Skipping Midnight (Desperately Ever After Book 3)

by Laura Kenyon

  “Found what?” she asked.

  “Stairs!”

  She leered at him as he grabbed her arm and started hauling her towards the rock. “Grethel doesn’t need stairs,” she said. “She’s a pureblood fairy. All she has to do is flick her whatever and poof—ground floor, ceiling.”

  “Yeah, well, maybe she put them in after you took your magical hair away,” he said as they approached the spot where the tower stopped curving and connected with the floorboard-flat rock.

  She gnashed her teeth together and yanked her arm away. “For one thing, she banished me. I didn’t leave. And seriously with the hair again? She only used that a handful of times when she was really sick and her powers went a little haywire.” She stopped, suddenly worried for a whole new reason. Was Grethel ill?

  “Touch it,” Donner said, positioning her so that her nose was inches from the stone. She was blocked in by a rock wall and her best friend’s volatile husband.

  “What do you mean, tou—”

  Suddenly, he pulled her back and flung her towards the wall. She screamed. Her hands flew up to soften the impact, but … but none came. She flew through the stone like a gnat through a window screen.

  “Stairs,” she said, running her hand along a narrow, spiral railing as her gargantuan companion slipped in too. She looked around, wide-eyed and open-mouthed, at the hidden entrance. Had this always been here? She drew her foot up and placed it on the first step. Then she put her weight cautiously on the next and began to climb.

  “So,” Donner said as they ascended, one behind the other. “If there’s a door at the end of these stairs and we actually make our way in, is this going to be a happy reunion? Or should my priority be finding something to use as a shield?”

  Rapunzel’s bracelet rapped against the railing. It was a fair question, but she honestly didn’t know. All she knew was her stomach was churning and if these stairs didn’t come to an end soon, she might decide to turn around and go back home.

  “Got it,” he said, translating her nonexistent response. Then, a few seconds later: “What about Ethan? Are you worried this quasi-mother of yours might try to kill him? Finish what she started when you tried to run away with him?”

  “Please,” she said, her voice curt and piercing. She wanted him to stop asking questions. She wanted him to stop trying to get into her head. They weren’t going to be friends—today or any day thereafter. They were putting up with each other because they shared a common interest, and that was as far as it would ever go. “I don’t want to talk to you about Ethan. Or Grethel. I barely even talk to my closest friends about either. Please, let’s just get inside this tower, grab our second fairy, and fix Belle’s—fix your—son. Okay?”

  Donner grunted something in reply and stayed quiet for the next few steps. But just as she reached a narrow landing with an iron-framed oak door, she heard him mutter, “And people think I’m the damaged one.”

  She spun around so fast, she lost her balance and stumbled down two steps. “What?”

  “I’m just saying. I’ve always wondered how things would have turned out if I grew up with a better role model, or if I didn’t spend a year blocked off from the world like a monster. But you did that for eighteen years. No wonder you go through men like pairs of socks. You don’t have the slightest idea how to trust.”

  “Excuse me?” The air was suddenly on fire. She was finding it difficult to breathe. “Are you seriously attempting to give me relationship advice?”

  “Ethan’s not upset because I have trust issues. He’s upset because he pissed me off and I stayed mad at him for too long. And because I didn’t have a slumber party with his nieces or do his sister’s toenails.”

  “Wow.” Donner shook his head. “That’s the attitude he gets after everything he went through? For losing his eyesight and almost dying, all because he fell in love with you? You know, most guys would have cursed the day they met you and never spoke of you again. But this sap not only found you, he came back here with you—to the thorns that split him in half. Seriously, if you think a semi-committal guy gets sixty stitches and loses his eyesight for a fling, I don’t care how many men you’ve slept with, you don’t know jack about us. This poor sap is in it for the long haul—kids, marriage, holidays with his parents—and that scares the crap out of you. That’s why he’s upset, because you still haven’t brought down that wall.” He slapped his hand against the stone to illustrate his point. “And at this point, you probably never will.”

  Rapunzel blinked. Twice. Three times. Words piled up in her head but tumbled away the instant she tried to catch them. He didn’t know what he was talking about. He was guessing. Donner’s authority on relationships was downright comical and Ethan wouldn’t have blathered about anything so personal while they were walking together—would he? She felt a wave of panic wash over her. The tower of stress was building and she wasn’t going to be able to keep it up very much longer. She needed to get out of this stairwell.

  She spun around grabbed the handle with both hands, but it wouldn’t budge. Her sneaker flew into the door as she throttled her entire body like a half-naked cheerleader in a horror flick. Finally, she dropped her head back and opened her mouth to scream. But the next sound to enter the stairwell wasn’t a scream at all. It was a crisp, tiny but unmistakable click. Then the doorknob turned.

  Chapter Sixteen

  DAWN

  Sugar Showers sat between a shuttered computer repair shop and a laundromat in Hobbs Hill, a decidedly unhip neighborhood halfway between the Regian Woods and the northern coast of the kingdom, after the East River bent horizontal and before it officially dumped into the sea. It was squat, drab, and downright desolate. And on this drizzly, dreary morning, Dawn wondered why she’d once told Hunter not to let Tirion Enterprises barge in and “mess with it.”

  “Right here,” she said, scooting to the edge of her seat and pointing to a narrow storefront with a black awning bearing bubbly gold letters.

  “Got it,” Christophe sang, flipping on his blinker despite the empty street and pulling into a spot a few doors up. “Strange place for a latte. Who are you meeting again?”

  “Just a friend,” Dawn said while unbuckling her seatbelt. Then she smiled. Christophe was a Selladórean native and had worked for her father once upon a time. He was the only royal driver she trusted to keep her excursion a secret—not that Hunter seemed to care how she spent her time anyway.

  For going on five days now, she’d seen her husband more on the news than in real life. He was always there: posing, smiling, shaking hands. No one would ever suspect that his heart was in pieces and his marriage threatened to follow. Were it not for a few miniscule signs—a drawer left slightly ajar, a whiskey tumbler in the sink, the toilet paper torn outside of the perforation—she would have feared he’d already gone.

  She’d contemplated telling him about Elmina, and the triad, and all the things she’d intended to tell him when she returned from the hospital early Saturday morning—floating on air because she’d heaved the weight of the past off her shoulders. But the full story would have included Davin’s connection to Angus Kane and the ramifications that had on her “awakening” via Hunter’s lips. It would have included her suspicion that Hunter wasn’t one in a million so much as he was one in the right place at the right time. Or even worse, that he was handpicked to be there not by fate or the universe, but by Angus.

  So she didn’t tell him. She couldn’t bear to watch any more affection drain from the eyes that once held so much. It was hard enough watching his smile fall over and over again, every time he walked through the door and saw her there. She knew she deserved to be punished. She’d betrayed his trust on a monumental scale. But she was finding it harder and harder to continue pasting on a positive attitude with no signs that it mattered at all. She knew the kids needed it. She knew doing otherwise would give Hunter even less incentive to take her back. But everyone had their breaking point, and lately, she’d found herself wishing he�
��d just toss her to the street and be done with it. Then she could have told Christophe to just keep driving—north, outside the borders of Marestam entirely, until they reached a shoddy motel where he could leave her, never to be heard from again.

  “I’m already late, so I’d better head in,” Dawn said, crushing the handle of her purse in her fist and opening the door. “If it’s any good, I’ll bring you back a muffin. Blueberry crumb, right?”

  Christophe grinned and gave her a shallow, two-finger salute.

  Dawn’s boots clacked as they hit the sidewalk, averting a mound of black garbage bags lined up along the curb. The walk was too short to bother with her umbrella, so she pulled her hood up and snuggled further into her collar—blocking both the cold rain and the sweet, rotting stench of trash day.

  The storefront was impossibly narrow, with a tiny window displaying a single cupcake, a diet-sized sliver of blueberry pie, and a chalkboard sign reading “Open” in faint, white letters. She opened the door slowly, expecting to hear a jingle of some sort—or perhaps a chime. But there was nothing. There was only the low hum of a radio and a disembodied voice chiming in at random intervals from the kitchen. Well, if Elmina was going for discreet, she nailed it. How did she even find this place?

  Dawn hovered by the door for a few seconds, then edged further in. The bakery was long and claustrophobic, with three small white tables and a beige counter with low-backed bar stools in alternating pink and orange. To the right of the cash register, three coffee dispensers sat beside a mountain of paper cups. To the left, a three-level display case presented a mouth-watering assembly of brownies, tarts, pies, scones, muffins, and all kinds of cookies on a sea of white paper doilies.

  Dawn almost chuckled. The owner of this place really needed a lesson about effective advertising. Had those been in the window instead of that lonely pink cupcake and shred of pie, she would have been much more tempted to come in.

  She was admiring the chocolate-coated squares with the rainbow stripes, when the door to the kitchen swung open and a pretty young woman with caramel-colored skin and tight black curls appeared.

  “Well hello and welcome,” she sang, smearing her hands on a dishtowel and floating behind the counter. “Lovely day for a treat. Nothing brings on the sugar cravings like a dreary autumn morning, does it? Except perhaps a dreary winter morning, I suppose. But then no one wants to venture more than ten feet from their fireplace, so it doesn’t help me much.” She let out a bubble of laughter and threw her long, lanky arms on top of the display case. She was tall and thin to the point where Dawn doubted she actually ate anything she sold. “So what’s your pleasure? Everything’s fresh this morning, the coffee was pressed at dawn, and if there’s something special you want but don’t see, just say the word. I’ve got a few tricks up my sleeve and have yet to make a pastry that wasn’t worth the wait.”

  Dawn eyed the woman for a moment, unsure how to rectify her delicate, pretty exterior with the garrulous, overconfident empress that appeared the moment she opened her mouth. At a loss, she lowered her eyes to the muffins. They really did look delicious. But would it be rude to order something before Elmina arrived? This is when a handbook of modern-day etiquette would come in handy.

  “Umm,” Dawn said, glancing toward the door. “I’m actually meeting someone, but I guess she’s late too.” She looked back again, then fiddled with her watch. Elmina’s note had said ten o’clock, not ten fifteen, but she wouldn’t have come and gone this quickly—would she? “Do you mind if I just sit for a few minutes?”

  The woman’s youthful smile plummeted as she threw her dishtowel on the counter. “Two dollar charge for loitering. Per minute.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “For the first ten.”

  Dawn shook her head. “The first ten what?”

  “Minutes. Minutes eleven through twenty are five bucks apiece. And the wireless is password protected. This is a bakery, not a free place to hide till the rain lets up.”

  “Oh,” Dawn said, pressing her palm against her collarbone. “No, I’m not hiding. I really am meeting someone. An old friend of my parents. Has anyone been here?”

  The woman smirked and leaned forward over the counter. “What does this old friend look like? Young? Old? Pretty?”

  “Old,” Dawn blurted, rocking on her knees a bit. She hadn’t seen Elmina for over ten years. “I mean not old old, but older. Like sixty-something by now. And short.”

  “Short and plump?”

  Dawn jumped. “Yes!” she called. “Well, probably. I don’t know what she’s been up to over the last decade so I can’t say that for sure but…”

  She trailed off. Judging by the scowl growing across the young woman’s face, she couldn’t say for sure either—whether to kick Dawn out on her royal tuckus or start calculating her bill, that is. Dawn reached for her purse.

  “Okay. You know what? I’ll have a tea while I wait,” she said, the words rushing together. “Medium please. Green if you have it.”

  Another stare, then a gruff grab of the kettle and a tea bag. “Two dollars.”

  Dawn’s head fell to the side as she pulled out her wallet. “Is that two dollars for loitering or two dollars for the tea?”

  The woman smiled but gave no answer. She had bright amber eyes and an unusual birthmark between her left earlobe and her neck—as if the world’s smallest bird had landed on a permanent inkpad and somehow waddled onto her face. She’d seen something like it elsewhere recently, but couldn’t remember on whom.

  “Two dollars for the hot water and sack of herbs. Make it two fifty and I’ll throw in a scone. Nothing goes better with a rainy day than a scone. I highly recommend vanilla orange. Your friend might appreciate one too. They’re big hits with the elderly and overweight.”

  “She’s not—” Dawn started to correct her characterization of Elmina, but decided why bother? If she’d learned anything over the past few days, it was that she was better off moving forward than trying to fill in any hole she dug by mistake. “I’ll take two of those, sure. And a blueberry muffin. Thank you.”

  Dawn glanced at the door again as the woman plucked a sheet of orange wax paper from a drawer and scooped up two vanilla orange scones and a blueberry muffin. She dropped the latter in a box and the former on two plates while Dawn watched, shifting her weight like her kids during the potty training years.

  “One for you,” she said, sliding the treats across the counter. “One for your driver. And one for the buxom old fairy you’re meeting.”

  Dawn’s face knocked back a few inches, followed by her feet. She hadn’t said anything about a fairy.

  “How—” Dawn began, her insides starting to quiver. What if that note hadn’t been from Elmina at all? What if Angus had written it? What if any second now, Davin was going to burst through that door followed by the paparazzi—checking on a tip about the Queen of Regian meeting with her Selladórean lover? “Did I say I was meeting a fairy?”

  But rather than answer, the woman laughed and rapped her index finger against the counter three times. On the third tap, the blinds snapped shut over all the windows, blocking out what little natural light there was. Dawn spun around as her heart flew into the bottom of her throat and the chandelier above them flickered.

  “Oh relax,” she heard next. “This isn’t a kidnapping. I’m not going to hurt you.” Dawn nodded but continued to clutch her purse like a shield, saying nothing. “But seriously, where’s your sense of adventure? Where’s your curiosity?” The woman snapped her fingers as if having a eureka moment. “Oh that’s right. You never got those lovely gifts because I had to save your life instead. Tell me, if you had to choose now, would you prefer bravery and moxie or grace, dance, and song?” The woman shook her head. “Beauty, I can understand. Like it or not, looks come in handy in this world. But as for the others … did those old bats expect you to sing an operetta while juggling atop a unicycle too?”

  Dawn’s bottom lip fell open, but singing a juggling oper
etta actually seemed easier than finding something to say at the moment. The twenty-something bakery girl was talking about the so-called “gifts” a bunch of fairies bestowed on her as an infant: grace and beauty and dance and song and a whole bunch of other ridiculous qualities intended to make her more marketable to some future beau back in the day.

  Dawn looked at the woman’s birthmark again as she gave a bored sigh and raised both hands to the ceiling. She then closed her eyes, turned her palms inward, dropped them quickly to her hips, and disappeared—but not in the traditional sense of the word. As her arms fell, the pretty young woman fell with them—at least fourteen inches—and plumped out on all sides. Her tight skin loosened like the pleats along Dawn’s brow. Her upturned nose doubled in size and bumped out in the middle. Her glossy black curls morphed into a wiry brown mess that looked speckled with confectioner’s sugar.

  When the transformation was complete, Dawn was staring at the fairy her parents had treated like a member of the family. The fairy who took their daughter’s death curse and turned it into a three-hundred-year nap. The fairy who had woken up with Dawn and the rest of Selladóre, but abandoned them when they needed her most.

  “Oh, shut your jaw,” Elmina ordered, her lips pulling up at the sides. “I wouldn’t have teased you like that if you’d shown up on time. Now, what do you need?”

  Dawn continued to stare. Then she looked at the food. Was she still talking about pastries?

  “I heard you were looking for me the other day,” Elmina clarified, plodding out from behind the counter and covering the nearest table with the scones, Dawn’s tea, and a mug of black coffee. “What do you need? Let’s talk. Or do you want me to change back into Alliana? She is easier to look at, I’ll give you that.”

  Dawn closed her eyes as tightly as she could, then reopened them. “Who’s Alliana?” she asked, despite the millions of more pressing questions whizzing around her brain.