To Catch a Queen (31 page)

Although Emily had been all for being zen about it, the moment Michael admitted to being worried, she was ready to jump. Turning to Eamon, she said, “You need to take us to the palace. Sophie might need help.”

He paused, considering. At last, he said, “It has been a long time, I believe, and I am concerned that neither has returned.”

“Awesome. So, who’s with me?”

“We’d better come,” Amelia said. “If they’re in trouble, they’ll need magical support.”

Emily turned to Michael. “You in?”

She could read the conflict in his eyes. He was worried and probably would have insisted on going at any other time, but he’d just found his wife and stood with his arm around her. She didn’t look at all happy about the idea. “I’m not sure how much help I’d be,” he said. “Maybe I’d better keep an eye on things here.”

“Yeah, that’s probably a good idea,” Emily said. “What if they come back the moment we leave? Which, knowing Sophie, is entirely likely.”

He still didn’t look too happy, but he did look relieved. “Okay. Be careful,” he said. “She’d kill me if I let you go into danger.”

“Yeah, she’s probably had her fill of rescuing me.” She handed over Beau’s leash. “You can dogsit.” The sleeping bulldog didn’t even seem to notice he’d changed hands.

Eamon was already holding Amelia’s hand, and Amelia held her sister’s hand. Emily took her spot on Eamon’s other side, and as soon as their hands were clasped, they all stepped off.

It wasn’t the quick trip Emily expected. There seemed to be a sideways step, and for a moment she felt like they were walking in circles, but when the long stride ended, they were right in front of the palace. “What was that?” she asked when she caught her bearings.

“I believe I fell into one of your sister’s traps,” Eamon said. “Once I noticed it, I was able to untangle it, but she initially detoured us to the other side of the Realm.”

The palace looked pretty much the same way it had the first time Emily saw it, like Sleeping Beauty’s palace while she was asleep, thorny vines obscuring everything. “Shouldn’t the vines be gone if they succeeded?” Emily asked, now starting to feel fully justified in her worry.

“The vines appear to be your sister’s work,” he said after staring at the palace for a while. “She may have tried to block Niall’s way.”

“Oh, then that’s a good sign,” she said, but she was still worried. Something about all this felt wrong.

They were on the right side of the river, though, so they didn’t have to worry about lowering the drawbridge or getting through the gate. They just needed to get through the throne room doors, which was going to take some work, since vines were blocking it off. That was if they wanted inside. If Sophie and Nana had been going after a rose, they’d be in the garden.

“How did you get in the last time?” Emily asked the enchantresses.

“We followed your sister,” Athena said.

“But you went in through the garden, right? Do you think you can do it again?”

Instead of answering, Amelia took off around the edge of the river that acted as a partial moat. There was a small pedestrian gate next to the closed drawbridge. Vines twined around the gate’s metal bars, but Amelia cleared those with a wave of her hand. The gate unlocked easily, as well. “Enchantress magic doesn’t seem to be blocked at all,” Amelia said.

Emily didn’t wait to discuss the finer points of magic. As soon as the gate opened enough for her to pass through, she ran. The rose garden should be straight ahead, as she recalled. It was right where she remembered it, nearly head-high bushes laden with roses that perfumed the air.

But there was no sign of her sister or her grandmother. She ran around the rosebushes, making sure no one was lying on the ground behind any of them. By this time, the others had caught up. “They’re not here!” she cried out.

“Maybe they went back already, like you told Detective Murray,” Athena suggested hopefully.

“No, something is wrong here,” Eamon said. His eyes had gone a steely gray, which gave Emily the impression that he was worried, indeed.

“Okay, then, what would they have done next if they were working their way through the song?” Emily said, thinking out loud. “How does that stupid song go?” She hummed the melody to herself, but while she could remember most of the verses, she couldn’t remember the right order.

“After the rose garden, there was the maze,” Athena said. “I believe the opening was about here.” She pointed to the wall of greenery ahead of her. “But the last time, it had already been opened.”

“And, like last time, we’re not worried about winning a crown. We just want to get there,” Amelia said. She raised her right hand, pointed her index finger, and blasted a hole through the greenery to reveal the maze. Next, she blasted a path straight through the middle of the maze. They all ran through, coming up to the last hedge, which remained intact. Amelia held them up there. “We should perhaps get a better sense of the situation before we forge ahead,” she whispered.

She and Athena stood still, their eyes closed and their hands held palm-up out in front of them. They looked to Emily like they were calling up spirits from the ether. She glanced over to Eamon, ready to make that joke with him, but he, too, appeared to be in a magical trance. Emily strained her ears and tried to peer through the leaves. Now would have been a good time for any latent magical powers she might have to kick in, she thought, but she didn’t seem to be accessing anything but her ordinary human sensory input.

“I don’t sense them,” Amelia said after a long moment, her voice sounding strained.

“Me, either,” Athena chimed in.

“I know only that something is as it shouldn’t be,” Eamon said.

While they were getting mystical, Emily found a slightly bare spot in the hedge—probably from where Amelia had blasted it the last time—and through it she spotted two figures lying on the ground. “Oh my gosh! There they are!” she hissed at the others, gesturing for them to join her, even as her stomach knotted with tension. She didn’t think motionless bodies were a good sign.

She was ready to rush out of the maze and go to Nana and Sophie when a pair of legs came into view. Looking through the narrow portal through the hedge, she had to change her angle to move up from the figures on the ground to see a face, and then she had to bite her tongue to keep from blurting, “Maeve!” out loud. Instead, she whispered, “Maeve’s there, too. She must be in on this, that double-crosser.”

“She must have been left behind to watch them,” Amelia said.

“Which means Niall’s probably already on his way back to the stone,” Emily said. “There goes this contest. Good thing we’re already ahead. Or would this count as cheating? Is there a form of cheating so blatant that it would disqualify anyone in a fairy contest?”

“I am afraid the contest is hardly our biggest worry at the moment,” Eamon said, “not if the queens have been incapacitated.” He frowned for a moment and said, “I will confront Maeve. That should serve as a distraction that will allow you to neutralize her.” He didn’t give them a chance to argue with his plan before he moved around the last hedge to exit the maze.

Emily bit back an anxious cry of, “Eamon!” just before she ruined any element of surprise he might have had. It was almost as nerve-wracking watching him in danger as knowing her sister was in trouble, and that was a revelation. Those kisses had apparently not just been acting on her part. She had a lot to think about when all this was over.

She heard Maeve’s voice say, “Eamon, what are you doing here?” and forced her attention back to the matters at hand.

“I hadn’t seen you in your court,” Eamon said.

“I have no more court,” Maeve spat.

“Oh, that would explain why I couldn’t find it,” Eamon said, sounding remarkably casual, like he’d just bumped into Maeve while aimlessly wandering around. He was playing up his absentminded professor persona, as though he really had been so out of the loop that he’d lost track of her current situation. Emily had to reassess his acting ability once more—and what did that mean for those kisses?

“I never should have had you find that girl for me,” Maeve said. “She brought me nothing but trouble.”

“Didn’t you accomplish your goal in luring her sister?”

“My goal was to win the throne,” Maeve snapped. “That did not go as I planned it. But I will have it soon anyway.”

“Oh?” Emily couldn’t see him well through the bushes, but it looked like Eamon was standing with his hands in the pockets of his tweed jacket. Eamon wasn’t really a casual guy, ever, but Maeve didn’t seem to have noticed that he was acting out of character.

“Yes. I’ve made plans and alliances, and as you can see, I’ve had my revenge on that usurper who took my rightful throne.”

That sent Emily’s heart into her throat. Were Sophie and Nana lying there dead?

“I was wondering about that,” Eamon said, still sounding way too nonchalant. “It seems an odd place to take a nap, but as much as I’ve read about humans, I still don’t understand them. So I suppose you did something to make them fall asleep here?”

Emily glanced back at the enchantresses, hoping for some reassurance, but they were busy conferring with each other on a plan of attack. Emily didn’t want to interfere with that, so she returned her attention to the strange scene playing out between Maeve and Eamon.

“Soon the court will come here, after Niall is named the rightful ruler, and I will be his consort as reward for my assistance in defeating his enemies,” Maeve gloated.

“I thought Orla was his consort,” Eamon said.

“She lacks the proper ambition to rule at his side.”

“That would take a lot of ambition,” Eamon agreed amiably. “And with that much ambition, why stop at being a mere consort?”

The enchantresses motioned for Emily to stay where she was, then they eased their way out of the maze, splitting up to come at Maeve from both sides. Eamon had managed to gradually shift position as he talked to Maeve so that she had to turn her back to the maze to continue facing him. That allowed the enchantresses to sneak up on her. Before she could react, they hit her with a spell that dropped her where she stood.

Emily didn’t wait for Maeve to hit the ground before she rushed out of her hiding place and fell on her knees beside her sister and grandmother. Much to her relief, she found strong pulses in both of them. “I think they’re just under a sleeping spell,” Athena reassured Emily as she knelt beside her.

“Then maybe we should have brought Beau with us,” Emily said, forcing a smile.
Or Michael,
she added mentally.

“Oh, this isn’t a kissing kind of spell,” Athena said. She was already digging in her bag, searching for something. “This one?” she asked her sister, holding up a vial.

“That’s probably the best to start with,” Amelia said after bending to peer at the vial.

Athena uncorked the vial, and the scent of whatever was in there wrinkled Emily’s nose and brought tears to her eyes. The enchantress waved it in front of Sophie and Nana, then the two sisters held their hands out toward each other and murmured something under their voices. The air crackled with energy, like a summer storm was approaching.

Sophie’s eyelids flickered first, and she stirred like she was having a bad nightmare. Nana moaned softly, but barely moved. Emily gripped her sister’s hand and urged, “Come on, Soph, wake up. That jerk’s probably stealing your throne even now.”

That was when she noticed that Sophie was no longer wearing the crown. She had been wearing it when they left, hadn’t she? Nana wasn’t wearing it, either, but her Queen Elizabeth hat was gone. “Guys, we’ve got a problem: Niall must have the crown,” she said to the others.

“We don’t have time to be delicate, then,” Athena said, her jaw set with determination. She pulled another vial out of her bag and added, “You might want to hold your nose for a second. This one can be rather pungent.”

Considering what the last one had smelled like, Emily decided not to risk it. She took a deep breath, held it, and pinched her nose as Athena uncorked the bottle. This time, she barely had to wave it in front of Sophie before Sophie sat straight up, her eyes wild with the air of someone who’d awakened abruptly while in the throes of a nightmare.

“Where is he?” she demanded.

“He’s gone, probably back to the valley,” Emily told her, then winced as she added, “And it looks like he took the crown with him.”

Nearby, Nana woke more gradually. “That potion is vile,” she remarked, rubbing her nose.

“It never fails,” Athena said, returning the corked vial to her bag.

“How big a head start does Niall have?” Sophie asked.

“He was gone before we got here, so at least ten minutes,” Emily said. “But you can probably get back there soon enough, and you’re still ahead even if he wins this one.”

Sophie started to get up, and Eamon gallantly offered her his hand to assist her. It was a sign of how rattled she was that she accepted it instead of just bouncing up on her own. Once Sophie was up, he helped Nana rise.

Sophie was already on her way into the palace. Emily rose and rushed after her. “Don’t you need to get back there to finish the contest?”

Without breaking stride, Sophie said, “If he wins mastery of the Realm, he wins, even if he did cheat. So I need to win this one definitively.”

The others had entered the palace and were following them, but Emily kept up with Sophie. “And how do you plan to do that?”

Sophie grinned. “I’m taking the contest to my turf.”

The Throne Stone

Meanwhile

No sooner had Emily and the others left when Niall returned, striding down the hill into the valley, a rose in one hand and the crown in the other. Michael noticed that he hadn’t tried to put on the crown yet, which meant there was still hope. If he’d truly defeated Sophie to take it from her, he wouldn’t have hesitated.

“Oh, my opponent hasn’t returned yet?” he asked far too nonchalantly as he approached the stone. He handed the rose to Tallulah with a gallant bow. “I believe this was the object of the quest, and I seem to have won the race.” He acted as though he was surprised to find the crown in his other hand. “I also have brought this, which the queen seems to have misplaced. I can wait awhile before I put it on. Ceremony is important, after all.”