Deadly Pink (12 page)

By the time we were finished, the sprites had developed the habit of spitting every time they granted a wish. Which was just plain nasty, even if they were small and their spit sparkled.

There was no way the mound of coins would fit back into the chest. It wouldn't have fit into five chests. That kind of bulk was the reason credit cards were invented.

“How much,” I asked, “for a small magical sack?” I indicated with my hands something change-purse-size, little enough to tie onto the sash of my dress. “The kind of magical sack that would hold everything I put in it but that would weigh no more than the sack itself ?”

I left one chest's worth of coins out for hammock-guy to bring back to the pavilion, simply as a precaution, wealth just in case I had to start over again, dismantling Emily's Victorian house.

The sprites' hair was getting frizzled from their vexation at having to grant all my wishes.

“How much,” I asked, “for me to have the power to turn into a dragon at will?”

Pink's hair actually sparked at that. And the answer was about half a treasure chest.

“That is just so attractive on you,” I said to her. “Okay. Last wish—”

“Finally,” Purple snapped.

I smiled at her. I smiled at both of them. “For now,” I couldn't help but gloat.

They spat even before hearing my wish.

“How much would it cost for me to put you in the sack and take you with me?”

Changing into a dragon made me feel the way I imagine those Mentos candies felt when they were dropped into the bottles of Coke in that YouTube video: bubbly, fizzy, simultaneously dissolving and expansive, overflowing out of myself. While it was happening, it was out of control and scary. But it didn't hurt, and as soon as it was over—as soon as I realized I'd survived—I thought,
That was fun.

I looked down at myself. I was much taller than the hedges that formed the maze. In fact, my sudden increase in size had uprooted a few of the bushes closest to me. My scales—I had scales!—were the shifting iridescent colors of soap bubbles. I had four legs, the front two short, a bit like
Tyrannosaurus rex
arms, and I also had wings. It didn't
feel
weird that I had an extra pair of appendages; it was only weird to think about. They looked too delicate to support my weight, but when I flapped them, I rose off the ground. I gave a couple more flaps, and I rose, sort of helicopter-like, out of the maze, over the garden, so that I could see the Victorian house and the pond with its swan-shaped gondola bobbing at its mooring. It was like looking at one of those 3-D miniature street scenes displayed at the Rochester Museum and Science Center—buildings and bridges and the river and the parks and the High Falls and the cemeteries—that show what the city looked like in the nineteenth century. Not that Rochester ever had gondolas. Or dragons, for that matter.

Pivoting my wings—dragon instincts must have come with the dragon body—I moved forward rather than straight up, and I circled the world I had explored already: House. Woods. Clearing with the tent. Clearing with the lute guy, where the unicorn had been.

But no Emily.

I was surprised to see that the sun was really low in the sky. Playing phone tag with Emily's so-called friends in the real world must have taken just about a whole day in this world.

That was not good, no matter how I looked at it.

I still held the magic sack in my talons—I hadn't tied it to the sash of my dress for fear that the bag would transform along with my clothing. And the clothing
had
transformed. Which was good—because a dragon in a thirty-sizes-too-small-Victorian-dress would have looked downright silly. Not to mention that dragonizing would have been hard on the seams. Now I shook the sack—which was only about the size of one talon—to get the attention of the sprites inside and called, “Where's Emily?”

When I couldn't hear a response, I shook the sack again.

Still nothing.

I put the sack up to my ear and only then could hear the tiny terrified shrieks of the sprites, and I realized I probably shouldn't have shaken the bag. “Oops, sorry,” I said. If I had felt like Mentos mints, they probably felt like chicken drumsticks in a Shake 'n Bake bag.

“All right, all right, get over it,” I told them.

Being a dragon, I was perfectly capable of flying while using my front paws. I loosened the drawstring, opening the bag.

Pink staggered out onto the stiff gathered edge of the sack, looking seasick-green and holding her hands over her ears. “Stop shouting!” she screamed at me.

Oops, I guess I'd been using my outside-dragon voice.

“Sorry,” I repeated, whispering. “You and Purple all right?”

Pink indicated the bag behind her. “Inside. Barfing.”

Ewww. I didn't care if it was sparkly like the spit had been; it was still barf. And all over my gold coins.

“Okay,” I said. “No more shaking. Where's Emily?”

Pink just glowered at me.

“Where's Emily?” I repeated.

It took two more tries before I realized my wording was wrong.

“I wish for you to tell me where Emily is.”

Grumbling, Pink said, “Wishes for coins.”

“Go ahead,” I told her. “Take one.”

She didn't move.

Sighing, I reached into the sack and used the very tip of a talon to pull out a coin. Evidently, it was one of the ones Purple had been sick on: I could tell by the glittery pink coating. It was slightly tacky to the touch, but at least sprite spew didn't smell bad. It was sort of like talcum powder. “Here,” I said.

Pink didn't move to take it. All she said was “Wishes for coins.”

“What?” I demanded, frustrated that I couldn't tell what she wanted, even more frustrated because I
could
tell that she was enjoying this. “How many coins for telling me where Emily is?”

“The information costs one gold coin. Transporting you there costs five.”

Remembering the last time they had transported me, I said, “Okay. I'll start with just the information.”

She only smirked.

“I wish,” I amended, “for you to tell me where Emily is.”

Pink folded her arms over her chest and looked pleased with herself.

There were thousands of coins in my sack, I knew. What was different from the other times?

I sighed, and my dragon breath nearly singed a low-flying bird that had let us get too close. I angled my wings to change direction, and now Pink sighed, realizing I'd caught on.

Okay, if I needed the fountain for the wishes-for-coins magic to work, I'd bring
that
along with me, too.

The damn sprites weren't making things easy for me, but they weren't making things easy for themselves, either. I shook a whole dragon-fistful of coins out of the sack and into the water, announcing: “I wish for the fountain to go into the sack.”

It disappeared from in front of me. From inside the bag, Purple gave a startled “Oomph!” But I knew the coins in there must have cushioned the weight, even if the fountain had landed directly on her, because she kicked the side of the bag and yelled out—in a tiny but very potty-mouth way—exactly what she thought of me.

“We hate you,” Pink added as I flew up and into a big spiral over the house and grounds.

“Well, thanks for that free information. Where's Emily?”

Nothing.

“I wish for you to tell me.”

Pink didn't spit, probably more from fear of the wind blowing the spittle back into her face than from fear of me. She mumbled, “Mountain castle.”

In the distance, beyond the woods with the pavilion, I spotted some peaks. “Those mountains?”

She gave me a long
How dumb are you?
stare before I caught on and added, “Take another coin.”

“Yes, those mountains,” she answered.

“Don't you want to help Emily?” I asked, since everybody else here seemed to live to please my sister. I was hoping to get on Pink's good side. Did she have a good side? “All I'm trying to do is help Emily.”

“Hate her worse than we hate you,” Pink said venomously. “Cheaters, both of you. Too many coins. Too, too, too many coins.”

“Oh,” I said, not sure what to make of that. Then, not because I had a plan, but because I didn't want to look at her pouty face any more, I told her, “You can go back in the sack.”

Chapter 13

Emily

T
HERE WAS A LAKE
, and then beyond that, the mountains. No foothills: just woods, woods, woods (which sounds boring, except for the fact that: Hel-lo-o! I was
FLYING!),
then came the great turquoise sea, then mountains. The sky was dramatically pink and orange, and the sun appeared to be perched on the edge of the world when I finally arrived. I could see Emily's castle. Of course, it was on the summit with the best view.

I drifted in the air currents, feeling guilty about how much I'd enjoyed flying, wondering how I'd get Emily to come outside. And then I saw her, outdoors already. There was a balcony that went entirely around the highest parapet—the castle equivalent of the Victorian house's wraparound porch. She was leaning against a balustrade, watching the birds wheeling over the lake one last time before the sun set, and the dolphins cavorting in the sparkling water. There was even a rainbow—not that it had rained. A fine evening for enjoying the show nature—or rather, Rasmussem—was putting on.

Did my shadow cross over her? She looked up into the sky and raised her hand. For one exhilarating moment I thought she was acknowledging me, finally greeting me. Then I remembered I was a dragon, and she had no way of knowing that. She was simply shading her eyes, trying to cut out the glare of the sun behind me.

There were no reference points for her to gauge my distance or, therefore, guess at my size. If she saw me at all, she probably took me for a bird.

My dragon eyes—and the fact that I was
not
looking directly into the sun—let me see her clearly: the silver brocade dress that draped so elegantly, her hair ruffled by the breeze. She was the very picture of a queen. I aimed directly for her and dropped at full speed. Rushing ... rushing ... I saw in her eyes the moment she finally realized I was much too big, and moving far too quickly, to be another bird. Puzzlement turned to alarm. I'm not sure if alarm had time to turn into understanding; and by then I was within range.

Can I really do this?

I could. I had to.

I blasted my sister with my flaming dragon breath.

Dead on.

Not daring to flinch.

For one awful, awful moment I could see her silhouetted, the way you can sometimes make out a candle's wick through the surrounding flame. But then the fire got too big, too intense. By the time it dissipated and stopped licking at the metal railing, at the stone parapet, there was nothing left of Emily, not even ash. Still, I was breathing through my open mouth, not daring to inhale for fear of smelling charred meat. My sister. My sister, whom I had just burned alive.

The railing was drooping, the stones themselves were warped by the scorching, and if my dragon hide hadn't been so tough, the residual heat would have blistered my feet as I settled down on the balcony where she had been standing.

I had just killed Emily.

There would have been no pain,
I told myself.

It’s not for real,
I told myself.

It’s just a game,
I told myself.

Like capturing the last piece in a game of checkers.

Myself was not convinced.

This didn't feel one bit like checkers.

Even if I
had
done it specifically to save her real life. To end the game and send her out of this fake world and back to Rasmussem.

I had been distraught when she'd had one of her game characters kill off another game character, and here I'd gone and killed her. Never mind that she'd done the same to me in exactly the same way, this simply felt wrong, wrong, wrong.

Had she felt this wretched when she'd killed me?

My body seemed to have developed a mind of its own. I was shaking, and something was boiling inside me, and for a moment I thought I was going to throw up. But it was a sob that bubbled out of me, a deep, racking sob. And then another, and another. I couldn't stop, couldn't catch my breath. My chest hurt. My heart hurt. The Rasmussem people would be ending the game any moment now—now that Emily had been forced back into reality—and I absolutely needed to regain control before I came to on the Rasmussem total immersion couch with everyone gawking at me. I was unwilling to make a show of myself in front of Ms. Bennett and Adam—plus, my mother would take one look at me and freak out.

I became aware that I was rocking back and forth on my knees, and that my knees hurt. They had sizzled a bit, from the intense heat, and they had little pieces of grit embedded in them. Knees. Human knees. Somewhere along the way, I had lost control of the wish to be a dragon and had reverted to being a girl. A girl who had just killed her sister.

And it was only then that I realized someone was standing over me.

“How sweet,” Emily said in her snarkiest tone, the one she normally used for mocking people on TV, not family. “You killed me, but you're sad about it. Oh, well! I guess that makes everything all right.”

Emily?

Okay, I’m back at Rasmussem after all,
I thought. I hadn't even felt the transition. I braced myself for embarrassment.

Except I wasn't back on the total immersion couch. I was still on the castle parapet.

So how could Emily be there?

But
there
she indeed was, as big as life: glaring at me, tapping her gemstone-sandaled foot, even.

I rubbed my snot and tears off on my already-filthy sleeve. My throat hurt, my head hurt. But my heart felt just a little bit better.

“Emily,” I managed to gasp between the sobs that still wouldn't stop, “I'm sorry I tried to kill you. I'm glad you got away.” That was true
despite
my realization that this was a major setback.

How
had she gotten away?