As Willa waited, she looked down at the phone to see a line light lit. By using the phone, she’d given herself away. She hung up immediately. She had to get out of there!
She tried walking through the door, but bounced against it. Her fear had gotten the better of her. It was a sickening, downward spiral. She tentatively opened the door and slipped outside, pulling it shut quietly behind her.
When she turned around, a shape appeared around the corner of a building and quickly ducked back.
“Finn?” She spoke his name aloud, though only in a whisper. She glanced around haltingly, ensuring she was alone.
“
He reappeared.
She waved, so happy to see him! Finn stepped out into the open, and she realized he’d come in disguise-he was wearing the same stupid costume, shorts and a T-shirt, that his DHI wore in the Magic Kingdom. She hurried toward him, a combination of relief and anxiety overcoming her: relief they’d found each other; anxiety over the thought of telling him there was no way to Return.
“Oh, my gosh, Finn! It is so good to-”
He evaporated into a wisp of smoke that reformed into something darker and larger…until she found herself facing the Evil Queen.
She screamed. Her hologram outline dimmed.
“You…witch!” she uttered angrily.
“You are correct.
Willa tried to run. She could hardly lift her legs. She was quickly surrounded by cathedral guards. Behind them, on the points of the compass, four crash-test dummies on Segways.
Cruella De Vil stepped out from behind the Queen.
“Well, well. I have to compliment you, dearest,” she said to the Evil Queen. “You’re quite the little Venus flytrap.”
The Queen ignored her. “The judge asked you a question, little girl,” the Queen said to Willa, her eyes squinting. “I fear you were rude to him. Let me explain that being rude to me will have far more…devastating results. Hmmm? Do I make myself clear?” The Evil Queen stepped forward. Willa found her beauty bewitching and powerful.
She nodded against her will. The sensation in her limbs slowly returned. Her legs no longer felt like they weighed a ton.
“Then out with it,” the Queen ordered. “Or suffer!” Another flick of her hand and Willa bent over in a convulsion, like she had been punched in the stomach. This despite her being in her state of partial DHI. She hated to think how that would hurt when flesh and blood.
The Queen waved her hands again and her lips trembled as she chanted some kind of incantation.
Spiders appeared out of cracks in the pavement. Hundreds, thousands of them. Small ones. Red ones. Black ones. HUGE ones. They swarmed at Willa’s feet, leaving her in the center of an oozing circle of hairy spiders. If she moved even slightly…
She was terrified, which dampened her DHI, making her more vulnerable. She was outmatched. The Queen got what the Queen wanted.
“WHAT DID JEZEBEL DRAW?”
“A face! A man,” Willa volunteered, still bent over, her stomach in a knot. The spiders encroached.
The witch cackled with laughter that sounded like breaking ice. “Who? What man? And be careful you don’t lie, little thing.” She began to sing. “‘The Itsy Bitsy Spider…’”
The ring of spiders tightened at Willa’s feet.
“A man…in uniform.”
Finn’s DHI climbed the stone steps running up the center of the Mexico pavilion, a Mayan temple with balconies of flowers on either side of the center staircase. He’d taken this same route with Philby; he knew what he was doing. Maybeck’s DHI had already reached the top, climbing as effortlessly as a cat.
“Wait up!” hissed a humiliated Finn.
“Move it!” Maybeck said. He watched Finn climb. “It’s only a set of stairs.”
“Memo to Whitman: I don’t think you’re going to be able to see Willa from up here. So what, in the name of cream cheese, are we doing here?”
“Doing what Philby told us to do,” Finn whispered back. “Into the booth.”
“The IllumiNations booth? How’s that supposed to help Willa?”
“Remember in
“Sure. The old guy. What about him?”
“That’s you. You’re the man behind the curtain. You’re the one controlling things.”
“I’m liking this plan more and more, Whitman.”
The longer he sat there staring at his computer monitor, the more concerned Philby grew. The webcam view was of the Park as a whole. He could see a few black specks move from time to time, but they looked about the size of ants. He couldn’t tell who or what they were, or what they were up to.
When Philby heard rustling in the bushes outside his window, he looked away from his computer.
The window was unlocked. Not good. What if there was a serial killer creeping around their house?
When he heard more brushing of sticks against the side of the house, goose bumps raced up his arms- something was out there, and it was too big to be a dog.
More like a person.
Willa was not scared of spiders; she was
“What kind of uniform?” the Queen asked.
She’d said too much already. She hated herself for having said anything. “A security officer,” she lied. “Like at the airport.”
There were two huge vultures following behind her. Cruella steered clear of the birds as she walked around Willa, studying her.
Willa’s eyes followed Cruella.
“I don’t think so,” the Evil Queen said. She waved her hand. The spiders swarmed over Willa’s feet and started up her ankles. She cried out and kicked with both legs, like running in place, but the spiders kept coming. Screaming, she brushed them away, but there were thousands of them, and each time her bare feet landed she felt them squish beneath her while a hundred more climbed onto her.
“Get them off!”
Willa jumped out of the oozing black circle, but a vulture came at her, flapping its large wings, and stuck its
