The Fairytale Curse (Magic's Return Book 1) (18 page)

As the little family of three hugged on the edge of the frame, a roar cut through the background noise of announcements and people talking. You could see people stopping in their tracks. Heads swivelled toward the gate, and the roar came again. The staff member who was farewelling the departing passengers at the gate stepped forward and peered down the corridor that led to the plane.

The little bald baby began to cry, and the family hurried away. Some joined them, but most moved toward the noise, rather than away, overcome with curiosity. It wasn’t the roar of a jet engine, which wouldn’t have turned a hair at the airport. It sounded more like an animal. People looked at each other uncertainly.

The roar sounded again, closer this time, and a small Asian man darted out of the gate, his face contorted in fear. He dropped his jacket as he bolted through the gate lounge, but he didn’t stop to pick it up. Others began to leave too; his fear was catching. The gate staff backed away, uncertain what to do.

Then an enormous figure burst from the gate. It had been bent nearly double to get through the tunnel from the plane. Now it rose to its full horrifying height. The picture wobbled as whoever held the camera backed away. Screams filled the air, then suddenly the view tilted dizzily and all we could see was the floor swinging backwards and forwards as the person filming bolted for safety. We could still hear the roars though, and the terrified screaming.

“What was
that
?” I asked as the clip finished.

The creature had been man-shaped, but twice the height of any man, and its face was so hideous it could have got a job as an orc extra on
The Lord of the Rings
. Its arms were massive, and hung low like a gorilla’s.

“An ogre,” said Kyle.

Thanks, Captain Obvious.
I’d actually got that part from all the screaming headlines on Google.

“I mean, where did it come from? How does a thing like that get on a plane?”

Kyle sighed. “As far as we can tell from the passenger lists, that thing used to be Warder Nabukov.”

Whoa. The poor guy.

“So it’s another fairytale attack?” CJ asked.

“But how?” It didn’t make sense. “Puck hasn’t escaped, has he?”

“No. He’s still locked in the vault.”

Then how had the Sidhe managed to strike again? Why hadn’t anybody seen magical activity on the monitors?

“We have seekers all over the airport,” said Simon. “Maybe they’ll find something.”

He looked even grumpier than ever—he was probably longing to be there with the others instead of babysitting two teenage girls.

“What fairy tale is he from?” CJ asked.

Kyle shrugged. “Take your pick—there’s plenty of ogres in fairy tales. I just hope to God it isn’t
Puss in Boots
, or we could find one of the other passengers has turned into a cat.”

“Where is he now?” I asked, afraid that some enthusiastic policeman may have put a bullet through him.

“They had to call in a vet from Taronga Zoo to tranquillise him. As far as I know he’s still at the airport. Last I heard they were holding him in one of the hangars. I think your Dad’s gone down there with Warder Kincumber to see what they can do.”

Wow. It sure put things in perspective. I fingered my ugly dog collar. Frogs and diamonds were pretty tame in comparison to being turned into an ogre.

“Does it seem to you that the curses are getting stronger?”

Simon met my eyes in the rear vision mirror, a thoughtful expression replacing his usual frown. “How so?”

“First was Snow White—they just put her to sleep.”

“It’s a bit more than that,” CJ pointed out. “She can’t wake up.”

“True, but sleep is natural. It’s just the not-waking-up part that’s odd. Then there was us, with our frogs and diamonds—unnatural, but we’re not changed. We’re still ourselves. And now there’s this. Poor Warder Nabukov is completely transformed into something that’s not even human.”

Silence fell in the car. What would the next progression be? Simon got onto the expressway before I realised we weren’t heading home.

“Where are we going?”

“Warder Winters is concerned about security. She’s called everyone into HQ.”

Poor Mum. This wasn’t a great time to be a warder. Ever since our YouTube video had gone viral, the current affairs shows had been full of talking heads discussing magic and whether it was real or not. After today’s little episode it was going to be pretty challenging to argue that it wasn’t. Puck must be sitting back laughing as all the little humans scurried around like a kicked ants’ nest. No matter how they tried, the ants were never going to be able to put their world back the way it had been.

We pulled into the underground garage at HQ. How long until the press discovered this place?

As we got out of the car, an ambulance came down the ramp and stopped by the lift. The driver hopped out and opened the back doors wide. His partner jumped down and together they pulled out the trolley inside, pulling its wheeled legs down with a metallic crunch.

The person on the trolley was jostled by the movement, and her head rolled toward us.

“That’s her,” CJ said. “The Snow White girl.”

We stood back while the ambulance guys wheeled her into the lift. She was very pale; even her lips were bloodless, only the faintest pink colour showing now the bright red lipstick was gone. Up close, she looked somewhere in her mid-twenties.

“Don’t call her that,” Simon said. “Her name’s Kerrie.”

“She a friend of yours?” The anger in his tone set all CJ’s antennae quivering. We could both sense there was a story here.

“We worked together a couple of years ago in Perth,” he said.

“And?”

He gave her a cold look. “And nothing. She’s a real person with a real name, that’s all. I don’t like it when people treat her like an object or a puzzle to be solved.”

The lift came back and the doors opened with a cheerful
ding
. Simon strode in and punched the button for Level 1 with a little more force than he really needed. I carefully didn’t meet CJ’s eyes, knowing what I’d see there. CJ smelled a secret romance. Given Simon’s general grumpiness, I was more inclined to suspect unrequited love—I had a hard time imagining anyone actually fancying him. Though there was Gretel, I guess, as proof that at least one woman found Mr Happy appealing.

“Have they thought of finding a prince to kiss her?” CJ asked. “Even if you don’t like people calling her Snow White, you have to admit that’s the fairy tale the Sidhe are working with, and in the story it was the prince’s kiss that brought her back to life.”

“Princes aren’t exactly thick on the ground in Sydney,” Kyle said. “And most of the European ones are married, even if we could persuade one to visit.”

“A boyfriend, then?” CJ cast a sidelong glance at Simon, who resolutely stared straight ahead at the closed doors. “Maybe it’s more a ‘one true love’ thing, not a prince thing.”

“We thought of that too,” Kyle said, seeing that Simon had no intention of joining the conversation, “but she’s not in a relationship at the moment, and ex-boyfriends don’t really meet the criteria.”

I wondered if Simon was one of those exes, but he was clearly not interested in pursuing the topic. Gretel would know.

The lift doors slid open on the quiet carpeted corridors of Level 1. Simon strode off without waiting to see if we were following.

“You can wait in your Mum’s office,” Kyle said, leading us after Simon. “She shouldn’t be too long.”

I could have found my way there on my own by now, but I allowed Kyle to deliver us like so much unwanted baggage on the doorstep. He and Simon were gone before the door had even shut behind us, obviously relieved to be rid of us for a while. Probably gone to get the low-down on what was happening with the ogre.

CJ flopped onto the couch in the corner, but I prowled around, picking up things and putting them down again, unsettled by the new developments. My collar was feeling uncomfortable after wearing it all day—all those protrusions had a way of poking into you—but I was afraid to take it off in case it somehow stopped working if I did.

Or maybe something worse would happen. I picked up a heavy glass paperweight shaped like a dolphin. Who knew what could happen? What if another curse struck us? We could be ogres, or cats, or even frogs. There was the tale of the frog prince, after all. Bad enough to be spitting frogs, but to be one—!

I set the dolphin back down on the desk with a heavy thunk. What if we became dolphins, or something else that couldn’t even live on land? I had a vague memory of a fairy tale about a magical wish-granting fish.

These thoughts were making me crazy. Distracted, I ran my finger uneasily under my collar, trying to make it more comfortable. There was a door to my right I hadn’t noticed before. Maybe a bathroom? Mum was a kind of executive after all—why shouldn’t she have an executive bathroom?

Sadly, it was nothing that glam—only a very small walk-in cupboard with shelving floor-to-ceiling. It looked like the wall behind reception at the doctor’s we used to go to in Townsville, with all the patients’ files ordered alphabetically. Were they employee files? That didn’t seem right. I was pretty sure someone had said Magic HQ had about 200 employees. There were a lot more than that here.

I pulled one out at random, vaguely aware that I probably shouldn’t be looking.
Curiosity killed the cat
got mentioned a lot in our house. CJ and I were both stickybeaks.

It seemed to be a personnel file, for a guy called Emmet Branson. It had test results, work assignments, assessments from various supervisors: “Emmet is an original thinker but does not take direction well.” Emmet also made more than $150,000 a year. Nice work.

I pulled out another, wondering if I’d stumble across someone I knew. I didn’t actually know anyone’s surname except Warder Kincumber, and his wasn’t there—I checked. I checked Reilly too, though I figured if Warder Kincumber wasn’t there, Dad wouldn’t be either.

But there was a Reilly file.

“CJ! Get in here.” She looked up, caught by the note of excitement in my voice. “I’ve found our file.”

We huddled together between the shelves. The cupboard was so tiny there was barely enough room for both of us. We had to shut the door so we could both fit, jammed up against cold metal shelves. The space smelled of old paper and dust.

“Give me that,” CJ said. “I don’t believe you. Why should there be a file on us?”

“It’s test results. Remember Dad said everyone from magical families was tested as children?”

He’d also mentioned the importance of latency.
The Gilded Cage
had given me a bit more information on that too. Apparently bloodlines were a big deal: no one could be a warder unless they were descended from the Founders, the seven mages who’d trapped the Sidhe originally. No one could be a seeker unless their latency score was higher than seventy-five per cent, and people like that mostly came from the same small group of families. I hadn’t yet discovered
why
these rules were so important; the book seemed to assume that any reader would already know.

There were several pages of graphs, and scores for all sorts of things I didn’t recognise. I handed her the bundle labelled
Crystal Jane Reilly
.

“What’s perception?” CJ asked, tilting the pages toward the light of the dim bulb above us. “I got 38% in that when I was five. And 34 in projection.”

My own five-year-old attempts were no better. “I’ve got 35 in projection and 52 in resonance.” I flipped through the sheets. “I can’t find one for perception.”

“I don’t remember any of this,” CJ said, frowning at the pages as she turned them. “Look, it says here we were retested at puberty. That’s only a few years ago.
I
don’t remember any magical testing.”

“Me neither. They must have ways of doing it that aren’t obvious.” Considering how many weird and wonderful gadgets Dad usually had in the house, he could have been up to anything. I flipped over until I found my own most recent results. “Hey, look at that. My projection’s up to 86, and resonance is through the roof.”

CJ said nothing.

“How’s yours?” I leaned over to see, but she flipped the pages closed.

“Never mind.”

“Come on—tell me.”

“Fine. It says ‘no latency detected’.”

Her tone was flat and final. The message was clear:
I don’t want to discuss this any further
. I tried to get her to look at me, but she turned away. Was that a tear?

“Hey, don’t be upset.” I took the pages from her, shoved everything back in the folder and put it away on the shelf. “It doesn’t matter—there’s no magic in the world any more anyway. So what difference does it make if you’re latent or not?”

Then why are you so pleased your scores are so high?
I had to admit, it felt good to know that in another place and time I might have been a mage. It was a pretty cool kind of secret to have. What might I have been able to do? Cast illusions? Spin straw into gold? And maybe—just maybe—it felt good to finally be better than CJ at something. It’s not like I was going to rub her face in it, but I was only human. I couldn’t help a little buzz of pleasure.

CJ shrugged off my hand as if she knew what I was thinking. I guess it was a new experience for her, not being better than me at everything. She was taller, prettier, more popular. More of a people person. She was always the one that people gushed over, while I hovered in the background. Not that I was complaining; I
preferred
the background. But she’d grown used to the limelight.

“It doesn’t make
any
difference,” she said, but she still wouldn’t look at me.

She had the door half-open when we heard the click of the office door opening, and voices in the corridor outside. There was no time to dash back to the couch and pretend we hadn’t been snooping; there was no time for anything but what CJ did—shut the door as quickly and quietly as possible, leaving us hidden in the dark of the filing cupboard.

We heard a number of people enter the room and shuffle around finding chairs. Mum offered drinks, followed by the clink of glass on glass as she poured.