With a Kiss

by Stephanie Fowers

  Chapter Sixteen

  Do you remember how the dreams of glory

  Kept fading from us like a fairy treasure;

  How we thought less of being fam'd in story,

  And more of those to whom our fame gave pleasure.

  Do you remember in far countries, weeping,

  When a light breeze, a flower, hath brought to mind

  Old happy thoughts, which till that hour were sleeping,

  And made us yearn for those we left behind?

  Do you remember this?

  —Caroline Elizabeth Sarah Norton, Recollections

  The light from the fire danced across our tired faces. I was cold. My hair was still wet, and my stomach rumbled with hunger. And I had some faery song stuck in my head, and there was no way it was coming out. But at least I could sleep now. And I didn't feel sick . . . not like I was in the Otherworld. Wait—the Otherworld? Now I was thinking like the faeries. Home was not the Otherworld. This place was the foreign one.

  Night had descended on the Sidhe. The forest branches creaked over us, heavy with the weight of the snow. The trees stretched long spindly fingers into the starlit sky. In just a moment, the branches would have us all in their grasp. My mouth lifted at the turn of my thoughts. This place made me paranoid.

  With a kiss, one, two, three, the sun circles. Another world you'll see. Then one and two, midnight strokes. Break these bonds and end this hoax.

  According to the faery queen's curse, I had one more day left in the Sidhe. One more day—until the stroke of midnight to get Babs back to her mother.

  And if I didn't? What would happen?

  I looked across the fire at Hobs. He had changed from his wet clothes to a warm brown jacket and worn-out jeans. The fire was playing tricks with his hair, turning straw into gold. He hunted through our backpack, taking an inventory of what was left. But his gaze wasn't on the faery gifts—it was on me. As soon as I became aware of it, he looked away and smiled bitterly with just a hint of something that I couldn't read. Well okay, I could a little bit. It was like he was waiting. I didn't know why, but his eyes betrayed him, because in them I sensed something impossible, like he knew me more than I knew myself. I couldn't figure it out, but I could tell he was frustrated. Something stirred inside me when I looked at him too, something I’d never felt before. Affection?

  Never.

  I shouldn't try to read him anymore. It would make me too close to him, and it wasn't like he was my Prince Charming. I knew his stats, had Googled him even—a good faery to have around when he wasn't stealing kisses and making girls cry. It all added up to one thing: player. I shouldn't try to read myself, either. My stats were just as bad as his. I had a cold heart jumpstarted by a faery queen. Now that I was bombarded by these strange new emotions, it only made sense that I would latch onto the first guy I felt something for—and a faery at that. It was forbidden. I looked at Babs, her head heavy on my arm. This strange place was messing with my heart.

  I lowered Babs to my lap, smoothing her blonde hair back from her sleeping face, a face that had grown so precious to me. Light freckles stood out on her cheeks, and I unconsciously connected the dots between them by the light of the flickering fire. Her future was completely dependent on me. Another scary thought. I didn't know how to help her. Was her mother even her real mother? And if she wasn't, did she at least want the best for the kid? I dearly hoped so, because if Babs ever loved me back, I had a very good chance of disappearing . . . or at least, doing something really stupid. It was really hard for me not to do something stupid.

  "You need a kiss."

  My head lifted. Hobs didn't look away this time. My heart lurched when I met his eyes. Had the nymphs turned a love potion on him after all? Knowing how they felt about me, and him, that was doubtful. Bugul growled in annoyance.

  Hobs pulled his dark eyes from mine, giving him an innocent shrug. "What?" Bugul continued to glare, and Hobs pushed past the faerytales in the backpack to dig out a gift from the nymphs; I recognized the container that held their nymph kisses. "Since you won't take mine, this is the best I can do." He stood up, edging past Bugul and the circle of fire to kneel beside me. He squeezed out the goo of nymph kisses from its container and rubbed it into my hand. It looked like lotion, except it was hot. His head turned to catch me with his probing look again. "It will warm you up."

  In what way? But the temptation to be warm was too much, and I let him roll up my sleeves. His fingers trailed a path of heat through my arms. I felt it ooze over my skin and tingle through my senses as he rubbed it in. Soon, I wasn't even shaking. The stuff worked better than hot chocolate. It made my hands glow. I loved it. I snatched more from the container and tried to rub it onto Babs' exposed face.

  "Don't." Hobs blocked me with his arm. "It will burn her up worse than a fever. She's warm enough."

  Babs was covered in furs, her cheeks rosy. She sighed happily and curled up against me. She looked content. I squared my shoulders and pressed my luck. "Got anything for hunger?"

  "Not unless you want some faery food."

  And then what? Be stuck here forever? Bugul frowned in disapproval, and I had to adjust to the idea that he was the one the faery queen had sent to protect Babs. The wolves, nymphs, and Merrow had all confirmed it, so if I didn't accept it, I'd be an idiot. But what did that make Hobs? Nothing the Merrow said about him made sense. I tried to put it together in my head—he was a prince. Though not necessarily sent by the faery queen, he had come to help us. Why?

  He still watched me. The usual jaded look was gone. The concern on his face was foreign, and it made my stomach twist—no guy had ever watched me that way before; but then again, I was incapable of accepting affection until now. "You'll be alright," he said after a moment. "The faery queen killed you with her curse."

  Any peace I felt disappeared. "What?"

  "I mean," he grimaced, "she rid you of your human tendencies and barriers. You don't need food. No one here does. You just think you do. Time is slower in the Sidhe."

  "Excuse me?"

  "I mean—we'll fix it later. You're not going to starve to death. No one ever has here. No worries."

  I tried not to think too hard on it. I stole Babs' swirly toy from her limp fingers. Without having to say anything, my home appeared on the face of it. At least, it looked like home. The leaves were golden and orange. They dropped gently over the green grass on our lawn. The sun was brilliant against the flat red roof. Below that, next to the balcony on the trampoline, I spied dark and blonde hair, two heads pressed together in laughter, their hair entwined. The blonde was Daphne, of course. The dark hair had to be mine . . . but no. It was my shadow's. They were both having too much fun for it to be me.

  The two lay on the trampoline, staring up at the clouds—comparing them to animals and celebrities and . . . me. They were laughing and making jokes. Daphne was in her gray sweats. She had snagged my shirt—it didn't match, but I doubted she cared. It was mine. She loved everything that belonged to me. My shadow didn't look like she cared, either. Her taste in clothes leaned more on the preppy side, with pink bubble shorts and a flirty shirt. They kicked their bare feet in the air and elbowed each other for no apparent reason. I smiled when they laughed so hard that they snorted and choked. Finally, they settled down and talked. I mean, they really talked. I frowned, feeling horrible.

  It should've been my moment, except I hadn't been capable of it. If none of this had happened, if I hadn't been stolen away to the land of the faeries, if I had been there instead of here, this moment still could never have been mine. What had happened to make me this way?

  The hands. Still, I couldn't blame them entirely. I was selfish. I had never appreciated my family like I should have. They loved me—and I always supposed that being their daughter was enough, but now I realized that it wasn't. I didn't do anything for them. I was mean. They never had any fun with me, ever. Was it too late to change things? Was I incapable of changing things? Even if I was unable to love, I sti
ll could have shared moments like these.

  Hobs leaned next to me to look into the toy, and I felt the warmth emanating from him. His presence was somehow comforting. "Months have passed at home. You got homecoming queen, by the way. Well, your shadow did."

  "Months?" Besides the threat of becoming homecoming queen, I didn't like the idea of losing so much time so fast. My hand landed against his chest. "What do you mean months?"

  "I thought you knew." He shifted uneasily. "Time passes quickly in the Otherworld."

  "Yeah, but the homecoming dance? That's late September." My heart beat uncomfortably as I tried to digest this information. The leaves had changed. They were falling. Just one day and my shadow started my senior year in high school? I might graduate before I got back, or worse. I could be in college and so far removed from everything familiar that I would never get my life back. I felt tears well up, and I was so shocked by it that I fought them, lashing out at Hobs instead—that came more naturally. "She's probably flunking all my classes!" It was terribly insignificant, but it hurt less to talk about than other things, to talk about how I was missing my life, not to mention all the years I had wasted when I actually was home.

  "Yeah, she's making a mess of things. Now everybody likes you."

  That hurt more than he knew, and I couldn't even glare at him. The urge to cry smothered me. I sucked in my breath to stop that from happening. I had never experienced so many contrasting emotions at once: longing, hurt, and love? It was more than I could handle. I felt like I was bleeding with no way to patch things up. Hobs tried to comfort me. "Hey, at least now you don't have to watch Hot Club every Tuesday night with Daphne."

  How did he know about that? Before I could ask, I saw a movement in the swirly toy. I tried to distract myself with it to keep the tears back. Daphne turned to me—to my shadow, rather—and whispered, "Remember that guy who played Puck in our play last summer? He's so beautiful. I have a huge crush on him. I think he likes me too."

  Ren? That awful kid! It seemed so long ago when he flicked my dangling earrings, and sat on the park bench in his dark shades and red hoodie watching me make an idiot of myself. Maybe it was the part he had acted out in the play that set me against him. Puck! Some strange, protective sisterly instinct overcame me, and I wanted to reach through the swirly toy and shake Daphne, but my shadow just kicked her legs back and flipped onto her stomach, resting her chin on her hand. "Yeah, he's really cute. Why didn't you tell me before?"

  "I wanted to . . . I tried, so many times."

  But I wasn't there for her.

  "Look," I heard Hobs saying. He hesitated a moment, then I felt the weight of his arm around my shoulder. He hugged me, trying to make me feel better with his soothing strength. "If we fix things here, we can rewind everything when you get back. It will be like you never left."

  I studied their happy faces for a moment. "No, I like how it is now. It's better."

  "What did you say?" He watched me closely. I knew I shouldn't try to read his expression, but I did it anyway. He had the look of someone who might kiss me. My pulse quickened, like maybe I wanted him to.

  Bugul harrumphed in the background. He loudly pounded out his sleeping bag, trying to make himself more comfortable in the snow—all the while making a perfect third wheel. I think I knew what would happen if Hobs stepped out of line.

  Hobs knew it too, but the excitement in his eyes was hard to resist. "Can you feel? Everything?" I didn't know what he was trying to say. He touched my hand. "Do you love . . . I mean, do you love Babs? Is this for her?"

  "Hobs, it's so dangerous. She could lose everything. If she loved me back . . ."

  "The love of mortals fades from view," he recited the hag's hateful curse, his eyes darkened on mine. "I hate to break it to you, but that's not everything. I mean, to be able to love . . ."

  "It sounds like I leave her or something, and I won't."

  He shook his head. "You're supposed to give her to her mother."

  "Yes, I know, but . . ."

  "The sovereign cannot rule unless she loves. This is good."

  "Don't tell me that, okay? Just because I love her, doesn't mean she loves me too. She's still safe. We're fine!"

  "You do have a heart." He looked as if he was trying to make up his mind about something, but he leaned back and tried to adopt a calm expression instead. "Now it can be broken. You'll be susceptible to love talkers. You'll be easy to manipula . . ." His voice trailed off, and he looked worried. "I didn't think about that. No, this isn't safe."

  That's what I was afraid of. I played with Babs' soft fingers, limp in sleep. Under normal circumstances, we'd look like a family on a camping trip. Of course, the hot chocolate and s'mores were missing . . . and the stories—I felt drawn to the faerytales. They poked out of the backpack just within reach, as if daring me to figure them out. The story behind all of our troubles was hidden somewhere in those pages. If I could just piece the clues together before Babs loved me back, we could get her home. Then I could concentrate on how to be normal—and try to survive it.

  Under Hobs' suddenly alert gaze, I dragged the book out and opened it. He didn't try to stop me this time. The firelight flickered across the story of Sleeping Beauty, except there was something wrong with it. The words of the book shifted and changed into something else. Either the flames were playing tricks on my eyes or this was a product of faery magic. The story beneath my hands was only slightly familiar. Instead of the blonde innocent who tangled with a spindle, it was the story of a beautiful princess, daughter to royalty from a far-off province in the Sidhe.

  "Hobs," I asked. "What is this?"

  Hobs could see it over my shoulder. "Faerytale prophecies." For once he didn't hide his interest, but then, that was directed more at me. "These are the true faerytales," he said, "as we were meant to see them."

  "The book didn't look like this before."

  "That's because you didn't open it in the Sidhe. All faerytales have magic in them—even if it's imperceptible in the Otherworld."

  Could everything Hobs told me about this book be taken literally? They were prophecies, sure, but actual prophecies—like their Bible? Most importantly, it would tell us Babs' identity, written down in black and white. I scooted closer to the fire to read the latest scoop on Sleeping Beauty.

  The story started out the same. The princess was beautiful and sweet, born to loving parents. But from there, it went completely crazy, because she had to live among shadows and demons and pests. Her life was filled with confusion and turmoil. She was only a princess because she had royal blood from an ancestor who had been stuck in a tree, imprisoned there by her stepsister. Then again, stepsisters were known to be mean. Sleeping Beauty's ancestor escaped, only to face banishment in the wilderness. The first daughter in her royal bloodline would be a princess. If the princess ever found out who she was, she would be cursed to sleep for a hundred years in the same tree that imprisoned her ancestor; there she would be forced to guard a treasure. Even worse, some creepy dog and a cat with large yellow eyes would watch the princess to make sure she couldn't escape.

  I groaned and set the book down on the mounds of blankets over Babs' back. The only thing familiar about the tale was that the poor princess had to wait under a spell until a knight with the right bloodline came to rescue her. I turned to Hobs. "So what happened to Sleeping Beauty?"

  "You mean, what will happen to her?" Yeah, that was right. These were prophecies. They hadn't happened yet, which made absolutely no sense. He took the other side of the book, lacing his fingers through mine. "It says a brave knight of Tristan's lineage will try to save her."

  "Try?"

  "Well, it's kind of hazy from there. The words of the prophecy aren't all in yet, but most likely he'll die and she'll rot in the tree." He turned to meet Bugul's unblinking glare, and treated him to a dry smile. "That's how real faerytale romances go." At my gasp of shock, Hobs shrugged. "He doesn't have the right bloodline. What can he expect? He's a goner."
>
  "Then," I ventured, "he must not really love her either?"

  "Love? He doesn't know her. If anything, he'll be after her lands and power. Everyone will be. What?" Hobs arched a brow, not attempting to take back the harsh truth. "The knight's bloodline, not his love, will save the princess, but since you're so worried . . ." He gave me a teasing look and perused the book. "I know a guy who belongs to the proper aristocratic family. Geoffrey of the Great Tooth can save her. He's got the right DNA."

  "Oh, really," I drawled back. "He sounds so charming." By now I was completely disenchanted by the whole story.

  "Oh, whoops, no. Wait." Hobs held up an index finger while he skimmed through the rest. It wasn't long before he generously divulged all the gruesome details. "The unfortunate soul who represents the appropriate family bloodline will lose his one true love. Looks like Sleeping Beauty will die of old age before he can collect the princess's booty from the tree. Poor boy."

  Poor girl! "So it ends that way?" I tugged the book from Hobs and searched the rest of the page to look for the "happily ever after." It was missing. What was surprising was to see that the whole end of the story was gone too. I jumped when something sharp pricked my finger. Ouch. The paper got me.

  "Of course it doesn't end." I heard Hobs say in a way-too-patient voice. "Why would the story end?"

  I sucked on my finger, staring at the blank pages. Half the words were there. And the ones that weren't? My hand ran gingerly back over the prickly paper and I felt a hint of them. They poked into the parchment from a bumpy surface beneath the story, almost like backwards carbon paper. The words weren't coming in yet. They might not be fully engraved in this prophecy for months, maybe years. I lifted the page and found nothing underneath, except another wretched faerytale on the next page. "Where's the rest of the story?"

  "Prophecies become clearer as time passes." Hobs stretched, acting like it didn't affect him, but I knew better. He watched me too closely for that. "The way things are going, Sleeping Beauty will just sleep forever."

  "That's a terrible story!"

  "Not as bad as Snow White's."

  I caught his not-so-veiled hint and flipped roughly through the pages, ignoring the stories of dark spells and other forms of faery torture. They made me sick. "If your people know what's going to happen to them, why do they keep making the same mistakes?"

  "Why does anybody? Everyone thinks they can beat the odds. The problem is, the more mistakes we make, the more they pinpoint our doom." I glanced up at him for more details, and he just looked grim. "Oh, there it is." He didn't look down at the book, though he had stopped me at the right story. I found it hard to believe he had the exact turn of pages memorized, but he did. "There's our sweet little Snow White." His voice was laced with that familiar irony.

  What used to be a sweet brunette in rags could only be a cold, ethereal beauty . . . um, from the back, anyway. If Hobs hadn't pointed her out, I never would've recognized the Snow Princess as the one we all knew and loved from our bedtime stories. I read through her description. The dwarves worked for her. The animals were her dark-hearted familiars. The queen (who was not of her blood) was ticked at her. Yep, this was the hag's story—or as the faeries here liked to call her, the Snow Queen. There was no hint of her downfall.

  "Hobs? What is her ending?"

  "Why do you always insist on one? She's on top. What does she have to worry about?" Hobs toyed with the medallion around his neck. "The witch sucks everyone's power dry. Without her, no one is anything." He took a deep breath, his face lifting so I could see the sardonic twist to his lips. "But you should see the great snowflakes she makes at Christmas, and she frosts the roundest pumpkins on Halloween. Besides, there are plenty here in the Sidhe who are far worse than she is."

  My eyes couldn't leave his. They hinted at something terrible that he wasn't telling me. "Here's a paragraph about her stepmother. Ever hear of the queen of Tylwyth Teg?" I shook my head. "Well, Queen Gwendhidw, of course, is the fairest of them all. No one can live if they gaze on Gwen for too long." My mouth dropped and he looked amused, though not terribly proud. He turned the page to Goldilocks and grimaced at it.

  "More prophecies about women," I said.

  His smothered laugh forced me to look closer at the page. Goldilocks was a guy. Hobs moved to turn the page before I could see it too closely. "He goes on an important mission for . . . uh . . . royalty, and tangles with the wolves."

  My hand landed on the page, and I forced him to keep it open. "That's you?"

  His hand joined mine, and he expertly guided me away from the story. "Have I ever told you what big eyes you have?" I rolled them. He propped his fist against the ground, moving his arm behind my back while he made himself more comfortable next to me. "We're never sure which prophecy concerns us personally. Everyone has their theories on who's who. There's a certain power to knowing who you are. But whether the prophecies are fulfilled or not depends on . . ." His voice trailed off when he turned another page, "us."

  Before I could look too closely at it, Babs cried out in her sleep. I stroked her full head of wispy blonde hair. We had put it in braids earlier, but her hair was so baby soft and thick, it wouldn't stay. And now I was messing with it again. The poor kid never had a moment alone. Neither did I, for that matter. Hobs wouldn't stop looking at me now, and Bugul clearly didn't approve. Even without his voice, Bugul was noisy about it. He pulled out a cushion that he had stolen from the back of the nymph's boat and pounded it like it was someone's head.

  Hobs turned from me to stare into the fire. "It used to be better here," he said in an undertone, "before the treasures were stolen. Not that we haven't had our problems. There have always been those who had a connection to the Otherworld, spilling secrets, exchanging ideas, giving mortals ill-gotten powers."

  "You thought the Skinwalker was one of them?"

  "Yeah, the guy who peeled off his face at the Okanogan golf course. It just seemed too big a coincidence that it happened so close to you. Then when he showed up at the park, I knew."

  "Who?"

  "You saw that big black dog?" he asked.

  Quite honestly, the Banshees had almost swept that from my mind. "I . . . I thought maybe he was some big faery pet or something."

  "He's one of the cursed." Seeing how serious Hobs was, I believed him. "These Otherworldly are humans who work with stolen magic. They're dark creatures who will destroy you and me, everything if they have a chance. They hate us for existing. It was the ultimate betrayal when one of our own made a deal with them."

  "Hobs, you've got to tell me. Does this have to do with Babs?"

  "It has to do with all of us. The four treasures are what give us our powers. Dagda's cup, Lugh's wand, Nuadha's sword, the sacred Stone of Fal. Without them, the Sidhe will fade out of existence. The worlds will end." I glanced down at the story that had caused him to talk this way. Rapunzel, or more accurately Ratis. This prophecy actually stated a name. The others were just guesses as to their identities. "The prophecy has been filled," Hobs said in a dull voice. "I've never seen anything like this before."

  The story had ended. The words were all in and accounted for. Printed across the bottom of the page in bold letters were the words: The End. My gaze slipped from the words to his solemn face. "You know something about this story, don't you?"

  He nodded. "It was said that Ratis betrayed the kingdom by selling the four treasures to the leader of these cursed, and for a measly price . . . love."

  "Was it worth it?"

  "Does it matter? Now that the treasures are gone, our powers will dwindle to nothing. It's only a matter of time." I studied the drawing of Ratis in the book. Her hair was long and golden, just like I was familiar with in the original story. Only this time, she had been locked up in a tower in the middle of the city.

  Hobs refused to look at the story. "We knew we were dying without the treasures, but she wouldn't tell us where they were, wouldn't reveal her secrets. The Twelve from the High Court banishe
d Ratis' handmaidens to the Otherworld where they would forever mourn the loss of the treasures. You've met them; those are the Banshees. Then the Twelve confiscated Ratis' powers and clipped her wings."

  "Wings?"

  "She's from Gorias," he explained with a shrug. "Of course she had wings. The Twelve then sent the Dones d'aigua, her own people, to guard her in the tower."

  I studied the elaborate depictions of the creatures, part bird, part women. The graceful guards circled the tower that stretched out into the heavens. Their glorious wings glinted in the sun, their eyes hopeless. It was vengeance that provoked Ratis' life sentence, not justice. Locking her up wouldn't have brought back the treasures.

  "And after all this," Hobs said, "Ratis was found innocent of the crime. Now that it's too late."

  "Can't you save her?"

  "It's not a prophecy anymore. Nobody saved the princess. The end is the end."

  I skimmed through to the bottom of the page—Ratis had died in her tower. The treasures of the Fae were in the hands of some unknown perpetrator, and no one could save the innocents of this crime. The prophecy had the stamp of fulfillment.

  Hobs met my eyes. "Our faerytales aren't like yours. We live in a world where heroes die."

  I didn't like the sound of that. Hobs could die. Bugul could die. And Babs? With difficulty, I kept myself from freaking out. None of us were safe. "You knew Ratis was innocent, didn't you?"

  "I had been told that . . ." He shook his head. "Let's just say that you can't trust what you see, or hear." Hobs was being cryptic again, and I saw the faint panic in his expression when he stared into the forest.

  "What do you mean?" I asked.

  "I can't hear anything." He pulled away from us, which was disappointing, and not just because I had been stealing his warmth for the last half hour. There was something comforting about his presence. He dug through the backpack for the faery gifts. "No birds, no sounds—except us. Bugul?" He exchanged glances with the Leprechaun, who had lunged to his feet and paced the campfire with his club. "I think we have some Grim on our hands."

  Oh, no—Grim! I held Babs tighter. It sounded . . . well, grim.

  "Kobolds and Shades," Hobs explained. "They're the worst things in these woods. The most terrifying sound in the Sidhe isn't the growl of a wolf. It's the beautiful sounds: the song of a siren, the laughter of a brownie. The danger is not knowing the enemy until it's too late." He sounded like he spoke from experience. "C'mon, we'll build the fire higher." He sprinkled something on it, and its smoke sucked into the flames and disappeared. In an instant, the fire turned into a huge blaze. I tried to shield Babs.

  "It won't burn you," he said. "Get as close as you want. You can even sleep on it."

  No. Way. It smelled awful. Bugul wrinkled his nose and tried to wave it away. "Yeah," I said. "The smell will lead them straight to us."

  "Nope, it repels them. Frog's breath. It's perfect for camping."

  Bugul snorted. Clearly, he'd had enough of us and our nymph magic—and I thought I was uptight. I tilted my head at him. "Bugul, I can feel your disapproval clear from over here."

  "At least you can't hear it." Hobs slushed around the circle of snow that made up the edges of our campfire, peering into the darkness to the woods beyond. He listened for a moment in the silence until he was satisfied. "I think we're safe, for now."

  I watched the firelight play with the gold highlights in Babs' hair. I didn't want her to be anyone in those faerytales. They were depressing and terrible. And yet, it was critical that the princess know her name. If not, the results might be just as bad as those other faerytale prophecies. Maybe worse. "Cinderella," I guessed half-hazardly. "She's sleeping near the ashes."

  Hobs gave a short bark of laughter and settled back next to us. It immediately warmed me up. "We're talking about our princess, right?" he asked. "She doesn't clean up after herself at all."

  "Well," I tried to figure it out. "We have to prove that she's a princess first . . . like the Princess and the Pea. Everyone will have to know she's real because of her sweetness and sensitivity."

  "Sweetness? Sensitivity?" He looked like he would laugh again, but then he thought better of it. "That has possibilities."

  But it wasn't enough. I quickly flipped through the pages of the book, remembering what Hobs had said before. Her whole story had a very Rumpelstiltskin feel to it. A baby was stolen. I found the faerytale and carefully smoothed down the rough page. As soon as Hobs saw it, he stiffened. Good. I was on to something.

  The identity of what used to be a manipulative troll with a secret name now seemed obvious. Rumpelstiltskin was the Otherworldly, a dark and loathsome creature from a different land. As I read, it seemed the Otherworldly had great power over the queen. Instead of turning straw into gold, the creature had something else the girl wanted—the four treasures. Without it, she could not rule the Sidhe. That, at least, was spelled out.

  I read the prophecy with building dread. According to this, the queen would make any deal with the Otherworldly to get what she wanted, even a child. It was part of their bargain. My insides felt hollow when the truth sank in. I knew exactly who that child was.

  Of course the Snow Queen would try to trade Babs to the Otherworldly. It was a convenient way to get rid of the only girl who could take her down. Was that why the Otherworldly had sent that dog to spy on us in the park? Maybe the Otherworldly thought he could get Babs without the queen and keep the four treasures too. The only puzzle stumping me was why Babs meant more to the Otherworldly than the four treasures. Well, she was to me, but that was irrelevant.

  I took a deep breath and closed the book. The original faerytales were safer. "We just have to put the clues together," I said. We had to save Babs from this fate and give her a name so she stood a chance against Rumpelstiltskin. So, what did Babs and the other princesses in these tales have in common? Most of them had a Prince Charming. He always saved them. It wasn't a very girl-power way of thinking, but I didn't care.

  "I have an idea," I told Hobs. I wasn't sure how he'd take this, but I was desperate. "We need to figure out who her Prince Charming is. If we know him, we'll know her."

  "That's easy." I was glad to see that Hobs wore his wicked grin again—it meant he was on my side. "It's me."

  I laughed. I probably shouldn't have, and at his usual ironic look, it cut short. "No." I shook my head a little too vigorously. "No, c'mon, you're not even charming."

  "What's the matter? You don't think I'm good enough for a princess? Oh, I know—you don't think she's good enough for me." He was teasing me, and I didn't like it. Hobs looked too cute when he did that, and when something like this was coming from his mouth, it was just wrong.

  "Knock it off."

  "I can't tell you who our princess is, but I can tell you who I am, and I'm sitting right here in front of you. Check the book if you like."

  I swiveled to Bugul for confirmation. He sulked next to the fire, but he didn't deny it. I felt my heart plummet. It was true then. The nymphs had called Hobs a prince. The Merrow had called him the son of a queen. And now he was meant for the princess? So, why was that so upsetting?

  Hearts were so . . . stupid! I felt like Hobs had cut mine out and thrown it into that ridiculous fire made of frog's breath. I was so through with him.