they owned all of us, even the Queen.
“Guten Tag. Auf Wiedersehen.” She hung up, and Andy, who’d been cowering in the corner, rushed to her side. “What did they say?”
“That by the end of the day, we had better sign Sage to a two-year contract as our spokesperson or . . .” She closed her eyes briefly. “There it is.”
“No, ma’am,” Andy said. “It’s gone. Maintenance came and trapped it.”
I put down the tray. “What is it?”
“A mouse,” the Queen hissed.
“A mouse?” I scanned the floor for a scurrying rodent and then, recalling the Queen’s paranoia. “Or the Mouse?”
Andy gave me a funny look and said flatly, “A mouse has been spotted, Zoe. As I’ve said, Maintenance trapped it and took it away.”
“They most certainly did not!” the Queen bellowed. “It’s still here. It’s after me. It wants to nip at my heels.”
I was tempted to climb a chair, since I wasn’t exactly a big fan of tiny rodents with sharp teeth myself, but when the Queen was distracted by something on one of the monitors, Andy made a point of catching my eye, shaking his head ever so slightly, and mouthing, No mouse, as he twirled his finger by his head in the universal pantomime for crazy.
Could it be that the Queen was under so much pressure from the Germans that she was seeing imaginary mice?
Sugar! That’s what was called for. Dashing to the tray, I stirred her maple-syrup-laced blueberries into a tablespoon of fat-free plain yogurt. “Ma’am,” I said, offering it up to her since she refused to budge from her stool.
“Not this morning, Zoe. I am brunching with Mr. Adams and his manager, Michelle.”
I lowered the bowl. “He’s here?”
She checked her official Fairyland watch featuring Cinderella and the castle clock. “Scheduled to arrive in our underground garage at ten-oh-five.”
So that was why the Queen had asked me to dress in civilian clothes, not because I was being fired, but because this was my day to escort Sage Adams. The Sage Adams. My heart fluttered with relief and the thrill of spending the day with a real-live celebrity—even if his music sucked.
Wait! I needed to call Sergei at the resort and let him know, so the staff would open the windows in room 505 and bring up the special lilies Michelle had requested, the ones that filtered the air. Was the Italian spring water on ice? There was so much to do!
“Then I need to get ready.” Setting aside the blueberries and yogurt, I ran to get my itinerary in the Sage Adams file that, for the purposes of secrecy, I had kind of anagrammed into “Dam Sages.”
The Queen halted me with the outstretched palm of her hand. “Not quite yet, Zoe. There is no telling how this morning’s negotiations will fare. As much as I eagerly want to sign Sage Adams to be our spokesperson, I’ve ridden the merry-go-round enough to know it doesn’t always go the right way.
“Therefore, I will need you to stand by for my call. Andy has arranged for an emergency backup to play Red Riding Hood for you if all goes well and, perchance, Mr. Adams is interested in touring the park after brunch. Meanwhile I need you to do a search through my files, Zoe.” She smiled thinly. “All. Five. Boxes.”
This was my punishment for being late to walk Tinker Bell—sorting through five boxes of files.
Her smile grew wider. “In the basement.”
The basement! That dingy, damp place with the spiders and centipedes and silverfish? Oh, crud.
“Tsk, tsk. Don’t look so dismayed,” she said, gingerly stepping off her stool. “This time, however, please do remember to keep your telephonic device activated. Would be such a shame if I couldn’t reach you to escort Mr. Adams, and I had to rely on someone like Valerie.”
The assignment couldn’t have been more dreary: to find a five-page memo from the Germans about something called PUD:1,001 that Evelyn had accidentally archived in storage.
The PUD:1,001 boxes were in the vault where all the important Fairyland documents were kept. I would need my master key and also a special combination that the Queen gave me to use on a lock behind a false basement thermostat. Which meant I would be spending a sunny August morning locked away in a windowless room searching through papers, away from everyone. Away from Ian.
There, I said it.
On the off chance I might run into him during breakfast, I stopped by the cafeteria to grab something to eat, since I was starved and