“Snow,” Fathom called, and I opened my eyes.
I was lying flat on my back in the snow.
“Hey, you just fainted or something?”
“I’m okay,” I said. But I wondered if Bale was.
When we got back to the Claret, Margot was waiting for us.
“What is it?” I demanded. Having seen Bale again, my patience with her had become threadbare. I was mad at myself for not getting to Bale yet. I was mad at myself for how close I had gotten to Jagger.
She ushered us inside. She wanted us to look at the plans for the heist again.
“You look pale, Your Highness,” she assessed.
I pushed past her into the Claret without answering.
That night, I fell into a deep sleep. If I didn’t know any better, I would have thought I had drunk one of Margot’s sleeping potions.
Somehow I was in Jagger’s room. It looked like mine, only his bedding was a dark navy ash. And along one wall was his personal stash of magic bottles.
“You know, when I imagined you in my bedroom, it wasn’t exactly like this,” Jagger quipped, suddenly beside me.
I whipped around to face him. “How could you?” I asked.
“Look, whatever I did, I am sorry,” he said lightly. “Robber Rules, by the way. You should not be here unless I invited you. But let’s consider you invited.”
He moved toward me flirtatiously.
My breath went shallow. And my heart was in my ears.
“This doesn’t feel like a dream. You seem so real,” I said with wonder.
“That’s partly true,” Jagger said smugly. “You are dreaming, and I am in your dream. I took this.”
Jagger held up a shiny silver bottle and continued, “This magic lets me walk inside your dreams.”
I had wanted to kiss him. And I had cared enough not to. And now this. A betrayal. I had not drunk a potion. He had.
“You were worried about kissing me. We can do anything you want here. No consequences.”
He put his hand around my waist and pulled me to him. I felt myself melt the tiniest bit, but I could not let go of the questions as they took hold.
“You did this back in New York, didn’t you? You inserted yourself in my dreams. You manipulated them. You manipulated me to make me come here, didn’t you?”
“Do you really want to waste the time we have doing this, when we could be not talking?” he asked, leaning in.
“You were right when you said that you didn’t understand me. You are such a liar.”
“‘We breathe out the lies; we stutter the truth …’ An old Robber proverb,” he said, smiling wider. “It means that it’s easier to lie than not to.”
“For you.”
“For most people. They lie to make others feel better. Whatever it is, we lie.”
“I don’t.” I paused and then added, “At least I didn’t before I came here.”
“It’s easy to be good in a bubble, Princess. You were in the Whittaker bubble, but our bubble burst the day you were born.”
I felt a flutter somewhere inside me, like I’d swallowed a gazillion butterflies. I wanted to be immune to Jagger. But wanting did not make it so.
I felt a drop of cold water on one of my arms. I looked up with dread. The ceiling of Jagger’s room was covered in ice. The ice was racing across the surface, dripping down in long, deadly icicles. And it was heading toward Jagger.
I walked out of the room onto his balcony. Was there anyone I could trust? Was there anyplace I could actually be safe? I had no idea how Jagger truly felt. If he was on my side or if he would ultimately betray me. He had said as much when I first arrived here. So why was this such a surprise? Why did I care? And why did I want to kiss him, knowing all that?
He followed me out to the balcony.
“I’m sorry for invading your dreams.”
I touched the banister. It was vibrating along with my pulse.
“You should go,” I suggested. “We should talk when you’re not in my dreams.”
And when I don’t want to freeze you to death, I thought.
“You know what this means? It’s exactly like Margot said. It’s your emotions that fuel your magic. When you first got here, you were so far past caring. You were so hurt by everything that had happened and everything that you’d learned. But now you’ve started to care again. You care about me, Princess. Otherwise you wouldn’t be angry enough to hurt me.”
“Get out,” I said quietly. I knew he was right, and I also knew that if he didn’t leave, I would tear the whole room, maybe the whole castle, apart.
“I will do as you ask. But not for the reason you think,” Jagger replied.
“You gave me the nightmares—and then you put yourself in my dreams so you could save me.”
He shook his head. “No, the nightmares were already there. I just made it so you could see them and so that you could save yourself.”
“So all this is for me … right?”
“You were in no way, shape, or form prepared for what is to come—for being in this land. I was trying to help.”
“I don’t believe you anymore. You lured me here from my world so you and Margot could get the mirror.”
“It’s what we do,” Jagger said unapologetically. “You were the biggest get of all.”
“How did you know I would go along with it? How did you know I wouldn’t just go more crazy?”
“You were never crazy. Most people listen to the man of their dreams,” he said.
“Don’t do that,” I warned. He pushed and teased every minute.
I had tried singing and yoga and counting and breathing, but the thing that made me most calm was Bale. He was brave enough to walk through the tornado that was my anger and take my hand. His touch was enough to return all my nerve endings to their normal positions. And now he was gone.
Bale and I were both storms. Maybe that was why he could always reach me. Maybe that was why we were each other’s calm in the center of what we were. But that changed with a kiss, and I could not figure out what to do about our reverse fairy tale. What if Jagger held the key? What if Jagger had started all this and not me?
“Please tell me it wasn’t me that did that to Bale. Please say it was you.”
I felt a little hope push in beside my anger. I was searching for the one thing that might make what Jagger did a little bit less horrible.
He shook his head. “I didn’t take him, and neither did the Robbers.”
“What about Bale being sick, being crazy? Tell me that you did that to make me not want him anymore.”
“I had nothing to do with his going crazy. But I still don’t think you did, either. Kisses don’t do that on either side of the Tree. I’ve never heard of anything or anyone having that effect.”
I thought about my kiss with Kai and my relief when nothing happened to him afterward. And a tiny part of me wondered what would happen if I did kiss Jagger, even though every brain cell told me not to.
“But I’m not like anyone else.”
“No, you’re not.”
There was too much affection, too much like in the way he said it. I didn’t know if it was true or another lie.
“Go. Now,” I ordered, stepping back into his room.
Jagger’s face fell.
“If you ever cared for me at all … Leave. Now!” I repeated.
By the time he cleared the door, the icy balcony cracked free and began to fall.
When I woke in my own bed, the sheets were as cold as ice. I sat up and a single icy teardrop fell from one of my eyes. A memory of the dream came flooding back.
“Regardless of what you think of me, I will keep my word,” Jagger had said. “I will help you get what you want. You will have your Bale, and you can return to your land. And you will never have to see me again. I promise.”
“Robber Rules?”
“No, I promise on you and me.”
“There is no you and me,” I had countered.
J
agger had smiled a sad smile. “Look at you. We made you a Robber yet.”
His words echoed in my head. We breathe out the lies; we stutter the truth.
33
I couldn’t sleep. My head was full of Jagger. And I couldn’t bear the idea of his being in another dream of mine. It was hard enough to resist him in real life. I walked the halls of the Claret, impatient for the Duchess’s Ball, to rescue Bale, and to go home.
Through the windows, I saw the ever-changing colors of the trees. Tonight the bark was a creepy yellow against the dim night sky. The North Lights were even more faded than usual and emanated a hazy soft focus of washed-out watercolor, rather than the electric luminescence of my first evening in Algid. Time was almost up.
Apparently I wasn’t alone in not being able to sleep. There was a light on in Fathom’s lab. I knocked and went inside.
Howl and Fathom were on opposite sides of one of the slabs. They were bent over something. When they looked up, their faces burnished with more color than their magical blush alone. What had I interrupted?
“Hey, can I hang out here for a bit?” I plowed on, wondering if this was a romantic moment I’d marched in on or something else.
“We shouldn’t let her stay,” Howl said, glancing nervously down at the table. There was only a stack of empty slides in front of them. I didn’t see what all the fuss was about.
“Queen Margot won’t like it?” I asked.
“No, I just can’t have anyone fainting while I work.”
“I’m not a fainter,” I declared.
“Let’s see if you can say that after,” Howl said, disappearing in a blink.
“Don’t mind her,” Fathom said, turning around to reveal a supersharp scalpel that caught the light.
“What’s the knife for?” I asked, trying to keep trepidation out of my voice. Despite all my bravado, I worried I might actually faint.
“You have already graduated from petty thievery. Tonight you get upgraded to kidnapping.”
“What?”
“We have to kidnap the people that we will replace at the ball.”
“And what do we plan on doing with them?”
“I’m going to cut their faces off.”
After a beat, she laughed.
Fathom motioned behind her, and a light turned on. Lying on the slabs at the back of the room were bodies covered by thin white sheets. I noticeably twitched when the sheets moved. The people she had already captured were still alive!
“Don’t worry. They’re just sleeping. Usually we use the dead and take their faces. But this is an invitation-only ball. So we need specific faces.”
“Oh,” I said lamely, wishing that I had stayed in bed and dealt with dreams of Jagger rather than come here. It would have been a lot less scary.
Howl returned with a dramatic poof of smoke and an entire carriage. Inside were two people dressed in all their finery. The woman was leaning against the windows. The man was desperately trying to lock the doors.
“You couldn’t have left the carriage outside the lab, Howl?” Fathom complained.
Howl shrugged, whispered something I didn’t understand, and threw open the door to the carriage.
“May I present Lord Rafe Mach and his wife, the Countess Darby Mach.”
The man stomped out of the carriage, his eyes scanning the room for a way out and sizing us up. The Countess arched her neck upward and held her skirt as she daintily stepped into the lab, feigning grace in the middle of everything.
Howl pointed to two chairs, and they obediently sat down. With a wave of her arm, she and the carriage were gone.
“Don’t worry,” Fathom reassured me. “They won’t remember a thing.”
“Will it hurt?” I asked.
The woman looked up at me, suddenly frightened.
“Like a Snow Beast,” Fathom deadpanned before breaking into a smile. “But I’m not a monster,” she said defensively, and offered the couple two vials filled with a light-green liquid. “Drink this.”
They didn’t take them.
“Your choice, but if I were you I’d rather not feel what I’m going to do next.”
The couple exchanged a look before the man grabbed one of the vials and gulped down the liquid without even a hint of hesitation.
Fathom looked at the Countess almost sympathetically. “Once I had a guy steal the sleeping potion from his girlfriend. It wasn’t pretty.”
The Countess spat at Fathom before downing the potion.
Fathom shrugged, wiping away the saliva. “And they say Robbers have no manners…”
Within seconds the couple fell into a deep dead-to-the-world sleep, slouching against each other.
“What happens next?” I asked.
“Help me get them up on the tables. I have got to remember to do that first next time,” Fathom said, irritated.
Together, we lifted the Lord, who was remarkably heavy.
“I hope you like the Countess. Because her face will be yours. Once you put on the face, the spell lasts until midnight. You and Jagger will take their places at the ball. You’ll sneak upstairs, and your magic should lead you to the mirror.”
“Why me? Why not one of you? You have so much more experience with heists. What if I freeze the ballroom or something?” I worried aloud.
“All the better for us.” She laughed.
“I’m serious.”
“Always so serious, Princess. You have a special relationship with the mirror. When you get to the mirror, it will only reveal itself to you. In pieces, the mirror can only reflect back a certain amount of power. Legend has it that if the pieces are united, then the power is a million fold. The prophecy says that whoever reunites the mirror controls Algid’s destiny. We just want to control our own.”
“Don’t you already do that? Jagger suggested that you want to get back at the King.”
“There’s that. But I like to think beyond that. A different life. A better life. One in which we never would have to steal again.”
“But will there be enough magic for me to get past the Snow King and find Bale?” I said out loud, reminding her and myself of Queen Margot’s promise.
“I don’t know how much power the single piece will give you, but we will make sure you are reunited with Bale.”
Fathom got to work. I helped her lift the Countess onto one of the tables, and I looked at the face that I would be wearing.
Fathom approached the woman, scalpel in hand. She made a tiny incision on the lady’s cheek, removing a bit of skin that she placed on a piece of glass. Effortlessly she slid the glass under an odd contraption that looked like a giant microscope. A beam of light focused down onto the glass.
The piece of skin began to grow.
“This light is powered by a mirror,” Fathom explained.
The bit of skin soon became the size of a washcloth and then facial features began to stretch over invisible cartilage. When the process was complete, a perfect mask of the Countess’s face stared up at us, unblinking.
“That’s incredible!” It was creepy and miraculous at once. All the years, all the needles and the blood at Whittaker had left me not squeamish. I had worn a face of another before, but I had not seen it being made.
“How does it go on?” I wondered out loud.
“Magic,” Fathom said simply. “This lucky couple will sleep it off, and you have until midnight tomorrow until the face returns to its proper owner.”
“And what happens if I don’t get back in time?”
“The mask disappears at midnight and turns to dust. But don’t you worry. You’ll make it,” Fathom said.
I couldn’t help but think about Cinderella, and if Fathom was my Fairy Godmother, I had no idea what to expect next.
34
There was a formal dining room in the Claret, complete with mismatched chairs, a ginormous stone tablet that served as a tabletop, and candelabras that lit themselves the second somebody sat down.
The Robber girls didn’t both
er with formalities, maybe because of the upcoming heist or because they never stood on ceremony for anything other than magical rituals. There was no dinner bell or announcement. The girls just popped in to eat whenever they wanted.
Howl and I found ourselves at the table at the same time the next day. She informed me that tonight’s meal had come from one of the local restaurants in town. Even the Robbers’ food was borrowed.
I took a bite of purple pasta. It melted in my mouth with a delicate, sweet, almost chocolaty taste. The minty ale concoction I chased it down with came from the speakeasy we’d robbed. I shoveled it all down, eager to get back to work and away from Howl.
As if on cue, Howl leaned back in her chair and asked, “How is she? Fathom won’t ask you. But I will.”
“Who?”
“Anthicate.”
“Magpie?”
I had not talked about her, and no one, not even Fathom, had asked me about her. I had spent the better part of two years at Whittaker with Magpie. Aside from whatever information Jagger had gathered about her during his visits, I was the sole possessor of the few details about what had happened to their runaway Robber.
“Magpie and I weren’t exactly friends,” I admitted.
Howl nodded as if that were no surprise to her. “She broke Fathom’s heart. She breaks everyone’s hearts.”
“So you’re not sad that I’m here and she’s not,” I said, knowing I had taken Magpie’s place in the Claret.
Howl smiled.
“I wouldn’t trade her for a million snow princesses. But she has her path and we have ours.”
I sensed Howl wanted their paths to cross again. But what she did next took me by surprise.
Howl produced a vial on a chain around her neck from her ample bosom and downed it. When she caught my gaze, she rooted around in her pocket for another vial and offered it to me.
“What does it do?” I asked, wondering if the liquid somehow took the edge off missing Magpie.
“Whatever you want it to do,” she answered.