“I was trying to protect you,” Charming said. “If anyone knew these still existed, your life might have been in danger.”
“Great, so you give them to us?” Sabrina groaned. “Doesn’t everyone hate us enough?”
“Grimm, no one is going to know you have them, because you are going to use them right away,” the mayor replied.
Sabrina peeked into the matchbox. Two small wooden matches lay inside. “What do they do?”
“I thought you two were supposed to be experts on fables and fairy tales. ‘The Little Match Girl’ is one of Hans Christian Andersen’s most famous accounts.”
“You’ve been in our house. There are like a million books in the bathroom alone. We don’t know everything yet,” Sabrina said.
“The Little Match Girl sold matches in the street for money,” Snow White explained. “One day she came across a box of them and set out to make a little money to help feed her family. But it was horribly cold outside and she was forced to light one. The flame became a magical portal, leading to a room filled with food and a roaring fireplace. The girl realized she had just wished she were in such a place before striking the match. People have been looking for those matches for a hundred years. They’ll take a person anywhere they want to go, Sabrina. All you have to do is wish.”
“Like Dorothy’s slippers?” Daphne asked. She and her sister had used them to pop up all over town, but they had lost one of them while running from a giant.
“These are more powerful than the slippers,” Charming said. “They could take an Everafter to the other side of the barrier, or they could take you to your parents.”
Sabrina stared down into the box and a tear rolled down her cheek. She didn’t deserve such an amazing gift and she knew it. For weeks she had looked at every Everafter as a suspect in her parents’ kidnapping. She had turned everyone against her and practically broken her grandmother’s heart. And yet, here was the most obnoxious, untrustworthy of the bunch, handing her the key to finding her parents.
“Why would you do this for us?” Sabrina asked.
“We made a deal,” Charming said, glancing at the pretty teacher.
“You could have used these to escape,” said Snow White.
“There was something that kept me here,” Charming said, staring into her eyes. The beautiful teacher leaned over and kissed the mayor. “Billy Charming, make me a promise.”
“What kind of promise?” Charming asked, somewhat breathless.
“When all this is said and done,” Snow White said, “Take me to dinner.”
“As long as we can leave your seven chaperones at home,” Charming said with a grin.
Mr. Seven grumbled in the front seat.
“Oh, it’s so romantic,” Daphne blubbered. “I think I’m going to cry!”
“I think I’m going to lose my lunch,” Puck groaned.
Suddenly, the car came to a screeching halt.
“Seven, why have we stopped?” Charming demanded.
“The road is blocked, sir,” the little man said, pointing out the window to where dozens of children were walking in the middle of the street. They were all wearing pajamas and had glassy looks in their eyes. “There are too many of them to maneuver around.”
“The piper is controlling them,” Sabrina said as they passed some of the kids.
Mr. Seven honked the horn, but it had no effect on the children.
“We’ll have to walk from here,” Sabrina said. They got out of the car, leaving Mr. Seven to guard it. Puck’s wings sprang from his back and he lifted off the ground.
“What I wouldn’t do for a carton of eggs,” he said. “I’m going to go get some and play dive-bomber on these zombies.”
Before he could fly away, Snow White grabbed his leg and yanked him back down to the ground. “We should stay together,” she said. The boy looked extremely disappointed, but his wings disappeared nonetheless.
The group weaved in and out of the crowd until they were standing on the front lawn of the elementary school. As they approached the main entrance, Sabrina noticed that the front doors the giant mouse had plowed through were still lying on the ground. A steady stream of vacant-faced children were shuffling through the doorway, ushered in by a hulking girl with a pink ribbon in her hair. When Sabrina studied her closely, she realized that it was Natalie.
“Natalie, you need to get as far away from here as you can,” she warned. “And try to get some of these kids to follow you. This place is going to get dangerous.”
“Oh, it’s going to get dangerous, all right,” the big girl replied as her skin began to bubble and inflate. Hair shot from every pore and two long fangs sprang upward from her bottom jaw. Her eyes turned a milky yellow and a long hound-dog tongue crept out of her mouth and licked her lips. Claws sprouted from her fingertips as she lashed out at the group, knocking Puck, Charming, Daphne, and Sabrina to the ground with one great swipe. Snow White just managed to step aside, avoiding Natalie’s attack.
“E-gad, I didn’t think you could get any uglier,” Puck said as he crawled back onto his feet.
“Snow, get behind me!” Charming shouted, as he leaped to his feet. “I’ll handle this brute.”
“Billy,” the teacher cried. “This is the twenty-first century. Women don’t need the white knight routine anymore. I can fight my own battles.”
She planted her feet and raised her hands. When Natalie charged at her, the teacher sent a hard jab and a right hook into the beastie’s face. The monster screamed angrily and lunged again, but this time, Snow White’s foot came up and landed a hard blow to the monster’s chest. Natalie tumbled to the ground, but sprang back to her feet, clawing and scratching at the pretty teacher. Ms. White blocked each blow with super-fast hands, until one of Natalie’s punches actually connected and sent the teacher painfully to the ground. Instinctively, Charming and Puck stepped forward, ready to take over the fight, but Snow White flashed them an angry look.
“Gentlemen, please!” she said sternly. Charming and Puck threw up their hands in surrender and stepped aside. She sprang to her feet, planted them again, and then eyed the monster with a smile.
“Come and get it, ugly,” she said. “School is in session.”
Natalie roared and leaped at her. Snow White stopped the attack by jumping into the air, spinning around, and round-housing the monster in the face. One of Natalie’s fangs broke off in the middle and the monster fell to the ground, groaning in pain. The teacher stood over her with angry eyes and eager fists.
“If you were smart, you’d stay down,” she said.
Sabrina and Daphne looked at each other in amazement.
“Snow, where did you learn to do all that?” Charming asked, obviously stunned by what he had just seen.
“I teach a self-defense class at the community center,” Snow White replied. “We’re called the Bad Apples. We meet every Saturday at four p.m.”
“Sign me up,” Daphne said.
“Piper!” Natalie shouted angrily as she crawled to her feet.
The principal stepped from out of the shadows. He was carrying a set of bagpipes and looked distraught.
“Do it!” the hairy girl raged.
“This has gone too far,” Hamelin cried. “Let them save their grandmother and her friends. The barrier will still be broken and they won’t pose a threat to you or your father again.”
“Piper, I’ll tell my daddy,” Natalie threatened. “He’s got your precious Wendell.”
The principal raised his bagpipe’s reed to his mouth and took a deep breath. “I’m sorry,” he said to the group, and then he blew a long, sorrowful note into the air.
Everything went black.
abrina! Wake up!” a voice shouted from far away. She tried very hard to pay attention to it but she was exhausted and dizzy. “Sabrina, you have to wake up now!”
She slowly opened her eyes. Mr. Hamelin was standing over her with a wild, desperate look on his face.
“What are you doing in
my bedroom?” she grumbled.
“Sabrina, we’re under the school!” Hamelin said, sounding frantic. “I know it’s hard, but try to concentrate.”
Sabrina looked around and saw she was standing in a huge tunnel, where children were rushing back and forth with wheelbarrows full of dirt and rubble. She looked down at herself and saw she was covered in soot and holding a shovel.
“Do you understand what has happened to you?” Hamelin asked.
“No,” the girl replied. Her head felt heavy.
“I entranced you and your friends,” the principal explained. “I had to. They have Wendell and they’ll kill him if I don’t do what they want.”
“Where’s my sister?” Sabrina demanded.
“They’ve got everyone—your sister, your grandmother, Canis, Charming, the sheriff, Snow, Puck, and my son—at the end of the tunnel. I managed to send you off into the mine to dig, and so far they haven’t noticed.”
“How long have I been down here?”
“Six hours.”
“Six hours! They could all be dead.”
“This is the soonest I could get to you,” Hamelin said. “They’ve been watching me, but now that they’ve tunneled so close to the barrier, they don’t seem to care that I ran off.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t say we don’t care,” a voice from behind them said.
Sabrina heard the sound of ripping flesh and Hamelin fell to the ground. The frog-girl was behind him, holding a bloody knife.
“You’re coming with me,” she hissed, grabbing Sabrina roughly by the arm.
Sabrina swung her shovel and hit the monster in the head so hard the frog-girl fell to the ground and moaned. Sabrina rushed to help Hamelin.
“Wendell,” Hamelin said, as blood pooled beneath him. “You have to find him and get him out of here.”
“I’ll come back for you,” Sabrina said, and rushed into the nearest tunnel with her only weapon—the shovel—slung over her shoulder.
She scampered forward, stumbled over jagged rocks, and accidentally kicked over some abandoned tools. Dust lifted into the air and filled her lungs, choking her and making it that much harder to concentrate on where she was going. Each step was a challenge to her balance and, unfortunately, her path was a complicated, twisting, turning maze. Every few yards, she would spot a child she recognized from school. Each was glassy-eyed, staggering through the tunnels, hauling buckets of broken stones. None of them seemed to notice Sabrina pass them, even when she stopped and begged for directions. They were still under the piper’s spell.
At last she spotted a faint light in the distance. As she came closer to it, the tunnel widened dramatically, revealing an enormous room carved out of the Ferryport Landing bedrock. She paused at the mouth of the room, doing her best to calm her breathing and listen for any movement. Hearing nothing, she lifted the heavy shovel off her shoulder and entered, swinging the weapon in the air in case anyone was about to ambush her. But she was alone. Only a few old buckets and a couple of tools littered the floor. There were no exits other than the way she had come. The tunnel was a dead end.
She raced back the other way, passing more of the zombie-faced, filth-covered kids. I should head in the direction they’re coming from, Sabrina realized.
She darted down the tunnel, fighting the crowds of children. At one point, Natalie and the frog-girl came lumbering down the tunnel after her, but Sabrina stepped into the line of children, and being as filthy as they were, went unseen by the monsters. The tunnels went on and on. Some led to massive rooms, while others narrowed so that there was hardly room for two children to stand side by side, but eventually Sabrina found what appeared to be the end of the dig.
The room was high and wide and filled with boxes of dynamite and mining tools. A few flaming torches illuminated the room, but there were still deep shadows along the walls that Sabrina could not see into. Anyone could be hiding in one. She knew she was vulnerable.
“I’ve come for my family,” she shouted into the cave. Her voice echoed off the stone walls and bounced around her ears.
Suddenly, something hit Sabrina squarely in the back. Unable to keep her footing, she tumbled over a sharp rock and fell hard onto her shoulder. Searing pain swam through her veins, followed by a dull, throbbing numbness. She tried to scamper to her feet, but her arm hung loosely at her side—it was broken. She cried out more in frustration than pain. But she grew quiet when she heard an odd clicking and hissing sound, followed by a disturbed laugh.
Using her good arm, she picked up the shovel that had slipped from her hand when she’d fallen and swung it around, doing her best to make it seem as if she had not been seriously injured. She walked in small circles, scanning the room for the source of the noise.
A long, spindly leg struck out from the shadows, narrowly missing her head. It slammed against the wall behind her, pulverizing stone into dust. Sabrina lifted the heavy shovel and swung wildly at the hairy leg, sinking its sharp edge deep into the monster’s flesh. Shrieks of agony echoed through the cavern.
“I’m not going to be easy to kill,” she threatened, hoping her voice sounded more confident to the monster than it did to her own ears.
“Kill you? This is a party!” the voice replied. One of the torches was snatched off the wall. It rose high into the air, shining its light on the ceiling. There, suspended in mounds of thick, horrible spiderweb, were her family and friends. “And you’re the guest of honor.”
Daphne, Granny Relda, Puck, Mr. Canis, Snow White, Sheriff Hamstead, and Mayor Charming hung above, with only their heads free of the sticky threads. Their mouths were covered as well, but Sabrina could hear Daphne’s choked cries and Hamstead’s angry groans and knew they were alive.
The spider monster slowly crawled out of the shadows and walked along the ceiling. It was gigantic and as Sabrina stared up at it, she realized that it wasn’t simply a giant spider. The lower body was spider-like, but the upper body had the chest, head, and arms of a boy. Even with the two huge pincers that jutted from his mouth and clicked excitedly, she could tell it was Toby.
“Surprised?” Toby laughed.
“Not really,” Sabrina admitted. “The bad guy is usually the ugly, giggling idiot.”
“Then, I’ve got a surprise for you,” a voice said from behind her. Sabrina spun around and found Natalie standing there. Sabrina noticed her front tooth was now missing. Then someone else stepped out of the shadows, someone who made Sabrina’s heart ache—it was her only potential friend in the entire school—Bella. The blond girl put her arm around Natalie’s shoulders and smirked.
“You’re one of them, aren’t you?” Sabrina said sadly. “Why did you pretend to be my friend?”
“Duh! She’s evil,” Toby said. He and the girls burst into laughter.
“You killed Mr. Grumpner,” Sabrina gasped.
“Yes, I did,” Toby said. “He was just too nosy and way too heavy with the homework.”
“Don’t forget Charlie,” Bella said, patting Natalie on the back. “They just kept getting in the way of our father’s plans.”
Suddenly, the girl leaped into the air, higher than any human being could possibly leap. Even more startling, Bella’s hands and feet stuck to the roof of the cave and her body started to change. Her skin looked as if it were filling with water. Dark spots rose to the surface on her hands and legs. Her eyes bugged out to disgusting proportions and migrated to the top of her head. Her shoes exploded off her feet, revealing long, green webbed toes. Within minutes, she had transformed into the frog-girl that had attacked the family and Principal Hamelin. Like a streak of lighting, a long, slippery tongue shot out of her mouth, latched onto Sabrina’s shovel, and yanked it out of her hand.
When Sabrina turned, she saw Natalie had already made her transformation into the hairy animal she truly was.
“Rumpelstiltskin is insane,” Sabrina said. “When he cracks a hole in the barrier, these tunnels will collapse and kill everyone in them. All the kids will die.”<
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“Actually, the children are already outside, trying to figure out what has happened to them,” a new voice said. Mr. Sheepshank emerged from the shadows.
“Mr. Sheepshank!” Sabrina cried. “You have to get out of here. They’re going to blow this place sky high!”
“Duh, Sabrina,” Toby the spider clicked. “You’re even dumber than you seem in class.”
“Hush, Toby,” the counselor said. He turned to Sabrina. “They’re not going to do anything of the sort. I’m going to do it.”
“You’re Rumpelstiltskin!” she gasped.
“Oh, I have many names,” Sheepshank said. “But the one I like best is Daddy.”
Sheepshank extended his arms and Natalie, Bella, and Toby rushed to stand by his side as the odd little man began to morph and bubble. But, unlike the others, Sheepshank didn’t get bigger. In fact, he got a lot smaller. When his transformation was complete, he was hardly three feet high. His head, back, and arms were covered in kinky brown hair, but his face and pointed ears were pink like a pig’s. He had a short, stubby tail, hoofed feet, and a couple of rows of sharp razor teeth.
“No fair,” the little monster said sarcastically. “You guessed my name. Someone told you! Really child, I must agree with my son. You aren’t as bright as your records suggest.”
“Well, at least I’m not some sick pervert who steals children,” Sabrina shouted, hoping to distract the little man and his freak show for a while longer.
“I don’t steal children, Sabrina,” the little creature said, as if he were genuinely insulted. “I care for them. These children have been treated with nothing but love and affection. I give them everything they ever wanted.”
“Then what do you get out of it?” Sabrina asked.
“Why, I get their love, and their joy, and their sadness, and their frustration, and their hope, and most of all I get their anger,” Rumpelstiltskin cackled. “I get their feelings, child, every last delicious morsel of them. You don’t understand, do you? Let me spell it out for you. I feed on their emotions.”
“That’s where you get your power,” Sabrina said, as Mr. Sheepshank’s advice about feelings came flooding back to her. Of course he would encourage her to express her anger. He was eating it.
The Unusual Suspects Page 17