“There she is!” Maxine cries as I walk into the cafeteria for what will be my second-to-last dinner there. “FTRS’s hero!”
Me? A hero?
I never thought someone would use that word to describe me, but here I am holding my dining tray and several hundred students of every kind are suddenly applauding and cheering for me. The sound echoes through the room with high ceilings and fish tanks. The left side of the room is less rowdy (Have you ever seen an ogre eat? Not only are they messy, but they break their plates at every meal!), and that’s where I find my friends cheering the loudest. Maxine, Ollie, and Jax wave me over to a round table piled high with food.
“We’re so happy you’re okay,” Maxine says, squeezing me a little too tightly and making one of my bandages pop off. “Oops! Sorry. Want me to get your dinner for you? You sit right here.” She practically throws me into my seat. “What do you want?” She waves her large, hairy hand away. “No matter. I’ll get you everything! You need your energy if you’re going to be ready for the FTRS Ball.”
For a split second, my heart sinks. Maxine and I were talking last week about what we were going to wear to the ball. Jax had offered to practice a few steps with me, and Ollie even said he’d escort Maxine and me personally. Now I won’t be here.
“Did you hear they got Gnome-More for the band?” Ollie asks us. “Goblins of Fire got spooked when they heard what’s been going on.” He waves a turkey leg around. “Can’t say I blame them. The way this place is going, I wouldn’t be surprised if the whole party went up in flames. Good thing we have Gilly here to save us again.”
I feel my body stiffen. Ollie’s making a joke, like he always does, but Madame Cleo’s premonition hangs over my head. I look at my new friends’ smiling faces, and I don’t know how to tell them I’m bailing.
You’re overthinking things, Gilly, I tell myself. They’ll understand.
As Maxine heads off to get my dinner and Ollie goes back for seconds, Jax moves his chair closer to mine. I can smell the lavender hand soap he must have washed up with. I’ve never been so happy to see him. “You okay?” he asks. “Ollie was just joking.”
“I’m a little tired,” I lie. Now I’m lying to Jax too, and that makes me feel the worst of all. “Where’s Kayla, by the way?”
Jax’s face clouds over. “I’ve barely seen her since Royal Day. Maxine tried to get her to visit you, but Kayla said she was sick. Something is definitely going on with that girl. Have you talked to her?”
I shake my head. “She wasn’t in our room when I got back there this afternoon.” She didn’t even leave a “welcome back” message or a note on our magic chalkboard. I guess Kayla won’t miss me when I’m gone.
“So I owe you again, thief,” Jax says with a smile. “Thanks for keeping me from getting killed.”
“Well, I couldn’t leave you hanging out all day in a bubble, even if it looked like you were trying to save the royals,” I tease. Jax doesn’t say anything. I lean in so no one can hear me. “I feel kind of bad that I’m getting the rock star treatment though. Everyone is acting like I saved the school when really I was just trying to save you! Even Professor Harlow thanked me.” Jax’s eyebrows go up. “She gave me early dismissal for my bravery. I’m out of here on Friday.”
“You’ve been sprung?” he whispers, taking a bite of his fig pudding before he tucks in to the roast pheasant we’re having tonight. Fairy bus girls fly between tables bringing extra napkins and condiments and clearing dirty dishes. Everyone is smiling at me, except Jax. “How? You’ve only been here for three weeks.”
My chest tightens. “Professor Harlow says I’ve proven myself.”
“You don’t find anything strange about that?” Jax asks. “In my whole year here, the Evil Queen has never let anyone leave early for good behavior. Now she picks you, a girl who’s fought with her sister, to let go home before the ball? Why?”
I close my eyes to block out the laughter in the room and the sound of tinkling silverware hitting copper plates. “I don’t want to think about her reasons,” I snap. “I don’t care what happens here. I just want to go home. My family needs me.” I open my eyes and look at Jax’s serious face.
“Did you ever think this family needs you too?” Jax asks quietly.
“I don’t want to listen to this.” I push my chair back from the table and stride out of the room. I hear Jax calling me, but I don’t turn around. When I reach the hallway, he catches up and grabs my arm.
“You and me? We’ve got to talk,” he says gruffly and starts pulling me by the arm down a new hallway that appears in front of us.
“I don’t care what you have to say,” I protest, wincing as he touches one of my bandages by accident. “I’ve got to go pack!”
“You own three things. It won’t take long.” I’ve never heard him talk to me like this before. I’m so dumbfounded that I let him walk me straight to a bookcase, and I watch as he feels around for something among the self-help tomes. Witchy No More, The Only Spell You Need Is Love, A Warlock’s Guide to Bettering Yourself, and Anna’s favorite book, No One Keeps Me in a Tower, a guide to breaking out by Rapunzel herself. Jax pulls Life Lessons from the Bog forward slightly, and the whole bookcase moves back to reveal a garden courtyard in the middle of the castle.
“Whoa,” I say as Jax pulls me inside. This must be where the cafeteria grows fresh herbs and vegetables. I’m not surprised they’ve kept it hidden. Some of my classmates have an insatiable appetite. He closes the bookcase behind us. My nose smells basil and mint growing among the radishes, tomatoes, and cabbage.
Jax turns toward me. “I brought you here so we can talk without anyone overhearing.” He takes a deep breath. “There’s something you need to know before you bail, and I’m only telling you because I know I can trust you.” His violet eyes glow in the dimming light. “I tried to keep you out of this, but you’re too smart not to see what’s going on right in front of you. You’re a fighter, Gilly, and I could use someone like you on my side.”
“On your side? What are you talking about?” He sounds crazy.
“That day we met, when I was breaking out of here—didn’t you ever wonder why I didn’t succeed? Why I made such an obvious mistake with the alarm?”
My smile vanishes.
“I needed it to look like I was trying to escape, but the truth is, I have reasons to stick around.” Jax suddenly sounds much wiser. “I’m undercover.”
I laugh so hard my belly hurts. “No, you’re not.” Jax doesn’t crack a smile. I stop laughing. “You are?”
“For the royal family,” he says simply. “I’m one of them, actually.”
“What? You’re not royal,” I sputter. I can feel a lump forming in my throat. “You were raised on a farm. You said you ran away.”
Jax plucks a sprig of basil off its vine. “That was part of my cover. This is a reform school. I needed people to believe I hated the royals and this school as much as anyone did, but the truth is, I’m actually Rapunzel’s brother.”
I feel my hands begin to tremble. He’s one of them?
“We’ve long suspected there was a traitor in the castle,” Jax tells me. “We’ve had too many close calls with the princesses to not think someone is feeding villains information.”
“Villains?” Images of three possible people enter my mind. There’s Gottie, Rapunzel’s captor. (Happily Ever After Scrolls once posted what they claimed was a grainy picture of her and said the photographer was killed taking the image.) Alva, Sleeping Beauty’s dragon of a witch, is the next baddie I imagine, but no one has heard from her in a decade. I bet she’s even worse than Gottie. And then there is Rumpelstiltskin, the trickiest and most dangerous of them all. “You’ve heard Flora,” I say. “No one’s seen them in years.”
“They’re out there biding their time ’til they can rise again. Who do you think sent those gargoyles to the school? They’re after something or someone at FTRS,” Jax says, and I feel a chill go through my body. “We just don’t know why. Are Flora or the other teachers working with them? Who was Flora meeting with that day we spotted her in the Hollow Woods? Is Harlow wicked again? That trance she was under was too perfect. Who could put the Evil Queen under a spell?”
Jax picks a piece of rosemary from its stem. “It was my father’s idea to get someone close to the villains to learn what was up.” He smiles. “What better place to do that than among thieves and crooks at FTRS? I’ve been getting myself in enough trouble to stick around without students getting suspicious for a year. It helps that I act like I don’t care about anyone but myself.” He grins. “I had you fooled, didn’t I?”
I don’t believe this. He tricked me! Now it makes sense—his expert dancing skills, royal name (Who has a name like Jackson?), and the way he was up on royal doings. I thought we were friends, but friends don’t keep secrets this big. “But you don’t act royal! You’re not spoiled. You’re not selfish. You’re not…royal!”
“We’re not all made from the same shoe mold, Gilly.” His violet eyes seem deeper somehow. “You should know that by now.”
I hang my head shamefully, thinking of all the royal put-downs I’ve said in front of him. I feel like a fool. If Jax is royal and a totally great guy who gave up going to the Academy to hang out in a reform school to help his family, could I be wrong about other royals too? My head hurts at the thought. “If you’re royal, don’t people know you’re Rapunzel’s brother? The princesses didn’t even give you a second glance on Royal Day. You let me save them.”
“And my family is most grateful for that.” Jax runs a hand through his hair, which is the color of corn. Like the corn I know now he obviously doesn’t sow. “You saved me from blowing my cover. But no, the princesses don’t know who I am. Before FTRS, I was away at boarding school since I was five. The princesses wouldn’t recognize me if they tried, and Rapunzel, well, she had that whole locked-away-in-a-tower thing for a while. No one’s seen me on royal grounds in years.” He looks at me carefully.
“That’s where you come in. I’ve been watching you the last few weeks. You’ve got the skills to get out of jams and fight fire with fire. You could help me stop the villains from the inside.” I give him a look that could fry fish. “I’m serious!” he protests. “You’re a royal hater. None of the teachers would suspect you of working with the royals.”
No. Way. “I’ve got my own family to worry about. I could care less what happens to the royals.”
“But don’t you care what happens to this royal?” he asks quietly. “I thought we were friends.”
Jax really thinks of me as a friend? It’s been a long time since I’ve had one that isn’t related to me. My family is all I’ve had for so long.
“You’re not the first to hate me because of my title,” he adds as a breeze makes the vegetables in the garden sway. “It doesn’t say anything about who I am. I care about my family just like you do, and I want to stop these villains before they can destroy our kingdom.”
“That’s just it,” I complain. “I can leave. This week! Get out of here and go home where my family is safe. Why should I stick around and help you?”
“If you think they’re going to stop at our school, you’re wrong,” Jax says darkly. “Even if you don’t care about Kayla, Maxine, Ollie, or the other kids here, think of your family. They’re not safe ’til we stop the villains.”
Anna, Han, Hamish, Felix, and Trixie. Five reasons to go home immediately.
And five reasons to stay and help Jax fight.
“You’re a thief. I am a liar. Think of all the kids in here we could get to help us. Never send a hero to do a villain’s job.” Jax grins mischievously. “This is a job for our kind, and you know it.”
In Enchantasia, I wouldn’t trust Jax as far as I could throw him. But inside FTRS, maybe who someone really is can be totally different from who you think they are. “Okay, let’s say I decide to stay and help you for a bit—and I’m not sure if I am yet. Where do we start?”
Jax exhales slowly. “With your roommate.”
“Kayla? Why?”
“You’re a thief. Read the signs,” Jax says. “Your roommate is hiding something, and I have a feeling it has to do with what happened on Royal Day. You saw how she fell apart in the gym. She knows who’s behind it. I’m sure of it. How else would she know how to stop the gargoyles?” He grabs a fistful of radishes and shoves them in his pocket. “I think we can get through to her. We have to.”
All the unexplained absences, the illnesses, how irritable Kayla gets. Maybe Jax has a point. “We’re going to have to find her first. She wasn’t in the dorm or at dinner. The Pegasi have been grounded since Royal Day. Where could she be holed up?”
“If I screwed up and didn’t want to be found, I’d go to the last place anyone would expect to find me.” Jax thinks for a moment. “What’s the one class Kayla despises?”
“Stargazing,” I say. “Maybe she’s in the observatory.”
“See that?” Jax beams. “You’re helpful already.” He steps out of the garden through the bookcase and beckons me back inside FTRS’s treacherous walls.
I stare down the hall into the unknown, hoping for the best but expecting the worst. We’ve all done some pretty bad things to get thrown in here. Nothing as bad as plotting with a villain, but maybe Kayla is looking for a friend to dig her out of whatever mess she’s in. Could that friend be me?
Jax and I make our way into the dome-shaped room a few minutes later. Outside, the sun is setting and the sky is a smattering of red, yellow, and orange. The room feels cold and the torches are unlit, giving the open space an eerie feel. Telescopes are set up near the windows. Star charts and maps are rolled up on empty chairs, and astronomy constellation charts hang on the walls like paintings. Scaffolding lines a wall where someone is installing extra magical security measures.
“Kayla? Are you in here?” Jax tries. “Gilly and I want to talk to you.” Silence. Jax frowns.
I look up. A duct above us is missing a grate. I think of how Jax and I shimmied through one just like it that day we were caught by the gargoyles. “Maybe that’s because she’s up there.” Jax’s mouth breaks into a smile, revealing a dimple I never noticed near his left cheek.
“I like the way you think, thief.” He rolls the scaffolding over to the hole in the ceiling and starts to climb. I follow. Within seconds we’re at the top, peering inside the dark shaft. I can just make out a pair of loafers.
“Kayla?” I call. The shoes shift slightly. “We know you’re here. Can we talk?”
“No.” Her voice is hoarse.
“We’ll wait you out,” Jax tells her. “We have all night. We already locked the doorway where the duct lets out so that you can’t become a flight risk.” He winks at me.
Quick thinking.
I hear Kayla sigh and then the sounds of knees moving along the ductwork. When she nears, I see that her golden locks are particularly ungolden and dark rings frame her amber eyes. She extends a quivering hand and Jax pulls her out. Her wings pop out and begin to flutter as the scaffolding shakes beneath us. She puts her hands out.
“Go ahead,” she says. “Turn me in.” Jax and I look at each other. “I know you’ve figured out what I’m up to.” She looks at me accusingly. “Why do you think I’ve been avoiding you?”
If Kayla thinks we know exactly what she’s done, maybe we can work this conversation to our advantage. “I’ve been on to you since the day I got here,” I lie and hope Jax plays along. “We know you’re behind the gargoyle attack and everything that went wrong on Royal Day.”
A single tear plops down her cheek. “I didn’t mean for anyone to get hurt,” she surprises me by saying. “Gottie said she’d leave the kids alone.”
Gottie. Jax glances at me. “If you ’fess up to us now, maybe we’ll make sure Flora and the dwarf squad go easier on you.”
Kayla nods sadly. “I know the world sees Gottie as the monster who cursed Sleeping Beauty, but when I lost my family to Rumpelstiltskin, she was kind to me when no one else was. I’d been busted for flying without a license, illegal use of magic, and casting love spells on people who hate each other. People in my village didn’t believe a word coming out of my mouth.”
I think of what would happen to me in the same situation. Father may not adore me, but he wouldn’t leave me out in the cold and no one in our village would either. “Tell us the truth—do you know why Rumpelstiltskin took your family away?”
Kayla grips the scaffolding tightly. “Because I asked him to.” I’m momentarily stunned. “I didn’t understand what I was doing, okay? I begged Rumpelstiltskin to get Mother to forget what I’d done so I wouldn’t have to go to FTRS. I didn’t know he’d wipe my family’s memories clean so they couldn’t even remember me.” She looks away. “I should have known his help would come at a price.”
“Rumpelstiltskin uses people to get what he wants,” Jax says grimly.
“That’s why I went looking for Gottie.” Kayla wipes her nose with the sleeve of the gym shirt she’s still wearing. “I knew someone with magic that powerful had to be able to break Rumpelstiltskin’s curse.” Her wings flutter slightly. “When I found her, it was as if she was expecting me. She offered me shelter and a warm meal, and tried to help me.
“She said if I agreed to go to FTRS and act as her mole, then she’d find a way to break my contract with Rumpel. I’ve been trying to please her ever since.” Kayla looks at me mournfully. “I was only trying to get my family back,” she cries. “I didn’t mean to hurt anyone. That’s why I was always trying to help you escape, Jax. I thought I could get the people closest to me away before anything bad happened.”
“And I made a good cover,” I say, realizing it. “Flora was on to you. By taking the new girl around, you could show up more places without anyone noticing, right?”
“Yes,” Kayla admits, and her cheeks turn beet red. “But even if you were here when Gottie’s plan went down, I wouldn’t have let her hurt you. I swear!”
“Just like you didn’t mean for her gargoyles to attack me and Jax or for all of us to almost get killed in the gym,” I point out.
“I knew you’d be okay. Gottie doesn’t have the strength to cast a spell as big as the one she wants to do yet.” Kayla’s wings flutter faster. “That’s why she needs Harlow and the others to work with her. She’s been trying to turn Harlow since I got here. I think she’s succeeded. But the others, I don’t know. She doesn’t give me many details.”
“What do you mean she’s not strong enough?” I ask.
“She wants to wipe everyone in Enchantasia’s memories clean,” Kayla explains. “If she and whomever she’s working with cast that spell, everyone will believe the villains rule the kingdom. The royals will disappear when she burns down the school,” she says hoarsely. “She wanted to do it on Royal Day, but Gilly screwed that up.” Kayla looks at me. “She knows who you are now.”
My family. My boot. Jax was right. I could run, but I couldn’t hide for long if Gottie was really coming for us. I had to help. “How can we stop her?”
“Gottie’s consumed with making the curse happen at the ball because the royal court will be together,” Kayla tells us. “She’s not going to fail twice, which is why she’s so desperate for inside help. She’s already gotten to Harlow. Her hope is to turn Flora next. I don’t know if she has, but she’s met with Wolfington. If she turns him, Cleo will follow and then they’ll have a team so powerful no one can stop them.”
“We can.”
I look down. Maxine and Ollie are standing at the bottom of the scaffolding.
“We’ve been trailing you since the vegetable patch,” Ollie calls up to us. “I did a card trick with one of the cafeteria fairies while Maxine stole her key to the hallway you guys went down that locked behind you.” He points to Jax. “Dude, why didn’t you tell me you’re royal? I’ve been dying to meet your sister!”
“You’re royal?” Kayla freaks.
Jax narrows his eyes at Ollie and begins to climb down. “How’d you hear that?”
Maxine points to her oversized troll ears. “These babies are supersonic. How do you think I made coin selling gossip to Happily Ever After Scrolls?” Her good eye looks down. “Well, until they caught on that I was making half the stuff up.”
So that’s why Maxine’s in this joint!
“We won’t tell anyone.” Maxine smiles lopsidedly. “As long as you let us help.”
“Dude, I’m a genius at making weapons out of curtain rods.” Ollie bounces up and down. “Let me help you kick some gargoyle booty!”
Jax is way more serious. “This is not going to be easy. We’re going up against the biggest baddie in Enchantasia and possibly all our teachers. Gottie won’t care that we’re just kids. If we screw this up, we’re toast.”
Ollie is the first to put his tiny fist in the circle. “Then we’d better be ready to fight. Who’s with me?” Jax throws his hand on top of Ollie’s. Maxine and Kayla quickly follow. They look at me. Seeing Kayla’s hand makes me hesitate for a moment.
But I have to remember: this is so much bigger than my feelings about Kayla. Finally, I join them. “As Harlow likes to say, keep your friends close. Keep your enemies even closer. Let’s do this thing.”