Once Upon Now by Danielle Banas

Author:Danielle Banas
Language: eng
Format: mobi
ISBN: 9781501155956
Publisher: Gallery Books
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

THIRTY-FIVE MINUTES TO MIDNIGHT.

I was in total secret-agent mode as we crept through the service entrance at the back of the Q. That is, if secret agents had feet that cramped up and caused them to stumble every two steps.

“All right, Leonard?” Corinne asked. We dodged several guards returning from a break room and ducked into a stairwell. I was panting, my hands gripping my knees, but Corinne appeared unaffected.

“I feel like my chest is about to explode,” I said.

“Just hang tight. There’s an elevator at the end of the hall.” She pulled the door open a crack, searching for trouble. “All clear. Let’s head up.”

For the first time since Corinne rescued me from the pirate ship, I was filled with doubt. Mia had been furious at me the last time I saw her. I couldn’t even imagine how she would react when I showed up to her rescue.

“What if she doesn’t want to come back?”

“She’ll come,” Corinne assured me. “You don’t know how overbearing Wilhelmina is. Mia’s probably dying to get out of there.”

I chuckled as we waited for the elevator to arrive. It was on floor forty-five and needed to come all the way to the basement. “You’ve never met my mother. She’s the same— Wait. Does Wilhelmina have blond hair?”

“Yeah . . .” Corinne answered slowly.

“Brown eyes?”

“Like a chocolate bar.” She paused. “Or feces.”

“Does she have a deviated septum that makes her squeak when she laughs and—”

“Yes!” she said kind of gleefully, but the confirmation only made my stomach hurt.

A loud bang echoed behind us. Corinne jabbed the call button repeatedly, as if that would help us get upstairs faster. Two women and a man in crisp white chef’s attire rounded the corner at the end of the hall. They halted when they spotted us.

“Did we hire new interns?” one of them wondered aloud.

The elevator arrived and Corinne pushed me inside before the doors opened halfway. She stabbed the button for floor sixty-four. The top floor.

“I have a bad feeling about this,” she said.

“No kidding! My mother’s a psychotic murderer!”

She pinched the bridge of her nose. “Leonard, Wilhelmina isn’t your mother. She just looks like her. Remember that.”

The elevator shot up with an incredible speed that made my head spin. If I had my old body back, I knew my skin would be speckled with sweat. Corinne retreated into herself, probably wondering if she’d made a horrible mistake.

As I watched the numbers climb, I thought about Wilhelmina and my mother. Mia and Beatrice.

Sal and my father. I wondered who Corinne would be in my world. Would she be royalty there too? A student? A celebrity? More important, I wondered who Leo Clark was in Pittsborough, and what I would do if I met him.

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