No. I refused to ride the damn ride—the overthinking ride that would end in nothing but feeling like garbage.
I wrapped my arms around her back, drawing her into me. Heat exploded in my veins. Her fingers closed over mine. As she guided my hand, I groaned against her mouth, imagining all the places she might lead it.
My imagination was pretty good, but I had to admit, I didnot expect her to guide my hand to a doorknob. Which was what she did.
“Wha…?” I opened my eyes to find blue magic pouring off me. The visual evidence of how much Courtney cared settled my racing thoughts. I would not ruin this for myself.
The doorknob heated under my palm, and it finally registered why Courtney had kissed me. I focused, directing the magic down my arm, forcing even more of it out into the door. The metal burned. I held on until I couldn’t, hand flying off the doorknob.
Courtney and I stepped back. The doorknob glowed red, smoke rising around the door. It jiggled, like Amy on the other side was trying to open it, but it held.
“You there,” I said, stopping a servant who was passing by. “Watch this door. Find us if Amy comes out.”
“Hurry, this way,” Greg urged, and we ran after him. “I have something else to show you. To correct the mistake I made.”
“Which one?” Courtney grumbled under her breath. “First you advise me to tame a dragon, then you nearly murder our mentor.”
We went down several flights of stairs and many long halls, avoiding the frantic castle inhabitants, who ran in a great hurry to nowhere in particular. The walls turned to stone, and the air grew chillier the farther down we went. At last, Greg gestured for us to follow before squeezing under a door.
Squeezing under a door.Something about that prickled at my memory.
I tried to open the door to follow, but the wood was swollen and stuck to its frame. I gave it a good shove with my shoulder, and it popped free. Stumbling inside, I barely had time to look around before I was backpedaling, nearly bowling over Courtney.
There, standing in the middle of the gloomy room, was a figure in purple robes. Their hood was up, concealing their face.
“Amy?” Courtney asked. “How’d you get out?”
The figure flipped back its hood, revealing a pale skull and ghastly grin. A strangled curse tumbled from my mouth.
Courtney gasped. “Did we somehow accidentally melt Amy’s face off?”
“Why does your mind always go tomelting?” I asked. “You think we accidentally melted a guy instead of assuming it’s one of the undead we accidentally raised because the dragon we accidentally freed made me accidentally—okay, I see how you got there.”
The skeleton cocked its head.
Greg let out a long-suffering sigh. “She’s one of the undead—their queen.”
Courtney set her jaw. “You! You hit me with a battle-ax! I have aboneto pick with you.”
That was Courtney, the joke at a funeral, and despite the situation, I snickered. “Nice.”
Greg gave us a withering look. “We can use her as a stand-in for the old man. If you keep her hood up, nobody will know the difference. It will buy us time. If people notice his absence, they’ll start asking questions.”
A seed of doubt took root in my brain. For the first time, I began to wonder if the mouse was the undyingly loyal animal sidekick I first pegged him as. I took in the room. Shelves lined the perimeter, countless glass jars containing a sludgy green liquid packed across every surface. A large black cauldron steamed in a corner. And the skeleton standing in the middle, for some reason, wasnotmurdering us all.
“Wait a minute.” I took a step forward, then thought better of it and took two steps back. “You want Courtney and me to let one of the evil skeletons follow us around all day? One of the evil skeletons whose pals are outside right nowlaying siege to the city?”
“She’s quite harmless,” said Greg. “She longs for a new, less violent life, and so agreed to help.”
“The queen of the skeletons happens to do whatever you say?” Courtney’s eyes narrowed.
I caught on to what she was thinking, finally putting two and two together. The skeletons wouldn’t even listen to Courtney, and she’d assumed she was the villain, their overlord. But they listened to a mouse?
“She’s agreed to help on the condition you’ll take her back through the portal with you,” Greg said. “She wants to go to medical school.”
The skeleton wanted to go tomed school? When it came down to it, I didn’t know what was a more absurd idea: signing a skeleton up for med school or having any hope of her paying off her student loans. Not to mention housing and—
“Why should we trust anything you say?” Courtney asked, bringing me back to the present before I could spiral into the logistics of becoming the primary guardian of a century-old undead skeleton. She turned to me. “Last time we saw Greg, he tried to kill Peepaw.”
