Protagonist Bound (39 page)

What was worse? SJ’s silence potion was going to wear off any minute. Which meant that the sounds of the Archives’ alarm, the creature, and our noisy battle would soon be able to be heard throughout the entire school!

I needed a plan. It was relatively hard to think straight with the way this thing was crushing me. Brains needed oxygen after all, and at the moment I was severely lacking in that department. But I tried my best to focus—analyze the situation, as was my nature even when I did have my back against the wall.

The monster scrunched me tighter and shoved my body harder into the wall behind.

Err, I didn’t mean for that to be so literal.

Come on, think,
I reminded myself.
Keep breathing and think.

It seemed that every time one of these smoke creatures got destroyed it took about seven seconds for it to reform. So, if I killed this one then that’s about how long I would have to get to the riddle, insert the answer, and shut down the security system. All I needed was one good shot and, well, to get this thing to stop strangling me.

Growing stronger, the smoke monster was beginning to sprout another arm, so I garnered enough gumption to make my move before it could finish.

Knife.

My spear shrank down.

With a struggle, I managed to rotate my hand a few centimeters and plunge the blade of the much smaller weapon into the tentacle holding my wrist. The stab was just enough to cause the beast’s arm to burst into smoke. The second it did, my hand was free and I used the knife to stab the other two arms entrapping me. They, too, exploded into smoke and I was released and dropped to the floor.

Spear.

I jumped to my feet and backed away. The monster’s arms were already reforming and it was coming after me again.

Okay, I have to get this thing at its center if I want the whole of it to dissolve for the full amount of time. So aim, self. Aim!

I ducked as one tentacle swung at my head. I drew back my arm. Then, with all my strength and focus I hurled my spear at the heart of the monster.

It was a direct hit. But I didn’t take time to admire the precision of the strike. The instant I saw the creature burst into smoke I made a break for the display cases.

My friends had obviously not heard me coming, so they were startled when I plowed into them and grabbed the quill from Blue. I looked over my shoulder and glimpsed the blob of smoke—its tentacles already sprouting and starting to move toward us. Quickly I wrote in the final word of the puzzle before it was too late:

“Few weaknesses pertain to the Mer-people’s world,

But that which they fear most is all that is
pearled
.”

When I entered the last letter of the desired word, the whole riddle began to glow. I turned around in a wave of panic and saw that the monster was less than ten feet behind us.

Only now . . . it seemed to be frozen where it stood.

The riddle’s tapestry shone even brighter. As it continued to increase in luminance the smoke monster began to disintegrate. One large flash later and they were both gone completely. The entrance to the case was revealed and the force field protecting the treasures vanished from view just as the cases’ alarm lights ceased pulsing.

Phew! What a relief!

Thank you, Lonna Languard.

It was pure luck that the mermaid princess and I had met, and even greater fortune that the bracelet Marie had given me had caused the aquatic girl to reveal the information about Mer-people’s deep fear of pearls.

Take that Lady Agnue’s. See, there
are
things outside of the traditional princess curriculum that this lovely school doesn’t teach us, which could totally come in handy in real life.

I exhaled and put a hand on my chest to try and keep my heart from popping out due to residual adrenaline. “That was close,” I heard myself saying.

“Hey, we can talk again,” Blue whispered excitedly.

SJ sighed. “And not a moment too soon.”

“Fantastic,” I panted.

SJ gave me a confused look. “Crisa, how did you know the answer to the last line of that riddle? Blue and I were truly stumped, and you never pay attention to our lessons.”

“Does it matter?” I said. “I pay attention to life. Now come on. You two get what we came for, I’ll get my spear, and then let’s get the heck out of here before we’re almost killed again.”

“What’s the matter, Crisa?” Blue teased quietly. “You’re not tired, are you?”

“Who, me? No way. I
love
single-handedly fighting shape-shifting smoke monsters at two in the morning. Who doesn’t?”

A minute later my wand was back in my boot, SJ had stashed our two newly acquired treasures inside the shoulder bag she’d brought with her, and Blue finished closing up the center display case.

The Archives looked like they had never been disturbed. The duplicate mirror that Jason and Daniel had made for us was a flawless imitation. And on re-locking the cases, the tiny alarm sensors inside turned green again—resetting themselves.

No one, it seemed, would ever know we were here.

With the help of SJ’s owl friends, the three of us called it a night and carefully made our way back to our room. We were exhausted, rattled, and a bit traumatized to be perfectly honest. But now, more than anything, we were curious.

When we’d returned to the safety of our suite my friends and I huddled on my bed with me in the middle.

SJ removed the treasures from her bag—a flower petal from
The Frog Prince’s
water lily, and the magic mirror from
Beauty & the Beast
. With great care she handed me the latter. And with a deep breath I held up the beautiful looking glass and said the four words that this whole mission had been aiming toward:

“Show me Emma Carrington.”

Frame Job

he Tardy Gods were with us on that particular morning.

SJ, Blue, and I hurried down the stairs in a panic—our morning lecture having already begun. We were horribly late and dreading the scolding we would no doubt receive for the indiscretion of barging into class a half hour past due.

In hindsight, this situation had been inevitable given that we’d been up at all hours of the night with our escapades. After our assault on the Archives, we’d attempted to use the magic mirror over and over again for the better part of an hour. But despite our persistence, it still hadn’t shown us anything of importance.

I supposed I should have expected as much. The mirror showed you where people were in real time. So when it displayed Emma last night, all we saw was my godmother sound asleep in her bed. Not much to go on when we were trying to figure out her location at large.

At 3:30 a.m., SJ had insisted we go to bed and try again in the afternoon when we might have better luck. Our hope was that at some point Emma would leave her house and go into town. And, based on what we saw in the background, we could find clues about her geographic position and narrow down the search from there.

In the meantime we had to resume our normal activities. Although given that classes started an eternity ago, I’d have said we were off to a pretty poor start.

When we reached the foyer we executed a sharp right turn to complete our dash to D.I.D. class. But as we made our way, we began to realize something peculiar. The halls weren’t quiet.

Usually by this time of day, everyone was already in their respective classrooms. However, as we continued toward class the distant murmurs grew louder and louder until we came to the very area of Lady Agnue’s that we’d tiptoed out of just a few hours ago.

That’s when we saw it. A large crowd of students, possibly all of the students, was gathered in the intersection that housed the Treasure Archives. The air was full of nervous whispers. My friends and I felt a wave of dread go through us as we slowed down and tried to walk over to the scene as calmly as possible.

I was worried, but mainly confused. The replica mirror that Jason and Daniel had fashioned for us had been perfect. Moreover, we’d hardly left a speck of dust out of place in that glass case, let alone anything that would’ve set off a red flag to the school’s staff.

We approached the swarm, but no one acknowledged our arrival. I strained to look at what my classmates were so focused on.

What in the—?

The perfect, glittering Treasure Archives that we’d treaded so gingerly around last night were smashed to pieces. Gaping holes had been created in the cases’ doors and thousands of glass shards were scattered on the floor.

Guards and several of the school’s senior staff members were carefully making their first inspections of the area. Meanwhile, another cluster of teachers was off to the side talking frantically in those hushed tones that grown-ups tend to use whenever there’s trouble afoot.

Upon examining the destruction closer, my shock deepened at what I saw. Well, what I
didn’t
see really. Several treasures were missing from the Archives.

Pretty much everyone at Lady Agnue’s had the contents of these displays memorized from having passed by them so many times each day. It was therefore instantly apparent to all of us exactly which four objects had vanished. They were the genie’s lamp from
Aladdin,
the pea from the
Princess and the Pea
, the poison corset from
Snow White
, and the mirror from
Beauty & the Beast
.

Of course, the one thing my friends and I knew that the rest of the school didn’t was that the stolen mirror was only a replica we were using as a placeholder. The real one was currently hidden safe and sound underneath my mattress.

“What happened here?” I whispered to a frazzled Marie Sinclaire, who was standing to my left.

“We do not know,” she whispered back. “It must have been sometime last night. But no one can figure how they did it without getting caught. You would have had to throw, like, chairs through the glass to create holes that big. How did no one hear it?”

It was a good question. SJ’s potion had silenced the room for a while, but instructions on how to make it could only be found in that special book of hers. Furthermore, how did the person who did this handle the smoke monster defense system after we’d reset the alarm? And when exactly had they had time to do it? There’d barely been a window of a couple of hours in between when we’d been here and the kitchens had opened for breakfast.

“Ladies, ladies,” Madame Alexanders said, emerging from the circle of faculty members and coming over to us.

She cleared her throat loudly and overpowered our chatter with her well-practiced teaching voice. “Children, the staff and I agree that it would be best if you returned to your classes until we get this all sorted out. So hurry on. Quick like bunnies; go, go, go.”

We protested a bit, but the other teachers worked together to herd us like frightened cattle away from the crime scene. SJ and I began to merge out of the area with the rest of the group, but after a minute we noticed that Blue was not with us.

It was hard to look around while being pulled along by the moving sea of students, but eventually we were able to spot our missing friend behind us, still by the Archives. She appeared slightly nervous, her eyes glancing around to see if anyone was watching her. When she seemed sure that neither our classmates nor the staff was looking, she bent down and disappeared from sight.

Barely a second later she popped back up again and swiftly forged her way into the migrating group of girls. When she was by our side once more, SJ and I shot her a couple of questioning looks.

“What was all that about?” I asked under my breath.

“Later,” Blue responded curtly.

None of us said another word as we continued to shuffle through Lady Agnue’s’ distraught hallways and into our D.I.D. classroom. That which we had to say could not be discussed here.