“I will never understand you,” she mumbled.
Puck laughed. “Really, don’t you feel your heart beating! Don’t you feel so alive? We’ve nearly died a dozen times already. It’s exhilarating!”
Daphne laughed. “I’d lost count. Who can remember them all?”
“The last year of my life has been awesome. I hate to admit it, but you two have helped my street credibility in the prankster community. We’ve busted a guy out of jail, broken into someone’s house, killed dragons and giants, destroyed a bank and an elementary school, changed the future, and started a civil war. You should be proud of yourselves.”
Puck and Daphne laughed until they could hardly breathe. Sabrina, however, was horrified. She had been involved in all of those disasters and her choices had made them possible—sometimes even caused them directly. She jumped up and ran into the woods before anyone could see her tears.
She threw herself under a giant toadstool and wept until her body shook. She had never cried so hard or felt so lost.
“Let’s get something clear,” Puck said. His presence startled Sabrina, and she jumped to her feet. She felt awkward and exposed as she wiped the tears from her face, but Puck ignored her embarrassment. “I’m not going to hug you or let you cry on me. Don’t get any funny ideas about that stuff. But, if you want to open your gob and spill your guts about your boo-boo face, feel free.”
“I’m fine,” she lied.
“You are smelly, annoying, infuriating, and I’m sure your parents dropped you on your head when you were a baby, but you are not fine. In fact, if I didn’t know better, I would suspect a Levorian Ear Toad had burrowed into your brain. You haven’t been yourself since we stepped into this book.”
“Sorry to disappoint,” Sabrina said as she stared off into the forest.
“Oh, boy!” Puck said. “Listen, I gave you a chance, but if you don’t—”
“I’m scared,” she said, hardly believing she had said it.
Puck grinned.
“Go ahead and laugh, dirtball, and I’ll break your face,” Sabrina said. She took a deep breath. She had a million fears: She was afraid of making bad decisions, getting her sister hurt, not finding her brother, failing. There was only one way to explain all of them. “I’m afraid of myself.”
Puck arched an eyebrow. “Let’s pretend I don’t completely understand.”
“I keep screwing up,” Sabrina said. “In the last few weeks I’ve helped our greatest enemy destroy our house and kidnap our brother, and I raced into this crazy book without a second thought. Now we’re working for this Editor, who might be evil, and his little pink erasers who might decide to eat us.”
Puck rolled his eyes. “I suppose you want a pity party.”
Sabrina’s face flushed with anger. “So I open up to you and you make fun of me for it? You know what you are, Puck? You’re a jerk.”
Puck laughed as if Sabrina had just told him the funniest joke ever, which sent her into an even nastier rage. After all the time she had spent with this filthy boy she suddenly realized that he was exactly the same selfish, arrogant, and weird punk who had tried to push her into a pool not so long ago. How she could have ever considered him a friend, or even have feelings for him, was just more proof that she couldn’t trust her own choices. She realized at that moment that if there was a decision she could be sure about, it was that she would never give this boy her heart. She didn’t care what was supposed to happen in the future. “I’m going to find Daphne,” she snapped, and stormed off, only to have Puck snatch her by the hand and roughly pull her to the ground.
“Are you crazy?” Sabrina said.
“Be quiet,” he whispered, wrapping his hand around her mouth. “There are men coming. Lots of them.”
Sabrina peered through the bushes and saw dozens of figures rushing through the forest. Each one had the body of a different playing card but with a head and arms and legs like a human.
Sabrina gasped. “Card soldiers!” She had encountered a few in the real world. Most worked for Mayor Heart and Sheriff Nottingham. They cared little for the rule of law unless it allowed them to cut someone in half with their swords.
“Where’s Daphne?” Sabrina whispered.
Puck shrugged. “I left her by the brook.”
Sabrina wanted to run to her sister, but all she could do was wait patiently for the strange army to pass.
Once they were gone, she and Puck crept out from behind their hiding spots and rushed to the stream. Daphne was nowhere to be found.
“Do you think they took her?” Sabrina asked. She felt as if she might faint.