Wendy started sawing the bars around Conner’s legs, but Mindy held up a hand to stop her.
“As much as it pains me to see you like this, I’m afraid we can’t help you just yet,” Mindy said. “You see, we’ve had questions about you and your sister for a long time now—questions only you can answer. So if you want us to scratch your back, you’ve got to scratch ours first.”
“Are you crazy?” Conner snapped. “I just said it’s an emergency! People are going to get hurt unless you help me down!”
“PEOPLE HAVE ALREADY BEEN HURT!” Mindy yelled, and slammed her hands on the nearest table. “Do you know what it’s like to have your parents, peers, and school administrators treat you like a lunatic? It’s HURTFUL! Do you know what it’s like to be the laughingstock of conspiracy blogs and chat rooms? It’s also HURTFUL! Do you know what it’s like to get blocked on social media personally by the mayor, the governor, state representatives, and the Pentagon? It’s really HURTFUL! Despite our overwhelming catalog of evidence, our valid suspicions and valiant quest for the truth have left us humiliated, stigmatized, and institutionalized at every turn—but still the Book Huggers persist! Now, if you ever want your feet to touch the ground, you’re going to give us the information we desire and deserve! You’ve kept the truth from us for four years, Conner Bailey, but your web of deception ends today!”
Despite their uncomfortable restraints, everyone in the Rose Main Reading Room froze and stared at the Book Huggers in silence. Even Hero was taken aback by the teenagers’ emotional display.
“Okay, fine,” Conner said. “I’ll tell you everything you want to know as long as you help me down afterward.”
The Book Huggers were so anxious to finally get answers, they practically vibrated. They shined a reading lamp directly in Conner’s face and their interrogation began.
“I’m going to ask you a series of questions and I want you to respond with either a yes or a no,” Mindy instructed as she paced below him.
“Wouldn’t it be faster if I just told you every- thing—”
“I’ll ask the questions!” Mindy roared. “In the sixth grade, you and your sister missed school for two weeks. According to a note we found in the nurse’s office, which a source confirmed was written in your mother’s handwriting, you and Alex were both absent due to chicken pox. But you weren’t really sick with chicken pox, were you?”
“No,” Conner said with a sigh.
“Precisely what I predicted,” Cindy said.
“In the seventh grade, your sister allegedly moved to Vermont to attend a school for advanced learners,” Mindy said. “Shortly before her departure, we witnessed Alex talking to a book in the school library and whispering covert messages like ‘Take me back’ and ‘I don’t want to be here anymore.’ The transferral paperwork we obtained indicated she was going to live with her grandmother, but after a thorough scan through public documents, we discovered your grandmother didn’t own any property in Vermont. So, Alex never moved to Vermont, did she?”
“No,” Conner replied with a massive eye roll.
“I knew that was a lie!” Lindy said with a fist pump.
“In the eighth grade, you and Bree abandoned our school trip on the way home from Germany,” Mindy said. “Bree has claimed several different motives for committing the stunt, ranging from underground concerts to food festivals. But you didn’t run off for music or cuisine, did you?”
“No,” Conner said.
Wendy used the handsaw like a guitar, indicating she had known all along.
“The following year you never returned to school,” Mindy said. “Mrs. Peters informed us that you had transferred to Vermont to live with your grandmother and sister, but we all know you didn’t move to Vermont, either, right?”
“No,” Conner said, and began to lose his patience. “Will you please get to the point? You’re wasting time!”
“One more question,” Mindy said. “Recently, the girls and I were innocently walking by your house on Sycamore Drive when we saw a group of strange people in the window. We were afraid your house was being robbed, so we took a closer look—and that’s when we saw pirates and a massive ship appear out of a beam of light connected to your binder! We were told they were just actors and set pieces, but they weren’t actors and set pieces, were they?”
“No!” Conner snapped. “You guys were spying on my house? That’s illegal!”
“This leads us to believe that everything from your strange school absences, to your phony transfers, to your European excursion, and even the evacuation happening right now in New York City, are all related!” Mindy declared. “Admit it! You and your sister have been involved in an interdimensional conspiracy for years, and the Book Huggers have been right to question you every step of the way!”
“YES!” Conner shouted. “YOU’VE BEEN RIGHT ABOUT EVERYTHING! FOR THE LAST FOUR YEARS MY SISTER AND I HAVE BEEN TRAVELING BACK AND FORTH BETWEEN THE FAIRY-TALE WORLD, THE WORLDS OF CLASSIC LITERATURE, AND THE WORLDS OF MY CREATIVE WRITING! THAT IS THE TRUTH—ARE YOU PSYCHOPATHS HAPPY NOW?”
Judging by the sheer bliss surfacing in their faces, the Book Huggers were more than happy. They jumped for joy, glad tears filled their eyes, and Wendy climbed down to join the girls in a massive group hug. After years of mistreatment, disrespect, and false diagnoses, the Book Huggers’ entire existence had finally been validated.
When their embrace was over, Lindy removed a folded piece of paper from her pocket and read a chart printed on it.
“All right, time to see who won the Bailey Twins Disappearance Pool,” she said.
“What is the Bailey Twins Disappearance Pool?” Conner asked.
“We made bets in the sixth grade about where you and Alex were sneaking off to,” Mindy explained.
“I guessed alien abduction, tunnel to China, and wizards,” Lindy read from the chart. “Mindy had Illuminati, Bigfoot’s cave, and vampires. Cindy predicted an international kidnapping ring, lost continent of Lemuria, and the mines of mole people. Wendy had government espionage facility, Swedish cover band, and—well, what do you know—worlds of fiction! Wendy wins!”
Mindy, Lindy, and Cindy each handed Wendy twenty bucks.
“I was really hoping for the lost continent of Lemuria, but I’m not mad at worlds of fiction,” Cindy said.
“How do you get to the worlds of fiction, anyway?” Lindy asked.
“There’s lots of different methods,” Conner said. “Like that enormous hole in the back of the room leading to a forest.”
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.
“Does anyone have a lighter?” she asked.
Jack handed her the matches he’d found on the previous platform. Bree lit a match and set the loose end of the twine on fire. Conner climbed halfway up the ladder to take a closer look at whatever contraption she was making.
“Bree, what are you doing?” he asked.
“Making a bomb,” Bree said casually. “We might want to take cover—quickly!”
Jack, Goldilocks, and Red jumped off the platform and ducked into the tunnel. Bree and Conner hurried down the ladder and joined the others. The flame flickered up the twine and into the can of Febreze and BAM! The canister exploded and the circular door fell from the ceiling.
“I’ve saved the day!” Red cheered, and applauded herself.
Jack and Goldilocks rolled their eyes and gave Bree a congratulatory pat on the back. Conner just stared at her with his mouth hanging open.
“What?” Bree asked.
“You just built a bomb!” Conner said in shock.
“And?”
“I just realized what a horrible influence you are,” he said.
Bree shrugged. “At least it smells better down here.”
The gang returned to the platform and stared up at the fresh hole in the ceiling. The explosion appeared to have blown through a layer of dirt and grass above the door. Conner climbed the ladder and crawled through the hole, and his friends followed close behind him.
Had Conner not known Central Park was above them he would have thought they were entering a forest in the fairy-tale world. He emerged from the tunnel at the bottom of a grassy hill sprinkled with large boulders. New York City’s skyscrapers were barely visible behind all the trees surrounding the area. Conner looked up and saw Alex’s magic shield stretching across the night sky like a jiggling, sparkling dome.
For whatever reason, Conner’s friends were taking their time climbing up from the tunnel. It took Bree, Jack, and Goldilocks a couple of minutes each to surface into the park, and almost five minutes passed before Red joined them aboveground. Conner thought this was a little peculiar, given the urgency of the situation.
“About time, Red,” he said.
“What are you talking about?” Red asked. “I was right behind you.”
“It doesn’t matter,” he said. “Let’s search
the park and find where the witches went. They could be anywhere or disguised as anything, so everyone keep a sharp eye out. Speak up if you see something even remotely suspicious.”
His friends nodded, and they formed a tight circle, just as they had when searching the library. They found a cement path beside the grassy hill and cautiously followed it deeper into the park. Central Park was enormous, and each time they passed a new directory they were shocked by how little ground they had covered since the previous one. Every now and then they would step through a clearing and see the city’s skyline peeking above the trees, but other than the twinkling buildings, they found nothing out of the ordinary. There wasn’t a witch or a Scout in sight.
Conner found a discarded map on the ground and used it to navigate the labyrinth of pathways snaking through the park. They agreed that the witches had most likely retreated to the heart of the park after battling the Marines, so Conner guided his friends down a trail leading to the park’s center. The closer they got to the park’s core, the more densely the air filled with smoke and a rich aroma.
“Does anyone else smell that?” Jack asked.
“Yes,” Goldilocks said. “It smells like gingerbread—fresh gingerbread.”
“The witches are probably building gingerbread houses to lure the Boy and Girl Scouts of America,” Bree said.
“If so, that is such a witch cliché,” Red said.
“Not all witches are cannibals, though,” Conner said. “Whatever they’re cooking, I don’t think it’s houses.”
The group eventually came to a large fountain on the edge of a small lake. The fountain had a wide, circular pool of shallow water and an angel statue perched at the top. It faced an impressive terrace that was flanked by two enormous staircases. Underneath the terrace was a spacious walkway that was lined with arches and pillars. The area looked like a piece of Rome.
“What’s this place?” Jack asked.
“The Bethesda Fountain and Terrace,” Conner read from the map.
“It’s pretty iconic,” Bree added. “They use it in a lot of movies and television shows.”