Of Sorcery and Snow (3 page)

I turned away, shielding my face, and dashed down the stairway to the courtyard. The last thing I needed was someone recognizing me and selling the photo to some tabloids. I could see the caption now:
DAUGHTER OF HOLLYWOOD ROYALTY CARRIES WEAPON INTO GOLDEN GATE PARK, WOUNDS ENDANGERED WOLVES.

The courtyard was full of bald-looking, knobby trees. Their leaves had barely started growing in, so it was easy to see the wolves stream down the steps after us.

Lena glanced down at her M3. “
Eleven
. Oh my gumdrops. Oh my gum—”

“Don't panic,” Chase said. “We've faced worse odds than this.”

“When?”
Lena asked. “Because this is looking pretty bad.”

Near the museum, someone screamed. We looked back.

An enormous wolf trotted down the steps, easily four times as big as the others. The rain had soaked its black fur, but you could see red-brown streaks running down its sides—exactly the same color as dried blood. When it saw us looking, it howled so loud that it rattled the concrete under my sneakers.

Sometimes villains are so bad that you recognize them instantly, even if you've never seen them before.

Ripper. As in Jack the Ripper, the serial killer who was famous in Victorian London even before the Snow Queen made him a wolf. He had held the Big Bad Wolf title for one hundred and fifty years.

He'd never been captured. He'd never been defeated. He hadn't even been
seen
since his mistress, the Snow Queen, had lost the last war.

“Scratch what I said about panicking,” Chase said in a tiny voice.

“Is that who I think it is?” Lena squeaked, starting to slow down. “Oh my—”

It didn't matter. We still needed to get of there.

“Lena, quick—before they catch up.” I shook her shoulder, and she looked at me, her eyes enormous behind her glasses. “Where's the Shakespeare Garden?”

“It's behind the Tea Garden.” She leaped up the stairs and sprinted past a line of benches. Chase and I followed.

I glanced back one more time before we reentered the trees. The smaller wolves were only a hundred yards behind us, but Ripper hadn't sped up at all. He just prowled behind the others, his jaws open in a smug doggy grin. Like he had all the time in the world. Like he knew he was going to get us.

I
hated
it when bad guys underestimated us.

“Here!” Lena dashed along an iron fence and through the
opening. She pulled the baby food jar of green-gold paint from her pocket. “Oh no—where's my brush?”

Chase reached the gate next. He grabbed the iron bars and waited under the sign that read
SHAKESPEARE GARDEN
, its letters decorated with metal leaves. “Rory!” He pointed over my shoulder. “Wolf!”

Without looking, I spun and punched. My fist caught a white wolf right between the eyes. It flew back with a whine, and its pack mates slowed to dart around him.

I swung myself inside, and Chase slammed the door. Breathing hard, hands over my knees, I scanned our defensive position—a smallish garden, about the size of eight parking spaces, encircled by a tall black fence. The garden didn't have that much in it, just a brick walkway that led to a couple benches and a low brick monument.

“Lena, can you set up a temporary portal with a
closed
door?” Chase shouted, holding the gate shut. “Please say yes.”

“No, but just lock it.” Lena inspected some small doors set straight into the brick and opened them. A metal bust of Shakespeare sat inside, protected by a sheet of clear plastic. “I've got another idea. Just give me a second to get the Plexiglas off.”

“Awesome. Rory, help me look for something to tie this closed with,” Chase said, kicking through some leaves. “The park must use a chain to lock up. Check the bushes.”

A wolf yipped, just up the trail. We didn't have time to search the whole garden.

I pulled my carryall in front of me and groped around until I found my sword belt. I tugged my sheath off and wrapped the sturdy leather strap once, twice, four times around the gate before buckling it closed.

Through the fence, I spotted three wolves—smallish with dark brown backs—tearing up the trail.

Chase stepped back, studying my handiwork. “They might try to chew through that.”

“You can stab them when they try,” I pointed out.

One of the wolves threw itself against the door, trying to open the gate. Not a great idea. The belt latch held, and Chase slid his sword through the metal bars, straight into the wolf's throat.

It collapsed in front of us, and I felt kind of guilty for suggesting it.

“Lena, they're catching up!” Chase said.

“Two more minutes!” Lena shouted back.

Another little wolf trotted up the trail, water dripping from its gray fur. I recognized its big white paws—it must have swum out of Stow Lake, and it looked absolutely thrilled when it spotted the belt. Definitely too smart for a regular wolf. It jumped up, rested its front paws on the gate, and angled its teeth toward the leather, but before Chase could even lift his sword, a brown wolf shouldered its pack mate aside.

“Mark, you heard the boss's orders,” it said.

I stumbled backward, my mouth open. I'd run into a bunch of fairy-tale wolves in the Glass Mountain, but I'd never heard a wolf
talk
.

“I know, I know,” said Mark, the gray wolf who tried to gnaw through my belt. “We wait till he gets here.”

He even
sounded
younger than the others, maybe the same age as Lena's brother George. He skulked back to the other wolves, his tail between his legs, and it was easy to imagine the teenager he'd been before the Snow Queen enchanted him—probably as gangly
and clumsy as George had been when he'd had a growth spurt last fall.

Great. I could
never
kill them now.

Chase's eyes bulged. “Rory, this is bad.”

“No kidding,” I replied, as six more furry blurs ran along the fence.

“No, I mean, these are
fresh
wolves,” Chase said.

I glanced at him. I didn't think he meant fresh as in cheeky.

“What's the holdup here?” said one of the new arrivals—a black wolf with an X-shaped scar on his snout.

“Waiting for Ripper, Lieutenant Cross,” said Mark. “Just like he ordered.”

“The boss's exact orders were to keep them busy,” said Cross. “The magician is working a transport spell. Besides, we know how to deal with fences, don't we?”

Immediately, one of the big white wolves stood beside the iron bars. A brown wolf shuffled off into the trees, so deep in the shadows that I couldn't see it anymore. Then it sprinted out. It jumped on the back of its white-furred pack mate and leaped again, clear over the fence. Chase slashed once—the wolf's body hit the ground first, and its head dropped next, a few feet away.

“The same will happen to anybody else who comes in here,” my friend told the wolves, his face dark.

Every once in a while, Chase
really
freaks me out.

“Okay! The portal's up,” Lena called.

But all the biggest wolves were standing by the fence now. Their smaller partners were disappearing into the woods for a running start.

“We kind of have a situation here, Lena.” Swallowing hard, I raised my sword. I couldn't let Chase do all the work. He would never let me forget it.

“A
big
situation,” Chase added, looking up the trail.

Ripper padded into sight. My throat clenched. He was bigger than a buffalo.

“It's okay!” Lena said. I could hear her rummaging through her carryall. “I have an invention for that.”

I thought she meant her new retractable spear, the weapon she only got out when we were so outnumbered Chase and I weren't sure we could cover her. This was definitely one of those times, but I honestly didn't see how Lena's fighting skills could save us.

Three wolves sprinted out of the woods. Their pack mates beside the fence braced themselves, standing very still.

“Found it!” said Lena. “Up, bat! Beat!”

A wooden baseball bat sailed into view. At first I thought she'd thrown it, but as soon as the first wolf cleared the fence, the bat swerved. It walloped the wolf's ribs and sped down the fence to smash another wolf across the nose.

I'd never seen
this
invention before.

“Oh, good—it works,” Lena said. “Come on.”

Ripper must have realized that his pack was losing. He began to run.

We were faster. “Ladies first,” Chase said, gesturing at Shakespeare's head.

The frame around the bust shone green-gold. I sprinted for it, sliding my sword in its beltless sheath and hoping that Lena had finished her paint job. Otherwise, I would head-butt a metal Shakespeare.

Growling, the ginormous wolf lifted a paw over the fence.

I squeezed my eyes shut, dove . . .

. . . and I promptly collided with someone. She fell over when I hit her. “Oww,” she said when Chase and Lena flew into me.

I looked up. The Tree of Hope's leaves shaded us. Branches stretched out and around, dipping to the grass and arcing back up to the sky, and we were surrounded by familiar Characters.

Ever After School. My favorite place.

“Made it!” I cried, still out of breath.

“Geez, Rory,” said the kid I'd knocked over. Miriam—an eleventh grader and George's girlfriend—flipped her long black hair out of her eyes and shot me an irritated glare. “You don't need to tackle anybody. The tournament's not over yet.”

he weirdest thing about the wolf attack was that nobody seemed to notice. The tournament had taken center stage.

The courtyard's usual mismatched furniture had disappeared, but the Table of Never Ending Instant Refills had to be somewhere in the crowd. Some kids snacked on popcorn as they watched the events—the longbow range, crossbows' moving targets, the dueling court, that stupid jousting lane where you were supposed to gallop straight at a post and grab as many rings hanging from ribbons as possible. So many Characters were squeezed onto the remaining patches of grass that you couldn't see any of the doors set into the walls.

“You can apologize anytime, Rory.” Miriam dusted herself off. Something had made her crabbier than usual.

“Sorry. It was an emergency.” I rolled to my feet and helped Lena up.

“What makes you think you're the only one with an emergency?” Miriam said, and before I could apologize again, she stomped off through the crowd.

“Lena, what's with the baseball bat?” Chase obviously wanted one.

“Classic spell from the Tale ‘The Donkey, the Table, and the
Stick.'” Lena sounded extremely proud of herself. When she wasn't inventing, she liked to unravel and recreate old spells. “The stick portion, obviously. I was going to test it in the workshop today, but I guess it works fine.”

Chase and I exchanged a look—the last time Lena took a new invention out for a test run during a fight, it had malfunctioned and almost cost us the battle.

“Well, I'm glad we made it out of there with all our teeth.” Then Chase did what he usually did in these situations—he changed the subject. “Here's what I don't get. Where are all the freaked-out grown-ups when you need them? The last few times we set up an unapproved portal in the courtyard, the EAS army was on us like poison on Snow White's apple.”

He had a point. “Do you see anyone in the Canon?” I asked.

Lena stood on tiptoes, peering over the crowd. “Ellie and Rumpelstiltskin,” she said, pointing. “Right on the other side of the jousting lanes.”

We squirmed our way through a clump of tenth graders holding crossbows, waiting for their turns. One of them, Lena's big sister, Jenny, called after us. “Be careful!”

Just ahead, I spotted Ellie's broad back, her apron strings hanging in a limp bow at her waist, her brown hair even frizzier than normal. “Ellie!”