Of Enemies and Endings (34 page)

“They had to get in
somehow
,” the Director insisted.

“There's an easy way to figure it out.” Lena climbed to her feet and swayed, still woozy. Her grandmother clamped her hands on Lena's shoulders, holding her up. “A simple scrying spell could find the item the Snow Queen used to make the portal. All you have to do is—”

The wreckage around the portal shuddered. We all jumped. Chase and a few others drew their swords again.

But something else zoomed out of the rubble. Glinting, it whistled through the air and landed on Lena's outstretched palm with a clink. A coin, tarnished on one side and as gold as Lena's new hands on the other.

“Oh my gumdrops.” Horrified, Lena looked at me, but I didn't know how magic could happen without anyone casting a spell.

Melodie did. “You're a sorcerer now!”

“Gretel has never cast a scrying spell just by thinking it before,” said Sarah Thumb.

“You must be more powerful,” Melodie told her mistress.

Miriam frowned at the object resting in Lena's hand. “Isn't that a wishing coin?”

I'd forgotten about those. The day after we'd returned from the Snow Queen's palace, the elves had confirmed the coins were embedded with recharge capabilities that tapped directly into the Snow Queen's own magic. So much had happened since then.

“Didn't the elves gather all those and toss them to the bottom of the ocean?” asked Chase.

They obviously missed one.

“If you wished on this coin enough, if it kept recharging, the link between it and the Snow Queen would get stronger,” Lena said slowly. “It could turn into the receiving end of a portal, just like the letter in Matilda Searcaster's desk during my Tale up the beanstalk.”

“I am uninterested in how the magic was performed,” said the Director. “I am only interested in who planted this coin here. Create a scrying spell for that.”

Trust the Director to start commanding Lena to use a new power we'd just found out about two minutes ago.

Lena straightened up and opened her mouth, already distressed, but Melodie raised her hand, obviously eager to help her mistress any way she could. “I can! Well, as long as nobody has destroyed the scrying spell ingredients from the workshop.”

“Hold on. We need to get this out of here.” Chase pointed at the coin in Lena's hand, careful not to touch it. “It's still
active
. The Snow Queen is still listening.”

A hush fell over the crowd.

Solange knew her sister was dead. She knew Lena was alive. She knew Lena was a
sorceress
. Had she gotten anything else?

“I'll take it.” Golden face grim, Melodie picked up the coin and gestured to the workshop. Her metal fairy chauffeur lumbered off, clumsier than usual. Some enemy blade had chopped off half its foot.

So much damage. I'd fought as hard as I could, and nobody had come out of this intact.

Once the door to the workshop closed safely behind Melodie, the hush broke. The Director did what she did best. She issued orders. “Send Jack to inspect the dungeons. We'll need somewhere to hold the villains in the training courts, and the traitor as well.”

We needed to
find
the traitor first, but my mind couldn't hold on to that thought. One spy didn't feel as important as Rapunzel's death and the Snow Queen getting what she'd wanted.

Chase thought so too. “All that is just cleanup,” he told the Director impatiently. “You can do it later. We need to figure out a plan. The Snow Queen got the maps.”

He made it sound like it was a huge catastrophe, but considering all the destruction around us, lost maps seemed pretty minor.

But Lena acted as nervous as Chase. “What would the Snow Queen want with . . . ?”

“Think about it,” Chase said. “What was
on
those maps?”

“Just the locations of all the known portals between the human world and the Arctic Circle,” Lena said. “But it wouldn't help her kill Characters. We all live here now. It wouldn't help her unless she planned to—”

“—invade the human world,” Chase finished.

Of course. What had happened here could happen everywhere.

“I can see why you waited until the wishing coin was gone before mentioning this to us,” the Director said, arms crossed. “Solange would laugh to hear such a ludicrous theory.”

“It's not a theory,” Chase said. “She always said she would take back the lands the humans stole and return them to their rightful owners. After tonight, she'll be even stronger than before. When she has her army together, her forces will march on DC, Ottawa, and Mexico City, but she has assigned a task force to every major city on those maps. Getting the witches back was part of the Snow Queen's plan too. She has a spell that can stop all human machinery in a mile radius. Guns, tanks, fighter jets—it doesn't matter. They're useless with this enchantment, and now she has the witches to cast it for her. After she controls this continent, she'll go after the rest. The humans won't know what hit them.”

So this was what would happen if I didn't stop the Snow Queen. Forget the fate of magic. The fate of the world depended on whether or not I failed my Tale.

“It's a possibility,” the Director admitted, “but you can't
know
—”

“He can,” I said. Chase had known about the invasion as soon as he woke up. He'd known exactly what Solange was after. He'd been right about all of it, and now he had time to explain how. “What haven't you told us, Chase?”

“Did you dream when you were under the Sleeping Beauty curse?” Chase asked the Director.

She frowned. “Did you?”

“I dreamed I was in the Snow Queen's war council,” Chase said. “I dreamed I was hovering right over the room, listening to all their plans, and the last thing I heard before the questers woke me up was the Snow Queen telling General Searcaster to begin the invasion of EAS's North American chapter.”

This time, they believed him.

“The sleeping enchantment backfired,” Lena told Chase, her voice barely a whisper. “It was only meant for human Characters, and you're half Fey.”

“Nice to go behind enemy lines when you're having a nightmare,” Chase said bitterly.

“We need to contact the other chapters,” Sarah Thumb said, panicked. “We need to convince them that they're next if they don't help. Oh my God. Should we even be talking about this here? We still don't know who planted that coin. They could be listening right now, waiting to report everything—”

“No,”
Chase said in his
Do you think I'm an idiot?
voice. “The Snow Queen called it a sweetened deal—she said she got the end of the portal and a way to hurt the Triumvirate, all in one clueless little idiot. Whoever had that coin had no idea.”

“It . . . ,” came a choked voice near the back.

The crowd shuffled to the side so we could see our accidental traitor.

Adelaide's cheeks were sticky with tears. Her blond hair had matted to them. “It was me,” she said, and hiccuped.

She looked so pale and stricken. She really hadn't known.

“We
took
your coin,” Sarah Thumb said, scowling at Adelaide. “I processed the paperwork myself.”

“The coin I gave you wasn't real.” Adelaide hiccuped again. “I mean, it might have been, but it wasn't the one Chase gave me. When the elves came for it, I wished I didn't have to give it back. A second coin appeared. It looked exactly the same as the first. That's what I gave you.”

“What did you
wish
for?” Chase said coldly.

Adelaide choked back a sob. “I'm so sorry. I really am.”

I was missing something.

“You just forgot about me when you started hanging out with Rory,” Adelaide told Chase. “I thought if we just spent more time together, if we dated, you might—” She sobbed for real, and Chase recoiled, disgust all over his face.

“Oh my gumdrops,” Lena whispered, glancing at me.

Chase turned my way too. His stare was so hard and furious that it pierced through my numbness. “I
told
you something was wrong with me.”

Oh no. Chase never remembered asking her out. He didn't know how he'd gotten to dinner with her parents. He'd said she had power over him.

Adelaide had wished Chase was her boyfriend. She wished that he would come with her on whatever stupid outing she thought up. She'd wished it over and over again. None of this had been Chase's fault.

My mouth fell open, but nothing came out. “Sorry” didn't seem to cover it. He had come to me for help, and I had been too angry to even listen to him.

“Take her away,” said the Director quietly. “Her apartment will be fine until her parents come for her.”

Mangled metal dummies stepped up alongside Adelaide now. She didn't put up a fight. She walked away between them, still weeping.

Such a stupid thing to cause the fall of Ever After School—one stupid crush from one stupid, lonely girl.

The Director turned to Chase. “Come to my office. We need to go over everything you may have heard in your dream.”

“Sure, let's chat. It's not like I need the sleep,” Chase said.

A few smirks flickered on our friends' faces.

But they didn't know Chase the way I did. They didn't notice the disappointment that shuttered his face. They didn't realize what it cost him—to wish for so long for a Tale, and to finally get this one.

He didn't even glance at me when the Director led him away. Lena was right. A first kiss could change everything, but not always for the better. Chase might not have minded having one in his Tale, but he'd definitely wanted to be the one doing the kissing. He'd wanted to be the one who'd pulled off the daring rescue.

The crowd thinned. Everyone else was leaving too.

“We need scouts at the portals,” Sarah Thumb said, flying after the Director. “We'll need to know when she moves again, so we can sound the alarm.”

Rumpelstiltskin followed them, carrying away the current volume. “But do we remember where the portals are?”

Jenny and George helped Lena step forward. “I know where the portals are,” Lena said, sounding woozy. “I have to tell Rumpel. I saw all the maps when I was searching for the one to the Arctic Circle.”

Her photographic memory. It saved us again.

But her grandmother didn't want to hear about it. “Shh, we'll take care of it. Let's just get you home first.”

Limping toward her house, Lena didn't look back, and I couldn't speak.

It was so much worse that the last attack on EAS, when the Snow Queen had poisoned the Fey fudge pies at the feast. We had all pulled together then. We hadn't left each other until we figured out a solution.

This time, we just melted into our homes and tended to our own wounds. If the Snow Queen struck again, if she attacked the human world right
then
, I didn't think we could organize ourselves enough to fight. That was exactly what Solange wanted.

“Rory?” I felt a hand on my shoulder. Mom's worry was plastered all over her face. Beyond her were Amy and, all in a cluster, Dad, Brie, and Dani. Their expressions matched Mom's.

“It'll be okay, sweetie,” Mom said, hugging me, but I didn't see how.

Mom sent me to bed early that evening. I didn't think I could sleep with the threat of another invasion looming over us, but I'd underestimated how exhausted I was.

When I fell asleep, the door flooded my dreams again, all the details in place. The ancient black wood, the grain etched with frost. The Snow Queen's symbol—a swirl of silver—over the doorknob. My breath hanging in the air, a tiny white cloud, deep within the bowels of Solange's palace.

This time, though, it wasn't the cold that bothered me, or the mystery of what was on the other side of the door, or even the burden of the world's fate on my shoulders.

It was knowing I had to face the end of my Tale, and I had to face it alone. No one would help me. The Snow Queen had taken everyone from me.

I woke up, shouting. Panic throbbed in my chest.

I needed to find that door. We were running out of time. But the Snow Queen was waiting for me by now. I could die trying to get through it, and I still had no idea what was on the other side.

Mom must have heard me yell. She came in, sat on my bed, and put her arms around me.

I curled into her. My whole body was shaking, and my tongue felt clumsy. “I don't know what to do. I don't know how to fix it.”

She didn't say I was too young to be putting so much pressure on myself. She didn't tell me I should let the grown-ups handle it. She knew better now.

The only grown-up who might have known what to do was gone. She couldn't help me anymore.

“No one knows how to fix everything,” Mom whispered. “We can only keep moving in the right direction. You just need to figure out what the next step is.”