Prologue
There was no getting around the fact that Tinker Bell was a little bitch.
The tiny, white powder-puff bichon frise with professionally manicured toenails scampered under the thornbush and out of sight. Aghast, I stared at her diamond-studded collar swinging perilously from her leash like a noose swaying from the gallows. It was way after curfew. We were deep in the forest, and my evil boss’s perfumed purse ornament had just taken off after an imaginary squirrel.
“Tink!” I hissed, trying to catch glimpses of white in the murky undergrowth. “Come back here, you spoiled-rotten little Q-tip. You’re going to get me fired!”
I was so tired, I could barely keep my eyes open, having been up since dawn to walk the dog and then in the Fairyland salon by six thirty, dressed in my silver gown and ready to start my day. Trish the stylist had twisted my long, brown hair into a tight updo topped with a delicate pearl headpiece; after which Helga had lined my green eyes in purple and my less-than-pouty lips in glossy pink.
At 7:02 I delivered to my boss, aka “the Queen,” her usual breakfast of three raw almonds, two grapefruit slices cut into thirty pieces, one hard-boiled egg (miraculously yolk-free), a pot of Earl Grey tea with precisely two drops of honey, and the morning’s newspapers—edited to remove all references to the Mouse—before sorting through her mail, reading the customer-feedback forms in what we in the Fairyland front office jokingly referred to as the Box of Whine, polishing her Magic Mirror, sorting her pencils according to length, and feeding Tinker Bell two spoonfuls of Russian caviar.
At ten I had to raid the kitchen to steal several bright red apples, since Snow White’s poisoned ones were all rotten. At noon I was called to the Haunted Forest, where Hansel and Gretel (aka Brendan Borowitz and Stella McPherson) had been caught making out behind the Candy Cottage. (“Gretel was applying mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to save her brother after the witch had tried to kill him. Isn’t that touching?” I told the traumatized children, pale from witnessing their first pseudoincestuous atrocity.)
Mac Weintraub as Jack took a post-lunch snooze and accidentally rolled off the beanstalk around two. I had to check if anything was broken before I called the insurance company. Oh, and did I mention Miranda Clark? She was playing Rapunzel when the air-conditioning broke in her hot, cramped tower, and she fainted. Fortunately I’d thought to bring along some spirit of hartshorn to revive her, along with serious contraband, an ice-cold can of Red Bull.
“You’re a lifesaver, Zoe,” Rapunzel whispered, popping it open and guzzling it in one swallow.
Not a lifesaver, actually, more like a psychic lady-in-waiting working behind the scenes to save my fellow Fairyland cohorts from imminent disaster while trying to anticipate my boss’s every whim. Though, at midnight, maybe not so much.
The iPhone in my pocket trilled the strains of “Every Breath You Take” right as Tink’s furry butt slipped out of my hands. “Where are you, Zoe?” Her Majesty inquired in her nasal voice. “I want to go to bed, and I need my Tinksy Winksy.” There was an ominous pause. “I hope you haven’t lost her.”
I shivered at the veiled threat in her icy tone. “No, ma’am.” Not yet. “Tinksy wants to stay out longer.”
The Queen yawned. “Very well, then. I’ll wait up.”
Oh, please don’t, I thought as she hung up. “Tink. Where are you? Come back here!”
We weren’t supposed to leave the park perimeter. It was strictly forbidden. Did I dare go farther?
Either that, or lose the dog.
Right. I did not want to think of the punishment that would await me if I returned to the palace without Tinker Bell.
Summoning my courage and keeping my ears cocked for the pitter-patter of tiny, manicured doggy toes, I padded across the soft forest floor, ignoring the distinct feeling that several sets of eyes were upon me. Owls, perhaps. Night creatures. Carnivorous plants. Security patrols. With only the bright moon overhead for light, I negotiated fallen trees and rotting logs, and the occasional nasty root and pricker bush, until I almost smacked into something hard. A wall.
It wasn’t Fairyland’s outside wall. That was lit from above, its granite stones regularly polished to a brilliant, toothy whiteness. This wall was dark and mossy. This wall was old.
I was running my hands over the dips and valleys, trying to figure out where I could be, when all of a sudden my right foot went through the ground and I was up to my hip in cold, damp sand.
Profanity was prohibited in Fairyland, but it wasn’t like anyone was there to bust me. I was trapped in a sinkhole, alone in the forest, and worst of all, Tinker Bell was long gone. I tried pushing myself out and found, much to my dismay, that the more pressure I applied, the more the ground gave way.
There was another rustle in the bushes. Tinker Bell? If I could nab the dog, that’d be half the battle. The two of us could huddle in the hole until morning, when the Queen sent someone to find her precious baby.
“Tink?” I called, stretching out my hand, hopeful for the wet nose, the rough lick of her tiny, pink tongue. “I have caviar!”
The rustling got closer and louder. My heart started to beat harder. This was no bichon frise. This was a much larger animal—like a human.
I detected a whiff of cologne that only the Prince Charmings were allowed to wear, spicy and so aromatic, it made you swoon. Then I heard someone say, “Gotcha!” and I was eye-to-eye with a pair of hiking boots. I looked up, but all I could see was a ball of white wriggling in some boy’s arms.
“Seems as though you’ve dug yourself into quite a hole there, Zoe,” he said, sounding amused.
Not for the first time did I curse the fact that, like the princesses, all the Prince Charmings had been taught to speak in “the Queen’s English”—complete with upper-crust British pronunciation—so visitors wouldn’t be able to distinguish one from another. He could have been any one of eight hot guys, and it didn’t help that his face was shadowed by the moonlight above.
I said, “I’m stuck. Can you give me a hand up?”
“I could,” he taunted. “But then, as the Queen’s lady-in-waiting, you’d report me for being outside the park after curfew, and I would be fired and . . .”
“No, I won’t.” Honestly, I’d never do such a thing. “I will be forever in your debt.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
“Forever in my debt, you say?”
“Yes.” Please just get me out of here.
“I’ll hold you to that, you know. So when I come to collect, you can’t back out and claim the whole thing never happened. Or that it was all a whole big mistake.”
“Fine. Whatever.” Here I was, slipping deeper into this pit, and he was making puns. Typical cocky prince.
Tinker Bell emitted a mewling sound of annoyance.
“All right. Hold on.” He placed Tinker Bell in my arms. “But we’ll have to do it the right way. Wait here.” He gave another laugh and trudged off, returning minutes later with a long branch. “I’m going to stand clear of the sinkhole so I don’t fall in, which won’t do either of us any good. You hold tight and try to claw your way out.”
It seemed like an impossibly tall order, clutching Tink and a branch while extricating myself from what essentially amounted to quicksand, but I did my best, scrabbling and clawing as Tink kicked in protest. At last we were free. I stumbled to where he’d been standing and leaned against a tree, breathing hard.
“Thank you!” I said.
No sound.
“Hello?”
He was gone, except for a sizable swatch of black flannel dangling from a thornbush. I picked it off and held it to my nose, inhaling the unique scent of the Prince Charming cologne. Yes, definitely his.
Stuffing the torn piece of shirt into my back pocket, I found my way to the path and ran as fast as I could, Her Majesty’s royal fluff ball bouncing in my arms. Had this been a real fairyland and I had been a real lady-in-waiting to a real evil queen, perhaps a pumpkin carriage or a knight on horseback might have come to my rescue.
But this wasn’t a real fairyland. It was Fairyland Kingdom, a destination fairy-tale theme park in the Pinelands of southern New Jersey, and I was a seventeen-year-old cast member interning for the summer in an exclusive program that thousands of teenagers from across the world auditioned for every year. I was lucky to be here—everyone said so—even though I was fast learning that behind the sweetly smiling princesses and dashing princes, there was a secret world that wasn’t oh-so-innocent.
That night, I showered off the sand and slid under my own sheets, slipping the prince’s shirt swatch beneath my pillow for safekeeping. Home at last.
As I drifted off to blissful sleep, I tried to recall my rosy expectations when Jess and I had arrived at Fairyland only a few weeks before, how we’d looked forward to a pleasant summer of dressing up in costumes and entertaining children, while in our off-hours getting to know the extremely cute princes.
Oh, how wrong I’d been. Fairyland was nothing like I’d imagined, except maybe for the princes.
They were even better.