates for the Hidden Troll Court, but I need to get an actual street address. Can you believe we don’t have Internet at EAS?”
She was still moving around too much. “Can’t someone else go? You should probably rest—” I started.
Lena scowled hard at the doorway she was painting. “Who would we send? Melodie with a practice dummy? That won’t attract attention.”
Obviously, Melodie’s efforts to keep Lena still were met with Lena’s usual stubbornness. I backed off. I wasn’t sure if I could handle both Rapunzel and Lena almost yelling at me in one morning.
“Anyway, this is just a temporary portal spell,” she said, with a very Lena-like gleam in her eye. “It’s only good for one transport. It’s basically disposable, so the Director can’t get mad.”
The paint smelled like sulfur. The greeny-gold stuff must have been gr
ound-up dragon scales.
“Okay. Make sure there’s an unbroken line all the way around. If there’s a gap in the paint, the spell won’t work. Next, you put the jar and the paintbrush down, right on the painted stripe on the floor.” She did so. “Then you need to activate the magic with the actual spell.”
“What’s the—?”
She hushed me. “ ‘Up and down, left and right, lead me out, out of sight. Keep me and mine safe from plight; please ignore how this line’s trite.’ ”
If I hadn’t understood Fey, it would have just sounded like a rhyming singsong. It might have even sounded impressive, but with Lena’s magic translator I caught every single ridiculous word.
“I wrote it down for you so you don’t have to memorize it.” She shoved a printout toward me and noticed how I pressed my lips together to keep a very Chase-like snicker from escaping.
“I’m so sorry, Lena—” I said.
“It’s okay. You can laugh.” She was already grinning. “I know it sounds stupid—I’m not great at rhyming anyway, and Melodie said it had to rhyme. So I tried that last line out of desperation, and it worked. All my spells are a little bit silly. I guess it can be my trademark.”
I grinned back. She reached for my hand. I thought at first it was just to squeeze it, to be encouraging or something, but she peered at my new ring curiously. “West told me it has a half day’s worth of his strength. It’ll run out of magic eventually, but do you have any idea how much he can blow, lift, smash, and carry in twelve hours?”
“It breaks trees, you know.” And all the bones in my hand, I almost added. There was so much I wanted to tell Lena, but no time.
Lena’s watch started beeping.
She gasped. “The spell! You have to go! You only have a minute left.”
“Is it ready?” I stared at the dark doorway. “Shouldn’t it glow or light up or something?”
Lena put her hands on her hips. “That flashy stuff is a waste of perfectly good dragon scales. Now go.”
Then she pushed me. I stumbled through, my luggage rolling behind me. The sulfur smell was replaced with exhaust. The sun was brighter and hotter. A plane engine screamed overhead, scarily close, and four impatient drivers honked their car horns at the same time.
LAX. I’d made it.
ory! Perfect timing! I was going to risk a parking ticket to come find you.” Hearing Dad’s voice, I searched the crowd for his face. Since my cell phone was dead, I’d just wandered around in front of the baggage claim, hoping Dad would just show up. “Here, honey!” A flicker of movement to my left, and there he was, waving, his grin ginormous. The first person I had seen all day who wasn’t holding my friends hostage, or being held hostage, or poisoned, or nursing poisoned people.
“Dad!” I broke into a sprint, and when he opened his arms, I crashed into him.
“You’ve gotten so tall. What happened to my little princess? Let me look at you.” His dark hair ran in a thousand directions, like he’d been running his hands through it for a while, maybe stuck in traffic. His gaze lingered on the left side of my face. “My gorgeous girl. I’m so glad you decided to come.” He squeezed me so hard he half lifted me off the ground, and I laughed.
It was disloyal of me—with all the work Lena had done to get me there, with everyone depending on me to save them—but I wished that I could have been there for a real visit. I wished I’d chosen to spend spring break with him instead of at EAS. I hadn’t realized how much I’d missed him.
“Well, you’re in trouble. Your mom has called me three times since Lena’s grandmother told her you were coming here.”
Doom.
I hadn’t thought of Mom all morning.
Dad took my luggage. “She made me get you a new charger, and you’re supposed to call her as soon as I have you.”
Scratch the traffic theory. This explained Dad’s hair.
“No, it’s okay, Rory.” He squeezed my shoulder. A blue SUV was parked in the no-parking zone. He held the door open for me. “She’s just a little overprotective. She doesn’t realize that you’re a grown-up young woman of twelve.”
He threw my duffel in the back of the car, as I hurriedly plugged in my phone.
The glorious homecoming quickly went downhill from there.
“You understand why I’m angry, don’t you?” Mom asked as Dad drove up the ramp toward the highway.
I braced myself. “Yes. Because I didn’t call when I promised to call.”
“That’s only part of it. Your cell may have been dead, but it’s not the only phone in North Carolina, is it?” Mom snapped. I had seen her get this kind of mad with Dad, but never with me. “I can’t believe I had two calls from Lena’s grandmother this week, but none from you. Texts don’t count.”
“You have?” Lena or Jenny must have recruited Mrs. LaMarelle’s help for me.
“Yes, that was the only thing that stopped me from flying down south to find you.”
“I’m just surprised. I thought she would be too worried.” Lena’s gran had to be the toughest woman in the history of grandmothers. “Lena’s—um, sick.”
“Yes. Lena’s grandmother explained there was a family emergency,” she said. I waited for her to ask, Sick how? She was too mad. “But you’re back in L.A. You have a charger and plenty of signal. No more excuses. We’ll talk about this more when you come home.”
I cringed against the seat. The upcoming lecture would be epic.
Mom paused. “I worry, because I love you so much. You know that, right?”
“Yeah,” I said quietly. She had told me this about a thousand times, and every time, it made me feel guilty.
“Maggie, five minutes is over in one minute,” I heard Amy say. Then her voice got a bunch louder, like she’d leaned toward Mom’s phone. “Rory, I’m sorry about your friend, but you lost a lot of trust points.” If Amy sounded that mad, Mom had been super freaked out.
Guilt made me extra polite. “Yes, ma’am.”
“I love you, sweetie,” Mom said finally. “Don’t forget to call me tomorrow, please.”
Hopefully, by tomorrow evening I would be back in Atlantis. Maybe I could find a sand dune with reception. “Okay. Love you too.”
By the time I got off the line, Dad was on his phone—I could tell by the dopey smile on his face that he was talking to his girlfriend. I caught the words “casting call” and “Nuthatch Studios.” Since Dad, as a director, never had to suffer through casting calls himself, this was a very bad sign. Either he was having a maybe-I-should-dabble-in-acting crisis, or it was for me. I’d known something like this would happen if I visited him.
As soon as he hung up, I asked, “So . . . Is there something you wanted to tell me?”
“So . . .” Dad mimicked me with a teasing grin, but when I didn’t smile, he sighed. “Well, I cleared my schedule when I found out you were coming—except for one meeting. There’s this film I want to work on. Their first director just dropped out. We’re supposed to talk about it today. It shouldn’t take too long.”
I made a face. I doubted I could sneak away from a meeting full of studio people. “Could I stay in the car?”
“You could.” He glanced at me, his gaze hitting just to the left of my eyes. “Or you could go to a casting call for the film. They need a child actress for a flashback scene. It would be great if I could reach out in a different way . . . ,” he started. I shook my head, arms crossed. “God, you look like your mother when you do that. It’s terrifying.”
I stopped. I didn’t have any right to be mad. I’d told so many lies to my parents, I was having trouble keeping them straight.
“I already told Klonsky you might stop by,” Dad said. That did make me angry. “That’s the casting director. Please, Rory—it’s not a very big role.”
“Wait, where is it?” Lena’s voice piped up. I jumped forward and started digging though my backpack.
“Same building as the Nuthatch Studios offices.” Dad gave me a weird look. “Are you t
hrowing your voice, princess? It’s kind of creepy. Cool, though!” he added hurriedly. “In case you’re planning to take up the underappreciated art of ventriloquism.”
My hand closed over the mirror.
Lena hadn’t figured out how to text on an M3. Instead she had scrawled a note and pressed it against the screen: Go. Nuthatch is right by the entrance to the Hidden Troll Court. I’ll give you better directions when you get there.
Well, at least I wouldn’t have to catch a cab to a sketchy part of town. “I’ll do it,” I told Dad quickly.
“Really?” He sounded so delighted that I hated having to trick him. He talked all the way through the drive—about the film, and how he’d always wanted to work with such-and-such actor, and how the script had made him want to cry, and how it had made Brie actually cry. Meanwhile I bit my fingernails, plotting out excuses that could separate me from Dad and imagining giant trolls lurking behind tour trams.
When we reached the studios’ parking deck, I reminded him, “It’s just a reading, Dad. Try not to get your hopes up.” I climbed out of the car and whispered to my M3, “We’re here.”
Lena held up one finger, scribbling a note.
“Of course not. Thank you, by the way, for agreeing to do it.” Then he opened up the trunk and yanked out my duffel.
“Why do we need that?” I asked, hiding the magic mirror behind my back.
“I thought you would want to change before your reading. Maybe brush your hair.” Dad’s gaze flickered to the left side of my face again, and I wondered if I’d missed some shampoo in the shower or something. “No one in the world can walk off a plane without looking a little rough around the edges.” Dad led me past a workshop dedicated to making props and a row of trailers.
We were halfway to the giant beige office building before I spotted her—red curls, heart-shaped face, wide eyes that widened more when she spotted us. Standing, she smoothed her airy green dress over her hips. She was obviously in costume—something glittered on her face, and a carnival mask dangled from her wrist.
