by Shelby Bach
I glanced around and realized that Klonsky was talking to me. “N-no.”
“Dripping wet, a black eye,” Klonsky snapped. I touched my face. All the makeup Brie had painted on must have come off. “Did you get into an accident or something? Are you trying to prove how dedicated you are?”
I shrank away. I couldn’t think of any excuses except that I had jumped in a fountain on my way to the Hidden Troll Court. “No.”
Madison stood at my left elbow. I wished any of the other kids had been called with me—anyone except the one person I would have to see again. Next Monday’s homeroom would suck so much more than usual.
“Then is this some sort of joke?” Klonsky’s eyes flashed even from the dim area. The bun-and-clipboard lady should have warned me that she was this type of casting director—the kind who lost it if you were rude. “This isn’t a comedic role. You’re not pretty, or talented, or charming, or famous enough for us to overlook this disrespectful behavior.”
I thought nothing could make me feel any worse, any smaller, but someone moved in the shadows just behind Klonsky—a man ran his hands through his hair. I couldn’t see his face, but I recognized the gesture. My father.
“There’s nothing appealing about you,” said Klonsky. “You’re a waste of my time.”
And Dad never said a word.
hey made me do the reading anyway.
Later I remembered holding a sheet of paper in my hand and hearing words sail out of my mouth. I remembered how Madison glowed. I remembered clinging to the hope that Dad would interrupt and say that I was his daughter, that no one could treat me like that, and that he was taking me home.
I remembered not crying, not even when we finally finished, or when Klonsky pointedly thanked Madison for her time, but not me, or when I shuffled back into the waiting room, face hot, and bent over my luggage to find some dry clothes.
In the bathroom, changing, I racked my brain for something I could tell Dad. But my rebellious mind just tried to puzzle out why he hadn’t stood up to the casting director.
He was waiting for me when I came out. All he said was, “Did you do it on purpose?”
“No.” My nose prickled just under the bridge. I was three seconds away from crying. If he asked what happened, I would tell him the truth—about EAS, and the quest, and the Hidden Troll Court. I would show him the fountain as proof. I would lift up the car with the ring.
It didn’t matter if he freaked out and locked me in my L.A. room. I had the ring of return. If I could get back to EAS, Lena could get me back here.
But he didn’t ask. He didn’t even look at me as he grabbed my duffel and walked out the doors. I followed him to the parking lot, so focused on wishing Dad would turn around and hug me that I didn’t recognize the redheaded figure leaning against his car, munching on something.
Brie waved when she saw us, with that super-bright smile. She had changed out of her costume and into jeans, a flowery blouse, and a ton of dangly necklaces. “I’m so hungry. If I hadn’t found this apple, I might have fainted.”
Oh, no. I couldn’t go to lunch right now. I needed an excuse to return to that back lot, and it had to be a good one.
Brie glanced between us. “You two have a fight?”
“No,” Dad and I said at the same time—except I said it kind of resentfully. I would have preferred having a fight. At least then Dad would be talking to me.
“Rory, did you take a shower? And what happened to your backpack? I could have sworn you had a backpack,” Brie said.
My carryall with the temporary transport spell, with the ring of return, the M3. I’d left it in the bathroom where any child actress, cleaning crew, or studio exec could take it. I had to go back for it, but Brie was way more interested in asking questions than in getting answers. She didn’t even pause for breath.
“Did the casting call today not go well or something?” she continued.
“Kind of an understatement,” Dad muttered, as Brie took another bite. Her extremely long, extremely skinny fingers were almost spidery. Even the ginormous diamond on her hand was wider than her ring finger—
I choked a little on my own spit.
Dad was engaged. Brie Catcher was going to be my stepmother.
“What?” Brie followed my gaze, and then, with an embarrassed grin, she covered the huge diamond with her other hand. “Oh. I know. Someone in the ring department told Eric that bigger is always better, but—”
“I hadn’t gotten a chance to tell her yet,” Dad whispered to Brie, in a voice almost too low to hear. He didn’t even seem sorry about it.
“But you said you would tell her when you picked her up.” She turned back to me. Her eyebrows pinched together. “And we talked about it in the trailer. I said it would be nice to have permission, and you said—”
“You didn’t say you were engaged,” I whispered, throat dry. “You weren’t even wearing a ring.”
“I take it off when I’m in costume,” Brie said slowly.
I tried to remember all the Tales that had stepmothers in them. There were too many to count. There were too many lame ones to count.
I didn’t want a stepmother, especially not one named after a stupid smelly cheese.
“Rory, are you okay?” The concern in Brie’s voice was real. I wished it hadn’t been, because then I would have had reason to hate her.
My nose prickled under the bridge again. “I left my bag in the bathroom.” Before either of them could answer, before Dad even looked up, I sprinted into the building, down the hall, and into the bathroom.
My carryall was where I had left it, propped under the sink.
I locked the door behind me and checked all the stalls to make sure I was alone. I needed to talk to Lena.
I scooped the M3 out of my carryall’s front pocket. “Hello?”
“You got away,” Lena said, relieved. All the coughing had taken its toll. Her eyes were bloodshot, and her shoulders kind of drooped. “I’ve got three options that might get you in.”
Maybe I could spare five minutes, though, just to get it off my chest.
But her image was replaced by Chase’s: His blond curls were muddy. A new red welt on his forehead promised to become a pretty serious bruise. “So . . . I have good news and bad news.”
“My M3s can do conference calls?” Lena seemed kind of impressed with herself. “Chase, how did you do that?”
He rolled his eyes. “Oh, it was really hard. I picked up the magic mirror and started talking. Anyway, bad news is the escape attempt failed.” He lifted up his arms. Both wrists were encircled by heavy manacles of tarnished Fey-tempered silver.
“What? You tried to escape?” Lena asked.
Right. I’d never filled her in on what Chase had whispered to me right before I’d left Atlantis.
“Yep, and Fael—I mean, His Highness the Royal Prince of the Unseelie Court—” Chase added hastily, for the benefit of someone just beyond the mirror’s frame—“well, he was kind of expecting it. But the good news is we didn’t get roughed up too bad. Although there was one hairy moment when Ori’an was going to step on Ben’s head, elephant execution style, and burst it like—”
Lena shuddered. “Stop. Just stop.”
I knew what Chase was trying to say. The questers would be watched even more closely than before. They wouldn’t be able to escape on their own.
It was all up to me. I didn’t have time to be upset.
“Your sympathy is simply overwhelming, you guys,” Chase said.
“I’m sorry. Did you want sympathy or rescue?” Melodie asked from over Lena’s shoulder. “Because we’ve been working on the second one.”
“At least tell me good things are happening on your end?” he said.
“We found the entrance,” Melodie said proudly, like she’d helped.
“We got a little stumped getting through,” Lena said.
I took out my phone and started a good-bye text to my dad: I’m sorry.
But what els
e could I say that wouldn’t make him blame himself? I didn’t want to make him even angrier than I already would, running away like this.
Are you sure about that? asked a vengeful little voice inside me.
Tears filled my gaze. I blinked them back, annoyed.
I couldn’t save Chase and Lena, and everyone else, if I let myself get really upset. I couldn’t give in and wonder why Dad hadn’t told me he was engaged, why he hadn’t asked me how I felt before he proposed, why he hadn’t interrupted that casting director—
I shrugged on my backpack. “Stay quiet until I say I’m alone. Okay?”
I opened the door slowly, but no one was waiting for me this time. I ignored the pang in my chest and crept down the hall, away from the double doors that opened toward the parking lot, away from Dad. I slipped out a side exit, where a child actress was crying so hard her hair stuck to her tear-and-mascara-smeared cheeks. Her mother gave me a sharp look that clearly said, Move along.
“Sorry,” I whispered. I checked each way for passing trolleys, and then I hurried down the alley toward the back lot. It was empty except for a skinny boy wearing neon orange sunglasses, carrying an armful of bowler hats. The back lot was totally abandoned, but I kept an eye out anyway. You never knew when an angry father or a security guard on a Segway would come by.
“Okay. I made it.” The fountain’s mosaic rippled and showed me a glimpse of hedges again. “What’s next?”
“Try ‘open sesame’ in Troll,” Lena said.
“No, really,” I said, half-annoyed. Too much was at stake for us to be joking around.
“No, she’s right. I’ve heard that too,” Chase said. “Trolls aren’t smart enough to remember passwords, so they use the classic ones.”
“So close your eyes, picture a troll, and say it,” Melodie said huffily.
I tried it, and instead of words, a weird gurgling noise came out of my mouth instead. I was smart this time. I checked by hand before I tried to jump through. My fingers brushed the mosaic immediately. “Didn’t work. What’s the next one?”
“This one is a little tricky, because it’s technically a spell,” Lena said. Great. Spells. Something I sucked at. No wonder she sounded worried. “But it’s a really common one. It’s basically the Fey trick for picking magical locks.”
“ ‘Break what was whole, crack what was smooth, open what was shut,’ ” said Chase in Fey.
“Exactly. You say that, and then you’ll need to throw in something that has power,” Lena said. “I wish I’d thought to pack you some dragon scales, but I think one of your water bottles would work.”
“Perhaps more than one. The stronger the lock, the more power is necessary,” Melodie added.
I unzipped the carryall and shoved my arm in, all the way to the shoulder, and felt around. I pulled out a cylinder with a metal cap, with symbols embedded straight into the glass—a miniature version of the West Wind’s prison.
“Here goes nothing.” I repeated the spell and let the water bottle go. It didn’t splash. It didn’t clink to the bottom of the mosaic. It completely disappeared. So did the tiled flames. All I saw was the maze of hedges. “I think it worked.”
“Yes!” Chase pumped a manacled fist in the air.
I glanced over my shoulder. A trolley rushed by an alley over, but I didn’t see any security guards. I didn’t see my dad.
No one had come after me. I pulled my cell phone out of my pocket and finished the text: I’m sorry. I have to go back. I can get to the airport on my own. My friends need me right now.
It wouldn’t matter if Dad got this right away. He might not even check the bathroom. He would try to head me off at LAX.
He would be so worried. Mom would scream at him, probably, when he told her that he had lost me. This wasn’t the way he and Brie should spend the beginning of their engagement.
But I ignored the lump in my throat and pressed send. “You guys ready?”
“Yep,” said Lena.
“All systems go,” Chase added.
I took a deep breath and jumped.
I braced for another splash, but it never came. I didn’t even feel wet, and when my heels struck the ground, so hard I stumbled, my clothes were as dry as they’d been on the surface.
“Ow—no broken bones,” I told Lena hurriedly, before she could freak out, “but still—ow.”
A palace stretched out in front of me—white marble with huge, shining windows and gleaming cherub carvings, gilded gates, and windowsills. I’d fallen through the fountain onto the set of a Marie Antoinette movie—with trolls.
The ceiling was smeared with decades-old soot. We were definitely inside some sort of ancient, almost-burned down studio lot.
The trolls streamed out of the palace in ragged armor, their spears and axes and swords glinting under a giant lamp. Fifty of them, at least. It would have scared me a lot more if I hadn’t noticed one thing.
“Chase, why didn’t you tell me that the Hidden Trolls were so short?” No matter how fierce they looked, or how sharp their weapons were, they only came up to about my waist.
“I didn’t know,” Chase said. I could practically hear him rolling his eyes. “It’s the Hidden Troll Court, Rory. Nobody has seen them for a century.”
The trolls surrounded me, fifty feet or so short of pricking distance. Some of them looked nervous to be confronted by a giant seventh grader like myself. “Who knows what the sceptor looks like?” I asked.
“Like a birch tree,” Chase said. “But silver and about two and a half feet tall.”
I dashed up onto the nearest white bench to get a better view. In the clearing beside me, a human mannequin stood on display, garbed in a gold robe with a funky geometric pattern. In the next clearing, a pair of shoes—red low heels with bows—glittered on its own pedestal. Another space boxed off with hedgerows had a pair of towering emerald doors standing open in the middle of a grassy space.
But no scepters in sight.
That was when the trolls decided to attack.
“Geez, Rory—hold still,” Chase said. “It’s hard enough to see on this itty bitty screen.”
“Fighting now, just FYI.” I disarmed the half-size troll who ran up first and stabbed at my shoulder. “If I stay still, I’ll lose blood.”
The hollow feeling in my chest eased. Maybe I didn’t know what to do with a new stepmother, but this I could handle.
I turned aside an ax with my sword. I snap-kicked at a bunch of spear shafts—knocking one out of a troll’s hand. I winced when I put my foot back down, feeling a new bruise. I wished I’d thought to change shoes. These flats didn’t protect the top of my foot the way my sneakers did.
“How many trolls have you killed so far?” Chase asked eagerly.
I frowned. “Guess.”
At least seventeen more trolls ran up behind the bench. They really weren’t very smart. They kept knocking their comrades out of the way trying to get to me. And they kept injuring each other. One with wrist guards broke the nose of his neighbor with a crack so nauseating that it probably would’ve given Chase nightmares.
“Okay, fine—how many did you knock unconscious?” When I didn’t answer, Chase said, “Rory, come on. This is not a good time to become a pacifist. We’re not there to watch your back. Do you want to win this fight or not?”
“I just want to grab the scepter.” With my left hand I snapped the handle of several battle-axes like toothpicks. “Beating up a bunch of little trolls doesn’t exactly appeal.”
But I did accidentally knock a few out. A troll with a gauntlet and a sword snuck up behind me and spooked me with a quick stab at my neck. I managed to knock the blow aside and punched at his face without thinking about it—he flew back, taking three of his fellow soldiers with him. They didn’t get up again, but more than one groaned.
“Whoops,” I said, panting. The trolls backed off slightly, kind of freaked out, I guess, by the super strength. My hand hurt, but first I checked the mirror I’d been holding,
looking for cracks around Lena’s worried face. “I don’t think I messed it up—”
Chase emerged in the M3 suddenly, pointing, “Rory, behind you!”
I whirled around, expecting a super-huge troll with a mace or something. But two clearings over, beyond those ruby red slippers, something silver shone in the fake sunlight.
“They just left it out there in the open, where anyone could steal it,” Chase said, clearly delighted about it. “How stupid can they be?”
“Well, they don’t have many visitors,” Lena said. “Besides, I’m not so sure that’s it.”
I eyed the paths of the garden, memorizing the way.
The short truce was definitely over. The trolls stepped closer, but they weren’t looking at me. I mean, they were, but not at my face—they stared at my feet with a freaky gleam in their eyes.
“Lena, are you even wearing your glasses?” Chase asked.
“Yes. But it doesn’t look like a scepter to me.”
Something pricked my left elbow. I turned aside just before a spear jabbed me. I smashed the shaft with my sword hilt, and it broke with a very satisfying splintering noise.
“Wanna bet?” Chase asked Lena.
“You guys—we’re not making bets while I’m fighting for my life.”
I vaulted off the bench and dashed out of the clearing.
“Yes, we are,” Chase said. “So, how about it, Lena? If I win, you’ll give me one invention of my choosing.”
The trolls stumbled after me, but slowly. Sprinting past the fan’s pedestal, I congratulated myself on my clean getaway—until I spotted a helmeted troll hiding among some rosebushes.
“Whoa!” I lifted my sword to deflect his battle-ax, but instead, the troll dove at my legs.
I fell, not expecting a tackle. I skidded so hard my shoulder dug a groove in the grass, but I squirmed out of the little troll’s grip pretty fast.
“You okay, Rory?” Lena asked, slightly panicked.
“Yeah.” Two steps later I snatched up my sword from the grass. I didn’t notice I had lost a shoe until I glanced back. The troll hugged it close to his chest, his squarish fingers stroking the gold beads.