The Thirteenth Fairy

by Melissa de la Cruz

  She feels a familiar blush warm her cheeks and she shrugs, apologizing as she walks in. “Whoopsie,” she says, and offers a nervous laugh. “Sorry about that. I think the wind took it and—”

  “It’s quite all right, dear,” the bookseller at the desk says with an understanding smile that is also full of pity—a reaction Filomena’s not unused to.

  Filomena smiles back and fidgets with her hands as her eyes scan the bookstore for what she’s expecting to find: a huge, freshly filled stand full of copies of the new Never After book. A ladder of books. A tower of books. A ziggurat! A pyramid! An explosion! Just like there was for all twelve books before this one.

  The Never After series is one of the most popular book series of all time. In the twelve preceding volumes, readers followed the adventures of Jack the Giant Stalker and his lovable, loyal crew of ragtag friends as they met heroes and heroines of popular fairy tales and battled to keep the land of Never After safe from a slew of evil witches, villains, and ogres. In the twelfth volume, Jack and his company were running for their lives, hounded to the edge of a cliff and certain to fall to their deaths. Would he find yet another ingenious way to escape and defeat his enemies once and for all? She certainly hopes so. The book ended on a literal cliffhanger.

  Filomena is itching to read the thirteenth book. She has waited so long. A whole year!

  But instead of the books, she finds a group of fellow die-hard Never After fans—better known as Nevies—standing around grumbling, seeming as disappointed and let-down as she’s starting to feel. They look like they’re about to take out pitchforks and riot. Then she hears someone say, “Ugh! No way! It can’t be true! No book?!”

  Filomena’s heart starts to sink. Another feeling she’s grown used to.

  Since she’s there alone and isn’t the most, er, socially outgoing individual, she approaches the familiar and friendly face at the counter instead of the crowd. Mrs. Stewart is not just a bookseller but also a former novelist who opened a bookstore after she’d sold gazillions of copies of her one book and decided she wanted to devote her life to reading instead of writing. Mrs. Stewart is also not just a bookseller but one of Filomena’s few friends.

  “Excuse me? Mrs. S?” Filomena asks. “Do you have the new Never After novel in stock? It was supposed to come out today, and I figured—”

  “Oh, honey,” Mrs. Stewart says, her sympathetic smile growing more sympathetic. “We figured, too. We were all ready with our fairy-dust cookies and our Stalker hats.” Indeed, many of the Nevies gathered at the store are eating crumbly sugar cookies and wearing the pointy green hats that Jack famously sports in the books.

  Filomena’s heart sinks past her stomach to the floor.

  “Except apparently it isn’t being published after all. Not this season. Not ever. The author’s long gone, and there’s no book.”

  “The author—you mean—Cassiopeia Valle Croix? She’s dead?” gasps Filomena.

  “Dead or disappeared—they won’t say.”

  Filomena’s mouth drops open. “So … wh-what do you mean? The book won’t be published? But it’s been advertised all year. And the cover’s on the website. How can that be?”

  “It just is.” Another sad headshake.

  “It won’t be published? At all? Never?”

  “Never ever, that’s what they say,” says Mrs. Stewart, frowning. “Apparently, Cassiopeia wrote all twelve books at once, years and years ago, and her estate has been publishing them all this time. But she never wrote the thirteenth one. Her estate thought they would find it in her files, and promised the publisher they would send it when they did. The publisher kept saying it was coming, hoping the estate would find it. But at last they all had to come clean. There is no thirteenth book. Not anywhere. Either it wasn’t written, or it’s lost, but in any case, it’s not being published. I’m sorry, honey.”

  Filomena is so devastated she cannot speak. Her mind reels from disappointment. She wants to shake a fist at the sky and scream Noooooo! But instead she just turns pale.

  “What can I tell you?” Mrs. Stewart sighs. “Sometimes life is stranger than fiction. This is one of those times. We definitely don’t have the book in the store. But I don’t know, maybe try online?”

  (They don’t have it online. They don’t have it anywhere. The book does not exist. This is something Filomena confirms later that evening after much online searching.)

  Filomena opens her mouth to protest—to protest what, she isn’t even sure—but stops herself. “Never?” is all she asks.

  “Never,” Mrs. Stewart echoes sadly.

  Feeling just incredibly, ridiculously, completely bummed and discouraged, Filomena takes one last look at the dejected crowd of Nevies and heads back toward the door. Maybe we should riot, she thinks. Maybe we should throw some books around, kick a few journals. Something. This will just not do!

  She leaves the bookstore in a huff. All she has left is a long walk home after a terrible day.

  She’s too busy feeling sorry for herself to notice that someone started following her about thirty paces ago.

  But when she does finally sense a presence behind her—a very unwanted presence—she feels an uncomfortable paranoia start to wiggle its way into her bones. She tries to shake it off, convincing herself it’s only her parents’ neuroses playing tricks on her.

  But when she turns and spots the person behind her, a tall figure draped in black, her eyes widen. She spins back around, pretending she hasn’t noticed him.

  Oh no, she thinks. Is he a kidnapper? Just like they always warned?

  She reminds herself that her emergency whistle is tucked inside her backpack. She tugs the bag closer to her in preparation, hoping she’ll be fast enough to get away if this person really is a Filomena-snatcher.

  Her parents have made her suspicious of everyone. She tries to shake off the fear again, convincing herself she’s just overthinking things.

  But a part of her can hear every scary story her parents have told her, about missing kids and mysterious disappearances and changelings left on doorsteps while the real children are whisked off to fairyland, and she wonders if their morbid prophecies are about to come true. Maybe fairies really are coming for her. Maybe she’s never going to see her parents again, ever. Maybe this is the end of her.

  Her heart rate picks up again. Only now it’s not due to excitement. It’s the exact opposite of excitement.

  What would that be?

  Oh. That’s right.

  That would be fear.

  CHAPTER THREE

  THE BOY

  Filomena squeezes her eyes shut for a nanosecond and then blinks rapidly, staring straight ahead. This cannot be happening, she tells herself. Surely there is not a random person lurking behind her, about to kidnap her. But when she quickly turns a corner, the person does, too, and when she slows down to look at the window of an ice-cream store, she can see him lingering in front of a florist just a block behind.

  Yep, some freaky rando is definitely following her.

  Serial killers or wicked criminals or evil fairies do not exist in her world, at least not in safe, sleepy, sunny North Pasadena, where nothing ever happens. Or … she thought they didn’t. They’re not supposed to, anyway.

  But what if they did? What if something actually happened here in North Pasadena? Something awful and dangerous?

  If something did, she would fight. Yes, never surrender. That was a theme in many books. And she has read many a book. Words are part of her world.

  And escaping her world is one of her favorite pastimes. (Though she’d never tell her parents that.)

  Oh no. Her parents! They’ll go absolutely nuts if she isn’t home by dark!

  But I’m not allowed to be kidnapped! she’ll tell her kidnapper. My parents will be very mad at me if I’m kidnapped!

  The fear of her parents’ wrath and the desire to avoid another three-hour lecture on how to stay safe in an emergency (if she failed to avoid one altogether) is enough t
o keep her going. Plus, she has her puppy and beta goldfish to survive for. If she’s abducted by fairies or taken by a nefarious child-grabber, who will take care of those two?

  As she tries to convince herself not to look back, reasoning that this person is just a figment of her imagination, she can’t help it. She turns around again in what she hopes is not an obviously frantic motion, to see if that someone is still there.

  Oh! Yes, he is, and he is definitely following her.

  She walks faster and looks down to watch her sneakers steadily padding the pavement. One foot after the other. Left, right, left, right. Distracting herself with this steady march, she focuses on her shoelaces. The frayed white edges. The double knots, a safety precaution.

  But she can still hear his feet trailing her own. An unbroken beat, too close, that echoes her own footsteps. It sounds as if he’s mirroring her pace, her movements. The joint steps create a strangely hypnotic rhythm.

  She knows she needs to stay calm; her parents lecture her about this sort of thing all the time. But she has never had to intentionally try to stay calm, except when her parents are freaking out and she gets sucked into the hysteria. Unlike several other unpleasant things, like finding a humiliating post on social media or a nasty note left in her locker, sheer terror is definitely not one of the things she’s used to. But she’s feeling it now.

  She knows he’s still behind her. And he’s getting closer.

  She looks back again, probably in a more obvious way now. When she turns her head, her eyes accidentally meet his. Gah!

  Filomena takes mental notes of details to remember about him in case she needs to provide a description to a police sketch artist. Hair color: to be determined (covered by hood). Eye color: gray? Height: tallish. Shoe of choice:… Wait, are those clogs?

  She glances behind her again to get a better look.

  Weird thing number one—besides the fact that he’s following her—is that the boy is wearing a cloak, not a hoodie as she’d first assumed. Weird thing number two, she notices that the part of his arm that is exposed is covered in vines—just like Jack Stalker’s in the Never After books. Weird thing number three is that this somehow comforts her and settles her galloping pulse.

  Suddenly she feels silly. She shakes her head and almost laughs aloud. He must be a fellow Nevie! She breathes a sigh of relief, and instantly the panicked internal screams stop.

  She slows her steps to a normal pace. Perhaps even a leisurely one, to allow him to fully catch up to her. Maybe he saw her at the bookstore, where he, too, was waiting for the thirteenth book, only to sadly discover that no one knows when or if it is ever going to come out. (Never. It is never coming out.)

  Filomena excitedly turns to him as he gets close, his footsteps almost next to hers. “Can you believe it’s not being published? I was so looking forward to the end—”

  But instead of commiserating, the boy suddenly pushes her to the ground.

  “Hey!” Filomena yells in annoyance, about to give him a piece of her mind, when a powerful force crashes down on the pavement inches from where she’s standing.

  What the—? Where did that come from? What is happening?

  Instinctively, she shields her head. She’s read enough books to know she has to protect herself.

  Am I under attack?

  She frantically tries to reach for her backpack to find her whistle. Oh man, her parents are going to totally freak out if this makes the news.

  But there’s no time to panic as another thunderbolt hits the sidewalk with a deafening boom, the brightness crashing against the concrete path right in front of her.

  Then evil, cackling laughter fills the air.

  Wait! What was that? Did I imagine it, or were we just hit with an Ogre’s Wrath?!

  Ogres aren’t real, though! They’re just in books! Never After books, to be clear. And they certainly can’t walk right off the page and into your hometown to try to scorch you.

  “Get up! We’ve got to run!” says the boy. “She’s followed us here!”

  Who’s followed whom here? Filomena wants to ask, but she’s too shocked to do anything, even stand. For a second or two, she wonders if this is some sort of joke. If perhaps it’s just an expensive, elaborate spectacle put on by the publisher or author to give superfans an interactive experience.

  But when a third thunderbolt crashes right next to her, almost singeing her backpack, and the cackles screech into madness, the joke suddenly isn’t very funny. Smoke lingers in the air beside her, and there’s a black mark on the ground where the bolt just struck.

  She instantly reaches for her hair to see if that’s where the scorched smell is coming from, but she’s stopped by the hand of the stranger she has almost forgotten about in all this bizarre chaos.

  “Come with me if you want to live!” the hooded boy says, offering his hand.

  She stares at him in disbelief and confusion. The cackling grows increasingly louder around her, the shrill laughter ricocheting off the booms of the thunder, creating a terrifying rumble and high-pitched screech.

  Just like that, her panicked internal screams start again. Filomena takes his hand. She wants to live.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  THE SERIES

  Hand in hand, they run from the thunderbolts. There’s no time to consider the potential risk or wonder where he’s taking her. All she knows in this moment is that she has to run. Even if that means running off with a stranger. Sorry, Mum!

  More thunderbolts strike the ground around them, but they duck and weave, luckily avoiding being hit. A bolt crashes between them, separating the two from each other. But when the smoke clears, Filomena finds the boy frantically waving at her.

  “This way!” he yells, heading toward a half-hidden alley.

  She follows him, running as fast as her last-person-picked-for-the-team legs will allow her. He takes a sharp right, and she almost trips over nothing other than her own fear.

  They continue to run as more thunderbolts shoot from the sky, and it feels like the strikes are tracking their steps through the deserted alley. The cackling gets louder and louder, bouncing off the brick walls of the buildings on either side of them.

  Things look dire, and despite the sheer adrenaline and her rapid heartbeat, Filomena decides she has to do something. If this is an Ogre’s Wrath—and it certainly sounds and smells and scorches like one—there might be a way to stop it. And if this boy in front of her, who is guiding her through the pandemonium, is a fellow Nevie, he won’t think what she’s about to say is all that weird. Maybe he’ll even know the words.

  As her feet pound the pavement with each step and her breathing becomes heavier, she goes over the spell in her mind a few times. Fumbling over the words will only lead to failure.

  Filomena reaches out to the boy and tugs on his cloak, signaling him to slow down. “Repeat after me!” she yells.

  “What? Now is no time for talking!” he replies curtly.

  She glares at him in response, yanking his arm to force him to stop. Because if there’s a tiny chance she may be right, then he’s wrong.

  Quickly, she takes hold of both his hands, knowing that their combined energy will do better than hers alone. She practices the fairy spell in her head, envisioning the words she’s read so many times.

  Then: “Ogre, ogre, cloaked in clover, I cease your wrath, three times over! Go back to the bog where you belong, go back to Orgdale and don’t be long!” she chants, and after a brief moment, he follows her lead, adding his voice to hers.

  Just as quickly as it started, the attack stops. The thunder quiets, disappearing in the distance of her memory. The cackling softens until it fades completely.

  “How did you know that would make it go away?” the boy asks, a look of wonder in his eyes.

  “Because a fairy spell stops an Ogre’s Wrath, just like in the books, duh!” she replies. “And sends the ogre back home.”

  “What books?” he asks.

  Filomena wants to talk
about why and how—and whoa!—they were just attacked by an Ogre’s Wrath in North Pasadena, where nothing ever happens, but there’s genuine confusion on his face, so it appears she will have to put aside her own confusion temporarily.

  Oh well. So much for thinking he was a fellow Nevie.

  She shrugs out of her backpack and removes a book from inside. “This book, of course!”

  It’s a massive golden tome with a treasure chest on the front and a vine pattern tracing all around. The twelfth and penultimate book in the series.

  He stares at it. “Where did you get that? It’s a spellbook.”

  Filomena rolls her eyes and wonders whether she should humor him. Is this a test? Is he trying to quiz her on her knowledge of the series? Little does he know she’s read all the books front to back, countless times over, not just favorite scenes but the entire series. At this point, she could nearly repeat the stories word for word, as if she’d written them herself.

  Yeah, she’s not buying it, his playing-dumb demeanor in this deserted alley after they were just attacked with magical thunderbolts and heard the laughter of the ogre queen that every fan knows about.

  Um, could they talk about that? What happened just a minute ago?

  But he’s still staring at the book with a concerned look, so it seems like they’ll have to talk about the series. Which is fine! Filomena loves talking about the books.

  “You’re telling me you’ve seriously never read this?” she asks him as she hands him the book, doubt lacing her tone as her eyes trace the vine around his arm. The one that matches the vine on the cover of the book she’s showing him. He certainly looks like a Nevie.

  “Read it?” he repeats, like it’s a mystery to him, as he flips through the pages.

  She shakes her head and offers an irritated sigh. But she explains that the book is part of a very popular fantasy series, adventure books based on fairy tales.

  “Fairy tales?” asks the boy as if he’s never heard the words.

  “Yeah, it’s about a bunch of kids and their adventures with princesses and frogs and witches and stuff like the lightning strike that just tried to kill us … here. I mean, what was that? Some kind of promotion, do you think?”