She pulled on the end of the scroll and it spun shut.

“You asked for a fairy tale. One of us here is an expert on fairy tales, and the only tale with a handsome prince waiting at the ball is Cinderella, which I duly granted.” Another toss of her hair. “If you had a different fairy tale in mind—well, I’m sorry you’re so ill read that you got mixed up and wished for the wrong one.” 94/431

“But I didn’t actually think that . . .” I stopped. It wouldn’t do any good to point out I hadn’t meant those words as a wish at all. I’d just been speaking in generalities. Apparently fairies didn’t do generalities. I tried to make my case in another way. “What about the prince?

He’s supposed to be wonderful so I can live happily ever after. That part of my wish wasn’t granted.” She rolled her eyes like I was the one being unreasonable. “You only asked for a handsome prince. He is. I suppose charming is implied in the wish—trust me, he’ll be very charming at the ball.” My mouth dropped open and a little squeak of disbelief popped out. “But besides that he’s an arrogant tyrant? How am I supposed to live happily ever after with someone like that?”

“I already told you I couldn’t grant vague statements like happily ever after. I grant specifics. Happy is entirely up to you and always has been.” Her wings fluttered in agitation. “Besides, since when did you become so concerned with personality? You never worried about Hunter’s personality, did you?” She picked up a shopping bag and pushed it, somehow, back into her purse. “You know, just out of curiosity, I checked in with him before my shopping trip. Do you know what he was doing? Talking with Jane over the phone about the benefits and drawbacks of testing out of freshman English.

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There’s a thrill ride for you. Most people can make those kinds of decisions without talking it over extensively with their girlfriends.”

Okay, granted, sometimes Hunter cared way too much about school, but he’d always worn such an endearingly earnest expression while he’d gone on about that sort of thing that I’d never minded. “This isn’t about Hunter—,” I said.

She held up one hand to stop me. “I know. It’s about getting back at Hunter. I totally understand how dating works between humans. You want a boyfriend who’s handsome and popular. Well, Prince Edmond is the epi-tome of that. You’ll be the envy of the kingdom. That’s what you really wished for, wasn’t it, to be envied?” It sounded so superficial when she said it that way that it took me aback. I had to stop and think about it for a moment. “It’s not that I have to be envied by an entire kingdom . . .”

Chrissy wedged her last bag back into her purse. “Oh, that’s right. You just want to be envied by Jane and Hunter. I can arrange that then. I can bring them here.

They could be poor peasants in your stepmother’s manor.” She pulled the wand from somewhere beneath all the shopping bags and looked ready to wave it in my direction.

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“No, wait, I don’t want that.” Even though I hadn’t forgiven them, I wouldn’t wish the type of life I’d just been living on either of them.

Chrissy put the wand down at her side. “Well, what do you want then? You called me here away from my shopping trip and I haven’t even made it to the shoe section yet.”

I tried to think of how to form my next wish. For almost a month I’d just wanted to leave, but now with Chrissy standing in front of me, tapping one foot while she waited for me to speak, I didn’t want to waste a wish on just going home. I should wish for something new, something spectacular, for a situation where I could be truly happy.

“Well . . .” I didn’t know how to phrase my wish or even how to articulate what I wanted, what I longed for.

Ironically, it struck me that Jane would know the right way to say it. Jane could write a thousand-word essay on how she felt at any given time. But Jane didn’t need wishes. Jane had Hunter.

Chrissy checked her watch. “I can come back later when you’ve had time to think about it—”

“No,” I said, because if she left now who knew how many days I’d be stuck here, and after my scene inside, the WSM would undoubtedly throw me in a dungeon or something. “I just . . . um . . . I want to feel beautiful and 97/431

loved, and although I like the idea of having a prince, he has to be more than just handsome and rich. He has to be nice, and kind . . .” I paused, trying to think of the next quality I wanted to add to the list.

That’s when I learned a very important lesson about dealing with fairies. Don’t pause when you’re wishing for things.

Chrissy slipped her sunglasses back over her face.

“One Snow White coming up!”

Chapter 6

Bright lights like hundreds of fireflies spun around me, and then I found myself in a completely different forest.

The trees grew together so close and tall that I couldn’t see the sky. Only slivers of light penetrated the canopy here and there, testifying that it was still day. What time of day, I wasn’t sure.

“I didn’t mean that I wanted to be Snow White!” I called out.

Only the sound of birds and tree branches rustling answered back.

“Chrissy?” I called. “Chrissy?” It had suddenly become very clear to me why she was only a fair godmother.

I called her name for a few more minutes, then wandered through the forest, frustrated and wondering if there was any way to get out of this. I did not like the idea of biting into a poisoned apple and lying unconscious until a prince showed up. How long would that take? Days? Years? I mean, yes, I sleep in but if I was lying around in the Middle Ages for years, my parents would notice I was missing.

Fairies really ought to give you some directions before they plop you down into the middle of a forest and take 99/431

off to go shoe shopping. The only thing Chrissy had given me was new clothes. I now wore a simple crimson dress.

As I wondered which way to go, a little man with a long gray beard and a brown cap on his head burst through the trees.

His eyes zoomed in on me, anxiety etched into the wrinkles on his face. “Snow White,” he said, “are you all right?”

“Yes.”

He knew who I was, which meant I must have come into the fairy tale after Snow White had found the seven dwarfs’ house. I had no idea which of the dwarfs this was, and come to think of it, I wasn’t sure I could recall all of their names. There was, um . . . Happy, Sleepy, Bashful, Boring—no wait, Boring wasn’t actually a dwarf. I was getting the dwarfs confused with my schoolteachers.

“Are you hurt?” The dwarf asked, still worried. “Why are you out in the forest?”

I knew I wasn’t supposed to lie, but I couldn’t very well tell him that I’d mistakenly been sent here from the twenty-first century.

“I, um, was out walking,” I said. Which was true, if not vague.

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“What?” he said indignantly. “You went wandering about when you know full well Queen Neferia is out to kill you?”

“I . . . guess.”

He broke into a language I didn’t understand but figured was dwarf cursing. He crossed over to me, took my hand, and none too gently towed me along beside him as he pushed his way back through the trees. “Have you not a lick of sense anywhere in your body? Did the good Lord spend so much time crafting your pretty head that he forgot to put anything inside? Do you not listen to anything we ever say?”

For someone so small he had a tight grip and moved incredibly fast. I tried not to stumble on rocks and tree roots as he pulled me along. “Let me guess—you’re Grumpy?”

He let out a humph. “And you would be too, if you’d just spent the last hour searching the forest for your wayward charge.” He walked even faster. “We tell you to stay inside, we tell you not to talk to strangers. But oh no, you must be out singing to the animals as if the birds didn’t do a fine enough job of it. And this after Queen Neferia has already tried to kill you thrice.”