This was all so weird. Eleanor collapsed onto the garden bench, elbows on her knees, the effort of keeping her laughter inside making her chest ache. Ash handed the kitten-of-ashes off to Thea and approached, hands folded formally behind his back.

“You. Stop laughing,” he ordered. In that instant he sounded quite a bit like Mr. January.

This, at last, was enough to shut Eleanor up.

“You and your friends. You wear strange clothes. You speak strangely. You don’t feel right,” he said, his gaze boring into her. “And you escaped the throne room without anyone seeing you.”

“And?” Eleanor asked.

“You’re from another world, aren’t you?” he asked. Eleanor stilled, trying not to give anything away, but he made a soft sound of satisfaction. “I knew it. How did you get here?”

“Why should I tell you anything?” she asked.

He considered. “Let’s make a deal,” he said. If she’d shut her eyes, heard only his voice, she’d know for sure who he was in that moment.

“I know better than to make a deal with you,” she said.

He looked puzzled. “Don’t you want to hear what it is before you refuse it?” he asked.

She gritted her teeth. She didn’t want to make any kind of bargain with Mr. January—even this younger, possibly less horrible version who liked cats. But she said, “Fine. What deal?”

“I’ll help you and your friends escape. Thea and Melia will help, too,” he said.

“In exchange for what?”

He smiled. It was not a smile as cruel as Mr. January’s smile, but she could see the sharp points at its corners. “Simple. We help you escape. You leave this world the way you came. And you take us with you.”

Eleven

Eleanor stared up at Ash. “You can’t leave on your own?” she asked.

“Mother and Father have been searching for a way out of this world for ages, but they’ve never found one,” Melia said. She was running her hands idly through Thea’s hair. It had gone limp after her ordeal in the throne room, but now it sprang back thick and golden. Eleanor had the sense, though, that this was an illusion—nothing had truly changed.

“That means that if you take us with you, they won’t be able to follow us,” Ash said. “You have a way out, don’t you? You got here, you must have a way to leave.”

“Please,” Thea said. Her eyes were wide and hopeful.

Eleanor wetted her lips, looking quickly between the siblings. What if she helped them get away, and that was the reason the curse existed in the first place? But what if she helped them get away, and it changed the future so that the curse never happened?