A Fairy Tale Read Online Free

shuddered. This was very Stepford Wives, sorority house edition. She noticed that although these women were clearly human, they had a hint of fae unearthliness about them. They must have been drinking the local Kool-Aid. Now she understood why Sophie said that was a no-no. Was this what she’d be like now if Sophie hadn’t rescued her before?
    “How nice for you,” she said with a thin smile. “But don’t you want to go home?”
    “Why would we want to go home?” Leigh asked with a shrug. “Here we don’t have to work. We just go to parties and dance and sing all day, and we get to be around her majesty.”
    Emma looked more wistful, like she was remembering something she’d lost. “What is it?” Emily asked gently.
    “I forgot,” Emma said with a sigh. “Sometimes I think there was something that made me happy before, but it can’t have been as good as this, could it?”
    “Did you ever try to leave?” Emily asked, but a handsome fairy with blue-black hair took Emma by the hand, pulled her to her feet, and danced off with her. Her wistfulness disappeared instantly. She threw back her head and laughed while she spun wildly with the fairy man. His hands strayed onto some rather intimate places, and she leaned into him. Pretty soon, they’d be in “get a room” territory, Emily thought. She turned her attention to the other girl and repeated her question.
    “There’s no way out,” Leigh said.
    “There has to be. My sister got me out before.”
    “Some of the Gentry come and go, but they tell us humans can’t pass through the barriers on their own.”
    Well, yeah, they would tell you that, Emily thought. “Do you know why they were looking for me?” she asked, but Leigh was being pulled away by another fairy to dance. Emily shook her head at the fairy man who approached her, even though the music made her twitch with the desire to dance. Dancing might be giving in. She swore to herself that she absolutely would not go native.
    Alone again, she was back to the question of what she should do. She imagined Sophie would figure out if she really was a prisoner, test the defenses to see if she could escape, gather and analyze information, and then come up with a plan.
    Emily could do that. She glanced around the room, looking for potential exits. There was the front door, a door opening from the other side of the living room, and the terrace doors. Nobody stood at any of those doors in a guard-like pose, but there were also plenty of fairies between her and all the potential exits. She figured she should see if she really was a prisoner.
    She got off the sofa and ambled across the room, aiming toward the buffet table but passing right by the front door. A fairy man moved between her and the door as she passed, his movement almost unobtrusive enough to be casual. She wandered by the interior door as she went to examine a painting on the adjacent wall and, again, someone just happened to move in front of the door. Yeah, she was a prisoner, all right.
    Maeve had entered and exited through the terrace doors, so they had to lead somewhere other than just a terrace. While Emily didn’t want to run into Maeve, she thought she might learn something by heading in the direction Maeve had gone. But if that was a way out, she doubted they’d let her go.
    What she needed was an excuse to be near the terrace doors. She could stand there and stare at the view until they got bored watching her and figured she was just looking out the window. They’d still probably do something if she tried to go outside, though.
    Then an idea struck her. If they wouldn’t tell her why they wanted her, then she had to guess, and why would they take a Broadway actress right after she made a stunning—if she said so herself—debut in a starring role? It was safe to assume (or pretend to assume) they wanted her to perform. She was pretty sure she remembered something about fairies stealing humans to make them sing and dance. She glanced