I nodded. And when Barbarian Mike slipped the gag off, I played nice.
Outside, the sky was cloudy and the city was quiet. With Barbarian Mike on one side of me and Trixie on the other, they guided me out of the alley to the street. We headed left, then right, then straight, then left again. This time I paid attention, looking at street signs to try and figure out where I was, but the city was a sea to me. I tried to spot some cops or, even better, Kingsmen. I hoped I would at least see some people, because if I was going to run and have a chance, I’d need a crowd to hide in. But normal eyes are a lot better than ord eyes, and if you have spells, you can sense stuff too. Barbarian Mike and Trixie would suddenly turn and head another way, as if they knew something was there. They even switched directions once because of a postal carrier delivering a package. I don’t know if Trixie suspected I might try to signal for help, but her fingers slowly tightened until they felt like they were digging straight through my shoulder.
If we would only hit a big road, a major road, but Barbarian Mike and Trixie kept to the side streets, strolling along unhurriedly and taking turns seemingly at random. Above us, brightly colored taxi carpets zipped in and out of traffic like dragonflies. We passed a restaurant, where a few people sat, sipping their morning coffee, so relaxed it made my stomach churn. How could everyone be so calm? Did they ever even look out the windows? Why wouldn’t someone just look over and see me and help me? Horrible, selfish people. I hated them, I hated them, and I didn’t even know I was crying until Trixie shook me and told me to hush up. I heard Barbarian Mike saying I was fine, I’d just had too much fun at the fest, then Trixie said, so help me, I was going to regret it—
Why are you waiting for THEM? my brain suddenly shouted at me. Why aren’t YOU doing anything? DO SOMETHING!
And I launched myself at Trixie with the only thing I had—my teeth. I latched on to her wrist and bit and bit and bit. She howled like a wounded animal and tried to wrench me away, and we fell together on the pavement, tumbling over the stones and slamming hard into a vendor’s cart. Potion bottles shattered down around us. Then there was a loud pop and Trixie started yelling, hot shrieks of blind pain. Strong arms wrapped around my waist, and Barbarian Mike lifted me up bodily. I was twisting and kicking like a wild animal, and for one split second I twisted the right way, and he lost his grip and dropped me.
With my hands still tied behind my back, I landed awkwardly, the impact stunning me. But my body was beyond needing my brain at this point, and it scrambled to my feet even as my mind merry-go-rounded out of control. Barbarian Mike was there trying to latch on to my cloak. Behind me Trixie was still screaming awful curses, and in between that “My knee! My knee!”
There were pounding footsteps behind me but I didn’t look back. I was running—down the sidewalk, shoving between people, and corkscrewing through the crowds. If they caught me, I’d know it soon enough. I shoved past the wrong person and they shoved back, and I fell forward into the street, scraping along the cobblestones.
“Ord!” Two people. One lurching. I rolled onto my butt and managed to squeeze my legs through the loop of my arms to get my hands in front of me. Pushing up, I dashed into the street. There were angry shouts, and carpets and people whizzed around me, lurched over me, just missing me and barely missing each other. Too fast for me to grab any, to hop on. I pushed forward, across the street, to the opposite sidewalk, all the while ripping my eyes up and down, looking for police, a Kingsman, anyone. My chest was so tight it felt like it might shatter. They were coming, I wouldn’t get very far, I needed, I needed—
There. An alleyway between two buildings where the wind blew leaves up against nothing, as if there were an invisible wall. Right in front was a sign: ONE WAY: NO ENTRY. I raced for it, heart hammering, and sprinted into the cool dark of the alley as the adventurers caught up. Trixie was limping badly, and her knee had swollen up to the size of a dragon’s egg. Her mouth tightened as she looked me over. “I’ll handle this,” she said to Barbarian Mike.
Trixie studied the barrier and tried to grab the sign. It gave her a nasty, crackling shock. She let go and carefully flexed her fingers, then leaned forward and knocked against the barrier with one knuckle. “Little pig, little pig, let us in.”
Behind her, people were starting to gather. It looked like our run across the street had caused a carpet accident; nothing bad, just a little roll-up. But an accident meant an ambulance and officials—it meant police. Or it should. Eventually.
I couldn’t wait for eventually. “Somebody help me! Call the police!” What did Becky say? Be specific. “You!” I pointed to a guy in the gathering crowd. He flinched but he looked at me. “Call the police! Call the Kingsmen! Call Alexa Hale at the palace! Do something! Why are you just watching?”
Barbarian Mike was obviously thinking the same thing. “We should get out of here—”
“Just a second!”
“And there are witnesses.” He nodded to the gathering crowd.
“I can get her!”
“Trixie, come on!” he shouted. “We can get another one. There’s rug burn in the road. Somebody’s got to have called the cops. We’ve got to go.”
Somebody had. There were sirens in the distance; I held on to the sound like an incantation. Barbarian Mike grabbed Trixie’s arm, but she ignored him. “The longer you draw this out,” she said to me, “the more it’s going to hurt.”
I didn’t care anymore. All I cared about was holding on a few more minutes as the sirens steadily got louder. Trixie blasted the barrier, but it bounced back, scattering over the crowd. There were shouts of outrage, and one guy charged up to Trixie, exclaiming, “Hey, that was my wife you got there!” She ignored him. Barbarian Mike wrapped his arms around Trixie’s waist and hefted her up, preparing (I hoped) to carry her out of there.
“What’s going on here?” The two men pushing through the crowd wore the deep, dull crimson of the police. Relief left my legs shaky, and I sagged against the brick wall.
“Nothing,” Trixie said, “nothing. Put me down, Michael!” He did and she landed on her bad leg, wincing.
“We didn’t mean any harm, officer,” Barbarian Mike intervened. “We were just trying to get our … child. She’s had a little too much excitement this weekend, and got mad at us, and ran away.”
“They kidnapped me!” I screeched. “They kidnapped me yesterday and they were trying to sneak me out of here and you have to arrest them!”
“It’s only an ord,” Trixie said, her tone like honey. The cops looked at me very closely, and for a second no one moved. Then one cop looked at the other cop, and he started waving the crowd away, and talking quietly in his crystal. In the distance, there were more sirens. The other cop removed a length of gold chain from his belt and asked the two adventurers to lie down on the ground and put their hands behind their heads.
Instead, Barbarian Mike shoved Trixie behind him and … it happened so fast, I’m still not clear on what happened. Barbarian Mike shouted, and then the world exploded into lights and magic and noise. So bright, so loud, I flinched and clapped my hands over my ears. There were more police, there were—Kingsmen? Melting into being out of thin air, and somebody must have done something to the crowd because they vanished and the street was empty except for us. There was so much noise and shouting, and I thought I heard Barbarian Mike’s voice, bellowing for Trixie to “Run, now, RUN!” She looked at me, agonized, but she did, her body turning into flame as she streaked away. Kingsmen flashed after her, and Barbarian Mike charged them, looking a hundred times more terrifying and heroic than in the stories. The air shook as he started summoning magic … a lot of magic. Trees bowed toward him, branches snapped off and swirled. Cobblestones cracked in half and lifted up from the pavement. Magic swirled around, through me, and it was strange how I could stand there, shaky but more or less steady, in the midst of magic while the sheer force of it ripped awnings up the middle and twisted street signs into loops.
Then there were a
rms around me and at first I kicked away, panicking—but it was all right because I knew those arms, and it was like the string that was holding me up snapped. My knees went to water, but it didn’t matter because Alexa was holding me tight, and everything was okay. Then we were moving. She was hurrying me somewhere, I didn’t know where, I just knew it was away. I couldn’t tell anything for the relief crashing over me. Alexa was here. She’d come for me. “Finally,” I murmured, and started laughing.
“Are you okay?” Alexa asked, her voice ragged. “You look okay. Are you okay?” Murmuring soft, broken nothings, she cast away the ropes around my wrists. The second they fell free I latched on to her.
I think I nodded. I know I asked her about Peter. “They didn’t find him,” I said. “He wasn’t there. He ran off.”
“He’s at the school, he’s fine. The police found him inside of an hour.”
I’m pretty sure I nodded again, but my head felt weird and bobbly and Alexa had to help me climb up on something—a carpet—and we lifted into the air. Looking back, I remember how it was quieter by that point. I remember looking down at the street and seeing it streaked with red, and realizing it was uniforms. I also saw the Kingsmen—there were Kingsmen there.
“I told them that you would sic King Steve on them,” I gasped, pushing the words out through something more desperate than laughter. “But I thought … I was just making it up to scare them.”
“You should know me better than that.” Her voice was thick, but I could hear the smile. I started laughing so hard I was crying, until everything was mixed up and I wasn’t sure what I was doing. I could feel the tiredness of the whole long night racing through me, threatening to pull me down like iron slippers. I wrapped my arms around Alexa’s waist and buried my face against her.
Alexa flew me to the castle so I could make a report and get looked over by a doctor. On the flight there, I felt all the tiredness and the hunger and the hurting that I hadn’t had time for until then. But I forgot all about that when I saw the rest of my family waiting in the castle lobby for us. I hadn’t thought I could run anymore, but I did. There was an awkward, silly, wonderful moment when everybody tried to hug everybody else all at the same time, and I remember I just kept thinking this, this, this. This made everything better.
Of course, then Mom and Dad started yelling at me. But it was the nice kind of yelling where you know it’s just because they were worried. There was more hugging and all that lovey-dovey family stuff, which Jeremy usually complains about until Gil demands to know what’s wrong with gooey stuff, but neither of them did that this time.
Finally Alexa butted in. “Doctor time.”
She took us to what had to be the Official Royal Medical Wing, and a small, fully stocked medical room that felt even smaller once my whole family had piled inside. Dad lifted me up and set me on the high medical table, but I had trouble letting go until Mom hopped up beside me and put her arm around me.
The doctor was really nice, especially about having to work around a bunch of worried grown-ups, and Jeremy, who was actually the worst with his constant questions of what does that mean? and how do you treat that? and what are the side effects?
“Somebody has to be interested in Abby’s treatment,” Jeremy informed him. “How else are we going to track her recovery?”
“We’re going to ask her.” Gil grinned at me. “You recovered yet, blondie?”
And I nodded.
Actually, other than being kidnapped and running for my life, I made out pretty well. A couple of scrapes, a lot of bruises, wrists rubbed raw, and one cut that didn’t even hurt until the doctor pointed it out. But he said it wasn’t too bad, considering. Just had to get them cleaned up and bandaged.
The doctor had barely finished when King Steve walked through the door.
Everybody scrambled to their feet, except for Mom, who just sat there, holding on to me. The king stopped them mid-bow/curtsey. “For heaven’s sake, none of that. How is our patient doing?”
“Not too badly, under the circumstances,” the doctor answered with a deep bow. “The wrists are the worst of it, but even without magic they should heal quickly. All in all, I think what the girl most needs is some rest. I’m going to prescribe a hot bath, a good meal, and a good night’s sleep. If she’s still feeling shaky in the morning, I’ll write her a note for a few days off on classes.”
“Thank you, doctor, I’ll take it from here.”
The doctor hesitated. “I still need to attend to her wrists, Your Majesty.”
“That won’t be necessary. Thank you,” King Steve repeated, and the doctor bowed and ducked out of the room.
Then the king came over and looked at me, and sighed deeply. He looked so worn down that I felt like I needed to say something, so I said, “Sorry I missed your party, Your Majesty.”
“Not as sorry as I am,” he said, and then smiled. “And not as sorry as they will be.”
King Steve cast up a tray on the table next to me with a bowl of steaming water, towels, a small jar of salve, and bandages. I reached for the towels, but he gently swatted my hands away, and picked one up and dipped it in the water. Then he began to clean my hands. My wrists had gone numb at some point, but the warm water woke them up, and a tight, scratchy burn flared along the surface. King Steve dabbed my wrists, wet the towel, and dabbed again; slow, methodical, and careful. All around us, the room was very quiet. Everyone was staring at the king (except for Olivia, who was staring at Alexa, and Alexa, who was staring at the floor). And it was a little weird, having a king tend to me. But then, King Steve didn’t really seem like a king—he was nice. Like a normal person. With a crown.
The king set the water to the side and dried my hands with a small towel. “There we go. That’s none too bad.” His long, knobby-knuckled fingers were more gentle than I expected, as he took a salve and started dabbing it on my skin. The salve smelled strong, like mint and rubbing alcohol. Already the itching around my wrists was fading.
“Thanks.”
He smiled at me and started wrapping the soft white bandages around my hands. “You’re welcome. I’m happy to see you’re all right,” he said, and he looked up at Alexa, who was still standing quietly in a corner with her eyes on the floor. “Alexa was very worried when we got the call.” The smile went away. “I wanted to be the one to tell you. Barbarian Mike is safely in our custody. He has confessed. He says … that kidnapping you was his idea. He says that his partner was against it, and that she tried to stop him, and when he wouldn’t be stopped she came along to make sure you were taken care of properly. He says that he believes you were able to escape today with her help.” King Steve looked at me, and his eyes were like flint. “If this is true, I might be willing to consider calling off the search for her.”
“It’s not true, it’s a lie—” And then my brain caught up with my mouth. “Trixie’s still out there?”
King Steve looked me over and then nodded. “We are having some difficulty in locating her. In the meantime,” he continued, “you will be escorted back to the school, and until we have the pleasure of Trixie’s company, you will promise me not to leave the premises.”
“Okay. She was hurt, her knee was hurt. It looked bad.”
“And this city has a thousand rat holes. Don’t worry. I am certain we will find her quite soon.”
CHAPTER
20
We were at the palace for two days. King Steve took the doctor’s recommendation that I rest as an order, and wouldn’t let me leave until I got back on my feet.
Staying at the palace was a mixed blessing. I mean, I know it sounds cool, but I didn’t actually see all that much. I spent a lot of the first day just sleeping, usually until Mom or Dad woke me up for a meal, and once when the doctor came to check on me again. And then I’d go back to sleep. I have never been so tired, ever, and it didn’t even seem to matter that I was in a strange room and a strange bed.
We didn’t do anything the second day, either, except t
o sit around the guest parlor King Steve had given us, curled up on couches, and watch bad action movies on the crystal. Which is an interactive sport for our family, since Gil likes to groan over the writing and point out the plot twists ahead of time, and Jeremy tears his hair out over the historical inaccuracies, and Dad makes corny jokes, till Mom reminds us, loudly, that some people are trying to watch the movie. Then we’ll all quiet down for about five minutes, until Olivia remarks that the costume designer should have dressed the star in kitten heels instead, because it’s a lot harder to run in stilettos.
That night we crowded around Alexa as she blew out the candles on her birthday cake. We left the parlor for the first time when Mom insisted we go hunt down King Steve so he could have a slice of cake. We made it exactly one hallway before we discovered the library, and Gil refused to leave, even for cake. Fortunately, King Steve heard we were looking for him and appeared just in time to help me pry Gil’s fingers off the bookshelves.
It was nice of King Steve to let us stay, but part of me just wanted to get back to school. To see my friends again and make sure Peter was okay. Alexa said they were, that Fred and Fran had been taken back to school right after we disappeared, and that Peter had gotten picked up and was no worse for wear, other than having Ms. Macartney officially reprimand him. And it’s not that I didn’t believe Alexa, but I wanted to see for myself.
On the third day, I went back to school. Breakfast was mostly over when I arrived under official royal escort; the front doors swung open and Fred came running out, and then Frances, Mrs. Murphy, and Mr. O’Hara, and Cesar, and a couple of the kitchen rats. A cry of “Abby!” was all the warning I got before Fred yanked me up and spun me around. For a few moments there were just hugs and people laughing and calling my name, and I have never felt as popular as I did at that moment. Mrs. Murphy—relief mixed with concern on her face—barely had time to say how proud she was, when Cook Bella huffed out into the courtyard and demanded to see “the worst of it.”
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