Prologue
(From the closing of THE WOLF)
Tinkerbell peered out from her hiding spot. She’d been here before. She’d been here a million times, in fact. The stage was the one place she felt like she belonged. Life at Enchanted Academy had always been confusing for her, and strange. She’d never really fit in completely. Not entirely.
And she wanted so very much to fit in.
What she knew was that when you were on stage, you were equal. Everyone was. No matter what you were going through, no matter what demons you were wrestling with, no matter what: when you walked across the theater stage, you were all the same.
It was strange for her to be watching, rather than performing, but that’s what she was doing. Tonight, she was just an observer. She was watching to see how the other actors prepared for their scenes the next day. They weren’t supposed to use magic to remember their lines or to incorporate props into the production. That just wasn’t allowed, even though she knew some people did.
No, theater at Enchanted Academy was all about using the non-magical things in the world to make everything seem more wonderful than it was.
And oh, she knew they could be wonderful.
Peter was on stage tonight. He was performing his scene with Hook. Together, the two of them stood in the center of the elevated stage, and they went through their lines for the upcoming production of: A Very Witchy Wish.
“It’s not fair,” Peter said loudly.
“Oh, it’s completely fair,” Hook countered. She stood a few steps away from him, and turned toward him while he spoke. Excellent stage presence. That’s what Hook had going for her. She wasn’t particularly nice and she wasn’t always kind or sweet, but she could command the audience to look at her, and they always did.
“No,” Peter shook his head. “It is not. When my father sent me to study as your apprentice, he never dreamed that you were as evil as you actually are.” He frowned, narrowing his eyes at Hook.
A shiver shot through Tinkerbell.
If she didn’t know they were acting, she might have thought they were actually having a fight. It certainly felt like it at a time like this. Peter was a tall, lanky boy. He towered over Tinkerbell and he was just slightly taller than Hook. Together, Peter and Hook did a great job communicating with each other. Their banter on stage was always beautiful to watch.
Tonight it was practically unbeatable.
Hook stepped across the stage. She moved swiftly and with purpose. As she walked, her gaze centered directly on Peter. As far as Hook was concerned, nothing else existed. The rest of the world just faded away and the two of them were left wanting one another.
Needing one another.
Desiring one another.
“Say that again,” she said.
“Never.”
“Say it,” Hook demanded. “Say your words. Say them again so I can hear just how vile and cruel you truly are.”
Peter shook his head.
Tinkerbell held her own hands tightly, anxiously. She was so nervous that she thought she might freak out if she wasn’t careful. She needed to stay calm. Okay, so she wasn’t supposed to be watching this private practice session. Peter and Hook had to run their lines and they liked doing it when no one was around. They had the stage to themselves at night and they trusted that they were alone.
It was just that Tinkerbell really liked watching.
Observing Peter and Hook was like watching a beautifully choreographed dance. One person took a step forward and the other one took a step back. Then they reversed. They made their movements in time and that was how they moved the production forward.
“You are nothing,” Peter said harshly.
Hook stood still and dropped her hands to her sides. Even though this was part of the play, Tinkerbell felt the pain and the agony in her heart that Hook’s character was feeling.
“Nothing,” Peter repeated. “And don’t even let anyone think that you are.”
“You thought I was more than nothing,” she stage-whispered. “Once upon a time you did, anyway.”
“That was a long time ago,” he said.
He glared at her and lifted his fake sword. It was harmless, Tinkerbell knew, but this scene was the one that would change everything. In this scene, Peter and Hook would duel. They hadn’t worked out all of the kinks in their choreography. There were still some places where the movements were sloppy and messy. There were a few places where they had to tighten up their movements so that everything would appear seamless and wonderful.
Right now, though, all they had to do was move.
And so they moved.
Hook pulled out her sword and instantly dove forward. Peter dodged, moving to the side. He laughed loudly, and his voice filled the theater.
How beautiful was this going to look on opening night?
How fantastic?
Tinkerbell couldn’t wait. She had been dreaming of working with these actors since she started school at Enchanted Academy and now it was finally her chance. Now she had finally learned enough to be able to make a name for herself, and she was going to do an incredible job in their play.
She stayed where she was for what felt like hours. She watched as Hook and Peter repeated their lines and went through their fight sequence again and again. They spent more than two hours working on their scenes, but Tink didn’t mind. She stayed right where she was: hiding in the rafters, and she looked at them like nothing else mattered.
Because to her, it didn’t.
Hook and Peter were her heroes.
She’d do anything for them.
“You’ll never defeat me,” Peter yelled out, charging at Hook in slow-motion.
But suddenly, something didn’t feel right.
A sort of chill swept through the auditorium. Hook and Peter seemed to feel it, too, because they stopped what they were doing.
“Did you feel something?” Hook asked. “That wasn’t supposed to happen.”
“Yeah,” Peter said, but before he could finish his sentence, the lights went out for just a moment. They flickered, turning off completely, and then they came back on.
Only Peter was gone.
Well, thought Tink. That certainly wasn’t supposed to happen.
Chapter 1
“I need your help,” Tinkerbell stood in my doorway. This was pretty unusual for a girl like her. Generally speaking, Tinkerbell was the kind of girl who handled all of her problems on her own. She didn’t like asking for help and she definitely didn’t like asking my roommates and me for help.
“Anything,” I said, jumping to my feet. It was strange to have her in my room. For her to come and ask for assistance, something must be seriously wrong. I smoothed down my school uniform and grabbed my robe, wrapping it around myself.
Wolf and Belle had the same idea, apparently, because they also stood up from where we’d been sitting on our living room floor and grabbed their robes. If we were going to go out, we were going to do it dressed to be warm and ready to do magic.
Well, they would, at least.
My magic abilities were still kind of non-existent, although I sometimes felt like I almost had something there.
Almost.
Sometimes I could feel something tingling in the ends of my fingers and down in my toes, but maybe I just had poor blood circulation.
“What’s wrong?” Wolf asked. She cocked her head and discreetly sniffed the air. I knew what she was doing. Wolf wasn’t just a magical student at Enchanted Academy. She was also a shapeshifter. She could change into a wolf whenever she wanted to, and that ability gave her some other pretty incredible perks.
For example, she could sniff out anything she needed to.
And some things she didn’t need to.
Wolf wasn’t the kind of person who shied away from adventure, which is good for her because her bravery is what landed her a super-hot, super-fantastic boyfriend.
“Come in,” Belle said. She gestured for Tinkerbell to come further i
nto the room, and then Belle closed the door behind her. Whatever it was that Tink needed help with, the rest of the dormitory didn’t need to find out about it. Belle wrapped her robe around herself and reached for her wand. She slipped it into the folds of her robe and seemed to mentally prepare for whatever we were about to hear.
“It’s Peter,” Tinkerbell said. “He’s gone.”
“What?”
“Peter Pan,” she said. “Gone.”
“What do you mean, gone? I just saw him yesterday,” I said. Peter was one of the most artistically talented students the school had ever seen. He was constantly drawing, singing, and even acting. He was the lead in the upcoming school play and was supposed to perform alongside Jillian Hook, who was also incredibly talented, if not a bit bossy and abrupt.
“He vanished.”
“How?” Belle asked.
“Like a ghost?” Wolf wiggled her fingers.
“Yes,” Tinkerbell said, and we all just looked at her.
“I think you’re going to have to start from the beginning,” I said gently. I might be the least magical student in the school, but I didn’t think that a student could just disappear out of thin air. That seemed like a stretch, even for a place like Enchanted Academy.
“I was watching the play practice,” she said.
“Are you in the play?” Wolf cocked her head. “I thought you didn’t get a role.”
Belle cringed at the unintentional burn. We all knew Tinkerbell desperately wanted to be in the play, but the casting options were pretty limited.
“No,” Tinkerbell said quietly. “I didn’t get a role at auditions, but the director needed some backup people, and he chose me.”
“Really?” Wolf asked. “Like an understudy?”
“Exactly like an understudy. I go to all of the rehearsals and on opening night, I’ll even have an extra, tiny little role.”
“What kind of role?”
“I’ll be a flower.”
“A flower?”
“Yes,” Tinkerbell nodded. She bounced, and she looked a little bit excited. It was good to see her looking a little happy.
“That’s great,” Wolf said.
“Fantastic,” Belle added.
“And hey,” I said, reaching for her shoulder. “I’ll help you practice for the spring production, okay? You’re an awesome actress. I just know you’ll be able to get a major role. You totally deserve it.”
“Really?” She asked, looking up hopefully. “You think so?”
“I know so,” I told her with a smile. “You can definitely get in. We’ll find out what they’re performing and get a copy, okay?”
Belle and Wolf exchanged glances.
“What?” I asked.
“The plays here are different than they are at normal schools.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s a magical school,” Wolf said. “It’s going to be a little different.”
“The scripts are carefully selected and usually, they’re kept under careful guard until the casting actually begins,” Belle adds.
“Yeah,” Tinkerbell nodded. “It’s part of what makes Enchanted Academy so very special. You have to think about how you’re going to put your own spin on your role in the play. So even if you’re performing a really well-known piece, there’s going to be something that’s different. There’s always some sort of weird, magical twist, even if we don’t use magic on stage.”
“You don’t use magic on stage?”
“Last year, one of the kids could levitate glasses of water. Then they would throw them into the crowd and get everyone wet.”
“Yeah, so Helena Hex said we couldn’t do plays with water anymore,” Tinkerbell shrugged. “Then she said no magic at all this year. They thought this semester’s play was a safe bet. They were wrong.”
“What’s the play?” I asked.
“Mother Goose.”
“What’s that about?”
All of the girls looked at me, and it was my turn to be embarrassed.
“Hey,” I said. “You all know I didn’t have parents growing up. How am I supposed to know about this stuff?” I bristled a little at the reminder that I really was an orphan through-and-through, but my friends didn’t seem to notice.
“It’s a collection of nursery rhymes,” Wolf told me.
“Some of them are pretty funny, but some of them are terrible,” Belle added.
“In the play, the script is pretty different from the traditional rhymes, though,” Tinkerbell explained.
“What do you mean?”
“Well, the director added in a bunch of stuff. Hook and Peter duel, for example, and I mean, it’s Mother Goose. There’s not really any fighting in the original script.”
“Mother Goose stories are like, bedtime stories,” Wolf pointed out. “So they’re short and sweet, and they usually aren’t the type of story that’s going to cause you stress.”
“I don’t know how I feel about that,” I muttered.
Mother Goose?
It seemed kind of weird, to be honest.
“So you still didn’t tell us what happened to Peter,” I pointed out. My robes were starting to feel a little bit hot, and I was getting sweaty.
“He just vanished,” Tinkerbell said. “I was...” She blushed.
“What were you doing?”
“Something she wasn’t supposed to be doing,” Wolf said, smirking.
Tinkerbell shook her head.
“If you want us to help, you need to tell us everything.”
“I was in the rafters watching the performance,” she said finally. “He was fighting with Hook. Well, their characters were fighting. I mean, the two of them weren’t fighting. That would be ridiculous.”
“Why?”
“Because they’re friends,” Tinkerbell said.
“Hook and Peter?”
“Yeah.”
“You said he vanished.” I was beginning to wonder exactly what had happened and why no one had talked to the headmistress about any of this. Tinkerbell saw him disappear, but that meant that Hook was still around.
Hadn’t she been scared for her friend?
Hadn’t she thought she should tell someone what happened?
“They were in the middle of a fight scene and the lights flickered,” Tink said. “When they came back on, he was gone.”
“What do you think happened?” Belle whispered.
“I don’t know, but neither did Hook.”
“What did she do?” I asked.
“She took off,” Tinkerbell said. “I thought that she was going to go get help from the headmistress, but she never came back. She was just gone.”
“Maybe she got scared,” Wolf offered gently. I knew why. We all felt scared sometimes. There was a lot of pressure at magic school to stay strong and brave, but the reality was that nobody felt brave all of the time. Sometimes people felt scared. Sometimes we felt afraid and didn’t know what to do.
Sometimes when we tried to do something, we made the wrong decision.
That was life.
“Maybe,” Tinkerbell said, but she spoke slowly and in a way that seemed to say I don’t think so.
“When did this happen?” Wolf asked.
“Last night.”
I glanced at my pocket watch. I thought using a pocket watch was really weird when I first came to this school, but I’d finally gotten used to it, and now it didn’t bother me anymore.
I definitely didn’t think it was weird anymore.
“So that was like, what? Twelve hours ago?”
She nodded. It was early. None of us had even gone to breakfast.
“What did you do after?”
“I finally just went back to my room,” Tinkerbell seemed embarrassed. Maybe she thought she could have done more.
“I want to hear more about what happened before he vanished,” Belle said. “People don’t just vanish out of thin air. I mean, when I vanished, it was because of a spell. Could there have b
een someone around trying to hex him?”
“No, I didn’t see anyone.”
“What about hiding backstage?” I asked.
“The stage area had all been cleared,” Tinkerbell said. “And they didn’t have the charms to unlock the backstage areas. Those are all protected by the director. He’s the only one with the charms to let people back there.”
“That’s strange. I would have thought anyone in the play could go backstage.”
“No way,” Wolf said. “There are a lot of magical items kept back there.”
“Not to mention the costumes,” Belle added. “If someone were to accidentally damage them, it could be disastrous.”
“Okay, am I the only one who wasn’t in magical theater?” I rolled my eyes. Even though I’d been at Enchanted Academy for a few months, I always seemed to be the odd one out. No matter how hard I worked, I constantly felt like I was just on the cusp of fitting in.
Go figure that even now, with a new mystery to solve, I’d be left out.
“I took theater my first year,” Wolf said.
“Really? You?”
“What about it?” She bristled. “Wolves can act.”
“I don’t doubt it.”
In fact, I bet she was probably pretty great.
“Look, what we need is a plan,” Wolf said. “We need a starting point.”
“We could talk to someone,” I pointed out the obvious.
“No!” Everyone said at the same time.
Then Tinkerbell shook her head.
“If someone did this to hurt him,” she said. “Then they’re going to come after the other students in the play, too, and it’s up to us to figure out how to get Peter back.”
I looked at the tears glistening in Tinkerbell’s eyes, and I listened to what she wasn’t saying.
She needed him.
We were going to get him back.
Chapter 2
Tinkerbell shivered as they moved through the dorms and headed toward the castle, but she wasn’t cold.
Nope, she was shivering because something was terribly wrong with this entire situation. She’d lost Peter, and she was afraid that someone else was next.
“Don’t freak out,” Jessica whispered to her.
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