by Shelby Bach
She slashed her dagger at my face.
I blocked it with my shield arm, hitting her fingers with the lid’s edge so hard that she shrieked. Her dagger clattered to the floor. She struck with her other hand, swinging a second knife. I hadn’t seen it. She must have dropped her ruined wand and grabbed the hidden blade.
With my luck, she probably had extra knives stashed in her boots. Well, if disarming her didn’t work . . .
I kicked out, three times in quick succession just like Chase and I practiced—once to bash the weapon out of her hand, once in her stomach to knock the wind out of her, once in the face to stun her. She choked, gasping for air. Her face twisted with rage, her lip bleeding. With a fresh knife, she tried to stab my belly, but the movement was much slower than before. I whacked her blade aside with my shield, stepped inside her guard, and smashed my hilt into her temple. She dropped into a heap, her arm twisted under her in a really uncomfortable-looking way.
She probably wasn’t faking.
“Behind you, Rory!” Amy yelled.
I glanced back. A third knife sailed though the air, aimed directly at my head. I jumped out of the way, but then a throwing star shaped like a snowflake flew into my path. I deflected it with my shield.
The witches of the Wolfsbane clan had lined up along the comb cage. I gulped. The bars only stopped magical attacks. A regular blade or arrow could make it through. The Wolfsbane witches had come prepared for this, armed with knives and snowflake-shaped throwing stars in every green hand.
“We gave Istalina the honor of first blood, if she could get it,” said a short, squat one. “But make no mistake, Aurora Landon. We bring your death with us today.”
They all threw at once. Amy screamed, but the witches’ aim was less than awesome. A few barbed snowflakes knocked into the bars and fell to the floor. A small knife bounced off my shield. Only one grazed my jeans and sliced open the fabric near my shin.
No blood, but too close for comfort. These weapons could be poisoned.
It would have been smart to tie up Istalina to make sure she couldn’t attack us again, but I made an executive decision to just get out of the way. I dove behind the island.
Amy slid closer. “Are you all right?” I nodded, slightly out of breath.
“Again!” barked one.
Another barbed snowflake clattered into the sink. They could throw all they wanted. Their aim had gotten even worse now that they couldn’t see me.
The same thought must have occurred to someone else. “Stop. Do not waste your weapons.” It sounded like the gray-haired witch. She was probably their leader.
“Why?” whined another witch. “We can always call for more. They’re not going anywhere.”
She was right. We were safe for now, but we were definitely trapped.
Amy’s eyes bugged out a little more. “What are we going to do?”
I grabbed the M3 I’d left on the floor. We needed help. We needed my friends.
I flipped open the velvet cover. I looked how I always did in mirrors these days—eyebrows pinched, hair messy, purple smudges under my eyes.
No answer from Lena. Okay. Still not a big deal. She’d been scattered recently. The Director had assigned her too much to do in the workshop. But tons of people had M3’s now. “Hey, come in. We have a code Gingerbread here. Requesting at least two squadrons for backup immediately.”
Only my reflection stared back at me.
A witch cackled. “Call your Character friends all you like. Her Majesty has devised new enchantments to confound your tiny mirrors.”
I froze. If the Snow Queen had figured out a spell to block the M3’s, we really were trapped until reinforcements came.
The triplets should still be on their way. Plus, Mom was back at EAS now. She must have raised the alarm when she arrived. She would track down Lena—or even Chase, if she could find them. She would make sure they brought back-up.
One of the witches guessed what I was thinking. “It wouldn’t matter if your message got through anyway. The warding hex we’ve cast blocks all enemy enchantments. None of your allies can travel here by magical means.”
No wonder the triplets were almost half an hour late. Their temporary-transport spell probably hadn’t worked. My friends couldn’t rescue us if they couldn’t get here.
“Hush,” said the gray-haired witch in charge. “We aren’t supposed to speak of the hex.”
“They’re captured by their own combs!” protested her ally. “It doesn’t matter what we tell them now.”
“Does that mean the ring of return didn’t work?” Amy asked. “Did your mom get through?”
I stopped breathing. I didn’t know. I’d never heard of a warding hex. I had no idea what they did. Lena wasn’t here to explain.
But Mom had disappeared. If she hadn’t gotten through, where had she gone?
I’d been so sure I was keeping her safe.
“Call the archers,” said the gray-haired leader. “Tell them to bring their flaming arrows.”
The door creaked open. Oh no. The archers’ aim didn’t have to be good anymore. All they needed to do was light the kitchen on fire. The smoke would kill us if the flames didn’t.
“That’s right, Aurora Landon,” said the witch who liked taunting me. “We will flush you out as we would a Dapplegrim from its herd. We have brought your death with us.”
I wished they would stop saying that. It was starting to sound true.
“And the death of the woman you seek to protect,” said the gray-haired witch.
I looked at Amy. She held a can in each hand, and her scowl clearly said, Well, I’m going down fighting.
“But it doesn’t have to be that way,” said the gray-haired witch. “Release the combs, and surrender to us. We will let the woman go free. It is your death we seek, after all.”
It was a trick. It had to be.
But maybe it wasn’t.
My Tale had begun two years ago. The beginning lines hadn’t changed that much: Once upon a time, there was a girl named Rory Landon. Though she did not know it, the fate of magic would fall into her hands during the month she turned fourteen. With it, she would meet winter, death, and despair.
Maybe the hail counted as winter. Maybe despair was finding myself down to two choices: my death by surrender or my death and Amy’s by fire.
No. I could ask them for a Binding Oath. I could make them swear on their lives that Amy would go free, and it would all be over.
My expression must have given me away, because Amy began shaking her head. “No. Rory, don’t you dare—”
The door creaked open again. More feet thundered in. The witches’ archers had arrived.
We were trapped. Help wasn’t coming. I knew my choice.
hen a new voice said, “The EASers are here.”
My heart leapt. I hadn’t even needed to ask for help. My friends had come anyway, warding hex or no warding hex.
“Then we must do our work quickly!” said the gray-haired witch. The witches launched their weapons. The air filled with silver snowflakes, their sharp barbs sparkling.
Amy screamed again. I yanked up the shield, over our heads. Two throwing stars clattered against the lid. Half a dozen more fell on the floor inches from our feet.
Too many more assaults like that, and something was going to hit us.
“This isn’t how it works,” Amy muttered. “I’m the adult. I’m supposed to protect you.”
“What are you waiting for, archers?” said the gray-haired witch. Oh great. I couldn’t see the new arrivals, but I bet they all had bows. They were probably trained to fight, just like Istalina. I braced myself.
Then the glass window above the kitchen table shattered. I half stood, risking a peek over the island to see what was going on. Two arrows sailed in, tiny little packets tied to their shafts. They landed, releasing great puffs of a green-and-gold powder. It glittered and stank of sulfur.
The witches coughed and choked. “Powdered dragon scale
s?” croaked the gray-haired one. “Why?”
Another arrow flew in. I stood on my tiptoes to get a better look. The arrow had landed right in the middle of all the witches. Someone had tied some sticks to it. The string they’d used looked weird, like a braid of brown hair with a blue bead at the end.
Lena’s hair.
I knew what it was. I’d seen Lena experimenting on long-range spells like this one, modeled after the transmitter General Searcaster had fashioned in the city of the Living Stone Dwarves. The powdered scales in the air made it impossible to dodge the enchantment.
She had them.
Then my friend’s clear, high voice rang out, shouting in Fey. I didn’t have my gumdrop translator in, so I only understand one word: “beep.”
“Did it work?” It sounded like Lena was at the bottom of the porch stairs.
The witches stared at each other in horror, waiting to turn to stone or sea foam, waiting to writhe in agony.
“What was it supposed to do?” I called back.
“Lena, you forgot the buzzer,” said someone else outside. Kyle.
“We will not be defeated by a bunch of Character children.” The gray-haired witch took a step toward the bars, toward us.
“Oh, yeah,” Lena said. An alarm beeped, almost identical to a kitchen timer.
All at once, the witches’ eyes rolled back in their heads. Then they dropped, collapsing all over each other. Weapons scattered across the wooden floor. I hoped none of them had fallen on their blade. Then I immediately felt stupid for worrying. They’d just tried to kill me. They’d tried to kill Mom and Amy.
Lena burst through the back door. Glass crunched under her feet. She half tripped over one of the witches’ bows. “RORY?”
I leapt out from behind the island. “Here, Lena.” Behind me, Amy stood more slowly.
“Oh, thank gumdrops.” Lena ran forward, jumped over the motionless body of the gray-haired witch, grabbed the second-to-last bar of the comb cage, and muttered the counterspell. When the bars shrank down to a comb, she threw her arms around me, hugging so tight that her bony elbows pinched my ribs.
We both took a deep breath. As I exhaled, I let go of that awful trapped feeling of no escape and no choices.
It had been a close call, definitely, but it was almost business as usual. We had been through all of this before. Not here, specifically. Not at my house. But at other Characters’ houses. Daisy’s house, just a few weeks ago. Ben’s house, just a few days ago.
“What did you do to them?” Amy said, staring at Lena like my friend could rain sulfur-smelling death down on us all.
“Long-range sleeping spell,” Lena said, clearly proud of herself. “I knew you had put up the comb cage. Magic can’t get through the bars, so even if the powdered dragon scales reached you, the spell would only be able to activate outside the bars. I figured if the whole clan was in one room, we had better knock them all out at once.”
She always talked this fast when she was explaining an invention she was excited about. I found it supremely comforting. “How did you know to come?”
“The triplets couldn’t get through,” Lena said. “They came to me, thinking the enchantment was broken, and when I was trying to sort out the temporary-transport spell, we ran into your mom.”
The rest of the panic ebbed out of my chest. So the ring of return had gotten her there safely. I tried not to think about how angry she was going to be.
Kyle walked in and smiled at Amy. “Good morning, Miss Stevens.” We could usually count on him to be polite.
Conner and Kevin crowded in behind him, knocking their spears against the doorway. “Backyard’s clear,” said Kevin. Daisy stomped in from the entryway, her bow out but not drawn.
“Tina and Vicky are sweeping the street,” added Conner.
“Anyway, we realized that something was blocking the transport spell,” said Lena. “So we went through the Door Trek door to San Fran and took a cab over. We got here as fast as we could.”
“Thank you.” I wanted to tell her how much it meant to me, but a lump started to clog my throat. I couldn’t risk it. “Any idea how long the sleeping spell lasts?” Forever would be fine with me.
She made a face, and Kyle answered, “When she tested it on me, I was out for a couple hours.”
“But you’re a human. I don’t know how witches react to the spell,” Lena said. “Could be longer. Could be shorter.”
“We better call in reinforcements,” Kyle said. “Ben’s squadron can handle confiscating wands, putting them in manacles, and hauling them off to the dungeon.”
“Where’s Chase? Is he with the stepsisters?” I knew he probably hadn’t come, but my eyes strayed back to the door anyway.
Lena’s face fell. “We couldn’t find him.”
I’d expected it, but still the small bubble of hope died. Something closed up inside me, knotted and cold. I pressed my lips together, trying to keep myself from saying anything I might regret later.
“We didn’t look very hard,” Kyle added. “We didn’t have time.”
“Maybe he’s getting coffee.” Daisy’s voice dripped with sarcasm.
She was still angry. She had a right to be. She was the only other person in our grade whose home had been attacked. When the Director had announced the mission, the rest of us had taken a temporary-transport spell to her front door and held off the invading trolls long enough for Daisy’s family to escape. Everyone came. Everyone helped . . . except for Chase and Adelaide. Afterward, they came back to EAS carrying iced coffees. They said they’d gone to a café for a little peace and quiet. Daisy still hadn’t forgiven them.
“Maybe they’re getting ice cream,” said Kevin. He wasn’t quite as sarcastic as Daisy, but he was pretty fed-up. We all were.
“You guys might have it all wrong,” said Conner. “It’s a hot day at EAS. Maybe they’re swimming.”
I pushed my anger aside. “The Director might have sent him somewhere. That’s what happened last week when you were all ragging on him for missing our rescue of the Goose Girl.”
That shut them up. Chase was going on just as many missions as the rest of us. He was just going on them with Ben’s grade, and George’s, and Miriam’s, and every once in a while, with his dad, Jack. He was working just as hard as we were to stop the Snow Queen. He just wasn’t fighting with us.
That was enough for the triplets. Not Daisy.
“Whatever,” she said. I didn’t blame her. A troll had speared her father in the belly. The Water of Life brought him back, but he would keep the scar forever. If anyone I’d cared about had gotten hurt like that, I would have a hard time even pretending to be nice.
Silence followed. It might have gotten awkward, but then Lena spotted the lid-shield in my hand. “Ooo, did you make this? Can I see? I can’t believe I didn’t think of this before.”
The stepsisters tramped in with four bundles of hazel sticks, dripping with mud. “Look what we found,” said Vicky, dumping an armful on the kitchen counter, her lip curling with disgust.
The source of the warding hex. It had to be.
“One in each corner of the yard.” Tina dropped her bundles too, and she went straight to the sink to wash her hands, completely ignoring the shattered dishes under the faucet.
“You dismantled it?” Lena said, horrified. “Oh no, I should have told you! I needed to examine it. If I can’t look at their hex, I can’t figure out how they blocked the temporary-transport spell!”
Vicky frowned at her. “What happened to us needing to call Ben right away? Didn’t we need to break the enchantment to use our M3’s?”
“Does that mean you don’t need us?” Ben stumbled up the porch steps and yawned in the doorway. “Because before the M3 woke me up, this was supposed to be our morning off.” He got a good look at my kitchen, and all the green-skinned sleepers lying on the floor. “Oh. So, which task did you want us to perform?” Then he laughed.
“Ugh, Ben,” Darcy said, right on his heels
. She stepped inside, flipped a sleeping witch on her stomach, and started tying the new prisoner’s hands behind her back.
Kenneth almost slipped on the hail melting on the porch and cursed. Then he saw the witches inside and cursed again. “No way. I’m not carrying them. You woke me up saying we would get to fight some witches, not clean up after these guys.”
We slid back into our usual habits so easily. It always amazed me, when I had time to think about it. Sure, the Wolfsbane clan had almost managed to kill me this morning. They’d even used some very scary spells, but we couldn’t dwell on it. We had too much to do.
Only one person in the room hadn’t chimed in. Amy hadn’t told me off for putting myself in danger. She hadn’t even protested about the muddy sticks on the clean kitchen counter. She just stared straight, her eyes unfocused.
“Amy?” I was suddenly worried she was going to faint.
Her eyes met mine. Slowly, her slack mouth formed a wry smile. “I’m just shocked that you haven’t said ‘I told you so’ yet. I would deserve it. It’s definitely time to move. Do you think we could recruit any of these kids to carry boxes, or are they too busy bagging and tagging witches?”
I smiled back, not fooled. She was pretending she wasn’t scared, making wisecracks like nothing was wrong. She was following our lead.
Conner craned his neck into the dining room. The table had almost disappeared under a pile of cardboard boxes. “You mean these?”
Kyle leaned his spear against the wall and picked one up. “We can handle it, Miss Stevens.”
For a second Amy half-smiled, like she’d realized how nice it was to have a squadron of athletic teenagers around on moving day. Then she said, not bothering to joke, “Your mother knows the emergency’s over, right?”
Mom was probably still terrified for me, and I just stood around chatting with my friends. “Lena—?” I said, my voice weirdly shrill.
Lena handed me two shining blue rings of return. “Go. We’ll take care of the rest.”
I took one and slipped it on.
It always throws you—to blink in a kitchen and open your eyes in the EAS courtyard. It was even worse this summer. It looked more like a loud, crowded village than an afterschool these days. You couldn’t see any of the colored doors lining the walls. Too many houses blocked the view. At least a hundred families had seen Lena’s home in the middle of the courtyard, and they’d decided to skip the rooms the Canon had offered and just move their whole house to EAS instead. So, we had a weird sort of neighborhood, buildings of all different sizes, all different styles. Lena’s spell had plopped them down at random, so they weren’t even lined up in anything resembling a street. Dirt paths wove through them instead. So many people were living here this summer that we’d worn down the once thick grass.