Until that moment, the Book Huggers hadn’t paid much attention to anything or anyone in the Rose Main Reading Room besides Conner. The four girls turned to the bridge and gasped when they realized just how out of the ordinary it was.
“I thought that was just a big plasma screen!” Lindy said.
“Nope, it’s a bridge into another dimension,” Conner explained. “And soon, thousands of terrible beings are going to charge out of it and attack our world. So, if you’re done asking questions, cut me down so I can do something to prevent it!”
Wendy hurried up the bookshelf and sawed off the remaining bars around Conner’s body. He took the tool from her and freed Jack, who used his axe to free Bree, Red, and Goldilocks. Once everyone was back on the floor, Conner and Bree went to the bridge between worlds and started brainstorming ways to close it.
“There’s got to be a way we can seal this thing before the Literary Army arrives,” Conner thought aloud.
“I don’t think there’s anything we can seal it with that the Literary Army can’t get through,” Bree said.
Conner angrily kicked the bridge, but his foot just went into the fairy-tale world and he almost slipped.
“I don’t know how we’re going to stop Morina!” he said. “She’s, like, one hundred steps ahead of everyone else!”
“That’s not entirely true,” Goldilocks said. “Morina revealed a lot about her plot to take over the Otherworld, but she never mentioned anything about our recruits at the hospital. I don’t think she knows we have an army of our own!”
“That stupid cow!” Red said. “Morina was probably so fixated on kidnapping Alex she didn’t even notice the people from Conner’s stories!”
“In that case, our odds haven’t really changed,” Jack said. “We knew we’d have to face the witches and the Literary Army, we just didn’t realize we’d be facing them in the Otherworld. I say we send for the others at the hospital and try to track down your sister in the meantime.”
Conner nodded. “Mindy, Cindy, Lindy, and Wendy,” he said. “I need you to go back to the abandoned subway and get as far away from here as possible. Once you’re someplace safe, find a phone and call my mom. Tell her we need backup and we need it fast. She’ll know what to do.”
To Conner’s complete surprise, the Book Huggers saluted him and left the reading room at once—cooperating with him for the first time in history. Conner, Bree, Red, Jack, and Goldilocks followed them out of the room and down the staircase. As the Book Huggers descended toward the library’s lower level, Conner and his friends headed to the entrance hall on the first floor.
As soon as they stepped into the hall, their stomachs dropped at the sight of all the destruction. The doors had been blown open, the front steps were covered in bullets, and the streets were filled with sharp icicles, but luckily, there were no bodies to be found—living or dead. The witches were gone, but not a single Marine was near the library, either. Conner and his friends stepped into the middle of Fifth Avenue and looked up and down the street for a sign of where the battle had moved.
“Look!” Red said. “All the soldiers are up the road by those trees!”
“It looks like they’re trying to get inside Central Park!” Bree said. “But what’s that weird bubble in their way?”
Conner recognized his sister’s magic instantly. “It’s a force field,” he said. “The witches must be inside the park, and Alex has put a shield around it.”
“Good thing the park is closed at night,” Bree said. “Otherwise the witches would have hundreds of hostages.”
Central Park’s strict curfew was a minor relief, but once Conner remembered why he knew the park’s hours so well, he was consumed by a horrifying feeling in the pit of his stomach.
“The park’s not empty!” he said. “The Boy and Girl Scouts of America are having a huge camp-out in the park tonight! The little boy I sat next to on the plane told me all about it!”
“You mean there are children trapped inside the park with witches?” Red asked.
“Yes! And we have to help them!” Conner said.
“How are we going to get into the park if Alex has put a force field around it?” Jack said.
“If we can’t get through it, maybe we can go under it,” Conner said. “Rusty said the Calvin Coolidge Express was going to stop in Central Park—let’s go back to the tunnel and pray we find another hatch beneath it. But we have to hurry—God only knows what the witches could be doing to those kids right now!”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
SOMETHING’S COOKING
Conner and his friends returned to the Calvin Coolidge Express tunnel beneath the New York Public Library. Jack found an old lantern on the unfinished platform, along with some matches, and lit it so they could see where they were going. Bree used a compass app on her phone to be certain which direction was north. The gang ran up the abandoned subway tunnel as fast as they could toward Central Park, hoping and praying they would find a way into it.
Strangely, only when Goldilocks started running did Hero finally settle down and go to sleep. The more tense and bumpy the situation, the more relaxed the infant became. His aunt Red, however, was fussing enough for both of them. The farther they ran through the tunnel, the more tears ran down her face.
“Red, why are you crying?” Bree asked.
“Physical exertion,” Red confessed. “It never agrees with me.”
After over a mile and a half of spotting nothing in the tunnel but bricks and the occasional rat, Conner and his friends finally arrived at another unfinished platform. The words CENTRAL PARK were written in chalk on the wall beside it.
“We’re here!” Conner said. “Does anyone see a hatch to crawl through?”
Jack raised the lantern toward the ceiling and they saw a circular door that opened inward. Conner found a ladder to the side of the platform and positioned it directly below the door. He climbed the ladder and pulled on the door’s handle, but it wouldn’t open.
“The door’s bolted shut!” he said. “We’re gonna need a jackhammer or something powerful to get through this.”
Bree, Jack, Goldilocks, and Red looked around the platform but didn’t find anything except some rope and masking tape. Their chances of getting through the door seemed very slim. Red, defeated, took a seat on the edge of the platform and pouted.
“So, we just ran a mile down a filthy, smelly tunnel for nothing?” she said, and sprayed her Febreze in the air around her. “This rescue mission isn’t going very well, is it?”
The others walked around the platform as they tried to think of alternative ways into the park. Bree, however, stood very still, and her eyes never moved from Red. An idea blossomed in her mind and a smirk grew across her face.
“Red, can I borrow your Febreze?” she asked.
Before Red had the chance to answer, Bree snatched the can of air freshener out of the queen’s hands. She picked up a roll of masking tape, plucked a long strand of twine from the rope, and climbed the ladder. Bree then taped the can of Febreze to the circular door, near the bolts keeping it shut. She broke off the tip of the canister and stuck the twine down the tube.