The sun went down. The hour grew late. The potion was wearing off. A faint pulse warmed Angela’s flesh. Her pupils flickered beneath her eyelids. She was having a dream. A very bad dream.
She was a puppet in a play, and all of her scenes were being changed by Archduke Arnulf. “What are my lines? What do I say now?”
The other puppets stared at her. “Aren’t you the girl who knows everything?”
She tried to run from the stage, but kept falling, her legs tangled up in her strings. The more she struggled, the more tangled she became. The lights went out. She was tossed into a storage box.
A voice came out of the dark. “Perhaps your puppet plays aren’t so silly after all.” It was Georgina von Hoffen-Toffen, smelling of stale milk and buzzing with flies.
Angela was puzzled. “You’re dead.”
“Oh yes, quite dead,” Georgina agreed. “Soon you will be too. We shall be sisters.”
That’s when Angela realized she was having a nightmare.
“It’s a pity you were murdered by the archduke,” she told Georgina. “I truly wish I hadn’t laughed. But all the same, if you don’t mind, I’m going to wake up now.”
Angela scrunched her nose and thought wake-up thoughts like she always did to get herself out of bad dreams. But when she blinked herself awake, she found herself in a place like her nightmare: a cramped, suffocating box without sound or light. Except this place was worse. This place was real.
Where could I be? she wondered. Oh no! My plan. I’m sealed in a coffin. Locked in a vault with the dead.
Angela banged frantically against the lid. It didn’t budge.
She took a deep breath. Another. Another. All would be well. Her parents would arrive; they’d save her.
But time passed. They didn’t arrive. More time passed. Still nothing. Cold sweat drenched her body. Something had gone wrong. Her parents weren’t coming. Not now. Not ever.
The air was going bad. Soon it would be gone and she would drift into a sleep from which there would be no waking.
Angela clawed at the lid. “Help! Somebody, help! I can’t die like this! No!”
Angela had always hated stories with bad endings. So, as she heard the ghostly voice of Georgina calling her to unconsciousness, she summoned her courage. “I planned a comedy,” she announced to the darkness. “That means a happy ending. Do you hear me? A happy ending! I insist on it!”