The Stepsister Scheme

as if we were in your room at the palace. Safer, really, considering what happened this morning.”
    The hallway stopped at another door, nearly identical to the first. The only difference was a glass sphere mounted in the center of the door. Talia searched for another keyhole, but she found nothing.
    Snow pressed her eye to the glass sphere. “There’s a curtain covering the far side.”
    “Do we knock?” Danielle asked.
    “He’ll be suspicious either way. Trolls hate the sun and the daytime,” said Snow. “His customers would know better than to come before dark.”
    Talia pounded the door. When nothing happened, she drew back and gave it a good, solid kick.
    “Tough door,” Talia muttered, leaning against the wall to flex her knee and ankle.
    Light appeared through the glass sphere. A hugely magnified yellow eye appeared, flitting this way and that. A gravelly voice said, “Come back at a respectable hour. Some of us are trying to sleep.”
    Snow peered through the sphere. “Very well,” she said. “I just thought you’d want to know that Queen Beatrice will be sending letters to the king and queen of Fairytown, telling them how you violated Malindar’s Treaty.”
    “What’s that? Move out of the way, you. Let me see who else is with you.”
    Snow obeyed, and the yellow eye studied them all more closely. “Ah. So which one of you little treats is the one they call Cinderwench?”
    “That would be me,” Talia said, before Danielle could answer.
    The troll chuckled. “I don’t think so, my dark-skinned muffin.”
    Danielle kept one hand on her sword, more for comfort than anything else. “I am Princess Danielle. Are you the troll who helped my stepsisters?”
    “Brahkop, at your service. As for that other matter, I’m afraid my transactions are confidential.”
    “Charlotte tried to murder me,” Danielle said. “They killed my mother. If you know who I am, you know we can pay whatever you ask.”
    “She doesn’t mean that!” Talia grabbed Danielle’s wrist and yanked her back. “Are you mad?”
    Danielle tried to pull free. “If he can help us find Armand, I’m sure the queen would—”
    “No fairy bargain is as it seems,” Talia said. “Nor do they often ask for money. Your soul, your joy, your future... whatever he wants, you don’t want to pay it.”
    “Now that’s plain unfair,” Brahkop said. “To judge all those of fairy blood based on the nasty tales your kind spread about us. And what’s all this about Malindar’s Treaty? You can’t prove I had anything to do with those girls. Even if I did, they’re the ones who tried to kill the princess here.”
    “You called me Cinderwench,” Danielle said. “Charlotte and Stacia are the only ones who call me by that name.”
    “Did I say Cinderwench? I meant... oh, dragon farts. You caught me.”
    Danielle stepped to the door and stared through the sphere. She could see nothing beyond Brahkop’s eye and the distended bulge of an enormous nose.
    Before she could speak, wisps of gray and white began to fall from the ceiling, drifting down around her head and arms. At first she thought they were more cobwebs, and she waved an arm over her head to brush them away.
    The strands tightened, catching her arm and pinning the elbow by her head. She tried to duck beneath them, but bumped into Snow.
    “It’s a net of some sort,” Snow said, her voice calm and curious. The strands were all but invisible. Danielle could see indentations in the skin of her arm as the net pulled the three of them closer together.
    Talia dropped to the floor. Her legs glided to either side as she attempted to slip beneath the net, but the lower edge caught her chest and face, pressing her back against Snow’s legs. She pulled out a knife and sliced back and forth at the strands. “Good net,” she muttered. “Snow?”
    “I’m working on it,” Snow said.
    “I promise a quick death, if it’s any consolation,” said Brahkop. “You’ll barely feel the cuts as my net slices you into nice, bite-sized pieces. It will be quite a mess, but it’s not the first time I’ve had to defend myself against trespassers.”
    Danielle twisted and hunched her shoulders. The net quickly tightened, but she was able to get her right hand to the hilt of her sword. That blade had killed the demon when normal steel failed; it might be able to cut Brahkop’s net as well. She tried to pull the sword free, but she couldn’t move her arm back far enough.
    The