At around eleven, there was a knock on the door and Maggie slipped into the room.
“I brought you some food,” she said, placing a plate of bread and ham in front of me. “I was going to bring cheese, but Nick said you didn’t like it.”
A smile involuntarily twitched my lips at the fact he’d remembered.
“How’s it going?” she asked me.
“Yeah, not great. I don’t suppose you’ve got any good news?”
“Afraid not. Something really strange is going on this morning; since sunrise, everything has gone a bit soft and faded. Look.”
Maggie indicated around the room, and I saw she was right: The four-poster bed looked slightly fuzzy, as if I were looking at it through a smeared lens.
“What’s happening?” I asked.
“I don’t know, but I’m terrified that the story is starting to fade. And that’s not all,” Maggie said. “I went to Longbourn this morning, and Mr. Collins has already proposed to Elizabeth, and she told him she’ll think about it.”
“What?” I looked at Maggie in horror. “She can’t do that; she’s supposed to reject him outright!”
“At least she hasn’t accepted yet, because if she does, then that’s the end of her and Darcy. But we can’t hang around for Lizzie’s decision. I think you need to read us out of here now, before the shit hits the fan and we disappear completely.”
“What do you meanIhave to read us out? You’re going to do it, aren’t you?”
Maggie frowned. “Nick and I have been talking about this, and I think it has to be you.”
“What?!”
“You’ve seen me, Zoe: I don’t even feel a twinge of magic when I try to read us out of here. I’ve been away from our world so long that I think the powers I had have completely disappeared, whereas we know yours work.”
“We don’t know that at all!” I said. “Maybe I have no powers and I only read Darcy in and out because it was your book?”
“No, I believe Nick’s theory’s right: Somehow you’ve gained the ability, so I think you’re our best chance. Besides, it’s more likely to work if you read the words you’ve written because you’ll be able to visualize them better.”
“But I have no idea what I’m doing!” I whimpered. “I’ve only done it twice before—the first time completely by accident, and the second when it went wrong and I ended up here. You said yourself I was too inexperienced.”
“I’m sorry to put all the responsibility on your shoulders, but I think you’re the only person who can get us out of here, and we have to do it soon. Nick’s waiting for us down by the woods now.”
My chest tightened with anxiety, and I took a deep breath. “Say I domanage to read us all home—do you think that will be enough to savePride and Prejudice?”
“Honestly, I don’t know,” Maggie said. “I’d love to say that would fix things here, but I worry that too much damage has been done already. Darcy is so preoccupied with his memories from our world that Elizabeth is the last person in his thoughts. And while he’s wandering around the stables mumbling about Tube trains and TV shows, the other characters have gone awry, and the world ofPride and Prejudiceis literally starting to disappear.”
“So you’re basically saying the book is screwed, whatever happens?”
“It breaks my heart, but yes, I think it is.”
I leaned back in my chair and rubbed my face, exhaustion fogging my brain. If Maggie was right, then one of the greatest works of literature was about to vanish forever. Could I really let that happen? I’d made this mess, so surely there had to be a way for me to fix it…
And then it hit me. I knew what the solution was, because it was the same thing I should have done the very first moment Darcy turned up at Cake Expectations.
“I think I know how to savePride and Prejudice,” I said, jumping up from my chair. “I have to tell Darcy the truth.”
“We don’t have time for that; we need to get out of here.”
“But if I tell him about his time in London, then maybe he’ll stop obsessing about it and turn his attention back to Elizabeth. If he can understand what happened, it might be enough to get the plot back on track and stop everything falling apart.”
“But it might make things even worse, and then this whole story could fade completely before we’ve had a chance to escape.”
“I have to try,” I said. “My mum loved this novel so much, and I know if she were here, she’d tell me it’s too important to just give up on.Please, let me talk to Darcy, and then I’ll come back and try to read the three of us out of here.”
