Of Witches and Wind (5 page)

The last of the paper burned up.

“Mistress!” Melodie pointed to the floor. The ashes glowed slightly green.

And then the inventors' club was back in session.

“Yay!” Lena knelt on the floor next to the pile of ashes. “What's the next step?”

“We need to bind the ashes to the inside of the backpack—” Melodie began.

I could only stand so much of this. Before they got too carried away, I interrupted, “Where's Chase?”

“Um . . .” Lena glanced around the room, puzzled. The ashes had turned her brown hands gray and glowing. “He was just here a second ago. . . .”

Metal clinked against glass, and we both turned toward the vial. A pewter hand gripped the cylinder, and a metallic face peeked out from behind it, light reflecting dully from his hooked nose, his wide full mouth. His eyes were in shadow, the metal skin covered in reddish brown hair.

Iron Hans. The Snow Queen's most deadly warrior.

My heart lurched with panic, but I forced myself to stay where I was. I even folded my arms over my chest.

This Iron Hans was too short to be a full-grown villain. In fact he was exactly Chase's height, and he held his huge ax—the double-headed blade as big as a steering wheel—the same way Chase held his sword.

He took a step toward us, and I grabbed him, feeling a boy's T-shirt rather than the hairy old dude's shoulder it looked like I held.

“Not funny, Chase.” I shoved hard.

Chase went sprawling and dropped the illusion, laughing.

It had been a few months since he'd tried this last. The first time he'd done it, right after my first sword lesson, he'd been friends with Adelaide, and they'd scared a squeak out of me with this same trick. I'd gotten better at not flipping out, but I didn't understand why he kept trying it.

“I couldn't resist,” Chase said, grinning.

Maybe he was still upset that I'd killed the chimera instead of him. He always needed to be the best—that was the desire that drove
him
. It was pretty annoying, actually.

“Wow.” Lena appeared beside us. “That was a glamour, wasn't it?”

Chase picked himself up off the floor. “Nah, just an illusion.”

“But when Gretel does an illusion spell, you can see it coming out of her,” Lena said. “How did you hide it so well?”

“Secrets of the trade.” But for once, Chase sounded a lot more uncomfortable than smug.

“Can you teach me?” Lena asked, grinding up some more dragon scales.

Chase was an expert at changing the subject. He tapped the vial. “What is this thing, anyway?”

“It was once the East Wind's prison,” Melodie said.

All of Lena's excitement rushed back. “It contained his essence, the same way the Glass Mountain contains the Snow Queen's essence. We're going to recreate that after we sort out the—are you okay?” she asked me anxiously.

When she'd mentioned the Snow Queen, something had twisted in my stomach. The freak out must've blazed across my face.

I shook it off. I was being stupid, worrying like this. There wasn't exactly an instruction manual to tell seventh graders how to defeat the worst villain the world had ever seen.

All I could do was train even harder to improve my griffin-slaying skills.

Outside the workshop a bell clanged—first of the evening. That meant it was six p.m. where my mom was—time for everyone in Eastern Standard Time to go home.

Lena, who lived in Milwaukee, an hour behind New York, and Chase, who lived there at EAS, didn't need to go anywhere yet.

I hopped off the stool. “Chase, swear you'll give me a lesson tomorrow.”

“You think we'll have time before the feast?” He clearly disagreed.

“I'm coming early, remember? Half day at school,” I said happily, weaving back through the elves' Tables of Plenty. Tomorrow was also the first day of spring break. Chase, Lena, and I were going to hang out at EAS all week—plenty of time for training. “Mom's going to drop me off at the airport, and Ellie is going to set up a Door Trek gateway there.” Mom and Amy thought that I would be flying down to North Carolina to visit Lena. I chose not to think about that.

“What time are you coming again?” Chase asked.

“Around one.” I wondered why Lena looked so distracted. It was impossible to tell what invention was on her mind.

“Rory, did you think of an excuse for your black eye yet?” she asked.

I had completely forgotten. I couldn't even remember where I'd left Rapunzel's ice pack. Dread curled up in my stomach. “Help me think of something!”

•  •  •

Unfortunately, Mom was in the front hallway closet when I returned to the house we were renting. I couldn't warn her before she saw me.

“Rory, what happened?” She threw her coat over the stair rail and rushed toward me.

“Some kid threw a ball at her.” Amy only sounded that disapproving when she was worried about me.

Ever since I'd gone up the beanstalk, Amy had been suspicious of EAS. Mom would've been too, but Gretel had enchanted her to think that I had taken a five-day-long field trip to Raleigh. Unfortunately, Amy had noticed I didn't remember taking any of the pictures saved in my camera.

Amy knew something about EAS didn't add up, which made my life slightly more difficult. When Mom had first realized that she would be stuck promoting one of her films during my spring break, she'd given me a choice—visit Lena or visit my dad. It was an easy decision—spend a week hanging out with my friends, or spend a week trailing after my famous director father, stuck in boring meetings. I'd picked Lena. But Amy had spent the rest of the day asking, “Are you sure?” She'd obviously hoped I would change my mind, which—considering that she wasn't my dad's biggest fan—was really saying something.

“No, they didn't throw it at me.” It took all my willpower not to wince when Mom tilted my chin and examined my eye. “Some eighth graders were playing catch, and I walked right into the baseball.” This lie came compliments of Lena. I held my breath to see if it would take.

With a sigh, Mom steered me into the kitchen. “You are so accident-prone, Rory.”

Lena's lie had worked. I hid a smile as Mom guided me through the swinging door and straight to the kitchen table.

Amy scurried around unpacked boxes to grab ice out of the freezer. “I have a dream, kid. Of picking you up in your cleats and
your shin guards and you telling me all about soccer practice, free of black eyes and other mysterious bruises.”

“They had tryouts two weeks before I got here. It wouldn't be fair if I walked on,” I reminded her. Our crazy moving schedule gave me a lot of excuses. I pulled out my homework, hoping that would end all discussion about injuries.

Amy passed me ice wrapped in a kitchen towel. “You have three different options, but I'm afraid I couldn't find any stylists you've seen before. Do you want to try someone new, or do you want me to keep calling around?”

At first I thought she meant a stylist for me. I didn't need a haircut, except possibly long bangs to cover my black eye.

Mom sighed. “Let's keep looking. I would normally be okay with someone new, but I have too many interviews. . . .”

Oh. They had completely changed the subject. I was never this lucky. Usually, I had to spend half an hour reassuring Mom I was fine.

“Wait. What happened?” I asked. Mom's hair looked completely normal to me—short, blond, and full of weird tufts.

“Maggie's on-set stylist found some gray hair this morning.” From the look on Mom's face you would have guessed that Amy had said that my mother had a poison-ivy rash in underwear territory or something equally embarrassing. Amy didn't notice.

My mom was an actress, kind of a big-deal one. She was only in her mid-thirties, but if she looked too old, it limited the kinds of roles she could get. I'd overheard her and Amy discussing it the week before.

Mom changed the subject. “Have you packed yet?”

“Um, kind of,” I said. “I just need to put everything in a suitcase.”

“Good. That means you still have room for these.” Amy patted
a shoe box I hadn't noticed. The designer's name seemed vaguely familiar.

Mom scooted the box toward me with a too-bright smile. “I got you something for your trip.”

Not sure what to expect, I lifted the lid. Inside lay . . . shoes. They were very pretty, made with poppy-colored silk, stitched all over with golden beads. Each shoe probably cost over a hundred dollars. Any of the girls at school would have killed for them. Maybe have killed me for them.

“Thanks.” I wondered if she really expected me to wear these. “But I have shoes.”

Mom hesitated.

“Rory, you couldn't get those any rattier even if you sprayed them with mud and then threw them in the garbage disposer,” Amy said.

My sneakers were stained with dirt and grass, the laces were fraying, and there was a hole at the ankle. I would probably outgrow this pair soon anyway, but they had sentimental value. They had survived almost as many battles as I had.

Even my family thought I needed to improve my look. The girls at school usually told me so, but this was the first time I'd ever heard about it from Mom and Amy.

“Your tennis shoes are fine for visiting Lena,” Mom added. “But you need something to wear if Mrs. LaMarelle wants to take you someplace nice. I just don't want you to be uncomfortable.”

I didn't mind wearing flats every once in a while, but if I wore them at EAS, they would fall off if I had to do something intense . . . like dodge an ice griffin or slay some dragons. I tried a different tactic. “But isn't this kind of overkill? Couldn't we have started out with sparkly shoes from Target or something?”

“Is that all? Your mom wore them during filming. Wardrobe comes as a bonus. Those were free,” Amy explained.

“It's nice that you and I are the same size now,” Mom added. “I get more samples than I know what to do with.”

We were only the same size in shoes.

My feet had shot out in the last year, forcing me out of kids' sizes forever. My hands had also gotten huge, but I didn't mind that so much—I could grip my sword hilt easier. Mom and Amy both swore that this meant I was going to be tall, but so far I just had clownishly big hands and feet. And that Mom forced some of her hand-me-downs on me.

Sometimes you have to pick your battles. I wasn't getting out of town without the shoes. “Okay. Thanks, then.”

Amy and Mom both smiled, and then the phone rang. “Ooh! Maybe someone had a cancellation!” Amy said before answering. “Hello. Assistant to Maggie Wright speaking.”

The rest of the evening passed in a blur of last-minute packing. When I said good night, Mom was standing in front of the mirror, tilting her head in a million different directions, looking for what her stylist had seen. Climbing into bed, I vowed to never go into any business where finding gray hair turned into a career emergency.

•  •  •

That night, I dreamed of satiny black hair flowing around a beautiful face. Her eyes were closed, the long lashes casting spiky shadows over her cheeks. Her lips were perfectly shaped, tinged with a delicate pink, like they belonged on a painted figurine. I started to wonder what Mia's deal was, and why her hair was spread flat over the table, and if maybe she was practicing for a Tale where she got kissed. Then my gaze fell below her chin.

It was Mia's head—and only her head—resting on the table.

he next day at school was a totally different nightmare.

Somebody thought we kids needed to bond before we left on break for nine and a half days, so they scheduled an extra thirty minutes of homeroom after last period. Clearly, the principal had never been a twelve-year-old girl.

My homeroom only had five kids. It was easy to understand why if you met the other four girls in it. Everyone else had transferred out rather than spend extra time with Madison and the KATs.