Skipping Midnight (Desperately Ever After Book 3)

by Laura Kenyon

  Three sharp taps sounded at the door. “Rapunzel?”

  She flung her head back up, splattering the wall with tiny darts of water and making her feel woozy. She grabbed the vanity and hovered over a glob of green toothpaste.

  “Breakfast is ready when you are,” Elisa called, her voice making Rapunzel feel pressured and inadequate all over again. “No rush. But I’d hate for you to leave here on an empty stomach.”

  “Okay,” Rapunzel called back, her mouth filling with saliva. She shouldn’t have flung her head around like that. She had low blood pressure. What was she thinking? “Be down in a few!”

  She didn’t move again until she heard Elisa clop away and thump down the stairs. Then she threw her hair up into a sopping wet bun and lunged for the toilet.

  * * *

  “Smells delicious,” Rapunzel lied as she ambled into the kitchen and darted straight for the coffee machine.

  “Good morning!” five kids and Ethan sung from the table—the latter sporting an ear-to-ear grin and a lopsided chipmunk cheek stuffed with scrambled eggs.

  Brandishing a spatula like a lasso, Elisa twirled around from the stovetop and plucked the mug right out of Rapunzel’s hand. “And how are you this morning?” she asked, replacing her spoil with an already steeped cup of ginger tea.

  Rapunzel stared at it for a second, grateful for the forethought but also a little disappointed. “Thanks,” she said as her hostess winked and turned back to the stovetop. “I’m fine. Sorry for missing dinner though. I really didn’t expect to sleep for fourteen hours.” She surveyed the counters, unsure where she’d left her cell phone. She’d resisted the urge to call Belle earlier because of the time difference, but it was just about dinnertime there now. And with Donner out on bail, she needed to make sure her friend was okay.

  “No worries,” Elisa said, flipping an egg with gusto. “You must have been exhausted. A lot of people don’t understand how draining it can be … but I’ve been there.” Elisa looked up and smiled. “Traveling, I mean.”

  “Yeah,” Rapunzel replied, eying a tiny upper cabinet in the corner. It was probably hiding all the booze. “Hey, do you mind if I get your wireless password? The last bit of news I saw about Marestam was on the plane and—”

  “Oh, we don’t have Internet,” Elisa said, giggling as if Rapunzel had just tried to brush her hair with a fork. “Nothing good there. But if it’s news you’re hankering for, you can always grab a paper on your way to the docks. Right, Ethan?”

  Rapunzel sucked the side of her lip and turned toward the window. She was either learning how to cope or approaching a breaking point, because this was suddenly getting comical. No Internet access. No booze. Five kids and a relationship analysis from her boyfriend’s only sibling. And now a newspaper? An actual, folding broadsheet made from tree pulp? Did the Mirror even sell those anymore? And did they export to Stularia?

  “Sure can,” Ethan sang, dunking a chunk of bagel into some hollandaise sauce and swirling it around his plate. “But we should head out soon. It’s a thirty minute drive and—”

  “No!” the children shouted, instantly abandoning their plates and leaping on their uncle.

  “Don’t go!”

  “What about the playground?”

  “Don’t you like us?”

  “Can’t you stay? You and Punzel can have my bunk bed. Pleeeeease!”

  Only the youngest, Camilla, remained in her seat—and not only because she was strapped in. “Egg,” she commanded, sliding her plastic plate towards Ethan and pointing to an empty corner.

  He laughed and dutifully obeyed, selecting one egg and half a muffin and carving them into bite-size pieces. “How can I possibly refuse you?” he asked, flicking a glance up at Rapunzel, but swiftly lowering it when he saw that she was looking back. His lips fell too, from that wide-open smile to a tight, slim line.

  “Here you go, sweetie. Now I have to help Aunt—to help Rapunzel find her phone. Be right back.”

  Only he wasn’t right back. It took ninety minutes of scouring before they finally found her phone—stashed inside a saucepan in the pantry, along with Ethan’s.

  Elisa blamed it on Porter at first, but a quick interrogation exposed the true culprit as five-year-old Rebecca.

  “Don’t go,” she pled through bright red eyes. Then she latched onto Ethan’s leg as if she was a barnacle and he was disintegrating on the ocean floor. “Pleeeeease.”

  Rapunzel might have rolled her eyes at the embarrassing display, had it not been for the tiny little sniffling sounds coming from that pipsqueak of a creature. And her face taking on the same strawberry tint as her hair. And the watery rim in Ethan’s eyes as he dropped to his knees and so engulfed her with his arms that she disappeared entirely.

  Shit.

  “Come back soon, okay,” Elisa said, pulling Rapunzel close and then analyzing her at arm’s length—as if confirming a purchase before swiping her credit card. “I mean it. You’re welcome anytime.”

  “We will,” Rapunzel said, hoping her eyes followed through. “Thanks for putting us up.”

  “Maybe you can return the favor sometime. Or, you know, just move here.” She winked. “We offer compulsory playmates and unlimited free babysitting.”

  “Alllllrighty,” Ethan swooped in, curling his arm around Rapunzel’s waist and pulling her hip against his. “If I keep looking at these adorable faces, I might never leave. Chin up, Becs. You’ll see me in a couple months, remember? I promised you a sandcastle and I fully intend to honor that.”

  Rebecca beamed through her bloodshot eyes and looked straight at Rapunzel. “You too?”

  “Umm.” Rapunzel wavered. She didn’t know what to say. She didn’t want to disappoint the seven sets of eyes boring into her but—

  “What? I’m not enough for you now?” Ethan joked, bending down again and wiping Rebecca’s cheek.

  After a few more tears, another round of hugs, and a one-two tap on the rental car horn, Rapunzel and Ethan were back on the road, en route to find Grethel.

  “So what time is the ferry?” she asked as the neighborhoods transitioned to highway and the boisterousness of the Wilkins’ house disappeared. She fumbled for a charging cable and jammed the adaptor into her dead phone.

  “The ferry’s whenever we get there,” Ethan replied, his tone sending a chill down Rapunzel’s back.

  She shot him a look of surprise. “Are you mad at me?” He said nothing but repositioned his hands on the steering wheel. “Look. I’m sorry I wasn’t thrilled about meeting your family. I just wasn’t ready for that yet and—”

  “No, that’s not what I meant. There is no time for the ferry. We have to ask around to see if someone will drop us off on Blood Island. It’s not a typical route. No one goes there.” He shook his head and squeezed the bridge of his nose.

  Rapunzel could tell he wanted to say something else, but was holding back.

  She stared out the window, noticing for the first time the orange clay along the roadside, the brightly colored beach huts in the distance, and the strange, bulbous baobab trees that resembled giant wine bottles covered in bark. It was a beautiful landscape. If only she felt as beautiful in it.

  “Okay,” she said, ignoring the fact that Ethan never told her Grethel’s island was uninhabited—or that it was called Blood. “But I really am sorry about how I acted on the plane, and if it took me a little bit to warm up to them.” She waited for forgiveness, but none came. “I wasn’t feeling great though and … well anyway, your family seems great.” She was struggling. “I’m glad it all worked out in the end.”

  She flinched as Ethan let out a tight, staccato laugh.

  “What?” she shot back.

  He shook his head. “Sorry, but I wouldn’t call pouting at the table for half an hour and then going to bed ‘working out in the end.’ You hardly gave them a chance.”

  Rapunzel’s entire body pulsated. “Is it because I didn’t promise Camilla we’d build sandcastles in December right away?
I thought she was joking. I mean—”

  “That was Rebecca. Camilla’s the baby,” he said, merging seamlessly into a rotary and just as seamlessly pulling off. “And December is summer in Stularia—not that it should matter. She’s a little girl. You could have just said yes.”

  “Well how was I supposed to know summer is—”

  “And you didn’t take a ‘little bit’ to warm up to them. You didn’t warm up period. You didn’t even try.” He brushed his palm against his cheek, calling attention to the gash that still remained from his encounter with Grethel almost twenty years ago. “You took one look at the kids and tightened up like a snake around a kangaroo. Which frankly, considering how much you seem to adore Belle’s son, I just don’t know how to take. Is it just my family that sickens you or—”

  “They don’t sicken me!”

  Ethan started to reply, but clapped his jaw shut and focused on the road again.

  Rapunzel followed suit, unable to say anything else because she didn’t believe he was wrong but didn’t know how to explain her feelings, either. Something about seeing his family had sent her into fight or flight mode—and she’d chosen the latter.

  They spent the rest of the drive in silence—save for the beep of the horn, the clacking of the turn signal, and the grunts of frustration caused by a complete lack of service on her phone, which only caused her anger to deepen. What if Belle needed her? What if Donner had escaped his babysitters and went after her? What if he’d relapsed into full beast-mode, gone on a rampage through Capitol Park, and set Braddax Castle on fire? Or what if Ruby had discovered another way to break the curse and didn’t need Grethel after all?

  “Here we are,” Ethan announced, grimly, as the car knocked to a halt and he stomped down on the emergency brake.

  Rapunzel looked around, expecting to see cruise ships and tourist shops and hordes of passengers carting around giant suitcases. Instead, she saw dirty old trawlers, heaps of empty fishing nets, and a dozen scruffy looking men dressed in tank tops and rubber overalls.

  “Market’s over there,” she heard Ethan say in a tone that made her feel like a schoolgirl—but not in the sexy way. “You get your newspaper and I’ll find out who’s going near Blood Island.”

  There it was again: Blood Island. But before she could ask for clarification, he was out the door and waving to a group of men as if they were old college roommates.

  The “market” (simply dubbed Whatcha Need by a spray-painted piece of plywood), was a dilapidated shack with three squat aisles, a case of rotating hot dogs, some sort of slush drink machine, and a teenage boy with a toothpick in his mouth, mud-crusted boots on the counter, and an actual tube television set. Had she stepped back in time?

  “Hi,” she croaked, pasting on a smile. “I’m looking for a newspaper.”

  The boy raised a hand and pointed towards a rack on the other side of the store.

  “Thanks,” she said, feeling more than a little slighted. He could have at least looked up.

  She flipped through the newspaper rack like a child searching for a rookie broomball card. Early Morning Enquirer, Stularian Journal, Wallabie Gazette. Nope, no Marestam Mirror.

  “Excuse me?” she called, as a toilet flushed behind a crooked bathroom door. Taking the clerk’s head bob as an act of acknowledgment, she continued. “Do you carry any newspaper from Marestam? The Mirror perhaps or even the Post? I’m visiting from there and—”

  “This is Stularia,” he said, scraping his boots together. Rapunzel cringed as globs of mud fell onto the counter.

  “Well, I know that but—”

  “We carry Stularian papers.”

  Rapunzel stared back at him in complete disbelief. “Okay. Then can you tell me if any of these papers cover international news?”

  No answer. She stomped forward, ready to go all old-timer on this delinquent and give him a piece of her mind. To pluck that damn toothpick out of his mouth and slash the coin-sized holes dangling from his ears. To find out just what was so damn important about that boob tube that he couldn’t even look a customer in the eye and—

  Then she saw it, the same channel she’d been unable to avoid on the plane. Only this time, the headlines were different: King of Braddax jumps bail. Manhunt underway. Royal jet missing. She was so consumed with fear and guilt that she barely heard the bathroom door shut behind her, or the heavy footsteps lumbering down her aisle.

  “Maybe I can help,” said a man’s voice. She looked down to see a tall and extremely broad shadow at her side. “I just came from Marestam.”

  “Oh thank you,” she said, preparing to bombard this stranger with questions. But as soon as she began to turn, the shadow came into focus and she lost all ability to breathe.

  “Beautiful morning,” said Donner, cupping a black-banded coffee cup in his gigantic hands. “And beautiful bracelet, while we’re at it. How’ve you been?”

  THE MARESTAM MIRROR

  Diamond Ropes and Velvet Cake

  By Perrin Hildebrand, King of Gossip

  BREAKING NEWS!

  Lock up your daughters, folks! Don’t let small pets outside! Donner Wickenham has given Marestam’s Finest the slip!

  According to Guard Chief Toby Kind, officers entered Braddax Castle at eight a.m. this morning when the king failed to check in at his appointed time. But instead of a surly detainee, they discovered a perfectly intact ankle bracelet (a message from mommy dearest?) and a missing sports car. Further investigation revealed that the royal jet was also missing from a rented airplane hangar a few miles down the road.

  “Right now, we cannot ascertain whether the king has fled Marestam entirely or is hiding somewhere within our borders,” Chief Kind told a clamoring press this morning. “Needless to say, we have every department in both our and surrounding realms working on tracking him down, and we will be activating several of the MSC-backed surveillance measures that Parliament passed on Monday. We understand that some of these might cause minor inconvenience, but appreciate the public’s trust that everything we do, we do for their own protection. Residents are also being asked to exercise extreme caution outside their homes, and to report any suspicious activity to the Marestam Guard. Rest assured, we will track down this threat and any accomplices together.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  BELLE

  Moments earlier, Belle was sitting outside on a checkered blanket, scooping up mashed strawberries with a baby spoon while Beast ransacked a field of wildflowers in pursuit of a hurled stick. In the cloudless sky, the sun hung bright and warm above them. The branches swayed overhead. The corner of Rye’s periwinkle blanket fell across her left knee. And while she couldn’t quite make out who had thrown the stick, Belle knew it was someone she cared for. She knew because she could feel it: Sublime peace. Warmth. A comfort and a happiness unlike she’d ever encountered before. A feeling that this was where she truly belonged.

  Then the camera inside her dreams panned left, and the child beside her came into focus. Blue eyes. Brown hair. A chain of dandelions wrapped around his chubby toddler hands.

  “Pretty,” he said, holding the necklace out proudly. “For Mama.”

  Belle felt something melt inside of her. “Oh, thank you so much, sweetheart.” She placed the strawberries in her lap and reached out carefully. She didn’t want to lose a single petal. “What a wonderful—”

  “No,” Rye said, pulling the necklace away as soon as she touched it. He held it against his chest and looked around. “For Mama. Where Mama?”

  The pain hit on both sides of Belle’s heart. She opened her mouth to ask what he meant by that. She was his mother. She was Mama.

  “There Mama!” Rye squealed, lighting up and pointing to another figure sitting down to join them. Snow.

  Belle felt something wrap around her heart and squeeze. She couldn’t breathe. Dream Snow pulled the dandelions over her head as Belle glanced down. Something wasn’t right. Suddenly, the strawberries in her lap multiplied by the thousands and gush
ed like blood all over her dress. When she looked up again, the toddler with the dandelions was gone. Instead, there was a teenager. A brown-haired, blue-eyed teenager with dots of acne across both cheeks. One blink later: a young man with a block jaw and stubble.

  Belle brought both hands up to her eyes and shook her head. The whole world began to swirl and shake in front of her. She heard someone in the distance shout her name, just as her chest erupted in fire and her eyelids ripped apart.

  “Belle? Belle, wake up! Are you okay?”

  The voice belonged to Gray, who was standing directly over her. His hand was clamped around both her arms, as if he was trying to pull her back from something that refused to let her go.

  “Belle,” he said again. But he still sounded miles away. The pain was drowning it out. Then his palm flattened against her cheek, siphoning away just enough to yank the world into focus.

  Beast was at full attention beside her, frantically licking his mouth with eyes wide as saucers. She murmured something inaudible. A momentary flash of relief cracked across Gray’s face and he leaned closer. “You were crying in your sleep,” he said. “And you’re hotter than a bonfire in August.”

  Belle pushed herself up on her elbows. Her shirt—the same one she’d left the hospital wearing yesterday—came with her. It was soaking wet, she was shivering (despite Gray’s diagnosis), and her chest felt like it was being crushed into a cube at an impound lot.

  She cursed, then flung the covers aside and raced to the bathroom. Beast sprinted after her, chasing the invisible assailant, but she shut him out with the door.

  “No,” she said, fumbling with her buttons and hoping she was wrong, hoping she was imagining the excruciating pain and the rock hard boulders that were hanging off her chest. “No no no no no.”

  How long had it been since she emptied? She remembered Beast arriving. Penny leaving. The stew. She’d passed on the wine because she intended to breastfeed as soon as she heard from Snow. She remembered waiting, and waiting, and waiting for the call, which seemed to take forever. She and Gray had passed the awkward hour like teenage lovers one year after their summer fling. All the pieces looked the same, but on the whole, there was something different between them–and neither one knew how to respond to it. She remembered being preoccupied while he tested the waters with small talk that only tapped each big topic once, the way a zoo animal might test its cage for weaknesses–one quick tap and if it didn’t give, on to another section.