Page 27 of Prince with a Chance of Darkness

The sound of jack hammering pulled me from a dead sleep. It took me a few seconds to realize the jack hammering was happening in my head, not in the outside world. I lay in the somewhat lumpy bed, wondering what time it was.

Was Helen back from her hunt for that badass demon they were so hell-bent on finding? I turned to check the side table, only to find myself staring directly at a wall. A wall that hadn’t been next to my bed at the inn when I’d gone to sleep. A wall that was not only newly placed, but that had wallpaper that walked straight out of the 70s.

The wallpaper was striped with pink, orange, and brown. It looked like Neapolitan ice cream vomited everywhere. With a groan, I turned onto my back only to be greeted by a yellowed popcorn ceiling, complete with a water stain that, if I squinted, looked a little like Jesus. “What the…?”

The whisper that came from me echoed throughout my head, making it feel as if I’d shouted with a megaphone. What in the hell had Willa and I done last night?

I thought harder on it all. I’d pretty much forced her to go demon hunting in the forest with me. That much I could remember. The map I’d swiped from Aunt Helen had lined up with one in Willa’s never-leave-home-without-it annotated copy ofDracula.

I remembered traipsing all over the forest, searching each and every spot that had been marked on the map.

Willa had freaked out about spiders. I remembered that too.

Rain.

Thunder.

Lightning.

It had stormed. Yes. I remembered that too.

My mind raced with flashes of a huge black wolf. When I saw it vanish before my very eyes, I gasped and sat up straight in the bed. We’d stumbled across a wolf-shifter in the forest? Yes. I remembered that now too.

It had started to storm, and we’d run for cover and to put distance between the huge wolf and ourselves.

The cave.

We’d gone into a dark cave, seeking shelter from the storm. I’d suggested burning pages from Willa’s beloved book to warm us, and then there had been laughter.

Dark.

Twisted.

Wrong.

And then… Helen!

Panic rushed through me. I twisted on the bed and found the room had two queen beds. On the other bed was Willa. I exhaled a sigh of relief when I saw she was alive and well.

There was a giant bouquet of white roses, at least two or three dozen, on the table between our beds. They hardly seemed nefarious and did help to calm me a bit more.

Maybe I was remembering the events in the forest and the cave all wrong. Maybe I’d dreamed it all. Had it simply been a nightmare?

Then where are we now? This isn’t the inn.

Crap.

A sinking feeling came over me. “Willa?”

She didn’t budge.

I threw the covers back and froze. What was I wearing? The black satin pajama set I was in wasn’t mine, yet it fit like it had been bought or even made for me. Willa was in a white pair of the same pajamas. We were more of the T-shirts and sweatpants for sleepwear kind of girls. Not fancy pajama sets.

“If I am dreaming, this is the weirdest dream ever,” I mumbled as I stood, the room’s shag carpet tickling the undersides of my feet. I dove onto my sister’s bed, making her bounce.

Her eyes snapped open, and she grabbed hold of my arm with a grip that was downright painful.

“Ouch!”

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