Of Sorcery and Snow (13 page)

“If it had fallen out of my hair, I knew that a search would be easiest in the morning, when the sun is up and the children are gone,” Rapunzel said. “Who activated it?”

“If I knew, I wouldn't be questioning you,” the Director said. “Deactivate the comb and let me get back to the library. I have every member of staff searching the corridors for these pranksters, but for God's sake, guard those combs
most carefully
. We'll surely need them in the war to come.”

A few seconds later I heard a door open and then close. With relief, I batted Chase's hand away and let the last cough escape.

“Not yet!” Chase whispered. “Someone else could be in that corridor.”

He was right. We heard slippered feet patter up the hall, and stop right in front of the storeroom door. I held my breath.

The door swung open. It was Rapunzel. I was a little too freaked out about what the Director had said about the combs to even feel relieved.

She whistled a low note. Then the room filled with light, coming from a slender glass vial on a silver chain. “Come out. Quickly.”

But getting out of our hiding spots was a lot harder than getting in. We'd been squatting for so long that my feet had fallen asleep. My elbow knocked a huge jar of pickled ice-griffin eggs right off the shelf, and it would have met a loud and messy end if Chase hadn't caught it.

Miriam leaped out from behind the dresses with a lacy parasol held high. “I'm warning you, Rapunzel. I won't let you stop us even if I—”

“No!” I said, still trying to wiggle free of the shelves. “She's trying to help us.”

Miriam snorted. “Help us? The Snow Queen's sister?”

Rapunzel ignored that, but I couldn't. “She
gave
me the comb,” I said, and Miriam lowered the parasol slowly.

“Makes sense to me,” Kyle said. “I would die for my brothers, but I sure as heck wouldn't do what they told me to. They're idiots.”

“If the others are combing the halls, then the courtyard is clear. Most students are in the ballroom,” Rapunzel said, but she wasn't really looking at us, not even Miriam, who stood right by her elbow. She just kept glancing over the walls. She frowned. “Forgive me. I am having difficulty looking directly at you.”

“Oh, good! The wish worked,” Lena said, triumphantly shaking the jar in her hand. The used-up wish sloshed around inside it. It just looked like turquoise water with a few gold flecks. “We'll get out without a problem.”

“But what about telling people the Snow Queen escaped?” I said. “The others deserve to know.”

“I can tell them,” Kyle said automatically. Then what I'd said must have sunk in. “
What?
She's
out
?”

Oops. I'd completely forgotten he hadn't been in the library then.

“And you're still going to her palace?” Kyle added, glancing at Lena.

I have to hand it to him: He recovered quickly and sped off down the hall. “You guys should get out of here. I'll go to the ballroom and get the eighth graders together. After we spread the news, the grown-ups won't have time to search for you anymore.”

After Kyle sped out of sight, Lena said, in her
I'm trying not to panic
voice, “I hope he tells them that he found out from us. Otherwise the Director will think
he
broke into the library.”

Chase snorted. “The Director won't be in a position to punish
anyone
after word gets out.”

“We're wasting time talking,” Miriam said, charging down the hall.

I lingered behind Rapunzel. If she was going to say something to me, it would be now—right before we left.

“Here.” Rapunzel took my hand and placed something metallic on my palm. The comb. No, three of them—all with the same tree design. “To return them to their original form, you touch the third bar from the right and whisper, ‘Give way.' Do not let your enemies see, or they will be able to take down the combs as well. There is a fourth comb, in the possession of the sorceress Arica. You will find her home on your journey.”

“You didn't tell me what the combs could do,” I said, trying not to sound too accusing or needy. I'd kind of been counting on some ominous-sounding predictions. We needed all the help we could get.

Rapunzel knew what I was thinking. “Sometimes, it is better not to know too much. You will learn soon enough.” I just stared at her blankly until she added, “Oh, Rory—to go or not to go is a decision. It rests on one person and one person only.”

Wow. I'd been hoping for that kind of warning, but now that I had it, I couldn't see any possible way it could help us.

“And the dwarves are not your enemies,” added Rapunzel, which sounded a lot more straightforward. “To earn their alliance, however, you will need to win.”

“As in, win them over?” Lena had pulled out her pencil and notebook, taking notes just like she did with Rumpelstiltskin. Chase looked more skeptical.

“No, I mean that you will need to become champions,” Rapunzel said.

“Are you three coming?” Miriam said, holding the door open for us. The courtyard was dark except for the lanterns over the Table of Never Ending Instant Refills. It was empty, except for that couple in the armchair, but they weren't interested in anything except—you know—kissing.

Lena and Chase hurried me down the hall, but I glanced back at Rapunzel.

I hadn't seen her look so stricken since we'd talked about the coming war last year, and suddenly I understood what she meant. Something bad was going to happen, something too awful for her to warn me about.

But it was too late to change our minds.

We sprinted across the courtyard to where Miriam waited, pack
on. She passed a carryall to Lena, who was fastest, and she tossed the other two to me and Chase. I shrugged it on. The straps pinched my bare shoulders, and as we hurried through the door to Portland, I hoped we would get a chance to change.

Miriam banged through the outer door and waited for us under a huge tree, its bark covered in moss, its roots crumbling the sidewalk around it. When I followed her, my foot found a puddle of slick mud, and I would have slid straight into the tree if Chase hadn't grabbed my shoulder. Leaves dripped above us, and the whole street—houses to our left, shops to our right—gleamed wetly under the streetlamps.

Chase made a face. “Of
course
it's raining.”

“Do we need to find a dry spot and recreate the map?” I asked Lena as she stepped out, pulling up her raincoat's hood. The emerald door swung shut behind her.

“No, not for this part. We don't have to go far. Only a couple blocks.” Lena knelt beside the tree trunk, scooping up some dirt into a vial labeled
HAWTHORNE (PORTLAND, OR)
. We would need that soil for the portal spell.

That step seemed really far away, though. We had a whole quest to survive first. Just getting out of EAS had been so much harder than I expected.

Miriam headed toward the shops. “Hawthorne's this way.”

Most of the businesses were closed. Walking down the street, I spotted a bookstore with its lights on and a couple restaurants open, mostly empty except for a few shell-shocked couples, staring past their menus like their minds were thousand of miles away, as far away as their children in the Arctic Circle. The only people I spotted on the street were a policeman and the waitress he was interviewing. Right as we passed them, my phone decided to beep with a new text message.

My mind instantly flashed to the note I'd left.

Dear Mom,

There was something I had to do—a matter of life and death. I'll be gone for a few days, and I know—I'll have a lot of explaining to do when I get back. I promise I'll answer all
your questions.

I'm really
really
sorry, Mom.

Love,

Rory

She'd found it. She was texting to tell me that she was coming to pick me up immediately, and I wouldn't be there. The Door Trek door would be locked.

I groped around my carryall for my phone.

“You're really going to get that?” Miriam hissed.

But I had to. If Mom was already worrying, I needed to tell her I was okay while I still could.

The text wasn't from Mom, though. It was from my stepmother:
IT'S A GIRL!!!! Any name ideas? XOXO
. I snapped the phone shut, furious, but not at her. Brie was having a girl. I knew it. Just like Solange and Rapunzel.

Lena hung a left and stopped in the side street so fast I nearly walked straight into her. I scooted those thoughts out of my head. The quest was what mattered now.

“I
thought
this was it, but it's supposed to be abandoned,” she said. “Maybe I should have actually drawn the map after all—”

This little corner did have the most activity on the whole street:
about a dozen people around Amy's age lined up outside a door, all waiting to see a man in black. Inside a really fancy border, the sign on the door read
MEMBERS ONLY
.

“Crap.” Chase stared at the line with the kind of horror he usually reserved for bones, tears, and troll armies. “Put in your gumdrops.”

I scooped my translator out of my carryall and stuck it in my ear. I wouldn't mention what Brie's message said. Lena and Chase didn't need to know about one more parallel between my life and the Snow Queen's, and definitely not before we got back from the Arctic Circle.

Then Chase pointed at the sign. The border wasn't just fancy squiggles—it was Fey calligraphy:
SEELIE COURT ONLY. EXCEPTIONS: NOBLE GUESTS, ENCHANTED HUMANS, INDENTURED ELVES, EMPLOYED GNOMES, AND ENSLAVED TROLLS.

“This is an entrance to Queen Titania's dancing pavilion,” Chase explained. I gulped and scanned the line again. Only nine left. I wondered how many were as human as they looked and how many were wearing a glamour. “She has a Door Trek system set up all over the world for it. She likes to have a nice mix of humans to dance with her nobles, so she sends out Fey scouts to lure people in.”

“Okay, but where's the
portal
?” Miriam said. “Philip's Tale didn't mention a pavilion, so it's not our problem.”'

“Unless you want to buy a plane ticket to the Arctic Circle, it
is
our problem,” Chase said. “This entrance to the pavilion is new. It's probably here to cover the Pied Piper's tracks and make it harder for us to reach the portal.”

“The Seelie Court has allied with the Snow Queen?” I asked. That would be really terrible news.

“I doubt it,” Chase said. “Solange insulted Titania and Oberon
once, and the Fey don't forget that. But whoever suggested this place to her probably is.”

I didn't like the idea of the Seelie Queen helping out Solange and not even knowing it. “Do you think we should tell her?”

“Do we have time?” Miriam asked, who clearly thought the answer was no.

“If she catches Characters sneaking around her pavilion unenchanted, she usually tries to imprison them for seven years,” Lena said. “But on the upside, all the regular humans here can be enchanted for only one night. That was Queen Titania's deal with the Canon.”

I bit my tongue to keep myself from throwing out any more stupid suggestions.

“Can you whip up another one of the illusion things?” Miriam asked Lena.

“Maybe,” Lena said slowly. “It'll take me some time, and we might need to get a few more ingredients, and someone will need to chant with me . . .”

Chase took a deep breath, and then he thrust out a hand, showing us a stack of dragon scales. “I got it. An illusion trick my dad taught me.” Suddenly, he looked about a foot too tall. Tiny raised dots lined his face, and scarlet wings rose from his shoulders.

A glamour
was
the best way to get us inside. The guard wouldn't be able to see through it, and with all the fairies around, he probably wouldn't even be suspicious Chase was wearing one. The Fey felt naked without a little magical covering.

But I couldn't believe he was using a glamour in front of the others. Maybe Miriam had bought Chase's story, but Lena's eyes were practically bugging out of her head. She was going to figure it out.

And as much as I wanted Lena to know, this wasn't the right
way to expose his secret. “What now?” I said, hoping that the other two would focus on the
quest
, not on Chase's transformation.

Pretending he didn't notice Miriam and Lena staring, Chase led us over to the line. “I think I can get us in,” he whispered, “but I need you guys to try and act like the other enchanted humans.” He jerked his head at the line.

In the group ahead of us, the girl looked pretty human in a long cotton dress, but her hair shone a little too gold, her eyes a little too purple. I wondered what color her wings were. Beside her, the human with a handlebar mustache couldn't focus his eyes, and his ponytailed buddy had a tiny puzzled frown on his face, like he couldn't remember how he got there.

When the guard opened the door, the glamoured Fey woman sauntered in, her two enchanted captives trailing behind her, their eyes half-lidded.

We were up next.

The guard had cropped silver hair and pretty burly arms for a Fey, but my eyes went straight to the dark stick in his hand, as skinny as a wand. It was Iron Hemlock, basically the Fey version of a Taser. One touch could make a fairy scream in pain. I didn't want to know what it could do to a human.

I concentrated hard on looking stupid, and not like I wished I could reach into my carryall and pull out my sword. Lena and Miriam weren't having any trouble seeming dazed.

Chase swept a bow. It went too low, and with him smirking like that, you could tell there was an insult hidden in it. “A guest, bringing his hosts a little entertainment.”