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The bridge began to sway dangerously.
“Wait!” screamed Jay. “You guys! They’re not talking about Maleficent! They’re still talking about Cruella! Quick—Carlos—what is her one true love?”
Carlos couldn’t think. He was too scared. He couldn’t even put a sentence together. And he was even more frightened by what the answer would be.
Maybe that was why he hadn’t guessed right, this time.
I can’t bear to say it out loud.
Jay’s voice echoed. “CARLOS! WHAT IS YOUR MOTHER’S ONE TRUE LOVE?”
He had to say it.
He’d almost always known.
Sometimes, like this afternoon, he would think she meant him, but he really knew better.
Because she never meant him.
Not once. Not ever.
Carlos opened his eyes. He had to say it, and he had to say it now.
“HER FURS! FUR IS HER ONE TRUE LOVE!” he yelled. She said it all the time. She had said it that afternoon in front of everyone.
“All my mother cares about is her stupid fur coat closet and everything in it. But you guys already know that.”
It was the truth, and like any truth, it was powerful.
In the blink of an eye, the four of them were standing on the other side of the gargoyle bridge, and everything was set to rights once more. There was no more swaying or rumbling, no one was falling over the side, and the gargoyles had all turned back to stone.
Although Carlos would swear that one of the stone gargoyles had winked at him.
They were safe, for now.
“Nice work,” said Mal, breathing heavily. “Okay, now—where to?”
Carlos shakily looked at the beeping box in his hands. “This way.”
The Forbidden Fortress lived up to its name. Once the four adventurers had found their way in through its massive oaken doors, it was almost impossible to tell the darkness of the shadow world outside the castle from the shadow world within. Either way, it was intimidatingly dark, and the farther Jay and Carlos and Evie and Mal crept inside, the more their nervous whispers echoed through the ghostly, abandoned chambers.
Jay wished he’d worn something warmer than his leather vest. Mal’s lips were turning blue, Carlos’s breath appeared in white clouds as he spoke, and Evie’s fingers felt like icicles when Jay grabbed them. (Once. Or twice. And strictly for warmth.) It was colder than Dragon Hall inside, and there was no chance of anything getting any warmer; there were no logs on the fireplace grates, no thermostats to switch on.
“That’s modern castle living.” Evie sighed. “Trade in one big, cold prison for another.” Mal nodded in agreement. Privately, Jay thought that Jafar’s junk shop seemed downright cozy in comparison, but he kept that to himself.
Inside every corridor, a dense fog floated just above the black marble floor. “That has to be magic. The fog doesn’t just do that,” Mal said.
Carlos nodded. “The refracted energy seems stronger here. I think we’re closer to the source than we’ve ever been.”
As he spoke, an icy wind blew past them, whistling in through the shattered stained-glass windows high above them. Each step they took reverberated against the walls.
Even Jay the master thief was too intimidated to try and take anything, and kept his hands to himself for once.
Of course once they did find the scepter, he’d have to man up. Jay knew that, and he’d made his peace with it—no matter how well they’d all gotten along on the way there.
Villains don’t have friends, and neither do their children. Not when you get right down to it.
None of them had come there out of loyalty to Mal, or friendship. Jay knew what he had to do, and he’d do it.
