we were missing. What would she and my mom do then? I knew with a sinking feeling that they would leave the play to search for us.
My wish had ruined things for Kendall too.
And my mom—in our last conversation, she’d yelled at me about the vandalism, and I had hardly spoken to her. It was such a bad way to leave things between us. I should have told her that I loved her.
A noise at the door caught my attention. Someone was pulling the bolt back. The next moment, the door swung open and the guard stepped inside. He shut the door behind him and stared at me.
That wasn’t good. I didn’t remember a visit from a guard as being part of the fairy tale. I stood up, trying to read his expression through the shadows of the room. His gaze was stern, penetrating. His sword hung at his side.
I gulped hard. He probably thought he could do anything to me and no one would care. I was a condemned prisoner, after all. I edged along the wall farther away from him.
He stepped toward me. “Tansy, it is you.” I recognized his voice at the same time he stepped into the light.
Hudson was standing in front of me.
Chapter 9
I blinked at Hudson, speechless.
He looked me up and down, shaking his head. “I should have known the next time we met you’d be in prison. It’s where you always end up, isn’t it?”
My eyes swept over him. From his leather boots to the dull shine of his helmet, he looked every bit a medieval man. Well, except that he had straight, white teeth. I walked over to him. “What are you doing here?”
He folded his arms, and his chain mail clinked in an angry rumble. “Do you really not know?”
I reached up and took the helmet off his head. I didn’t understand how it was possible, but it was definitely Hudson. His hair was a couple of inches longer than I’d seen it yesterday and it hung in messy strands around his face.
“What are you doing here?” I asked again. I worried, with a sickening panic, that Chrissy had sent the whole school to the Middle Ages. “Why are you one of King John’s men?”
“Because I didn’t want to be one of Robin Hood’s men. But then, you already knew I was more of a stay-on-the-right-side-of-the-law sort of guy.” He held a hand out to me. “And you? What brings you to England in the late twelfth century?” His voice was light, but I could tell he wasn’t amused by any of this. “Did you come to visit friends or did you just pop in for the fine cuisine?” I wasn’t about to answer his question until he answered mine.
“Hudson, really—how did you get here?” 128/356
He glared at me and took his helmet back. “Do you remember that day I came over to your house to do homework with Nick?”
“Yeah,” I said. “That was yesterday.”
“Try three months ago,” he said.
“No, I’m pretty sure it was yesterday.”
“I’ve been here for three months, and I have the calluses to prove it.” His eyes narrowed as he regarded me. “My father must have looked for me, sent out search teams, put my disappearance on the news …”
I shrugged. “Sorry. No one told me you were gone.” He made a grumbling sound in the back of his throat to show his disapproval.
“Time must be different here.” I vaguely remembered Clover criticizing Chrissy for not being able to lengthen time. “I only got here this morning. But at any rate, I remember the night.” I gestured for him to continue his story.
“After I left your house, I was standing on the sidewalk texting a few people and I heard shouting coming from your backyard. Men shouting.” He looked at me to see if I knew what he was talking about.
I felt myself coloring. “Right. I remember that too.”
“I walked over to your fence. With those sword-wielding thugs in town, I figured I’d better make sure you and Nick were okay.”
“You wanted to catch them, you mean. A rational person would have run away.”
Hudson ignored my point. “Before long, the thugs were climbing over your fence.” He fixed me with a hard stare. “I won’t ask you why they were there, at least not yet. I hid behind one of your bushes and was about to call the police when a leprechaun appeared in front of me, waved a wand in my direction, and the next thing I knew, I was in Sherwood Forest in the year 1199.”
129/356
I let out a little gasp. “Clover was only supposed to send Robin Hood and the Merry Men back in time.”
“Yeah, we figured there had been a mistake when I materialized and someone named Alan A’Dale never showed up.” The dark glare Hudson was shooting in my direction suddenly made sense. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I never meant—” He didn’t let me finish. “I know what you meant. Robin Hood told me about your wishes and the fairy godmother you set on unsuspecting people. We had a long talk about it. And when I refused to take a blood oath to join Robin Hood’s men, they tied me up, blindfolded me, and left me on the road to town.”