I was right. She’d done this on purpose. I looked upward, eyes on the arched ceiling. “I don’t believe this. I’ve been suckered by a fairy godmother. They always seemed so nice in the stories. Sending girls to balls, helping them find true love . . .”

“Exactly. I’m sending you to balls and helping you find true love. You know, Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty were a lot more grateful about our services. Maybe that’s your problem—a bad attitude.”

A bad attitude. My mind was stuck on a vision of vines wrapping around me, of green leafy ropes twisting around my arms and neck. “What will the queen do if she catches me stealing something?” I put my hand to my throat and gulped. “I don’t know how to crackle, and I’ve never popped.”

“That is why as a concerned fairy godmother, I’m officially advising you not to get caught. Once you come back through the forest, you’ll no longer be in Queen Orlaith’s domain. Call me as soon as you pass the last tree, and I’ll come for the goblet.” She tipped her wand in the direction of the tickets. “Then you and Jason can go home. He’ll appreciate it—what with that pizza withdrawal he’s suffering.”

I gripped the tickets so hard they crumpled. There are a lot of stupid ways to die, and stealing something from a fairy queen seemed high on that list. But what choice did I have? It wasn’t just my life I’d messed up. Jason was stuck here too. I had to at least try to get us home.

“What does the goblet do?” I asked.

“It’s like a fancy glass,” Chrissy said. “Rich people use them for drinking.”

“I know what a goblet is. I want to know what’s so special about this one that I’m risking my life for it.”

“Oh, that.” Chrissy straightened one of the ribbons near my collar, looking me over like my drama teacher used to do before she sent me on stage. She was making sure I was ready to play my part. “The goblet is enchanted. If you pour a special elixir into it at the stroke of midnight, you can ask a question, and it will answer you.”

“That’s it? It answers your questions? We already have that in my world. It’s called Google.”

Chrissy gave me a look that made it clear I’d missed the point. “The internet can’t tell you what your enemies are planning or the secrets of breaking spells, and it certainly can’t tell you how to care for magical trees.”

Voices interrupted us. Two people were coming from a hallway that connected to the grand entrance.

“I’m sorry,” a female voice said, though there wasn’t any sign of sorrow in her words. They were spoken lightly, triumphantly almost.

“I can’t stay here for days,” a guy said, irritated. “I’ve got to take care of my brother. I’ve got school assignments that are already overdue—and if my probation officer thinks I skipped out, he’ll pop a vein. Seriously, he’s an old dude. He’ll probably have a coronary.”

School assignments? Probation officer? Those were modern things.

Two people stepped into the room, both about my age. The girl wore a flowing green dress that showed off her shoulders and ruffled around her feet like trailing greenery. Her black hair was pinned up into a braided bun with green ribbons twisting around its folds. Her dark eyes were set, jewel-like, against flawless, pale skin. She moved with a grace and a bearing—not to mention a slight glow shining around her—that made me suspect she was a fairy.

The teenage guy walking with her was tall with sandy blond hair and a two-day-old beard. He wore scruffy gray clothing, a crumpled felt hat, and dusty boots with gaps in the soles. A sheathed sword hung on his belt, along with a leather purse and a wooden cup.

To say he wore the clothes well anyway seemed odd, but it was true. With his square jaw and blue eyes, he was attractive enough to make a girl look twice. Or three times. Not that I was counting.

Chrissy took in the scene and let out a huff. “Jade Blossom. What a surprise to see you here.”

The dark-haired fairy stopped short, and her mouth made an indignant O. “What are you doing here?”

Chrissy squared her shoulders. “I’m here on official business.”

“Official business?” One of Jade Blossom’s dark eyebrows rose. “What official business do you have in The Eleven Dancing Princesses story?”

Chrissy casually tapped her wand against the side of her dress. “It’s The Twelve Dancing Princesses now.” She gestured to me. “Meet my client, Princess Sadie.”

“Twelve princesses?” Jade Blossom let out a snort of disbelief. “You can’t send more girls to this story. I mean really, what family has twelve daughters? It just screams magical tampering. Mortals are bound to get suspicious.”

“Wait . . .” My gaze ricocheted between the fairies. “Hasn’t the story always been about twelve dancing princesses?”

Chrissy patted my arm reassuringly. “Of course it has. Don’t listen to her.” She turned to Jade Blossom and lowered her voice. “It’s not my fault. Being a princess is a popular wish.”

Jade Blossom’s eyes narrowed into glittering slits. “You’re just after the goblet. Admit it.”

Chrissy took a couple steps toward the guy, regarding him disdainfully. “And what are you doing here toting a mortal around?”

Jade Blossom fluttered her hand in the guy’s direction making the jeweled bracelets on her wrists clink. “Donovan asked for wealth, power, and an invisibility cloak. What else could I do?”

The guy—Donovan—had been studying Chrissy and I, measuring us every bit as carefully as we were measuring him. Now his attention turned back to Jade Blossom.

“For starters, you could have left me in the twenty-first century. What good is being rich if you’re stuck someplace where you can’t buy anything?”

He had an air of confidence about him, a careless swagger. I knew these types of people from school—guys who were effortlessly cool and spent their time mocking everyone else.

“Where am I?” he asked, “and what is The Twelve Dancing Princesses?”

He didn’t know the fairy tale. And I was glad. Instead of answering him, I turned to Chrissy. “He’s from my century and doesn’t know anything about the story. That means I’m not famous, which means this wish didn’t work and is null and void. Undo it and take me back home.” Granted, it was only a thin straw of a hope, but I was ready to grasp at anything,

Chrissy waved her hand dismissively at Donovan. “You can’t expect one of Jade Blossom’s clients to know anything of importance or culture. He probably crawled out from the same rock she lives under. ”

Jade Blossom glared daggers at Chrissy, then reached into a ruffled green bag at her waist and produced a white strip of paper. A magical boarding pass. Apparently he needed to make a bargain with a fairy too.

I didn’t want to give up on the null and void angle so easily. “I’m not famous,” I insisted. “I’m some nameless character in a fairy tale that never made sense to begin with.”

It was true after all. The story never said why the princesses secretly went dancing every night. It didn’t explain who the princes were or why they didn’t just ask the king for the princesses’ hands in marriage. It also didn’t give a reason the soldier followed the girls for three nights instead of ratting them out the first night like any sensible person would do.

Chrissy was unmoved by my argument. “You’ll be in books, movies, and have a Barbie doll created in your likeness. That means you’re famous. You never asked for your name to be famous. However, if you want to get technical, I can pull a few strings in your father’s ancestral history so your last name will be Benz instead of Ramirez.

And then my name would be Mercedes Benz. Like I hadn’t already heard enough car jokes. “No.” I held up a hand to stop her from swishing her wand and rearranging my ancestry. “Don’t do that.”

Donovan finished reading the boarding pass and held it up between two fingers. “Hamilton, Ohio on the day I left.” He glanced around at the unchanging scenery, then turned to Jade Blossom. “Well, that didn’t work. What else you got?”