by Odette Beane
CONTENTS
Dedication
Part One
Wandering Hearts
1 Welcome to Storybrooke
2 The Thing You Love Most
3 Snow Falls
4 The Price of Gold
5 The Shepherd
6 The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter
Part Two
Lost Hearts
7 Desperate Souls
8 7:15 a.m.
9 Skin Deep
10 What Happened to Frederick
11 Red-Handed
12 Heart of Darkness
13 Hat Trick
Part Three
Lost and Found
14 The Stable Boy
15 The Stranger
16 An Apple Red as Blood
17 A Land Without Magic
Once Upon a Time on DVD
Copyright
To the extraordinary fans–you are the fairest of them all
CHAPTER 1
WELCOME TO STORYBROOKE
She had been hunting Ryan Marlow for nearly three weeks now, since he’d emptied his family’s bank accounts and fled New York, embezzlement charges hanging over his head. Why he had decided to stop off in Boston for a little online dating was anybody’s guess, but Emma Swan didn’t care much about why the bail-jumpers she tracked down did what they did. She wasn’t paid to know their stories; she was paid to find them, to catch them, and to bring them in.
She stood and watched him, uncomfortable in her high heels.
Marlow hadn’t seen her yet, and she studied him for a moment. Handsome, just like he was in the pictures, but there was something smarmy about him as well. Which fit the bill, of course—arrogance and wantonness seemed to be the norm with these banker types. There was something about his cool confidence as he waited—it made her sick to her stomach, actually.
She went to him.
“Ah, you must be Emma,” he said, rising as she approached the table, and she smiled her best nice-to-meet-you smile and held out her hand. She frowned at her own fingernails. She had forgotten to paint them.
He smiled broadly, lasciviously. Like a wolf. They shook, and he kept his eyes locked on her.
“Ryan?” she said.
As she sat, Emma, after seeing something in his eyes, smiled at him and said, “Well. You look relieved.”
“I’m sorry,” he said, chuckling nervously. “You just never know how a person will look when you meet them online. For real, I mean.” He went to his seat and sat. “And you are—well, you’re very hot. Online and in real life.”
She did not blush. She looked down, pretended to be flattered. What had his online profile said? Divorced, no children, enjoyed yoga and pickup basketball? Right. Emma knew the real “real life” story. Back in New York, he had three kids under ten years old and a wife with a part-time job, trying to get by alone. Right now the wife was sorting through a welfare application. Devastated. Broken. Explaining where Daddy was. That was real. And here was Ryan Marlow, who had it in him to date after doing that to someone.
“So,” said Ryan. “Tell me something about yourself, Emma.”
Emma smiled her sexiest smile.
“Well,” she said. “First off, I’m an amazing judge of character.”
Ryan Marlow looked surprised.
She was going to enjoy taking this one down.
• • •
In another world, in another time, Snow White stood hand in hand with Prince Charming in the Royal Castle’s ballroom.
All the kingdom’s subjects surrounded the couple. The two looked into each other’s eyes as the bishop asked Snow if she would have Charming forever.
There was no hesitation. She said that she would, and the two smiled at each other nervously and lovingly as the bishop pronounced them man and wife. The court’s musicians began to play, and Charming and Snow leaned together to kiss once again.
It had been something of a miracle. Charming had awoken Snow from a cursed sleep brought on by her stepmother, the Evil Queen. And they were not, it turned out, free of her yet.
This time, just as their lips touched, a tremendous clap of thunder overwhelmed the music, and many in the room cried out. The assembled guests all turned at once to the ballroom’s great doors, where the sound had originated, which flew open with great violence, striking the walls on either side of the entrance.
There, in the doorway, stood a figure all in black.
The Evil Queen.
Again.
Wonderful, thought Snow. More of this.
Guards rushed her as she began to stride toward Snow and Charming, who stood in the center of the room, clutching each other. The Queen sent a half-dozen guards flying through the air with a flick of her wrist—her magic was still powerful, there was no doubt.
When she was near, Snow pushed Charming back, grabbed the hilt of his sword, and unsheathed it before he could stop her. Snow White pointed the blade at the Queen, eyes aflame.
“You are not welcome here,” she said, and her strong voice echoed through the great room. “Go. Now.”
The Queen stopped walking, kept smiling.
“Hello again, Snow White,” she said.
Charming, his hand on Snow’s, slowly pushed the sword down until its tip touched the stone floor.
“She has no power,” he said to Snow quietly. “We’ve already won.”
He was right, she knew—after Charming woke Snow from the Queen’s sleeping curse, the two of them united the kingdom against the Queen, driving her from power and allowing love to reign.
“Leave us,” said Charming to the Queen. “You’ve already lost, and I won’t let you ruin this day. Not another one. Let us have our happiness. You’ve been defeated.”
“On the contrary,” said the Queen, “I’m not here to ruin anything. I’ve come to give you a gift.”
“We don’t want it,” said Snow quickly. It didn’t matter what it was.
“And nevertheless, I shall give it to you,” said the Queen. She raised an eyebrow. “Generous of me, don’t you think?” The Queen was beautiful and terrifying all at once. Her features were severe, her hair black as onyx, her eyes piercing and ice-cold. Perhaps once, long ago, she had been an innocent young maiden herself, the fairest of the land, but now all could see that hatred and bitterness had pulled the warmth from her face. Snow had known her for a very long time, and every time she saw her, the Queen had become more embittered. Snow didn’t understand how one person could hate so much.
As the Evil Queen spoke, more guards poured into the room, surrounding her, but her gaze did not waver.
“My gift to you is happiness,” she said. “This happiness. Today.”
“What do you mean?” asked Charming cautiously.
“I mean that tomorrow, good prince,” said the Queen, “I will begin my life’s work. To destroy your happiness. Permanently.”
At this, Charming had had enough, and he threw his sword in one quick, lightning-fast maneuver. It sailed toward the Queen, tip forward, bearing down on her heart.
Just before it reached her, the Queen disappeared in a cloud of inky black-and-purple smoke.
The sword disappeared as well.
Snow White, her hand on her new husband’s arm, watched the cloud swirl and fade.
• • •
Exhausted, Emma walked down the hallway to her apartment, holding her red heels with the fingers of her left hand and a bag of groceries in the other hand. Taking down Ryan Marlow was not as satisfying as she had hoped, and now she had a headache.
Her hand also hurt.
He had tried to run, of course. The men all tried to run. He’d made it to his car, only to find it booted. Not a dif
ficult thing for her to set up. That’s when she had rammed his head into the car.
These things—the hunt, the chases—had all become a bit predictable. What else did she know how to do, though? And where else would she go? Something was off, but she didn’t let herself think about it too much. Nothing a little sleep and scotch wouldn’t cure.
Inside the apartment, Emma dumped the groceries on the counter, turned on some music, and removed the birthday cupcake she’d purchased for herself. She fished out the candles she’d bought, removed one from the package, stuck it in the cupcake, and lit it. It wasn’t much of a party, no. But it was something.
She watched the candle glow for a moment. Another year, another year alone.
She closed her eyes.
Please, she thought, don’t let me be alone on my birthday.
It sounded depressing there in her head, ringing around, but it was her wish, she had to admit.
She was not one to indulge in self-pity. Plenty of people had worse pasts than she had, and she was strong enough to contain the ache of her blank history. That didn’t mean she didn’t get lonely, no, but it meant she could handle loneliness. She just also needed to wish it away sometimes.
Just as she blew out the candle, the doorbell rang. Emma frowned at the door, ticking through the various fugitives she’d hunted down in the last few years, trying to recall if any of them had recently been released from prison. Probably, she thought. One of these days she was going to open the door to a sledgehammer falling down on her head.
She went and looked through the peephole and thought: What in the hell?
When she opened the door, a small boy—a stranger—stood looking back at her. He had shaggy brown hair and was wearing a sagging, full backpack. He stared up at her, eyes wide.
“Hello?” Emma said hesitantly.
“Hi,” said the boy. “Are you Emma Swan?”
“I… am?” said Emma. “Can I help you?”
The kid smiled, held out his hand. “I’m Henry Mills,” he said. “I’m your son.”
Emma stared. She didn’t take his hand.
“I don’t have a son,” she said flatly.
The boy seemed to ignore this. Instead of responding, he pushed past her, looking at the kitchen.
She was too shocked to do anything, to stop him. “Ten years ago,” he said casually, looking around. He turned back to her. “Did you give up a baby for adoption?”
Emma again said nothing. Some of the color had drained from her face, though; she noted it when she looked in the mirror.
“I’m him. The kid. Are you gonna eat that cupcake?”
“I—”
It could be him. Emma didn’t think he was lying, and she could see her eyes in his eyes. But if he was the son she had spent so many years burying and forgetting, to see him here, so casually asking for a cupcake, sent her into fight-or-flight mode. She felt dizzy. She felt—
She didn’t know what she felt.
(She never knew what she felt.)
She closed the door and turned, trying to think of something to say.
“You can have it,” she said, distracted. “Have the whole thing.”
This seemed to please him. Emma put the cupcake on a plate, removed the candle, set him up on a stool, and excused herself.
In the bathroom, she stared at her face in the mirror, steadying herself, holding the edge of the sink. How different she looked from ten years ago, when she was only eighteen and all alone. She remembered looking in the mirror then, too, in the last days before the birth, when she’d been holed up in a dusty jail simply waiting, not a soul to help her. Loneliness. She remembered feeling it then, and realizing that the baby she was about to give up would have meant the end of loneliness had she kept him. But she didn’t.
She took a few more breaths.
“Get ahold of yourself, Swan,” she said out loud.
At the sound of her own voice, a more reasonable, skeptical, and stronger part of her mind stirred and snapped to life. Old Emma. Tough Emma. Bail-bond Emma. The real question: Who was this kid, really? He was certainly not her son. Here she was getting bent out of shape, and for all she knew he was rifling through her things in the other room, or he was the front end of some con that involved a number of large men bursting into her apartment just as she was beginning to open up….
It was a con. That was it. Someone knew her past. Someone knew her past and someone knew how to get under her skin. She hurried back out to the kitchen, ready to start shouting.
The boy was sitting at the table, eating the cupcake. He looked up, and his eyes disarmed her.
“Hi,” he said. “How was the bathroom?”
“Hi,” she said, frowning again. She walked over to him, put her hand on the table, took it back. This little kid was making her unsure how to behave.
“So. I’d like to ask you a few questions,” she said finally.
“Okay,” he said. “Go.”
“How… did you find me?”
“I’m resourceful,” he said. He seemed bored by the question, more interested in studying her reaction than anything having to do with his own feelings. “This isn’t going how I thought it would go.”
“What’s ‘this’? This conversation?”
“Yes.”
“How did you think it would go?”
“More like Oprah. You know? With crying and hugging.”
“I’m not the crying type, kid.”
“I can tell,” he said, agreeing.
If she didn’t know better, she would have guessed he was making fun of her. Or chiding her, at least.
“We should get going,” he added.
Emma smiled skeptically, lowered her brow. She did like his audacity, whoever he was. “I’m sorry, I didn’t know we were going anywhere,” she said. “You were just leaving. I was just going to bed. We were just about to never see each other again.”
“We are going somewhere,” he said, nodding. “You have to come home with me. You have to give me a ride, at least.”
“And where’s home?”
“Storybrooke.”
Emma looked at him. She looked at the book he’d taken out of his backpack. Ah. I see. This kid, she thought, is in the middle of some kind of psychological “event.”
“Storybrooke?” she said finally. “Are you kidding me?”
“No. What?” he asked innocently. “That’s what it’s called.”
“Okay, kid,” she said. “This has been fun. But one, I don’t have a son. And two, I’m calling the cops now. I don’t have time for this and you’re obviously a runaway. Do your parents not know where you are? I’m calling the cops.” Emma went toward the phone, realizing she had said it twice.
“No you’re not.”
She glanced up, phone in hand. “I’m not?”
“No,” he said, taking another bite of the cupcake. “Because if you do, I’ll tell them you kidnapped me.”
Emma thought it through. The doubts trickled back. If he was really her kid, it was a good plan. The cops would suspect her of having a motive for taking her biological son, and at the very least, she’d get tangled up with red tape for hours, possibly days. Calling the cops would be a lot more trouble than it was worth, even if she was in the right.
But still, something was wrong with this whole thing. He couldn’t actually be her son, could he?
“Listen, kid,” she said. “I like to think that I have one superpower. One thing I can do. You know what it is? I can always tell when someone’s lying. Always. And you, kid, are lying.”
She wasn’t sure if she believed it, but she let it sink in. She was good at sussing out lies, but the truth was that he seemed to be telling the truth. Which meant she didn’t know what to think.
He swallowed the last of his cupcake. “I’m good at telling when people are lying, too,” he said.
“Are you? Spit it out.”
He nodded slowly. She could see that his confidence was starting to wane; he looked upset
. He’s just a little kid, she thought.
And then that softhearted other Emma popped up again, and she thought: No, Emma. He’s your kid.
It was the little things. His ears were the same as his father’s ears. The shape of his eyes—she could see her own there, just a little bit, just a flash of I am looking in the mirror right now. Emma could even hear something in the pitch of his voice. Of course it would have been nice to be able to compare his ears and his eyes and his voice to her own father’s, her own mother’s. But that was another thing altogether. She’d never known her parents.
This isn’t a con, Emma thought. You know it.
“Please don’t call the police,” he said. “Okay? Just come home with me.”
Emma took a breath.
“To Storybrooke,” she said. What else could she do? “You need a ride home to Storybrooke? That’s what you’re asking. That simple request, is it?”
“Uh-huh.”
Emma sighed. There was no fighting this kid.
“Okay, then. Let’s go to Storybrooke.”
She couldn’t believe the size of his smile.
• • •
Snow White, belly amply swollen with both new life and anxious anticipation, hurriedly followed the jailer through the dark corridor. She and Prince Charming were on their way to speak with the one man in the realm who could answer their question. Snow had not been able to find peace since the Queen’s threats; she had to know the truth.
The jailer, a bulky and dyspeptic man, did not like this idea one bit.
“Don’t give him your name, and here, wear these cloaks,” he said knowingly, passing two heavy hooded cloaks back to the couple. “Your best line of defense is anonymity.”
Charming took the cloaks, put his on, handed one to his wife. “Why did I let you talk me into this?” he said to her.
Snow kept pace beside him. She put her cloak on, too. “It’s the only way,” she said. “You know I’m always right.”
“He is right to be wary, m’lady,” said the jailer ominously. “None is filled with more regret than he who’s spoken to Rumplestiltskin.”
Charming and Snow shared a look: They were both a little worried at the man’s words.