With a Kiss (Twisted Tales) (26 page)

“I thought you knew.” He shifted uneasily. “Time passes quickly in the Otherworld.”

“Yeah, but the homecoming dance? That’s late September.” My heart beat uncomfortably as I tried to digest this information. The leaves had changed. They were falling. Just one day and my shadow started my senior year in high school? I might graduate before I got back, or worse. I could be in college and so far removed from everything familiar that I would never get my life back. I felt tears well up, and I was so shocked by it that I fought them, lashing out at Hobs instead—that came more naturally. “She’s probably flunking all my classes!” It was terribly insignificant, but it hurt less to talk about than other things, to talk about how I was missing my life, not to mention all the years I had wasted when I actually was home.

“Yeah, she’s making a mess of things. Now everybody likes you.”

 That hurt more than he knew, and I couldn’t even glare at him. The urge to cry smothered me. I sucked in my breath to stop that from happening. I had never experienced so many contrasting emotions at once: longing, hurt, and love? It was more than I could handle. I felt like I was bleeding with no way to patch things up. Hobs tried to comfort me. “Hey, at least now you don’t have to watch
Hot Club
every Tuesday night with Daphne.”

How did he know about that? Before I could ask, I saw a movement in the swirly toy. I tried to distract myself with it to keep the tears back. Daphne turned to me—to my shadow rather—and whispered, “Remember that guy who played Puck in our play last summer? He’s so beautiful. I have a huge crush on him. I think he likes me too.”

Ren? That awful kid! It seemed so long ago when he flicked my dangling earrings, and sat on the park bench in his dark shades and red hoodie watching me make an idiot of myself. Maybe it was the part he had acted out in the play that set me against him. Puck! Some strange, protective sisterly instinct overcame me and I wanted to reach through the swirly toy and shake Daphne, but my shadow just kicked her legs back and flipped onto her stomach, resting her chin on her hand. “Yeah, he’s really cute. Why didn’t you tell me before?”

“I wanted to . . . I tried, so many times.”

But I wasn’t there for her.

“Look,” I heard Hobs saying. He hesitated a moment, then I felt the weight of his arm around my shoulder. He hugged me, trying to make me feel better with his soothing strength. “If we fix things here, we can rewind everything when you get back. It will be like you never left.”

I studied their happy faces for a moment. “No, I like how it is now. It’s better.”

“What did you say?” He watched me closely. I knew I shouldn’t try to read his expression, but I did it anyway. He had the look of someone who might kiss me. My pulse quickened, like maybe I wanted him to.

Bugul harrumphed in the background. He loudly pounded out his sleeping bag, trying to make himself more comfortable in the snow—all the while making a perfect third wheel. I think I knew what would happen if Hobs stepped out of line.

Hobs knew it too, but the excitement in his eyes was hard to resist. “Can you feel? Everything?” I didn’t know what he was trying to say. He touched my hand. “Do you love . . . I mean, do you love Babs? Is this for her?”

“Hobs, it’s so dangerous. She could lose everything. If she loved me back . . .”

“The love of mortals fades from view,” he recited the hag’s hateful curse, his eyes darkened on mine. “I hate to break it to you, but that’s not everything. I mean, to be able to love . . .”

“It sounds like I leave her or something, and I won’t.”

He shook his head. “You’re supposed to give her to her mother.”

“Yes, I know, but . . .”

“The sovereign cannot rule unless she loves. This is good.”

“Don’t tell me that, okay? Just because I love her, doesn’t mean she loves me too. She’s still safe. We’re fine!”

“You do have a heart.” He looked as if he was trying to make up his mind about something, but he leaned back and tried to adopt a calm expression instead. “Now it can be broken. You’ll be susceptible to love talkers. You’ll be easy to manipula . . .” His voice trailed off and he looked worried. “I didn’t think about that. No, this isn’t safe.”

That’s what I was afraid of. I played with Babs’ soft fingers, limp in sleep. Under normal circumstances, we’d look like a family on a camping trip. Of course, the hot chocolate and s‘mores were missing . . . and the stories—I felt drawn to the faerytales. They poked out of the backpack just within reach, as if daring me to figure them out. The story behind all of our troubles was hidden somewhere in those pages. If I could just piece the clues together before Babs loved me back, we could get her home. Then I could concentrate on how to be normal—and try to survive it.

Under Hobs’ suddenly alert gaze, I dragged the book out and opened it. He didn’t try to stop me this time. The firelight flickered across the story of
Sleeping Beauty
, except there was something wrong with it. The words of the book shifted and changed into something else. Either the flames were playing tricks on my eyes or this was a product of faery magic. The story beneath my hands was only slightly familiar. Instead of the blonde innocent who tangled with a spindle, it was the story of a beautiful princess, daughter to royalty from a far-off province in the Sidhe.

“Hobs,” I asked. “What is this?”

Hobs could see it over my shoulder. “Faerytale prophecies.” For once he didn’t hide his interest, but then that was directed more at me. “These are the
true
faerytales,” he said, “as we were meant to see them.”

“The book didn’t look like this before.”

“That’s because you didn’t open it in the Sidhe. All faerytales have magic in them—even if it’s imperceptible in the Otherworld.”

Could everything Hobs told me about this book be taken literally? They were prophecies, sure, but actual prophecies—like their Bible? Most importantly, it would tell us Babs’ identity, written down in black and white. I scooted closer to the fire to read the latest scoop on
Sleeping Beauty
.

The story started out the same. The princess was beautiful and sweet, born to loving parents. But from there, it went completely crazy because she had to live among shadows and demons and pests. Her life was filled with confusion and turmoil. She was only a princess because she had royal blood from an ancestor who had been stuck in a tree, imprisoned there by her stepsister. Then again stepsisters were known to be mean. Sleeping Beauty’s ancestor escaped only to face banishment in the wilderness. The first daughter in her royal bloodline would be a princess. If the princess ever found out who she was, she would be cursed to sleep for a hundred years in the same tree that imprisoned her ancestor; there she would be forced to guard a treasure. Even worse, some creepy dog and a cat with large yellow eyes would watch the princess to make sure she couldn’t escape.

I groaned and set the book down on the mounds of blankets over Babs’ back. The only thing familiar about the tale was that the poor princess had to wait under a spell until a knight with the right bloodline came to rescue her. I turned to Hobs. “So what happened to Sleeping Beauty?”

“You mean, what
will
happen to her?” Yeah, that was right. These were prophecies.
They hadn’t happened yet, which made absolutely no sense. He took the other side of the book, lacing his fingers through mine. “It says a brave knight of Tristan’s lineage will try to save her.”

“Try?”

“Well, it’s kind of hazy from there. The words of the prophecy aren’t all in yet, but most likely he’ll die and she’ll rot in the tree.” He turned to meet Bugul’s unblinking glare, and treated him to a dry smile. “That’s how real faerytale romances go.” At my gasp of shock, Hobs shrugged. “He doesn’t have the right bloodline. What can he expect? He’s a goner.”

“Then,” I ventured, “he must not really love her either?”

“Love? He doesn’t know her. If anything, he’ll be after her lands and power. Everyone will be. What?” Hobs arched a brow, not attempting to take back the harsh truth. “The knight’s bloodline, not his love, will save the princess, but since you’re so worried . . .” He gave me a teasing look and perused the book. “I know a guy who belongs to the proper aristocratic family. Geoffrey of the Great Tooth can save her. He’s got the right DNA.”

“Oh, really,” I drawled back. “He sounds so charming.” By now I was completely disenchanted by the whole story.

“Oh, whoops, no. Wait.” Hobs held up an index finger while he skimmed through the rest. It wasn’t long before he generously divulged all the gruesome details. “The unfortunate soul who represents the appropriate family bloodline will lose his one true love. Looks like Sleeping Beauty will die of old age before he can collect the princess’s booty from the tree. Poor boy.”

Poor girl!
“So it ends that way?” I tugged the book from Hobs and searched the rest of the page to look for the “happily ever after.” It was missing. What
was
surprising was to see that the whole end of the story was gone too. I jumped when something sharp pricked my finger.
Ouch.
The paper got me.

“Of course it doesn’t end.” I heard Hobs say in a way-too-patient voice. “Why would the story end?”

I sucked on my finger, staring at the blank pages. Half the words were there. And the ones that weren’t? My hand ran gingerly back over the prickly paper and I felt a hint of them. They poked into the parchment from a bumpy surface beneath the story, almost like backwards carbon paper. The words weren’t coming in yet. They might not be fully engraved in this prophecy for months, maybe years. I lifted the page and found nothing underneath, except another wretched faerytale on the next page. “Where’s the rest of the story?”

“Prophecies become clearer as time passes.” Hobs stretched, acting like it didn’t affect him, but I knew better. He watched me too closely for that. “The way things are going, Sleeping Beauty will just sleep forever.”

“That’s a terrible story!”

“Not as bad as Snow White’s.”

I caught his not-so-veiled hint and flipped roughly through the pages, ignoring the stories of dark spells and other forms of faery torture. They made me sick. “If your people know what’s going to happen to them, why do they keep making the same mistakes?”

“Why does anybody? Everyone thinks they can beat the odds. The problem is, the more mistakes we make, the more they pinpoint our doom.” I glanced up at him for more details and he just looked grim. “Oh, there it is.” He didn’t look down at the book, though he had stopped me at the right story. I found it hard to believe he had the exact turn of pages memorized, but he did. “There’s our sweet little Snow White.” His voice was laced with that familiar irony.

What used to be a sweet brunette in rags could only be a cold, ethereal beauty . . . um, from the back, anyway. If Hobs hadn’t pointed her out, I never would’ve recognized the Snow Princess as the one we all knew and loved from our bedtime stories. I read through her description. The dwarves worked for her. The animals were her dark-hearted familiars. The queen (who was not of her blood) was ticked at her. Yep, this was the hag’s story—or as the faeries here liked to call her, the Snow Queen. There was no hint of her downfall.

“Hobs? What is her ending?”

“Why do you always insist on one? She’s on top. What does she have to worry about?” Hobs toyed with the medallion around his neck. “The witch sucks everyone’s power dry. Without
her
, no one is anything.” He took a deep breath, his face lifting so I could see the sardonic twist to his lips. “But you should see the great snowflakes she makes at Christmas, and she frosts the roundest pumpkins on Halloween. Besides, there are plenty here in the Sidhe who are far worse than she is.”

My eyes couldn’t leave his. They hinted at something terrible that he wasn’t telling me. “Here’s a paragraph about her stepmother. Ever hear of the queen of Tylwyth Teg?” I shook my head. “Well, Queen Gwendhidw, of course,
is
the fairest of them all. No one can live if they gaze on Gwen for too long.” My mouth dropped and he looked amused, though not terribly proud. He turned the page to Goldilocks and grimaced at it.

“More prophecies about women,” I said.

His smothered laugh forced me to look closer at the page. Goldilocks was a guy. Hobs moved to turn the page before I could see it too closely. “He goes on an important mission for . . . uh . . . royalty, and tangles with the wolves.”

My hand landed on the page and I forced him to keep it open. “That’s you?”

His hand joined mine, and he expertly guided me away from the story. “Have I ever told you what big eyes you have?” I rolled them. He propped his fist against the ground, moving his arm behind my back while he made himself more comfortable next to me. “We’re never sure which prophecy concerns us personally. Everyone has their theories on who’s who. There’s a certain
power
to knowing who you are. But whether the prophecies are fulfilled or not depends on . . .” His voice trailed off when he turned another page, “us.”

Before I could look too closely at it, Babs cried out in her sleep. I stroked her full head of wispy blonde hair. We had put it in braids earlier, but her hair was so baby soft and thick, it wouldn’t stay. And now I was messing with it again. The poor kid never had a moment alone. Neither did I, for that matter. Hobs wouldn’t stop looking at me now and Bugul clearly didn’t approve. Even without his voice, Bugul was noisy about it. He pulled out a cushion that he had stolen from the back of the nymph’s boat and pounded it like it was someone’s head.