Of Sorcery and Snow Read online

  To Colby and Clint,

  I would cross frozen wastelands and fight evil sorceresses to save you, too, just so you know

  he wolves might not have attacked if we had left right after school. If we’d headed for Golden Gate Park on time, they might never have sniffed us out.

  Of course, I wanted to hurry for a completely different reason. I squinted up the hill. Half of our classmates had clustered behind my best friend, trying to convince him to borrow their skateboards.

  “We don’t have time for this, Chase! We need to get to EAS!” I told him.

  Even thirty feet away, with a giant homemade ramp on the sidewalk between us, I could see Chase rolling his eyes. “Trust me, we won’t miss the tournament,” he said. He knew how much I wanted to wipe the smug look off a certain sword master’s face. “This’ll just take two minutes.”

  “What’s the deal with that Ever After School?” asked the freckled kid who sat behind us in pre-algebra. “You, Rory, and Lena go every day.”

  You could tell by the way he said it: He thought eighth graders going to day care was the lamest thing since kids started bringing their teachers apples.

  Ever After School wasn’t day care. It was a program for fairy-tale Characters-in-training. I’d been going for about two years, my other best friend Lena for a little longer. Chase lived there with his dad.

  But we obviously couldn’t tell that to a kid who didn’t know magic was real. I hadn’t even broken that news to my parents yet.

  “It’s awesome. That’s all you need to know,” Chase said coldly. “Hey, Rory! Move, or I might land on you.”

  Sighing, I trotted halfway up the steps to our school, Lawton Academy for the Gifted. It wasn’t that foggy today, but the sky was gray, the clouds close.

  The door opened behind me. Lena came out wearing yellow rain boots, a yellow raincoat, and a waterproof backpack over her shoulder. “Ready! I—” Then she stopped. “Oh, hold on. I forgot my umbrella.”

  She rushed back in, and I sighed again.

  All I wanted to do was get to EAS, sign up for a duel with Hansel, and kick the sword master’s butt. I’d been fantasizing about it for months—no, years. During my first sword lesson, Hansel had told us, You have no idea what you might be up against. You would all be dead in two moves if the war hadn’t ended. Especially you girls. When I’d told him that we might grow up to be even better than him someday, he’d just sneered at me.

  Well, today was the day I’d prove it.

  But I couldn’t do that if we missed the whole tournament. EAS only held it every three years, and it would end in an hour and a half. Plus, we had a pretty long walk ahead of us—four city blocks and the whole Golden Gate Park before we even reached the Door Trek door. If I lost my chance just because my friends were too slow . . .

  No. Never mind. I still remembered how much school sucked before Chase and Lena started coming with me.

  Because my mom’s job made us move every three or four months, I’d been the new kid more times than I could count. I’d gotten used to it. Most of the time, it was just lonely.

  Then, one morning last spring, Chase had shown up in my homeroom, and Lena had arrived the week after that. I hadn’t asked them to come. My family had moved twice since then, and both times Mom had dragged me to a new school. Chase and Lena had been there too—even if they had to enchant every teacher, secretary, and computer to get themselves into the school’s system.

  Skateboarding and excessive rain gear were no big deal. I definitely had the best friends in the whole world, magical or otherwise.

  “Rory! You’re not looking!” Chase called.

  I turned back to the top of the hill. “If I watch, can we do a warm-up match when we get to EAS?”

  “Only if I hear a big round of applause.” Chase hopped on the skateboard and rolled down the slope. He didn’t brake or even take a few turns like the other boys had. He just barreled full tilt for the ramp.

  The door squeaked open again, and a second later, Lena clutched my arm. “He’s not even wearing a helmet!”

  The skateboard’s wheels clattered when they hit the ramp. Then Chase sailed off the end, way too high, and he grabbed the front end of the board. Gravity dragged him back down, and he hit the sidewalk smoothly. The boys rushed down the hill after him, cheering.

  “I thought you were going to fly straight into traffic!” Lena told Chase. He just swerved to a stop right in front of us and grinned expectantly.

  But I didn’t have good news. “That jump wasn’t human,” I said, and his face fell.

  Chase was half Fey. He had wings, which were invisible most of the time, and he couldn’t resist using them to show off. It hadn’t taken him long to figure out that he was a natural on a skateboard and that regular kids were a lot easier to impress than Characters and fairies. He always asked me to watch, so I could tell him if he overshot.

  “About eight feet too high, I think,” I added gently, and Chase nodded.

  Lena looked at me funny, not getting it. She didn’t know that Chase’s mom was Fey. I’d tried to convince him to tell Lena a hundred times. She was the smartest person I knew. She was eventually going to figure it out, and then she would probably be furious with us for keeping such a big secret from her. But Chase refused.

  So, except for all the grown-ups, I was the only Character at EAS who knew.

  The boys reached us, and every single kid was begging Chase to teach them how to get that much air. His grin immediately reappeared.

  Lena and I exchanged a look.

  “We’ll meet you at the crosswalk,” she told him, and we skirted around the crowd, down the sidewalk, to the street corner. We knew from experience that Chase liked to bask in our classmates’ admiration for a while, but when he noticed we were leaving without him, Chase broke away and caught up.

  I stared at the crosswalk signal and willed it to change. Underneath it, a college student in a red sweatshirt was chatting on her phone. Her enormous black dog stood higher than her waist, and it didn’t have a leash. It turned toward us, its eyes glinting yellow.

  Chase looked at the bank sign clock over Lena’s shoulder. “Wait. Is it really three twenty-two? Registration for the tournament ended at six fifteen, Eastern Standard Time. I totally forgot.”

  Seven minutes ago. I froze. He’d spent weeks helping me train. He knew how important this was. I couldn’t believe he’d—

  “Rory, he’s messing with you,” Lena said.

  Chase laughed. “April Fool’s!”

  He loved April Fool’s jokes. He’d also tied my shoelaces to my desk in English, stolen Lena’s textbook in math, unplugged all the computers in the computer lab, and cast a glamour over our chemistry experiment, turning the sulfur bright blue. Our teacher had a hard time trying to explain that one.

  I rolled my eyes to hide my relief. “I can’t believe I fell for that.”

  The light changed, and we hurried across the street. The giant black dog sniffed at us as we passed, its ears pricked forward. We turned down the hill, the park very green ahead of us.

  “I can. You’re taking this tournament way too seriously,” Chase said, obviously trying to sneak in one last lesson before we reached EAS. “You’re never going to beat Hansel if you don’t loosen up. Getting all nervous is going to make you stiff. It’ll slow you down a fraction.”

  “No, Rory—you’re going to do great,” Lena said firmly, but she was just saying that to be a good friend. She was more of a magician than a fighter. “You’ll beat him easy.”

  “I hope so,” I said.

  I’d been watching Hansel for two years. I knew his habits. He always fought with a broadsword, and he always finished duels in one of two ways: If he wanted to lull his student
s into overconfidence, he struck high with a one-handed strike, then low, faked a blow to the left—and always left; I think he had an old injury that made him a little slower coming from the right—stepped inside the kid’s guard, and disarmed them. If he just wanted to get the duel over with quickly, Hansel switched to a two-handed grip, locked swords with the student, and kind of leaned on the crossed blades until the kid either buckled or freaked. Then he did the disarm. I’d never seen him end a fight any other way—not even with his advanced classes.

  Chase and I had run through both scenarios until I was sure I could outmaneuver Hansel. All I had to worry about now was if the tricks I planned would work on an opponent bigger, stronger, and heavier than Chase. And more experienced. And not nearly as likely to go easy on me.

  Right. I wasn’t worried at all.

  The street was full of traffic. Some smoke wafted toward us, and Lena waved it away, shooting a glare at the driver who’d rolled down his car window for a cigarette. He didn’t notice. He was too busy turning up the radio.

  “. . . a frightening case of misreporting,” said the announcer. “The incident in Portland was not an April Fool’s joke. Those children are missing. The mass kidnapping is still under investigation, and the authorities have yet to name any suspects.”

  Mass kidnapping sounded serious. So serious that my worrywart mom would probably want to see me as soon as she heard about it. That’s fine, I thought, walking even faster, as long as I have my match with Hansel first.

  We stepped into the park, and the trees closed over our heads. Pine smells replaced exhaust. Tourists passed us on their way to the exit, see-through ponchos over their I LEFT MY HEART IN SAN FRANCISCO T-shirts. No other humans were in sight, but two huge dogs sat beside the trail ahead. The dark gray one with white paws tilted its head at us and whined, but the brown one nipped its ear. Golden Gate Park had some weird strays.

  Suddenly Chase flinched. “Did I just feel a raindrop?” He hated the rain, especially getting his wings wet. He told me once that they itched while they dried.

  As I pulled up my hood, Lena shook her umbrella open, happy to be prepared. “I can share!”

  “We’ll just hurry,” Chase said, practically running down a sidewalk lined with benches. “It’s not bad yet.”

  My eyes landed on a puddle forming on the concrete ahead, the perfect revenge for earlier. I grinned. “Lena, are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

  She spotted it a second later. “Yep!”

  Lena and I ran up to it, bending our knees dramatically. Catching on, Chase sprinted out of the splash zone.

  We didn’t jump.

  “April Fool’s!” I said, and Lena and I cracked up.

  “Hilarious, you guys.” Chase turned onto the next trail.

  “Ooooo, I see,” I teased as we veered toward the bridge. We always crossed Stow Lake and followed the path around the island. Lena was sure gnomes had built and hidden a colony between the waterfall and the gazebo. She was hoping to find one of their hats for an experiment. “You can dish out the April Fool’s jokes, but you can’t take—”

  Three enormous dogs stood on the bridge, blocking our path. I stopped in my tracks, wondering how they’d caught up to us so fast.

  “I’ve seen those dogs before.” I was sure they were the same ones—the black one from the crosswalk, the older brown one, and the little gray with the big, white paws. All three triangular faces turned toward me in unison, pink tongues hanging past long teeth, and the hairs stood up on the back of my neck.

  Lena squeaked and ducked behind a tree so she could unzip her backpack.

  “Crap.” Chase thrust his arm in the front pocket of his carryall—the one Lena had designed specifically for easy access to weapons—and drew out his sword.

  If these two started freaking out, then we had a battle coming. So I started searching my backpack too. Somewhere in there was my sword, but since my carryall was the older model, it didn’t have the convenient sword pocket—my sword could be anywhere.

  “Rory, those aren’t dogs!” Lena whispered. “They’re wolves.”

  I could tell from the way she said it that these weren’t the regular, endangered variety. The Snow Queen sometimes made wolves for her army, transforming criminals to create a soldier with the intelligence of a human and the teeth and claws of an animal.

  Magical creatures sometimes snuck into human areas, like the bridge troll we’d once caught in Boston, but I had the awful feeling that these wolves had been waiting for us.

  “At least there are only three of them—” I started, trying to make myself feel better.

  Behind us, something howled, and a half dozen other wolves joined it, including the ones on the bridge. Forget the hairs on the back of my neck. Every hair on my body stood up.

  “Looks like you’re going to get that warm-up fight after all, Rory,” Chase said.

  But they weren’t attacking. The three furry guys on the bridge hadn’t even moved, except for the younger one, who tilted his head a little. Maybe they were here for some other reason. “So, what do we think? Did one of us just become the new Little Red Riding Hood?” I asked.

  Lena shook her head, kind of apologetically, like she knew how much I hoped that was true. “I think one of us would have to be wearing red for that.”

  “The Snow Queen just sent something new to kill us,” Chase said. “You know, since dragons, ice griffins, and trolls didn’t work.”

  I’d been afraid of that. The Snow Queen liked to send her minions to kill Characters.

  She especially liked trying to kill us. This was the second time her forces had ambushed us out of the blue. In February she’d sent a squadron of trolls after Lena at home. Luckily, Chase and I had been visiting. We’d managed to fight them off and transport Lena’s whole house to EAS’s courtyard.

  “We’ve never been attacked in public before.” I stuck my head half in the carryall, determined to find my sword.

  “First time for everything,” Chase said. “We have company. Four more wolves at two o’clo—Watch out!”

  I looked up. The big black wolf had run forward, snarling seven feet away. Chase raised his sword to defend us, but he didn’t notice the little gray one running at us.

  Neither did Lena, who was busy tucking a baby food jar labeled 3 into her raincoat. When the gray wolf leaped, teeth bared, I shoved Lena down with my right hand and swung out with my left.

  The punch connected with the wolf’s muzzle. It sailed back thirty feet and hit the lake with a splash so big that lake water doused the top of the bridge. Whoops. Definitely overkill.

  I was still getting used to the silver ring that gave me the West Wind’s strength. I hadn’t learned how to totally control all that power yet, but at least I had gotten better at not smashing stuff accidentally.

  The little wolf didn’t surface. His brown pack mate on the bridge howled, probably calling for backup.

  “Thanks.” Lena peeked inside my bag, pulled out my sword, and pressed the ridged hilt into my palm. “Remind me to put a hook in here for your sword belt.”

  “We need to get out of here, before the rest of them catch up,” Chase said, as Lena and I slung our carryalls back on. He sprinted down the path along the lake, not even looking twice at the pile of black fur he’d left behind.

  My stomach squirmed. Chase killed bad guys so easily, and I knew he wanted me to do the same. But I couldn’t imagine killing one the way I slayed dragons and ice griffins. These wolves had been human before the Snow Queen enchanted them. I didn’t want to go home knowing I’d taken a life, without being able to tell my mom why I was upset.

  Something snarled at my elbow. I spun and crashed my hilt between the eyes of a small red-brown wolf. It fell, legs sprawled out in all directions, its breath whistling through its black nostrils. It didn’t get up.

  Knocking a wolf out with one blow felt pretty satisfying though.

  “We need a doorway,” Lena said, huffing just ahead. “We’re
not going to make it to the Door Trek door.”

  She was right. The director of EAS frowned on temporary-transport spells, but for emergencies, Lena had premixed some paint with just enough powdered dragon scale to magic the three of us back to EAS. This definitely counted as an emergency.

  “What about the museum?” Chase said.

  “In this rain?” Lena asked, incredulous.

  “It’ll probably be filled with tourists right now,” I agreed. “We need to look for a shed or a public bathroom or something.”

  Lena read the sign we sprinted past, her hands on her glasses to keep them steady. “Or the Shakespeare Garden!”

  Chase snorted. “You want to go there? What’ll keep the wolves away? The flowers or the poetry?”

  “No, the fence has a gate,” I said. “Where is it?”

  Lena double-checked the sign. “Oh,” she said in a small voice. Then she pointed at the far side of the lake.

  “You mean, back toward the wolves?” Chase said, obviously not a fan of the idea.

  But Lena was right on this. “We need a door frame. It’s better than losing time searching for one.”

  “Time’s not the issue.” Chase said. “Wait, are you still afraid we’ll miss the tournament? I was joking.”

  A wolf howled in the distance, and we all turned to stare in that direction. All we saw were trees.

  “There’s probably more than one,” I said.

  “Lena, can you check?” Chase asked.

  We ran up the path. His way, unfortunately. Since he had the most fighting experience, he was used to taking the lead during attacks.

  Lena fumbled inside her jacket and pulled out a fabric-covered square—her mini magic mirror. This was an improved one. Since the first walkie-talkie M3, she’d added a video recorder, a flashlight, texting capabilities, and most recently, a radar for bad guys.

  “Lena?” Chase said, sounding impatient.

  “It’s a lot harder to read when I’m running! Wait, just a—” Before we rounded the corner, Lena gasped and threw out both arms. Chase and I skidded to a stop. Four wolves stood shoulder to shoulder across the trail, growling. White teeth gleamed in their black gums, gray fur bristling around their necks. The second pack had outrun us.