Page 5 of Switched

Oops.

“Thanks, Gilly,” Jocelyn snaps.

The pirate laughs again. “Foolish lass! You can’t beat a pirate!”

He and his friends have the royal court surrounded. One is holding a sword to Ella’s neck. Another keeps Jocelyn at bay. Harlow, Kayla, and Ollie are still above us, but for how long? A third pirate has Blackbeard pinned to a wall, and Wolfington is trapped on a floor below. How did the tide turn so quickly?

I have no weapon and my friends are trapped, but I have always liked a challenge.

“Step away from my friends!” I demand.

The pirates all turn toward me. Gulp.

“Boys, we’ll finish this rug rat first,” a pirate says as I start to slowly back away.

Suddenly, there’s a roar so loud that it shakes the windows. It sends the birds from the open book into flight and makes fairies hold their pointy ears. But that sound is nothing compared to the sight of a beastly man dropping four stories and landing between me and a band of unruly pirates. The room collectively gasps.

The beast does not waste time. Within seconds, his hairy hands have snatched the pirates’ book and opened it to a random page. With another loud roar, he scares a pirate into jumping back inside to avoid his wrath. Then the beast quickly goes after the others, and the same thing happens over and over again.

Freed, we wordlessly move out of the way as the beast runs on all fours after the final pirate, who has escaped to the second level. The beast leaps so high and fast that he outruns the scallywag, cutting him off by a fairy librarian station. There is another ripple of gasps as the beast throws the book at the pirate. That move didn’t work for me, but the beast’s aim is much better. The book hits the pirate in the face, which sucks him back into his storybook world.

The room is eerily quiet as the beast walks over to the book, picks it up, and holds it securely closed.

“Stay in there!” he roars, his deep, throaty roar reverberating off the walls. His rounded back is rising and falling rapidly as he tries to catch his breath.

The pixie sitting on the shoulder of a goblin next to me topples off in fear.

No one moves. Neither Flora nor Wolfington approach him either, which is why I’m surprised to see a woman rush up to him. She’s petite and girlish but obviously older, with long, brown hair piled on her head and the rosiest cheeks I’ve ever seen. Her dress is golden in color and looks like a tapestry from the walls around us. It’s obviously very expensive and yet nothing like the princess dresses I’ve seen. She hands the beast a small, glittering, blue vial, and he snatches it from her, swallowing it in one gulp.

Maxine hits me so hard that I fall backward into Jax. “Do you know who that is?”

“It’s Princess Beauty!” Ollie supplies. “And that must mean that beast is her prince!”

Beauty and the Beast are our new professors at Fairy Tale Reform School?

Even Jocelyn looks stunned.

The beast burps. In the back of the room, I hear a pixie giggle.

The creature whips around to see where the noise came from, and I finally get a good look at him. Oh my Grimm, he’s scary! And yet not. He reminds me of Professor Wolfington, who has been known to revert to his wolf side when needed, but this metamorphosis is different. I watch in awe as his hairy face becomes smooth and his long fingernails and horns start to recede. As his body seems to shrink down to normal size, his hair changes to a long, dark mane that frames his pale skin. He blinks big, blue eyes that look more kind than frightening.

“Say hello, darling, or you’ll scare them,” the woman prompts.

Darling?

The beastly man grunts.

“Darling,” she tries again in a singsong voice.

He sighs and rolls his eyes. “Fine! Hello, students!”

His voice is still deep and menacing, but human. A murmur of hellos echoes in the room. Then his face darkens. “First things first: Who was the foolish child who opened that book?”

All eyes in the room are on me. Jax and I make eye contact.

For the love of gingerbread. No one can actually prove I was the one who took the book, can they? There are hundreds of people here, and the pirates caused a huge commotion and—

“Girl!” He points to me. “Come here now!” His voice makes the stained glass windows shake.