Of Sorcery and Snow (8 page)

Waiting for Chase to find the LaMarelle's spare key and let himself in was
torture
. Waiting for Lena and Miriam to come in was even worse. Especially when Amy knocked on my bedroom door and brought me back to San Francisco with a jolt. “Ten minutes before dinner.”

“Okay!” I called back.

Mom and Amy. I couldn't leave them unprotected, not when those wolves were roaming around. I should have thought of that before.

“Chase. I have to tell you something.” In fifty words or less, I explained what had happened in the grocery store.

“And you didn't mention this
earlier
?” Chase said in that special annoyed way he got when he was worried about me.

“Your news was more important,” I reminded him. “But do you think they'll try again?”

“Of course they'll try again,” Chase said. “She went after Lena a few months ago, and now she's after you.”

“You think she'll attack if I'm not here?” Then I'd have to stay. I imagined the weekend ahead, wondering if I could have rescued those kids, and the weeks after that, explaining and re-explaining everything to Mom.

“You mean, if we go with Miriam?” Chase said. He thought about it for a second. “No, I doubt it. The Snow Queen goes after your family to use them against you. If we all go on the quest, she'll have two other potential targets close by: me and Lena. She wouldn't waste energy going after people in the human world instead.”

Wow. I was
definitely
excited to go on the quest now.

“Besides,” Chase added, “we might not go.” He flipped the mirror around so I could watch Miriam and Lena crashing through the door.

“Are you
sure
you don't want to take someone from your grade?” Lena asked anxiously.

Maybe it had been wishful thinking on my part, until I heard her trying to change the Tale bearer's mind, but I didn't realize Lena had expected Miriam to say no.

“Yep,” said Miriam, stalking into the room. “Do you know what Natalie said when the Director cancelled the quest? ‘So, I get to use my glass slippers after all.' I don't need any Companions who are more excited about some stupid dance than saving my brother.”

So we
were
going.

I wished there were three of me—one to stand guard all weekend to keep my family safe, one to tell Mom the truth without freaking her out, and one to rescue the Pied Piper's victims. But Chase said Mom and Amy would be safer without me. That meant the Portland kids were in the most danger. I had to focus on that.

“We should leave tomorrow. During the ball.” It was the only time Mom would let me go to EAS, but I hated that I was planning to disappear on her
again
.

“Good idea,” Chase said, resigned. “Dances are always chaos. The Director won't be watching us so closely.”

“Okay.” Lena grabbed a notebook from the coffee table and pulled a pen out of her pocket. “Let's write a list of everything we need.”

“We have to sneak into the library,” Miriam said eagerly. “I want to find out why Rumpel and the Director freaked.”

Lena grimaced, obviously wishing we didn't have to, but she wrote it down anyway. “We'll do that during the ball too. I think I can find a good illusion spell that'll keep the Director from realizing we've even left the dance floor.”

Chase turned the mirror back to his face, so I could see his grin. “What did I tell you? An extraordinary talent for breaking rules.”

hat night I dreamed of a door. The door hadn't changed from the other dreams it had haunted—it was still carved from black wood, cracked with age. A scrolling
S
marked the doorknob, and frost traced silver into the wood grain. My breath fogged the air, like it had before, but this was the first time I
felt
the cold: my ears and fingertips ached with it.

On the other side of the door, the Snow Queen had hidden something, and the fate of the world depended on me finding it.

When I woke up, my heart beat so hard I could hear it thudding in my ears. If you were a Character, dreams were never just dreams, especially if you had the same one three times. Those dreams gave you a glimpse of your Tale.

This one I'd dreamed five times. But that wasn't why adrenaline poured into my veins.

We were going to the Snow Queen's palace. If that black door existed, it would be there. I might
find
it.

My Tale might actually start on this quest.

Mom wasn't too crazy about me going back to EAS, but she was determined not to show it. Instead, she made me as pretty as possible for the ball. It was like a Hollywood glitzy version of reverse psychology.

After spending hours picking out the perfect accessories, Amy attacked my hair with a blow-dryer, while Mom sat me down on her bed, pulled up her desk chair, and opened a makeup box with an alarming spread of bottles, brushes, and powders.

You would think, with such an important quest coming up, I would be immune to getting excited about a dance, but when Mom said I could pick out one of her old dresses, I knew exactly which one I wanted: an emerald green one she'd worn to a premiere six years ago, back when Mom and Dad were still married and hardly having any problems at all. When I put it on, silver embroidery shaped like leafy vines swirled around my torso, and the gauzy skirt swished against my legs, light and cool and totally swirl-worthy.

I stared at my reflection as Mom zipped up the back. I'd thought that I would look like Mom in the dress—pretty and elegant. But my arms were a lot stronger than my mother's, and without sleeves, they looked it. Plus, with all the makeup, my eyes looked bigger, which meant that my chin didn't look so huge, and if you added Amy's handiwork on my hair, I looked as glamorous and dangerous as the superhero Mom had played in her last film.

Except superheroes didn't usually have such goofy grins on their faces.

Amy came close, tugging my hair free of my dress straps and frowning as she finger-combed it back into place. Then she snapped a pic on her phone. “Wow, Rory. You went through an awkward phase last year, but you're a knockout now.”

“What are you talking about? I don't remember an awkward phase,” Mom said. “But I admit you look particularly lovely right now.”

“If all these eighth-grade boys don't swoon at your feet, then
they're blind.” Amy checked her watch. “Okay, you've got just enough time to drive over there and be fashionably late. I don't care if the hottest guy in the universe asks you to dance right at the end—I want to see you outside at a quarter to ten. If you're not there, I'll send your mom in after you. With her camera. And her most embarrassing hair.” She grinned to show me she was joking. Kind of.

“Pigtails,” Mom said, playing along. “Lopsided ones. Now just give me three minutes to run to the bathroom. Then we can go.”

“I'll meet you beside the car,” I said, swinging on my lime-green carryall. Late the night before, hours after Mom and Amy had gone into their rooms, I'd dug through my moving boxes and packed all my cold-weather gear. Plus my sword, my toothbrush, a couple changes of clothes, and
lots
of warm socks.

“Someone
is
excited,” Amy teased as I reached the front door. I grinned a little sheepishly, so she wouldn't suspect anything, but that wasn't it.

I'd thought of one more thing I wanted to do before I left, and since Mom and Amy had been keeping closer tabs on me than usual, I hadn't gotten a chance to sneak away yet.

Outside, I climbed halfway down the front steps and found the tile I'd given Mom for her birthday, sitting in the bare dirt between some trees. The carving looked like a really ornate Celtic knot, and it gleamed green and gold with all the pieces of ground dragon scales Lena had baked into it. She'd given it to me as a precaution after trolls attacked her family.

When I pulled out my gumdrop translator and stuck it in my ear, I could easily read the Fey writing:
I protect this house
. Over the tile, I whispered in Fey,
“From this earth, I ask you to rise, to stand tall and hear what I advise.”

Like gnome-size zombies, figures rose up on dirt-caked feet. They didn't have heads—just a torso, legs, and arms ending in a fist. One had a petunia growing out of its shoulder. Each dirt servant left a cat-size hole in the potting soil. Whoops. I hoped the person who owned this house wouldn't charge Mom for damages done to his garden.

“Um,” I said, trying to remember the next part of the spell. They all turned to me, which was actually kind of creepy.
“Still and quiet you must stay, guardians enspelled by clay. If an enemy comes in dark or light, we need you to stand and fight.”

I was pretty sure it worked, but somebody was bound to notice if they stood out front.
“And hide,”
I added in Fey, pointing at a conveniently leafy Japanese maple. It took them a second—Lena said they weren't sure you were talking to them if you didn't rhyme—but they shuffled behind the tree.

Done. If anything as magical as a mugger with troll blood tried to hurt Mom and Amy while I was away, the dirt servants would attack.

I trotted down the driveway to the car, shoved my gumdrop translator back in my bag, and leaned against the passenger side just as Mom opened the front door.

“Ready?” she asked. I nodded, afraid to glance one more time at the maple, in case someone noticed the moving shapes behind the leaves.

Amy waved from the porch. “Remember! A quarter to ten!”

Mom made me nervous when we drove away. She kept glancing at me until I was sure she had figured out my real plans. Maybe she'd spotted my sweaty palms. Maybe she'd gone to my room—I'd left her a note on my pillow, but if she'd found it three hours too early, I would have a serious problem.

“I can't believe that you're almost finished with eighth grade and this is your first real dance,” Mom said finally. “If we'd stayed in L.A., you would have had maybe twenty by now. I'm so sorry.”

Oh. This
was
my first dance. Working so hard on my makeup hadn't been reverse psychology. She'd just wanted to make it special for me. “It's okay.”

Mom smiled, a little sadly. “It's really not okay, Rory. But I appreciate what a fine, brave, uncomplaining little girl you are.”

Hello, guilt.

It squeezed my lungs flat. If I spoke, I would probably confess that she should add “lying” and “soon-to-be runaway” to that list. She didn't deserve this. She didn't deserve
me
.

I
could
tell her. I could explain everything right now—magic and the Tales, the Door Trek system and the Tree of Hope, the Pied Piper and the kidnapped children and the Snow Queen. Even if she turned the car around, dragged me back to the house, and locked me in my room, it still wouldn't stop me from going. I had a temporary-transport spell in a jar. I could paint it around my closet to get back.