by Schulte, Liz
“It’s time,” Olivia said.
Sparks crackled and the air started to feel thicker. Olivia vanished.
“She’s leaving?” Megan squeaked.
“She’ll be back,” I said. “Boone and I will be behind the car, you guys should be close, but also somewhere you can see the elevator. No matter what, don’t let her take the woman.” They glanced around and went to the middle row while I went behind the car, squatting down between the bumper and the wall.
Boone matched my stance. “Maggie,” he whispered, touching my arm just above the elbow. “I’m sorry for blaming you last night. It was uncalled for and not at all your fault.”
I looked over at him. “It’s okay.”
He shook his head. “It’s a long story, but it isn’t okay. Nic and I had a fight and you were brought up and then…” He sighed.
And then I showed up and Nicole was taken. Guilt was something I understood well. It didn’t keep me from wanting to ask what was said, though I could guess. He had been spending a lot of time with me.
“You didn’t do anything, but try to help. I didn’t have any right to talk to you like that. A lot of what Nicole said wasn’t untrue. Knowing you has not only complicated my life, but also how I feel about certain things including the direction I see my life heading. I lashed out at you when I’m the only one who should feel guilty.”
I blinked. What exactly was he saying? I started to ask and then stopped myself. “Apology accepted. Let’s not talk about it again until Nicole is back and everyone is safe, okay?” I peeked out around the bumper. The door had almost taken form. The elevator door dinged behind us with the gentle whooshing sound as it opened its doors. Within moments, gray wood with cracked and chipped white paint stood in the spot as solid as any real structure. The elevator dinged and quick footsteps echoed across the cement.
The magical door opened and the same heavy feeling I’d experienced at Boone’s house crushed down on me. The woman in white floated out of the door, toward the aisle.
“You don’t belong here, Holda,” Olivia’s voice came out strong. The pressure on me released enough that I could move like I was treading deep water.
Holda stopped, only her skirt still visible to me. “It is of no concern to you,” she said. “I won’t be a moment.”
I nudged Boone and mouthed. “Time to go.”
I was about to step through the doorway when I glanced back. Boone hadn’t even made it inches. We didn’t have time for this. I started back to him, when Phoenix appeared behind him, waving me on. I hesitated only a moment before stepping through.
There was an immediate sense of falling, though my feet were firmly planted on the ground. A too perfect, too green meadow stretched out in front of me. Lilacs danced in a breeze I couldn’t feel. A thatched roof cottage stood at the end of the meadow, just before a dark and ominous forest. Behind the woods, a tall castle loomed, the spires almost reaching to the clouds. I turned around to watch for Boone and Phoenix, but the doorway wasn’t behind me. There was only a dirt road that looked identical in both directions.
“Let go of me. Who are you?” Boone said as both guys appeared, though they looked completely different.
Boone’s dark blond hair was shorter and parted on the side into a perfectly unnatural wave. He was suddenly wearing a red cape and hat with a tan tunic and brown pants that were pretty tight. Phoenix, on the other hand, was wearing a turban, baggy pants, and an open leather vest with no shirt underneath it.
I snickered. “Did you stop for a wardrobe change?”
“Looked in the mirror lately?” Phoenix said, letting go of Boone.
Except for being too pale, Phoenix was pulling off the new look.
He caught me staring and winked, reminding me that I was mad at him. I grabbed his arm and dragged him to the side. “I thought you weren’t coming.”
“And I told you, it’s my job to protect you.”
“Maggie, I think we should hurry,” Boone said, giving me an impatient gesture, but I didn’t miss the tightening of his square jaw as his eye went to Phoenix’s hand on my arm.
“Just so we are clear, this doesn’t change anything,” I said to Phoenix then strode over to Boone, my dress swishing around my legs.
Wait. Dress? I glanced down. I was wearing a blue dress with a white apron. “What the holy hell?” I reached up and touched my hair, feeling a velvety headband. I had to look a lot like…I looked at the guys again. We were all dressed in costumes. I pictured the kids. I’d noticed they were dressed oddly, but as what hadn’t struck me.
“We’re in a fairy tale,” I said. “That’s the collection. The kids are Hansel and Gretel.” If Boone was a prince, Nicole must be a princess. “Nicole was asleep when she was taken, and Holda pricked her finger with a pin. She never opened her eyes. Maybe she’s Sleeping Beauty? The hotel maid would be Cinderella—”
Phoenix’s cheek twitched. “That’s one explanation for this. The other is that we’re in hell.”
Boone smiled. “I don’t know why I didn’t see it. Of course. That’s why her appearance changed too. She was going with the stories. So if that’s the case then Nicole’s in the castle.”
“And the kids will be in the witch’s candy house,” I said.
“We can do this faster if we split up,” Phoenix said. “Maggie and I can get the boy and girl. You get Nicole. We can meet back here.” Obviously he was used to being in charge.
Boone raised a doubtful eyebrow. “I think we should stay together. Besides, I don’t think Maggie wants to go with you—whoever you are.”
Phoenix stepped forward, sizing him up. “I don’t think Maggie quite knows what she wants, but don’t worry, I’ll help her figure it out.”
Boone folded his arms. “She’s perfectly capable of making her own decisions.”
“She’s also standing right here,” I said, waving my hand. “And I think we should stay together. Let’s go.”
“At least I don’t lead her on and then blame her for my problems,” Phoenix fired back. “She knows exactly what she’s getting with me.”
Boone’s jaw tightened.
I jumped between them. “Both of you shut up. This isn’t helping. We’re not splitting up. The only way we’re going to get anyone back is by working together. Phoenix, give me your lamp.”
One of his eyebrows arched. “My what?”
“Lamp. Come on. Genies are supposed to grant three wishes to the person who possesses the lamp. Give it to me, I will wish for everyone back, then we can get out of here.”
He patted the legs of his baggy pants. “I don’t have it.”
Of course he didn’t. “Then I guess we’re doing this the hard way.”
“Which way do we go?” Phoenix asked.
I pointed toward the woods and we started off. If I remembered my fairy tales, the witch’s cottage was deep in the woods—not the one on the edge of the tree line. But the forest was large and the cottage could be anywhere. And another, more disturbing, thought was taking hold in my mind. What if the three people we knew about weren’t the only ones? What if everything in this world was something she had stolen, like her own personal dollhouse?
“This place is messed up,” Phoenix said.
“Besides for the obvious, how so?” I asked, curious about what he was picking up.
“From where we stood, the forest was at least two hundred yards away, but we made it here in less than twenty steps and the cottage at the edge disappeared.”
I looked around. He was absolutely right. I didn’t even notice. “I don’t think we’ve scratched the surface of the weird that we are about to discover.” I started into the twisted, dark forest, and the ground gave out around me. I grabbed at a tree limb, snapping it off in my hand as I fell. My entire body jerked, as Phoenix caught the back of my gown and yanked me back up. We all looked down. The hole was so deep that the bottom wasn’t visible.
“I think you almost went down a rabbit hole,” Boone said. He reached
down and took my hand gently in his. “You’re bleeding.”
“It will hea—” It should have healed by now, but blood still welled from the scratch across my palm. I wrapped the corner of my apron around it. If I couldn’t heal, what else had changed? “I’m not healing.” I gave Boone a light push that back home would make him stumble back, but he didn’t move an inch. My strength was gone too. I glanced at Phoenix and shook my head, knowing he’d understand.
He nodded once. “Stay behind me and watch where you step.” Phoenix trudged into the forest and Boone and I scrambled to keep up.
After what felt like miles in silence, Phoenix finally stopped. “Are we headed to the castle or looking for a candy house?”
“The castle,” Boone said at the same time I said, “The cottage.”
“But we can see where the castle is.” A wolf’s howl punctuated Boone’s sentence. “If we get Nicole, we can get the kids on the way back.”
“Did you look at that castle? It’s enormous. We could spend just as long trying to make it through there. Plus, the children have been missing longer and are in more danger, if she’s being true to the fairy tales. The witch is going to try to eat them. Nicole will just be—um, Phoenix?” I pointed at his leg. A long vine had wrapped itself around his ankle and was starting its way up.
He reached down and tore it off, but it started back toward him immediately, twice as thick as it had been before. He sidestepped the vine as it darted toward him. A second one shot out of the ground behind him.
“Run,” I said to softly to Boone then launched myself at Phoenix, knocking him backwards. We tumbled down a small hill, landing in the soft moss at the bottom, Phoenix on top of me. The air in my lungs thinned.
“Ow,” he said, not at all trying to move. “You tackled me.”
“I saved you from the vines.”
He raised an eyebrow with a slight smile.
“I did.” I pushed him, but he didn’t budge. “This doesn’t mean anything.”
“Maggie,” Boone called from somewhere deeper in the forest.
“Keep telling yourself that. You know, if you knew yourself half as well as you think you know me, we wouldn’t be having this conversation,” Phoenix said, helping me up. “And with your strength and healing gone, you need to stop taking risks. In this world, you’re mortal, Maggie. Keep that in mind next time you try to save me from vegetation.”
I straightened my dress. “And you think you aren’t?”
“I’m a genie. I think my problems are much worse. All someone has to do is find my lamp, and I will have to do anything they wish me to do,” he said. “I don’t think I will be able to fight it. Genies never had much choice in the stories.”
“Maggie,” Boone called again.
“Your psychic is going to get us killed if he keeps shouting.” Phoenix grabbed my wrist and dragged me toward the sound of Boone’s voice.
“How do you know he’s a psychic? You haven’t met Boone before tonight.”
He didn’t slow as all as he pulled me along. “You couldn’t keep anything from me if you wanted to, which, by the way, you don’t.”
We spotted Boone at the summit of another hill. He waved us up. As I crested the top, and there it was. A life-sized gingerbread house with smoke coming out of the chimney and a creek to the side that looked a lot like chocolate.
Phoenix whistled. “She’s committed to this scenario.”
Chapter 15
“How did you find this place?” I asked Boone.
“You told me to run and I did.” He gave me a pointed look at the fact that he had actually listened to me this time. “But then I got turned around. It was like trees were popping up behind me as I went and moving because when I turned around to look for you, nothing looked the same. The next thing I knew, I was here.” He frowned at the house. “I was led here. It’s probably a trap.”
“I have no doubt,” Phoenix said. “And I’m sure all the shouting didn’t alert any old hag who might live inside it to our presence.”
I headed for the cottage, sick of their shit. They could stand out there and argue until their lips fell off. I had two little kids to rescue. I nudged the gingerbread door open with my foot, craning my neck so I could see inside. I spotted the children immediately, sitting in a large cage next to the fireplace.
They looked at me with wide eyes, tears dripping down their rounded cheeks. It had to be a trap. Boone was right. He’d found it way too easily, and Phoenix was right as well. Someone had to hear Boone calling my name. Boone stopped me from going inside and lobbed a candy cane over my shoulder into the room. The moment it touched the floor, a wolf in a nightgown stepped out of the kitchen. Holda was blending her fairy tales.
Teeth gnashing and snarling, it came at us, claws out.
“Duck,” Phoenix said and both Boone and I dropped to the ground. Phoenix tossed a bucket of chocolate on the wolf and it froze, screaming, as fur and skin dripped to the ground with the chocolate.
“Death by chocolate,” I said as he helped me up. “How did you know?”
He shook his head. “I didn’t. I took a stab. I’d be willing to bet that every piece of candy, cookie, or cake here is toxic. This world is meant to trap us.”
I nodded. “Good call.”
Boone was already in the house, breaking away the bars of the cage that appeared to be made out of peppermint sticks. The kids huddled in the back corner. I knelt down in front of the hole he had made. “It’s okay. You’re safe now. We’re going to take you home.”
They shook their heads. “The witch will kill us if we leave.”
“I won’t let her,” I said, holding out a hand to them.
The boy reached for me, but the girl knocked his arm back down. “It’s a trick,” she said. “Don’t listen. Cover your ears like this.” She cupped her hands over her ears and squeezed her eyes shut. The little boy did the same thing.
There was no way I’d be able to reach the kids from out here. I started to climb into the cage, but Boone caught the back of my dress.
“I wouldn’t,” he said, pointing to his work boot, which had been partially eaten away by the shards of hard candy. He took the ladle out of the cauldron on the fireplace and poked at the kids softly. They turned to dust.
Not them.
“Shit,” Phoenix said under his breath. “How are we supposed to find them now?”
I stood back up and we all headed for the door.
“Maybe this is Granny’s house, not the witch’s,” Boone said. “The wolf was here.”
“Granny didn’t live in a gingerbread house,” I said. “They have to be here.”
“They don’t have to be anywhere. Holda could have stashed them anyplace. Does anyone else think it’s fucking bizarre that this world seems to know we are here and is leading us to where it wants us to be, but we haven’t seen a single other person? What if no one else is here, and this whole thing is a trap? I sure as hell didn’t see a door to get back home—”
“The oven.” I slapped Phoenix’s arm. “In the story, the witch is constantly trying to put the kids in the oven.” I ran back into the house, straight to the kitchen. I slid the bolt back and pulled the oven’s large metal door open. Two little kids spilled out, scrambling to their feet with tear-streaked cheeks.
“I wanna go home,” the little girl said, throwing her arms around my waist, weeping into my dress. The boy did the same.
“We’re going to take you home.” I hugged both of them. “You’re okay.”
“I’ll be damned,” Phoenix said from the doorway as Boone helped free me, taking the boy’s hand.
This time when we left the house, a road stretched before us and the forest was gone. The castle looked closer than ever before. Phoenix hadn’t been wrong in what he said. This world was Holda’s creation, and it was responding to everything we did, said, or wanted, but to what end? Would it ever let us back out?
“Do you trust me?” Phoenix asked.
Not pa
rticularly, was my first mental response, but that wasn’t entirely true. It really depended on what context he referred to. I trusted that he wouldn’t willingly let me die, even if he had no problems putting my life at risk. Everything else was pretty much up in the air. “Why?”
“I want to test something.”
I looked at Boone, who shrugged. “Couldn’t hurt. I don’t trust anything about this world.”
“Okay.” I held the girl’s hand a little tighter. “Lead on.”
Phoenix went to the road and headed the opposite direction of the castle. We only walked for about five minutes before the road turned itself around and we were once again headed directly for the castle. “It doesn’t matter how we choose to go. This is the only place we will ever reach,” he said. “She wants us in the castle.”
“That’s a comforting thought,” Boone said dryly.
The little girl looked up at me. “What’s in the castle?”
“A beautiful sleeping princess that we have to wake up. Then we can go home.”
She pulled in her bottom lip. “How will we get through the thorns?”
“What thorns?”
“The thorns that surround the castle that Sleeping Beauty is in.”
Crap. How had I forgotten about that? “What’s your name?” I asked.
“Chloe,” she said.
“Thank you, Chloe. I had forgotten all about those. Do you remember how the prince got through?”
She shook her head.
“Phoenix,” I said louder. “Do you have a plan for the thorns?”
He looked back at us then at his bare feet. “Working on it.”
A little while later, the castle was finally just up ahead, and as Chloe predicted acres of thorn bushes grew around it.
“Hey, kid,” Phoenix got the little boy’s attention and beckoned him forward. The child shook his head with wide eyes and edged behind Boone, barely peeking out. “This is all you, Prince Charming,” Phoenix continued. “He has to storm the castle to save the girl. That’s how the stories work.”
I looked at Boone. “He has a point.”