went on tiptoe, and shoved a letter into the box. Then, tidying his blond pageboy wig and straightening his lederhosen, he marched swiftly away from the camera.
That fink!
There was a knock at the door, and Evelyn bustled in with another letter. The Queen read it, sighed, and said to Andy, “Call Norbert Atkinson, our lawyer. I want to make sure he reviews this before I have Zoe deliver it to Marcus Blaisdel informing him of violating the Fairyland rules.”
I felt the blood drain from my face. If Marcus was in trouble for bringing a girl to his room, then my cousin was in trouble, too.
“Why do we need to call in a lawyer when that’s only a summons for Marcus to come to your office?” Andy asked.
The Queen closed her eyes and flared her nostrils. Andy should have learned, as I had, that she did not appreciate truculence. “Please. Just do as I say and . . . don’t . . . argue!”
Without another word, Andy took the letter, opened the door, and left so I was alone with the Queen in one of her most foul moods. She pinched the bridge of her nose and whispered, “Sustenance.”
I quickly poured a cup of tea and handed it to her. After she took a sip, she replaced it in the saucer and said, “Zoe, I am cursed by the company of dunderheads.”
Join the club. “Yes, ma’am.” I fixed her a nonfat yogurt and raspberries, chiding myself for not having brought more honey.
“I don’t know what I’d do if it weren’t for you.”
A compliment? That was unexpected. And worrisome. Handing her the delicate china dish, the berries arranged in a uniform pattern of threes as she preferred, I said, “Ma’am?”
The Queen smiled thinly. “You are the only one who executes my orders as I direct with no useless backtalk.” She sliced a raspberry in half and nibbled half of that. “You keep Tinker Bell on schedule with regular vigorous exercise.” She gave her dog, snoozing on her satin pillow, a gentle pet. “The other day you prevented Sleepy from drinking that awful Five-Hour Energy. You noticed that birds were making a nest in Rapunzel’s braid and that the porridge in the Bears’ cottage had grown moldy, thereby sparing Goldilocks from all sorts of untold ills. And then, of course, you came to my aid last night.”
Okay, this was way too much praise. “Thank you,” I said. “I think.”
“Which is why I’m all the more disappointed that, being a close acquaintance of this scoundrel, you did not divulge the nefarious tendencies of one Marcus Blaisdel.” She pushed aside her yogurt and sighed. “He may seem like the village idiot, but I’ll have to let him go, Zoe. I have no choice. Such behavior as that which our security cameras detected last night cannot be tolerated.”
I swallowed. Jess! How had she allowed herself to be caught going in and out of the boys’ dorm when she knew that, for safety reasons, a security camera was aimed at the front door?
The only thing I could think to say was, “Ma’am. I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“You know,” she said, resting her pointed chin on her thin, white hand. “I believe you. By the way, never end a sentence with a preposition such as about, Zoe. It is so very pedestrian.”
How could she criticize my grammar at a time like this? What was going on?
“All clear!” Andy reappeared, waving the letter. “Norbert says it’s fine. However, he asks that you not speak to Marcus in person without making sure you have legal counsel present.” He laid the letter on the desk. I read it upside down:
SUMMONS TO ANSWER ALLEGED VIOLATION OF FAIRYLAND KINGDOM RULE #22:
Venturing into the Forbidden Zone at any hour and for any reason without written permission from Management will be considered to be an Act Against the Kingdom punishable by automatic exile from Fairyland Kingdom and automatic disqualification from the Dream & Do grant.
I gasped. “Marcus is the traitor?”
This didn’t make sense. The prince had caught Tinker Bell and saved me by using a branch to get me out of the quicksand. And then there was his analysis of costs and profits as reasons why Fairyland let much of the fence to the Forbidden Zone decay in disrepair.
Marcus wasn’t smart enough to be the traitor.
Unless he’d been holding out on us. Maybe that laid-back surfer persona he had going was a ruse. No, something was off.
The Queen whipped out a pen