Unspun

by Ruth Nickle

  “But he appeared as a mouse in the stories,” Lena argued. “The book said he had seven heads.”

  “He had seven faces.” The distinction made the prince grimace. “He could take seven forms.”

  “But he chose to be a mouse?”

  “He was trapped in that form by the same spell that compelled me to appear as a nutcracker,” he said. “Marie helped break that curse, but she also helped to unleash him.”

  “Glad you don’t victim-shame,” she deadpanned, setting down her fork.

  “She was brave and loyal and succeeded in defeating him that night,” he countered solemnly. “For that, I have honored your family for the long years since. She succeeded because his power was divided between directing his troops and dueling with me, and because I was foolish, I believed that the defeat was permanent.” After a few heartbeats of silence, he continued speaking in a subdued tone. “I apologize for that lapse in judgment.”

  In her current mood, Lena neither acknowledged the apology nor pardoned him. “So, he has re-established his domain in my house. Why now?”

  “Because the link between our worlds was made vulnerable at the time of your mother’s passing,” he explained. “I am unsure if this is the first time that he has attempted such a feat, but it succeeded this time and for that, I am guilty of negligence.”

  “You are.” She pushed her plate away, appetite suddenly gone. “What does it mean for me? If I return home, will I be trapped?”

  “You will be in danger, but not beyond my power,” Prince said. “By agreeing to meet with me here, you fortified the alliance that was yours by birthright. You are under my protection wherever you go.”

  “Except you will not visit except by invitation,” she reminded him. “That was part of the agreement.”

  “Unless I am coming to your defense.” He didn’t shrug, but he tilted his chin as if challenging her to disagree. “Peril will demand that I act.”

  “And how will we define that peril?” The Mouse King’s original infraction of telling her borrowed stories from her mother’s deployment was manipulation, but not much as far as threats went. “Will you be my Secret Service agent or annoying older brother?”

  He was silent for a few moments of contemplation. “If you are in physical or magical danger, I will respond immediately,” he said. “In other circumstances, I will come when invited. Is that all right?”

  Lena nodded. “So, what has to be done to seal the house?”

  He seemed to relax at her acquiescence, or at least his posture seemed less battle ready. “The first move would have been to remove from the house all physical ties to our kingdom,” he said, “but Anna took the sugar plums and you brought the nutcracker with you, so that is done. I will take care of the binding spells and set watchers.”

  “Which means that if there’s no physical tie allowed in the house, I’ll be unable to go home?”

  “Until we have found a permanent solution,” he confirmed. “It is currently too dangerous.”

  “So, my family’s legacy means exile?” Lena had felt more at home on campus for the last year, but her house was the last place that she associated with Mom, and that wasn’t to be taken lightly. “Unacceptable.”

  “Unavoidable.” Once again, he straightened his shoulders and leaned forward. It had taken less than a minute to erase the progress that had been implied in her accepting his help. “At the moment, you have no heir to pass this legacy to, and I have no wish for this to be the last generation of Hoffmans for me to protect.”

  “It seems to me that you haven’t done much to protect this generation.” She allowed herself to lean forward as if she were ready to charge him. “I’m not agreeing to banishment from my own home.”

  “I’m not asking you to forever, just temporarily.” He held his stance for a minute longer before looking away and standing. “I will hold him at bay, but you must agree not to confront him without allowing me to put some defensive measures in place. You would be able to visit your home without being as much under his power as the house itself is.”

  That seemed more reasonable; keeping her out of the house would allow Prince to work without setting this many conditions, but he wouldn’t keep her from still using home as one of her havens.

  “All right,” Lena agreed. “If Anna accepts this as well, what happens next?”

  * * *

  Lena knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that there would be consequences, whether in the form of increased protection or a proper lecture. She doubted if Prince would dare to put her under house arrest, but he would not be happy about her decision to break one of the fundamental rules. This wasn’t picking a fight, though, just testing the water by crossing her own threshold for the first time in weeks. She’d resisted the urge to visit there in all this time, but the pull of home kept growing stronger until she decided she just had to go peek. It would be fine; the prince was far too quick to assume everything was dangerous. Nothing would go wrong, she kept telling herself until she almost felt convinced. And if the prince was angry at her for it, she even had a menorah to retrieve in case she needed an explanation for this errand.

  Anna had insisted on coming along as backup or moral support, but Lena had firmly instructed her to stay in the car. If there was anything amiss, Anna would be more valuable as a getaway driver than as an escort. Anna was about as enthusiastic about being sidelined as she was about risking a visit to the house, but she eventually agreed that Lena should be allowed to put herself through this.

  Before she could lose her nerve on her own doorstep, she jammed the key into the lock and twisted. She half-expected to find something visibly altered now that her family’s old enemy had been in control of the premises, but other than the scent of slightly stale air, home was just as she remembered it. The only sounds were caused by the heater and fridge, and even her breath seemed inappropriately loud in such quiet. She nevertheless moved cautiously and left the hallway lights off, but turned on a lamp as soon as she reached the living room.

  “I did not expect to see you here,” the man she had first thought of as the prince commented from Mom’s favorite armchair. “On the other hand, I should have known that you would come when I called to you.”

  Lena had been waiting for this ambush since she unlocked the front door, but it did not lessen the shock any. Her bookbag fell from her shoulder with a thud and she immediately gripped the edge of the table.

  “I’m sorry.” Her ersatz nutcracker chuckled, maintaining the ruse that he was the prince. “I wished to welcome you home without doing permanent damage to your peace of mind. It has been so long since we spoke.”

  If he was going to pretend, she would too. She crossed to the bookshelf and retrieved the menorah she would need for the holiday with relative calm, but when she finally spoke, she kept her voice steady and her smile fixed in place.

  “I called for you,” she admitted, “but when you did not come, I assumed that our bond was not strong enough to reach beyond these walls.”

  He stood and approached, reaching a hand towards her. Lena immediately turned and headed for the kitchen as if she had something to accomplish other than getting beyond his reach.

  “It will change in time,” he promised at her back as she casually got a glass of water. “This is a difficult time for you, and our bond is not as it should be. Perhaps while you are home, that will change.”

  Over your dead body, Lena thought, not trusting herself to look him in the eye.

  “Perhaps,” she echoed. “I will be back soon, and we will see how things go then.”

  For a moment, his expression darkened, but he almost immediately affected a mournful look as though disappointed in her. “I had hoped that this would be a friendship to be enjoyed on the holidays.”

  “I know,” was the only thing she felt comfortable saying.

  “It would pain your mother
if you trusted me so little,” he continued. “Perhaps, if you came here every time you were in need of my assistance, our bond would grow strong enough for me to answer your call whenever it occurred.”

  That was undoubtedly part of his end game and Lena couldn’t say what that would accomplish, but she didn’t want to know. He was a treacherous rat, but he was a treacherous rat in a very small cage and that was how she liked it.

  She turned just before he would have laid hands on her and was able to back away. “As you said, it has been a difficult time.”

  “Then perhaps you should stay here after the semester resumes.” He arched an eyebrow, inviting her into the discussion. “What better place to heal is there than home?”

  “How about your kingdom?” She watched for any sign of suspicion or a hint of doubt, since this would seem like a huge step forward for someone who had resisted an alliance at first, but he was as flawlessly uncaring as ever. “If I have inherited your allegiance, I hope that I have earned the right to go there as my ancestors did.”

  “Once we are better friends, perhaps,” he suggested. “My loyalty to you is not in question, but I am not sure that you would find yourself welcomed in my realm just yet.”

  She didn’t know her mother’s prince very well yet, but she knew that he would have never made her welcome conditional. He had already tried to manipulate her into cooperating and this most recent lie immediately set her teeth on edge. “I understand,” she lied. She stepped around him to retrieve her bag and strode to the door. “We will speak more of this over the break.”

  “Why wait?” He had moved across the room with almost silent ease and blocked her access to the doorknob. “If we break down a few of the barriers between us, perhaps our friendship will not be confined to this house.”

  “I don’t want to rush into this.” It was a feeble lie that she suspected he wouldn’t tolerate more than once. “I’ll learn to trust you in time . . . ”

  “You have no reason to mistrust me.”

  Lena fell back a pace at his ingratiating smile, and he stepped forward, driving her farther from her escape route.

  “Why not give me the benefit of the doubt?”

  “Because I know.”

  The words were out of her mouth before she even thought to censor herself, and she clenched her jaw. The Mouse King leaned forward, encouraged by her discomfort, and it was a struggle to stand her ground.

  “What, precisely, is it that you think you know?”

  She had said too much, so she opted for a half-truth. “I know that things are not as simple as you’re making them out to be,” she said. “I don’t know why that is, but I don’t want to make any promises until everything’s on the table.”

  His hand latched onto her upper arm with such speed that the air rushed from her lungs in surprise. His grip, which she had assumed would feel slimy, felt no more extraordinary than a friend’s hand on her shoulder.

  “If you truly think that, this is no time to put distance between us,” he said in a rat’s hiss. “It’s for your safety as well as mine.”

  His touch wasn’t forceful enough to hurt her arm, but a pressure behind her eyes caught her attention and flourished into a dull, throbbing pain. Time seemed to stand still as the pain became stronger and all the while, he stared intently at her as if measuring her ability to suffer.

  “I have to go,” she suddenly blurted out, wrenching her arm away. “I will . . . you and I will . . . ”

  She couldn’t find a single thing to say in the end, but she managed to reach the door. The pain didn’t fade as she put distance between herself and the house, and by the time she reached the car, it had been joined by a churning in her stomach. Anna immediately shifted gears and peeled away from the curb as if driving a getaway vehicle. Lena kept her gorge down, but just barely.

  “What happened?” her aunt asked once they were outside the city limits.

  “I almost told him.” Shutting her eyes against the glare of sunlight helped, but the pain now pounded against the inside of her skull with each heartbeat. “I think he realizes something’s wrong—”

  “But he didn’t tell you who he was?”

  “No.”

  “And he didn’t hurt you?”

  He probably didn’t even leave bruises, but she couldn’t risk causing a panic by checking her arm for marks; the sudden headache was the clearest evidence that she had been subjected to gut-wrenching terror. “He didn’t.”

  Anna’s grip on the steering wheel relaxed slightly, but her voice remained tense. “Summon Prince.”

  “I think his watchmen will have tipped him off,” Lena said.

  “He promised to only come when summoned.”

  “Which means he’ll probably exercise some kind of ultimate override on the family contract.” She rubbed restlessly at her temples, more out of weariness than any belief that it would do some good. “I’ll summon him as soon as I get home.”

  The headache began to subside by the time they returned to her apartment and Anna accompanied her back inside. True to his word, Prince had not invaded against her will. True to Lena’s word, she summoned him immediately.

  “You permitted him to touch you,” he said without preamble. “There are still traces of his sorcery on you.”

  “Traces?” Anna squinted at her arm as if looking for some kind of neon marker. “Traces that he can use to come here now?”

  “I think not.” Prince handed over the sugar plums as an afterthought, as though the tribute were the last thing on his mind. “I recognize his power, but it is not strong enough for him to wield it from afar.”

  “Which is another reason against her going back.” Anna folded her arms. “If she keeps her distance, he shouldn’t be able to do anything, right?”

  It was the first time that she had seen a glower on his face. He had too much respect for her mother to be angry with Lena in most situations, but he seemed to think that her breaking their agreement about the house was an extenuating circumstance.

  “Correct.” He looked as if he wanted to add more but clenched his jaw instead.

  Lena appreciated the restraint in not belaboring the point, and Anna nodded in satisfaction.

  “I will have to study how to best rid you of his influence, but I hope that you have satisfied whatever need drove you to contact him and that you recognize the danger.”

  The headache throbbed more emphatically at that moment, and Lena could only respond in a whisper. “I do.”

  * * *

  Prince left, having given her a potion to help with sleep, but Lena awoke the next morning with a dull version of the previous night’s headache. She doubted if painkillers would touch it, but she took some just in case. By the time she got out of classes, all that was left was a cramp in her neck.

  It flared up three days later without explanation or warning, but only lasted an hour. The following day, with no exams to take or essays to hand in, she left the lights off and only awoke when her phone buzzed with an incoming text alert.

  Anna had only written two words: Summon him.

  Her alarm clock claimed it was just after midnight, so she responded, I will in the morning. Want to tell me why?

  Summon him now. Anna was almost certainly glowering at the phone and it wasn’t like her to answer this quickly late at night. I’m on my way so we can talk about what you’ve been up to.

  After shooting off a quick reply, Lena stretched muscles that felt as stiff as if she’d been holding still for a full week. Her stomach cramped in protest of her long day in bed, and she headed for the kitchen. She wasn’t about to dress up for the conference, but no one would fault her for bringing a bowl of cereal.

  The stench of spoiled food hit her as soon as she opened the fridge. The jug of milk was distended, and its contents were beginning to separate. The leftover chicken from Sunday dinner
was looking slimy instead of marinated, and a slight fuzz of mold was creeping along the corner of a half-eaten sandwich she’d made for lunch. None of this should have been possible—the fridge was in perfect working order and they had not lost electricity. None of the food should’ve spoiled . . . unless something more sinister was at play. Even more puzzling, Laurie’s food looked like it had been there less than a day.

  From the force of the knock on the door, she guessed that Anna had arrived first. Lena shut the fridge door tightly and answered her insistent pounding empty-handed.

  “You’re going to wake Laurie up.”

  Anna stepped aside to let Prince past, and he entered with all the caution of someone expecting to find an active shooter around the corner. “Please leave,” he said.

  As much as she disliked having male visitors after curfew, Lena suspected Laurie would have an even stronger reaction to finding herself alone except for an intruder.

  “No way. If you’re coming in, I’m staying here.”

  “I’ll stay inside with him,” Anna said, “but Lena, we have to check something, and you shouldn’t be there for it. Here.” She grabbed Lena’s jacket from the coat rack and thrust it into Lena’s hands.

  Lena pulled the proffered jacket over her shoulders as they shut the door, but she didn’t have long to wait before they emerged.

  “It’s safe to go in.” Prince’s voice was low and reassuring.

  “Are you sure?” She glanced towards the kitchen. “I think the Mouse King has done something to the food.”

  Neither of them looked surprised by such an absurd statement, but Anna reached out to draw her into a quick embrace. “It’s not the food,” she said. “It’s the time.”

  Lena pulled away and powered up her phone’s display. It was still the middle of the night, but her eye caught the date.

  “That can’t be right.”

  “How’s your headache?”

  She honestly hadn’t thought about it since the text had woken her up. “Better,” Lena said cautiously. “But what do you mean the time?”