“I’d run away if you were my sister too,” Jocelyn mumbles.
“I have to go back to Mother and Father,” Maxine tells us. “Come join us at lunch when you’ve found Anna.” We hug again and Maxine trudges off.
“Why did Anna disappear?” Kayla asks.
“We had an argument,” I say quietly. “It sounded a lot like the one we just had. I wish I could wave a wand and make this week go away.” Wands. If I were a girl who wanted one, the wand room would be the first place I’d go. “I think I know where she is.”
“Well, don’t leave us here.” Kayla pushes the empty crumb cake box under the bench. “Maybe we can help talk to her.”
“I’m in too.” Jocelyn smirks. “I want to watch you get yelled at again.”
I give her a look, but I don’t want to get on Kayla’s bad side again. “Fine.”
The three of us step inside the castle and find the hallways shifting fast. I wonder if their magic is malfunctioning. “I’ll never find the wand room with the halls acting like this.”
Jocelyn removes a small pouch from her skirt pocket. She pours purple sand into her hand, mumbles words I can’t understand, and then blows the sand into the air. Within seconds, the sand is stretching out kernel by kernel down the hall, making a left near a giant sea-serpent water fountain. “This way,” she says triumphantly.
I follow behind her, wondering how Jocelyn’s magic slips under Miri’s radar. Because she’s learned it from Harlow, I realize. The former professor always had a free pass in her own school. We reach the wand room and find it locked.
“We should have known they wouldn’t let students have wands today,” Kayla says. “Where to next?”
I frown. “I don’t know. If you were visiting FTRS, where would you go?”
“The Pegasi stables,” says Jocelyn, blowing more sand into the air. But Anna is not there. The fencing demonstration has cleared out too, and there is still no sign of her.
“Maybe she left,” Kayla says.
I shake my head as a family with a map walks by us talking about the Arabian Nights’ Flying Carpet Tutorial. I wanted Felix to see that. “You have to be signed out.”
“Well, we can’t keep roaming the halls!” Jocelyn’s voice makes a pixie family walking by the fireplace we’re standing in front of jump. “Miri is going to catch up with us eventually and I, for one, don’t want any more time in detention for helping you.”
“I was fine finding my sister on my own,” I snipe.
“Um, guys?” says Kayla.
“Yeah, it looked like it,” Jocelyn retorts.
“You’re the one who asked to come along!”
“Guys! Look!” Kayla shouts over our bickering.
The fireplace has rotated to reveal a hallway behind it.
CHAPTER 13
Past the Point of No Return
The hallway smells like it hasn’t been opened in years. I cringe at the sight of all the moss and water dripping down the bricks, but I can’t help but be curious. Flora built this castle. There must be a reason there is a secret door here. A door that’s starting to close. Jocelyn and I both jump into the unknown, having the same reaction to pull Kayla through with us. Then the door closes and we’re enveloped in darkness. Jocelyn quickly produces an orb of light. Her dark eyes peer back at me.
“Thanks a lot. Now we’re stuck here!”
“You went through first!”
“Only because I knew you were going to if I didn’t.”
“Guys?” Kayla grips my arm. I can hear her wings fluttering. “Someone’s talking.”
We grow quiet to listen. I strain to hear anything other than dripping water and what I think is a squeaky mouse. Then I hear faint voices speaking quickly.
Jocelyn’s and my eyes find each other, and I know we’re thinking the same thing.
Alva.
Kayla begins backing away, her wings fluttering at warp speed, but I grab her, realizing something.
“It’s okay. Alva wouldn’t want to stay hidden,” I say.
“But Rumpelstiltskin might,” Jocelyn tosses out, and we both look at her. “So would that mole you’re desperate to find.”
The three of us say nothing, but we move onward. As the path begins to turn down and brighten, Jocelyn is forced to extinguish her orb. The voices grow closer, and I can finally make out what they’re saying. Gillian. Kayla grabs my arm.
“Gillian can’t know what is going on,” I hear a familiar voice say and stop. Flora.
“Use her as bait,” comes a second voice eagerly. “Gillian is the one she wants. If you hand her over to Alva, she might leave FTRS out of this hostile kingdom takeover.”