Of Enemies and Endings (23 page)

Chase never came back to the training courts.

Snow White needed an escort for her trip to meet the gnomes in Avalon, and Jack—the guy in charge of the mission—had picked Chase and a few others to come with them. I found out, because Jack sent Rufus to pull George and Ben out of class.

I tried so hard not to feel bad. I tried to believe that Chase had deserved what I'd told him.

But it nagged at me. I knew I'd gone too far. I wondered how long it would be until I could apologize. After class finally ended, Lady Aspenwind didn't discuss it with me like Hansel might have. She didn't even look at me. She flipped open her wings and flitted to the doorway, flying over the crowd so that she could be the first one out. I was pretty sure that was the Fey version of a cold shoulder, and at first I was angry. I'd
said
the duel wasn't a good idea. Chase and his mom had forced me to go through with it anyway.

Then I spotted Priya and Kelly's faces as they put away their staffs, their frozen, helpless looks. I knew how they felt. When my parents had fought, I used to feel like a huge part of my life was going to pieces and I'd caused it somehow. Priya and Kelly probably thought it was their fault that Chase had stormed out, because they'd suggested the fight.

Shame rolled in and threatened to sink me. Chase was right. Everything had gotten so messed up.

“Are you okay?” Mom stood behind me, close enough to touch my shoulder, but she didn't.

I wondered if she'd seen the duel.

“I heard about Hansel,” she said tentatively, like she didn't want to start another argument. “I checked on you while you were sleeping, and I didn't want to wake you. I could tell you needed the rest.”

Maybe I should have protested, considering Mom had just told me she checked on me at night, like I was still a little kid. I mean, some of the staff students were still in earshot. But instead it was kind of nice to know she was looking out for me.

“So you're all right?” she said.

I started to nod, but that felt like a lie. “I'm not hurt.”

Mom peered into my face for a long minute. Then she said, almost like nothing was wrong, “Is it teatime?”

“Sure,” I said. I'd been planning to go to the workshop and do more research, but I couldn't stand fighting with
two
of the most important people in my life. We cut through some corridors toward the apartment, because neither of us wanted to face the courtyard full of people mourning Hansel.

On the way, I tried to persuade her to see my side of the situation. “I know we've had a bunch of close calls. But you have to understand—that trap at the Zipes's ranch was set for
me
. I couldn't just let my friends go alone.”

“But, Rory, you're so
young
.”

This time, I just took a deep breath. I refused to let myself get mad. “You and I see being young very differently. For me, it means we have more time left in the world than the grown-ups. It means we have
more
responsibility to make things better.”

Mom looked at me with a tiny little crease between her eyes, but she didn't automatically disagree. That was new. We turned left, down another corridor.

Angry voices drifted toward us.

“The effort was never going to work like you wanted. You can't sustain it for more than a few months.”

“Like I said, I don't know what you're
talking
about.”

“Please. Time is wearing thin. Give it to me. Otherwise you shall make a villain of yourself.”

Mom and I cautiously eased around the corner so we could see who was talking: Adelaide's face was screwed up in a snarl, her fists clenched. She leaned toward Rapunzel. “For the last time, I DON'T KNOW WHAT YOU'RE TALKING ABOUT, YOU CRAZY OLD—” Well, I won't repeat the last thing she said.

Rapunzel's response shocked me even more. “Yes! But you are a shortsighted infant! You'll regret this before today's sunset!”

Mom and I glanced at each other. For the first time all summer, I could tell we were thinking exactly the same thing:
I'm glad we don't argue like this
.

Then Adelaide marched out the door at the end of the corridor. She slammed it behind her, so hard that Mom gasped.

“Um . . . ,” I said, wondering how to break it to Rapunzel that she'd had an audience.

“It's all right, Rory,” Rapunzel said wearily. She wrapped both arms around herself, cradling her elbows. “I know that you're there. May I speak to you?”

Mom shot Rapunzel a skeptical look, like she really wanted to ask my friend what kind of example she was setting. But even my mother knew that our teatime was postponed. I could use any advice Rapunzel had to offer. “We'll discuss this later,” Mom said, kissing my cheek, and it didn't seem so ominous this time. “This door, right?” She pointed at the door Adelaide had just smashed through, the one that led to the back of the student apartments. I nodded. She waved and left.

Rapunzel stared at the ground. I didn't think I'd ever seen her so rattled. This time, I was pretty sure it didn't have anything to do with Hansel's death. “Is there something I should know about Adelaide?”
You shall make a villain of yourself
sounded pretty serious.

“Not yet. Time, for me, is messy,” she said, staring at the ground.

“And timing delicate. Got it.” I didn't want to push her. Or to keep talking about Adelaide.

“I need a favor from you,” Rapunzel said.

“Okay,” I said, kind of freaked. Rapunzel had never asked me for anything before. She hadn't even asked me to trust her the day I found out Solange was her sister. Of course I would do it.

“You will go on a quest with Adelaide soon,” Rapunzel said. “Watch over her, please.”

Rapunzel wanted me to look after the girl who'd just screamed in her face? “
Adelaide?
There's no way we would go on a quest together.” We would have to be Companions on the same Tale, and there was absolutely
no
overlap between the people who would choose her for a Companion and the people who would choose me. “Rapunzel, I would never travel with such a spoiled, selfish—”

Her silver head jerked up. Her dark gaze was fierce. “Don't speak that thought in my presence. Family is the one part of my life I haven't made my peace with.”

I stared at her, completely confused about what family had to do with Adelaide.

Then Rapunzel said, “On her mother's side. My great-grandchildren emigrated to the United States at the turn of the century before last. I followed them, and Solange followed me. I have watched over my descendants as best I could. Adelaide is the youngest, and I am failing her.”

No.
Not Adelaide. She had more in common with the Snow Queen than with Rapunzel.

Rapunzel must have seen the disbelief on my face. The fierceness left her, and she hurried toward me and dropped her hand onto my crossed arms. “
Please
, Rory. Friendship can survive anger, but only if you choose the person over the rage. We must part as friends.”

She sounded so desperate. “Of course we'll part as friends—” I started. Oh. So she'd already heard about what I'd said during the duel. “The thing with Chase is
different
,” I said. “We're in the Triumvirate together.”

“Even the tightest bonds don't make you inseparable. Even Maerwynne, Rikard, and Madame Benne were not together all the time.” Rapunzel was one of the few people who often compared us to the first Triumvirate, not just the one Solange had been in. This time, I wished she wouldn't. “They were united in purpose even when their paths diverged. They trusted that they would return to each other in time.”

That wasn't the point, and she knew it. She had to know why protecting Adelaide was asking a lot. “Don't you think I have a right to be angry?” I asked.

Rapunzel's tone was careful. She clearly didn't want to set me off again. “You have a right to all your emotions, but it is best not to let them control you.”

I would have told Chase off even if I was calm. I started to say so, but she interrupted.

“Rory, it is
too
easy to pass pain on when pain is all you feel,” she said. “This will not be your hardest day. The shock numbs you now. It will not last.”

So it was going to get worse too. Lately, that felt like the only thing Rapunzel ever told me, and I kind of wanted to say so, and not in a nice way. But that was the same thing as hurting Chase just because I was hurting.

So I took a deep breath and said, “Does Adelaide know she's related to you?”

“No. She must not know. She believes I only seek to stop her,” Rapunzel said. “Protection has not crossed her mind.”

And to protect her, Rapunzel was recruiting me, even though she knew how Adelaide and I felt about each other. I kind of wished I hadn't already agreed, but after all Rapunzel had done for me, I guess I could do this. “Anything else I should know? About ‘watching over' Adelaide?”

Rapunzel sighed. “She will speak harshly with you. She will be distracted, and the stair will strike.”

Ugh. I didn't know what news was worse: that Adelaide would yell at me right before I saved her, or that stairs would be involved. Stairs usually mean heights.

“We must go,” Rapunzel said, leading me down a short hall to the door that opened into the courtyard. “I tried to buy us as much time as I could. I thought we would have more. I hope it will be enough.”

I wondered why everyone was suddenly trying to tell me that they thought we'd have more time. I thought I would have more time too. I thought I would live to be older than fourteen. Then it hit me.

“It's happening, isn't it?” I whispered. “The Snow Queen is
really
starting to move. Not just to get more allies, but for real.”

“Yes, and I will do what I have always done,” Rapunzel said. “I will try to minimize the damage.”

She opened the door.

George and Kyle were right outside, nearly frantic. Ben was a little farther down, hammering on the amethyst door of the Director's office. They looked up when Rapunzel and I came out, and I could tell from their faces: Something was wrong with Chase. They should have all still been in Avalon, helping Jack and Snow White with the gnomes.

“We didn't see it coming,” Kyle said, his face white.

“Chase has been enchanted,” George explained. “The ring of return didn't work on him.”

“We had to leave him,” Ben said, like he would never forgive himself for doing it.

“Stone?” I croaked, remembering Sebastian.

I wouldn't think about what Arica had said. I wouldn't think about how horribly she'd died.

Kyle shook his head. “A sleeping spell.”

My
dream
.

“Tell her about the message,” said Rapunzel. She'd seen this.

“As soon as we got there, the gnomes said they had seen some of the Seelie Court refugees. They said some of the younger Fey had been arguing about whether or not to seek refuge at EAS, or some other stupid sh—” George bit off the curse, like his gran would be walking by any second.

“The gnomes thought they were in one of their old forts, just a couple miles away,” Ben said. “Jack called in the tip to the Director, and she ordered us to go check it out.”

“And now she won't even
see
us,” said Kyle. “She says she's in a meeting.”

“What happened in the
fort
?” said an annoyed voice behind me. I hadn't realized Adelaide was there, and she stared intently at the guys, clearly pretending that Rapunzel and I hadn't showed up.

“Nothing happened,” George said. “That was the problem. We walked right into the tower, expecting them to attack. You know, to test us and see if the Itari thing was true. But it was abandoned.”

“We went all the way upstairs. There was a room. Totally empty except for all this furniture—tables and chairs and weird spinning wheels,” added Kyle. Goose bumps sprouted on my arms. “Then Chase pretty much lost it.”

“He'd gotten his hopes up. He thought we'd come back with Fey allies in tow.” George shrugged. “It wasn't that big of a deal. He took it out on the furniture.”

“Until something scratched him. One of the tables was metal. That could have done it,” Ben said.

“When we saw the blood on his arm, Ben stopped him,” said Kyle. “Then Chase's eyes rolled back in his head and he fell over.”

“I thought Chase fainted,” George said. Chase would've flipped if he'd heard his name and “faint” in the same sentence. “But then we couldn't wake him up. We shook him. We poured water over him. We waited for a while.”

“Then we got worried he'd hit his head. He fell
hard
,” Ben said. “So we tried to get him back to EAS. We thought he needed medical attention.”

“His ring of return didn't work.” George sounded completely stunned that one of his sister's inventions had failed him.

“Ours did,” Kyle said. “It wasn't one of those warding hex things.”

“So you left him there?
Hurt?
” Adelaide asked shrilly. Rapunzel cast a tender look over her, but her descendant didn't even notice.

“They needed help,” I pointed out. “Did you guys get dirt from outside the fort?”

George lifted a glass vial filled with dark soil flecked with bright, healthy grass. “Lena sent me prepared.”

“But there's something else,” Ben said. “When we left the tower for the dirt, something started growing.”

Kyle nodded. “Right outside the door.”

If I was going to rescue Chase, they would both have to be more specific. “What do you mean, ‘something'?”

A bell began to ring, the one that always announced the beginning of a new Tale. The door to the library opened. Sarah Thumb swept out on Mr. Swallow, winging straight toward us, and Rumpelstiltskin hurried after, carrying an enormous book bound in blue leather—the current volume of Tales.