The Grim Adventure, page 2
She bent to pick up the sweatshirt, noticing a small embroidered design for the first time. It was a stick with a curved piece of metal at the end.
Another boom informed her that she didn’t have time to marvel at magical items or try to remember where she’d seen sticks with curved swords. She grabbed the hoodie from the floor and put it on once more, vanishing in the mirror the moment she did.
Rosemary knew what she had to do. She took several brave steps out of the room and followed the sounds of barking dogs and screaming statues. Summoning as much courage as she could, Rosemary walked directly toward the danger.
Hello, my friend. I’m sure you’re quite worried about Rosemary right now, and I don’t blame you. Statues have always given me goose bumps, and not the good kind. Rosemary is brave and skilled and smart, but no human or demifae can fistfight a creature made of stone.
The last time you saw me, I was still in a pretty heated conversation with my father. We don’t get along, you see, but my gift for finding things told me that Rosemary needed to be found. I expected great things from the girl who can see death, but imagine my surprise when she used my chitchatting distraction to cut herself free from the vine and sprint for the tree. I was as surprised as she was (and you, perhaps) when the statue followed her.
Most young folk expect excitement in the month leading up to their thirteenth birthday, but rarely do they expect it in the form of a high-stakes chase to the death. Halloween is always a bit spooky, but if Rosemary and her propensity for trouble have set the standard for October 31, then I can only imagine that bats and cauldrons will not be enough to satisfy our talented, very-in-trouble friend blessed with the graveyard gift.
Perhaps all would have been lost, if it were not for something very special that Rosemary Thorpe was not meant to find.
Invisibility is a neat gift. Some fae can become invisible on their own, though it’s exceptionally rare. The one thing everyone wishes they had, but no one possesses, is a treasure that can make its user invisible at will. There is only one fae with such a gift, and it’s not my place to speak the fae’s name. That’s the sort of secret you’ll have to wait to uncover, I suppose.
What I can tell you, however, is that Rosemary Thorpe used her stolen sweatshirt and its powers of invisibility to sneak right past the statue. A little dog made of bones paused to wag its tail at her when she walked by, but otherwise kept the statue occupied. Dogs are lovely like that.
I can tell you that Rosemary kept the hoodie on while she slipped out the front door of a large stone house—one that was not the Seelie castle at all.
I can tell you that she found a new knotted tree—one that took her to the Lost Woods—and that, from there, she used her classmate Iris’s compass to go north toward Fern’s.
I can tell you that Rosemary said collywobbles and the world twisted and spun until it spit her out in the forest beyond Fern’s school.
I can tell you that she took off the sweatshirt, folding it so the curious stitching was hidden, and draped it over her arm as she approached the manor.
And I can tell you that Rosemary Thorpe was utterly certain that she knew not only who the Keeper’s spy was, but precisely why they were trying to tear the school apart.
Rosemary’s feet slowed as she approached the school, the sweatshirt bundled in her arms. She’d fought her way out of the Seelie court and finally made it back to the one place she felt safe: her home at Fern’s.
At first, she thought things looked different because she’d arrived at sunset. She stared at the leafy green vine that smothered the manor, struggling to understand why the leaves looked so red and yellow. A speck of light caught her attention, and her gaze shot to a row of carved pumpkins with candles flickering inside. Enormous cobwebs stretched over the school’s door.
She turned slowly to look at the forest behind her, the bushes by the animal sanctuary, the plants near the classrooms. Everything once green had shifted into shades of brown, gold, and orange. Pumpkins and spiders and dangling cauldrons decorated each building, as if everyone was in the throes of Halloween festivities.
Except . . . October shouldn’t be for another month.
“Rose? Is that you?”
Rosemary whipped around to see her friend Henry stopping in his tracks after rounding the back of the building, slack-jawed and wide-eyed.
“Henry, what’s happening? What day is it?”
He knocked the breath out of her when he rushed up to her with a hug. He pulled away, gripping her by the shoulders. “Thank the stars you’re all right, Rose. When you didn’t come back . . .”
“What do you mean?”
He dropped his hands. “I was so scared for you, Rose. We’re both human-born, but you didn’t grow up knowing about the courts or fae or how bad some of them can be. You were all alone, and . . . Now that you’re back, we have to take this seriously. Come on.”
He snatched her hand and dragged her toward the manor.
The door swung open before they had a chance to reach it. Their classmate Iris stopped midstep, her blond hair falling around her shoulders, jaw on its hinges, blue eyes wide with shock. “Oh my heavens, look who it is,” she gasped. “Where have you been?”
Henry took a half step to position himself between Iris and Rosemary. “Back off. We’re on our way to see Una.”
Iris scoffed. “I’ve questioned your choices for a while, Rosemary, but you disappear without a trace for weeks and he’s the one who finds you?” Then to Henry she said, “The vine has seen you messing around doing heaven-knows-what at night. Willow told me so.”
Rosemary shot Henry a glance. The large vine within the school kept watch over the students, but . . . Is Iris implying that the vine talks to Willow? Before she had a chance to find out, Iris continued.
“Let me guess: Henry and his shadows took you to some Unseelie nightmare.”
Rosemary couldn’t believe it. Her roommate had been right to warn her about how unkind Iris could be. The girl hadn’t even given her ten minutes of peace before making her life miserable upon returning to school.
“There was nothing Unseelie about the nightmare I faced,” Rosemary said, narrowing her eyes at Iris’s rude division between the two fae courts.
Iris threw out a hand. “Are you kidding? Henry is practically the son of nightmares. Do you know who his dad is?”
“No, and I don’t care. Henry’s my friend. I can’t say the same for you right now.” Rosemary grabbed Henry’s hand and tugged him around Iris. They left her stunned on the landing as they marched toward the housemother, Una.
They were practically on top of Una’s desk before she looked up from her paperwork.
Her single enormous eye flew open. Papers went flying as they fell from her hands. The cyclops jumped up from her chair and scooped Rosemary up, squeezing her. “Oh, thank goodness!”
“Una,” Rosemary coughed into the housemother’s cloud of curly hair. “Will someone explain what’s going on?”
Una repeated Henry’s gesture from moments earlier and held Rosemary at arm’s length while she examined her. She muttered about the cut on her face and her dirty clothing, but after a hasty assessment, she said, “What on earth happened to you?”
“How long have I been gone?” Rosemary demanded, putting her foot down until someone answered her question.
Una blinked her single, bewildered eye. “Time moves differently in different realms, dear. When you didn’t come back with the other students, no one had any clue where you’d gone. We were so scared for you.”
Scared for me? Rosemary’s hand went to the silver compass still bulging in her pocket. Her thoughts darkened. I bet one student knew exactly where I was, and why it was so scary.
“I was only gone for a few hours,” Rosemary said.
“Maybe that’s true in the realm you were in. But here . . . no one has seen you at Fern’s School in a month, Rosemary. We’ve been worried sick.”
The world swam, Rosemary’s vision bobbing as the information sent a shiver down her spine. One month.
The high, sharp sound of shattered glass caught her attention mere seconds before Rosemary’s roommate, Trym, crashed into her. Rosemary struggled to breathe through the puff of lace and black, braided hair.
She tried to return the embrace, but her arms were pinned to her sides as she sputtered for air. The broken remains of a glass terrarium glittered over her roommate’s shoulder, though considering Trym’s love for animals, she was confident the box had been empty.
Trym released her and instantly jabbed a finger into Rosemary’s chest. “Don’t ever make me worry like that again!”
“Hey.” Rosemary struggled between her confusion and the joy at feeling wanted. “I didn’t disappear on purpose. This is my home. You are my family.”
Rosemary held up all five fingers, then put her middle and ring finger down, making the sign for I love you. She wished she had learned more sign language by now to help communicate with her roommate so she could sign something like I’ve missed you, I wish you had been there, or Holy crow, Trym, you’re never going to believe what I went through.
For now, this would have to do.
Trym returned the sign and said, “You’re my family, too.”
“So.” Rosemary looked at Henry while still hugging Trym. She made a weak attempt at looking calm and collected as she asked, “October, huh?”
He ran a hand through his curly brown hair as he gestured to the leaves, the decorations, and the stunned faces. “Happy early Halloween.”
“Happy early birthday,” Una added with a smile.
Una told Rosemary to stay put while she fetched the other teachers. The command, like most of the housemother’s advice, was swiftly ignored.
“They can fetch her from her room!” Trym said, dragging Rosemary up the stairs before Una had a chance to argue. They huffed and puffed up two flights of stairs, until they entered their bedroom.
Trym gestured for Rosemary to take a seat while she shut the door. Rosemary tucked the sweatshirt behind her pillows while Trym lit the candles.
When she was ready, she shoved her crocheted stuffed phantom into Rosemary’s arms. “Ghosty is for if the story gets scary.”
Rosemary looked around the room not for a stuffed animal, but for the pinkish, magical squirrel-like creature that Trym kept as a best friend. “Where’s Wiggles?”
The siboo popped his head up at the mention of his name. Rosemary dropped the ghost as the fluffy animal leaped into her lap, snuggling in for a story.
“Wiggles!” Rosemary hugged him and he responded with an excited squeak.
“Back to the story,” Trym insisted. “You were gone forever!”
“From my perspective, I was gone for a few hours at most,” Rosemary said, stroking the siboo’s fur while she spoke.
“You keep saying that, but look around. Glance outside. The evidence says otherwise.”
For a sickening moment, Rosemary missed the normalcy of being homeschooled in Point Pleasant, West Virginia, before magic, before fairies, before talking animals and vanishing time.
Trym said, “You came back to Fern’s a little bit older, but not a lot wiser. I can whip you into shape before your birthday. Now, tell me what happened.”
Rosemary gave Wiggles a squeeze, then launched into her epic tale. She gave animated accounts of the children with deer feet, the statue, the sparkling, terrifying, beautiful Seelie court, and finally, the Seelie Keeper.
“Holy crow, Rose. You disappear for weeks and come back saying you met the Keeper?!”
Rosemary’s head wobbled once more at the lost time. She steadied herself and asked, “What do you know about him?”
Trym scoffed. “He’s half of the reason the Seelie and Unseelie hate each other so much. Legend says that we used to live in peace, but everything changed when he came to power.”
“The Seelie Keeper,” Rosemary clarified. “He’s like the fae king?”
Trym drummed her fingers against her arm. “Listen, I don’t love humans and their silly systems of rulership, but at least they’ve sliced their little mortal countries up like a birthday cake. A ruler for this slice, a king for this slice, a president for this slice, so on, so forth.”
“But with the fae . . . ?” Rosemary pressed.
“He’ll be the Seelie Keeper until he’s gone. He’s the most powerful. And now that he’s finished conquering the Seelie fae, it looks like he had to turn his sights elsewhere.”
“Is there an Unseelie Keeper?”
Trym nodded. “Yes, but she’s like a billion years old and no one has seen her since dinosaurs walked the earth. There’s an Unseelie version of every Seelie thing. There was even a campus just for Unseelie students, once upon a time. I bet we would have liked it better there.”
The fae world was strange enough that Rosemary had no idea whether or not Trym was joking. Since she could only make sense of one impossible thing at a time, she focused on the Seelie court.
“He ran out of fae to rule, so now he needs to take over the humans?”
“No,” Trym corrected. “He wants to take over everything. But you got away! How?”
The answer caught in Rosemary’s throat. Maybe it came from years of losing friends when she’d shared something too terrible. Maybe it came from a caution that Iris might be listening on the other side of the door. But Rosemary simply shook her head and told a version of the story that wasn’t a lie but wasn’t the truth, either.
“I don’t fully understand how I got away.”
Trym made a sputtering noise, blowing up a tuft of hair as she did so. “Well, that’s the fae for you. There’s a good chance you’ll never understand anything again.” After a beat, Trym said, “Hang on. Do you know how you got there in the first place? We were all together, then poof.” One finger pointed upward between the other flattened fingers of the opposite hand, then dropped downward as she made the sign for disappear.
“I think . . .” Rosemary hesitated, then produced the silver compass from her pocket. “I think Iris’s compass took me there.”
The whites of Trym’s eyes were as large as tea saucers. “Her compass?! Why do you still have it!”
Rosemary started to give it to Trym, then pulled her hand away. She looked at her roommate seriously. “Whatever you do, do not press any of the buttons. Don’t open it, don’t close it, don’t do anything except look at it.”
“What are you, my mother?” Trym said, wriggling her fingers for the device. “Do you think her dad knows the Keeper? Or worse, could her dad be working for the Keeper?”
“What do you mean?” Rosemary asked, taking the compass back from Trym after the short examination.
“I mean”—Trym pointed to a candle on the far wall—“This is mine. If I light that candle, it zaps me straight through the Unseelie court and takes me to Banshee Town. My mother gave it to me.”
Rosemary gaped at the candle. “You have a transportation device, too?”
Trym nodded. “They’re pretty rare, so usually parents give them to their kids. You can also get one from a best friend who wants to see you, a sworn enemy looking for a fight, or a boss who wants you to be at your job in an instant. But Iris hasn’t turned sixteen yet, so I’d bet it came from her dad. We knew he was Seelie, but I don’t like that he’d send her straight to the Seelie court. Maybe her parents are encouraging her to give him information.”
“It wouldn’t surprise me at all if Iris’s family knew the Keeper.”
Trym chuckled. “He’s that bad, huh? Awful enough to compare him to Iris?”
“Worse.”
The sun had already set by the time Una and the tutors collected Rosemary and ushered her away to find out what had happened.
The auditorium was eerie at night.
She hadn’t been allowed to watch crime movies growing up, but she’d seen glimpses of police interrogations on TV, and couldn’t help but feel that four tutors asking questions of one student was very much like detectives interviewing a criminal. Rosemary had been in this room many times for afternoon classes, always surrounded by her classmates while daylight beamed through the windows.
She knew her tutor, Dante, of course, and was comforted by the flannel he wore, almost like a uniform. Miss Amanda, a Seelie fae with some gift for guardianship, tutored Iris and Grey. She had a friendly smile, deeply tanned skin, and long, braided hair. Rosemary knew her better than the remaining two tutors, only because she was most often put in charge of afternoon lessons on the human realm in the auditorium.
The other two, Aster and Magnolia, she only knew in passing. Aster taught the Unseelie boys, and though he was Seelie, he looked like he belonged in a Halloween store. Magnolia, on the other hand, looked like a summertime Santa Claus dressed in leaves.
“Here.” Una pushed a cup of hot chocolate into her hands. “Sweetie made a pot just for you. I hope you understand why we’re so worried. We can’t very well have students go missing one right after the other. And coupled with Essie’s horrible encounter with those human troublemakers whisking him away with a wish . . . ?”
“Our school isn’t a safe space if our pupils can vanish or run away at the drop of a hat,” came Miss Amanda’s soft voice. She and the rest of the tutors sat on one side of a long desk, while Rosemary and Una sat on the other. “We’ve gotten a record of events from Essie and everyone who went with you on your rescue mission. You were very brave, and very foolish to go alone.”
Aster, the tutor with a love for dramatic black robes, spoke sharply. “Where were you?”
It felt like an entire apple caught in Rosemary’s throat as she swallowed. “The Seelie court,” she said honestly.
“For a month?” Aster pressed.
Rosemary examined each teacher. “Did anyone come looking for me?”
The teachers exchanged looks.
A small, angry flame flickered within her. “Last time a student went missing, I went and found him. Did anyone do the same for me?”
