Of Enemies and Endings

To the readers:

One of you named this book;

all of you fueled this story.

And in special memory of Leila,

who died of leukemia this February.

For you, I wish I could have written faster.

he morning before my fourteenth birthday, the witches ambushed us before Mom had a chance to finish her coffee. We were arguing about the usual things.

“The triplets will be here any minute,” I said, shoving my cellphone and my M3 into my carryall's front pocket. Those guys were always a couple minutes late for guard duty. Sometimes they slept through their alarm. It
was
summer. That happened. “Then we can get out of here.” I slung on my raincoat. Big heavy drops pattered on the window.

Mom set down her mug and folded her hands carefully. I knew what that meant: I wasn't going to like what she said next. “I've been meaning to talk to you about that, Rory.”

Amy didn't even try to break it to me nicely. “No. They're not coming with us today. We're meeting with the play's producers.”

“You
need
protection.” I reached for my magic combs and reminded myself that it wouldn't do any good to get irritated. They just didn't really understand—not yet.

“They're teenagers.” Amy crossed her arms. “It
looks
like we're babysitting them, not the other way around.”

“It is beginning to look strange, Rory,” Mom said. “Normally, I'm fine with them tagging along with us. I know that it makes you feel better, but today's meeting is important—”

“Makes me
feel
better?” I wrestled with my temper and lost. “The Snow Queen attacks a new Character almost
every day
.”

Mom took a very deep breath, like she usually does when she thinks I'm exaggerating but doesn't want to call me on it. “We've taken all these precautions, but we haven't been in any danger since that wolf attacked us in the grocery store.”

She
always
brought that up in arguments, and it was getting old. “You didn't want to move to Ever After School, even though it's the safest place for us,” I reminded her, “and I said okay, but only if you accepted bodyguards. That was the deal. You promised me.”

Mom winced. She'd obviously hoped I'd forgotten about that. “They're just kids, Rory. Just like you.”

“You could come with us,” Amy said. “That wouldn't look as weird.”

“I have responsibilities too.” I had class in Hansel's training courts in an hour, and I was on call for rescue duty until dinnertime. I'd explained this to them at least a hundred times.

“Besides, your mother made that promise more than three and a half months ago,” Amy said. “Maybe the Snow Queen forgot about you.”

“She hasn't.” I was about to turn fourteen. According to my Tale, I would hold the fate of magic in my hands some time this month. The Snow Queen had to move now, but I'd been saying that since before Independence Day. They still weren't convinced.

I wished the triplets would hurry up and get here. Company always cut our arguments short.

Something pounded against the roof. No matter what they said about the Snow Queen losing interest, Mom and Amy both jumped just as high as I did. Outside the window, white spheres bounced across the back porch. “Just hail,” I said. We didn't usually see it in San Francisco.

“Great.” Amy dug through her purse for her keys. “I better check on the car.”

Movement flickered in the yard. It had to be one of the dirt servants. Lena had rigged them to patrol the yard's perimeter—our own magical security system. And this one was shuffling toward us, as fast as its stubby dirt legs could carry him. It was hard to tell in the crummy weather, but it looked like it was missing a foot.

My heart stuttered. I reached for one of my combs.

It could be another false alarm.

The dirt servant jolted to a stop in the middle of the backyard, its mangled limbs bleached to gray. It toppled over. Turned to stone.

“Found them!” Amy stepped toward the exit, her keys jangling from her hand.

“No!” I tossed the comb in front of the back door. It fell with a clunk, and bars as wide as my wrist sprang up from the floor.

“Not again!” Amy said. Bars crunched against the ceiling. “Rory, you damage the house every time you overreact. We'll never get our security deposit back.”

Mom tried to be more soothing, but she was obviously a tiny bit peeved too. “It's probably just the neighbor's dog again. The dirt things always think he's a wolf.”

I picked up the other combs. The Snow Queen's allies were coming, just like I knew they would.

The front door banged open. Someone—
several
someones—stampeded into the living room. We couldn't see them, but we could definitely hear them squawking and cawing through the drumming hail.

I threw the second comb across the entryway to the living room. In two breaths, it knitted up the door frame with a chain-link fence. I tossed a third comb between the island and the kitchen table, and metal bars sprouted from the wooden floor.

Amy shrank back. “Oh my God.”

Four green-skinned, black-haired witches trampled in from the dining room, the only entrance to the kitchen the combs hadn't sealed off yet. They wore toothy grins under their warty noses and raised long wands in their gnarled hands.

So, the Snow Queen had kept her word after all: the Wolfsbane clan would get their chance to kill me. They had even gotten first dibs.

One witch fired off a spell. I grabbed Mom's elbow and yanked her aside. The enchantment landed on the fridge, turning it to stone. Mom would have to pay for that too when we left this rental.

“Get behind the island,” I said, snagging my carryall and dodging another shot. The top was marble. It would protect us from most spells. “Where are those rings I gave you?”

The week after I'd gotten back from the Arctic Circle, I'd made them
swear
to keep the rings on them at all times. When school was still in session, I refused to get in the car unless they both showed me the rings, but I hadn't done a check in a while. I definitely should have.

“My nightstand,” Amy confessed.

Mom's mouth thinned and twisted, the face she always made when she realized she'd messed up. “It's over there.” She pointed to where her red purse sat on a side table—on the other side of the chain-link fence.

I pulled my own ring out of my jeans' pocket and stared at it. One ring for three people.

“Well, you know what you have to do,” Mom said. Calm as anything, she placed a hand on my arm. “You go to EAS. Get help. Come back and rescue us. The bars will keep us safe.”

There were a million things wrong with that plan. I hadn't heard the third comb's bars hit the ceiling yet. Mom and Amy knew nothing about fighting, even less about magic. But I didn't bother arguing.

I squeezed her fingers reassuringly. With my other hand, I gripped the ring.

“I love you, sweetie,” Mom said. The only way she could have been more obvious was if she actually
said
she never thought she would see me again.

“I love you too.” Then I slid the ring on her finger.

She didn't have time to look surprised. She was just gone.

“She's not going to like that,” Amy said quietly. “She wanted you safe first.”

“If they captured her, they would use her against me.” I'd explained this a hundred times too. I didn't mention that the witches would do the same with Amy.