How Zoe Made Her Dreams (Mostly) Come Tr - By Sarah Strohmeyer Page 0,38
the way, she thinks Marcus is you.” I showed him the letter. “And he’s being fired for it.”
Dash set his jaw and cursed. “That sucks. He didn’t do anything wrong.”
“Aside from showing up late every day for work, true. Also, I think even Lulu refuses to let him ride her. I think she’s insulted that he keeps falling off.”
I counted the seconds in my head. How long until the trolls came to start up the elevator? How long until the Queen observed that the camera had been grayed out by a Fruit of the Loom?
“There’s something else,” I added. “Jake the Hansel caught me after you left. And this morning I saw him slip a sealed envelope into the Box of Whine. I’m sure it details everything I said to you.”
“We need to get that, then.”
Well, duh. “We also need to get this elevator moving and the T-shirt back on your body. The Queen’s probably already radioed the trolls to investigate.”
“Don’t worry. One step ahead of you.” He punched the Restart button, and the elevator began to move. But he made no effort to get his shirt.
“This might seem kind of forward,” he said, coming closer, “but I think it’s the only way to throw them off.” Then he leaned down, paused for a second, and brought his lips to mine.
What? My eyelids flew wide open in shock.
He stepped back and grinned. “Okay?”
More than okay. Actually really nice. I smiled as the elevator doors flew open to two awaiting trolls. Dash swept his lips over mine again, only kissing me deeper. I did my part by throwing my arms around his bare neck. In the process I accidentally took a big whiff of that princely cologne.
Suddenly I became fixated on the softness of his mouth, the feel of his wet hair, how even the sound of us kissing sent me into a tailspin.
“Excuse us,” one of the trolls said gruffly. “You two coming out, or you gonna stay in there all day?”
Dash released me from his clutches, and I gasped for breath, my body weak and wobbly.
“My apologies, gentlemen,” he said, grabbing his shirt and pulling me through the trolls. “You know how young love is.”
He said young love!
The trolls snickered like they knew. Oh, boy, did they know. I had to bite back giggles of my own as the cologne’s effects gradually wore off and I became, again, fully functioning.
“Sorry about that,” Dash said, once we’d turned the corner to the hallway that led to the Box of Whine outside Personnel. “There didn’t seem like any other option.”
“It was fine.” I blinked away the fuzzy filter that made everything glow. “I, um, enjoyed your logic.”
“You’re all right, Kiefer. Now let’s go find the Hansel’s letter.”
The Box of Whine was a large, wooden box nailed to the wall outside Personnel. Since it was Sunday, Personnel was closed and the hallway vacant. We checked behind us. Dash threw his shirt over the camera again, and I opened the box with my master key. It was empty.
Dash peered in. “That’s not good.”
“Not good at all.” I closed the lid and locked it, trying to think what could have happened. “The Hansel must have given her a heads-up. She never gets her complaints this early.”
“Can’t you get the complaints before she does?”
“I could. . . . Unfortunately I was supposed to have delivered these letters to Marcus and Adele already.”
“Adele too?”
I drew a finger across my throat. “It might read Fairyland on the gates, but there’s no promise of happily ever after in this place. You know what the Queen told me the other day? That already half of the interns had disqualified themselves for one reason or another from the Dream and Do grant.”
Dash leaned against the wall and ran a hand through his damp hair. “I suppose she didn’t say who.”
“Nope. Anyway, I’ve got to deliver these summonses before the Queen has my head, and if you think that’s a metaphor, you don’t know my boss.”
“Anything I can do?” he asked as I headed toward Wardrobe.
“Oh, sure. Just find the troll with the complaints, knock him to the ground, get the Hansel letter, and give it to me by the end of the day. All without getting caught. No problem, right?”
“No problem.”
I’d meant it as a joke, of course. But apparently Dash was the type to take things literally.
Fifteen
After Dash left I went to Wardrobe to deliver my summons to Marcus, quite possibly the suckiest five minutes of my life.