Emma reluctantly signed up to bring her biological son home. She definitely did not sign up for Regina Mills.
***
The Invigoration Draught was both a blessing and a curse, Emma decided as they left the New England city behind them and started winding through the rural parts of Maine. Harry had fallen asleep in the back seat over an hour ago, and next to her, Henry was nodding off against the window. She, on the other hand, had to remind herself not to stomp on the accelerator because adrenaline pumped through her blood. The potion was doing an excellent job of keeping her awake . . . and it was doing an excellent job of making her want to crawl out of her skin. She could feel her magic sparking through her, and her fingers clenched tight around the steering wheel.
"Another option is a curse of some form, but there are very few curses that could block someone's magic for this long. It would have to be one of the darkest curses that exist."
Tina's words had made her feel uneasy when her magic had been unlocked, and despite years of searching, neither Newt nor the Goldsteins could find what kind of curse could have possibly been behind the cage that had contained her magic for so long. Then her long-lost son had barged into her life and told her that he needed her to break a curse on a town?
Ever since Harry had come into her life, she had believed there was no such thing as coincidences . . . but a curse that revolved around fairy tales being true? That was a far stretch for her beliefs.
Her trusty bug's headlights illuminated a sign on the side of the road, and she sighed in relief when she saw it: Welcome to Storybrooke. "Boys?" she called, and Harry stirred from the backseat as Henry jolted awake. "We're here."
"We are?" Harry was suddenly wide-eyed and peering out the window with inquisitive green eyes. "It's . . . kind of empty."
"I imagine it looks livelier when it isn't pitch black at night," Emma pointed out as she navigated the rainy streets. "OK, kid. How about an address?"
"44 Not-Telling-You Street," Henry answered promptly.
Harry snorted, and Emma kept herself from rolling her eyes. That was definitely her snark, and if it was any other time, she might have been amused. At this point, hyped on the Invigoration Draught, she was anything but. She put her foot on the brakes, and as her bug squealed to a stop, Harry yelped in surprise. Emma unbuckled her seat belt and stepped out of the car; when she shut the door, the power lines above her head sparked. She frowned up at them, then she folded her arms and sat on the hood of her car as the boys emerged. "Look, it's been a long night, and it's almost - " She looked around for a reference, and she did a double take when she saw the clock tower. "Eight fifteen?" she sputtered.
"That's not right!" Harry stared.
"That clock hasn't moved my whole life," Henry explained. "Time's frozen here."
"Excuse me?" Emma raised an eyebrow.
"The Evil Queen did it with her curse," Henry nodded. "She sent everyone from the Enchanted Forest here."
Emma stared blankly at Henry. She knew potions often came with warnings about side effects, but she was fairly certain she hadn't needed to worry about anything from an Invigoration Draught other than more jitters than from a venti coffee from Starbucks. Now she wasn't so sure. "Hang on . . . the Evil Queen sent a bunch of fairytale characters here?"
"Yeah," Henry confirmed. "And now they're trapped."
"Frozen in time, stuck in Storybrooke, Maine." Emma rubbed her forehead, feeling a headache start to form. "That's what you're going with?"
YOU ARE READING
Operation Cobra (Book Two of The Savior Fables)
Fanfiction"It was the kind of small-town with nothing to look at - unless you knew where to look. After all, it's a town no-one knows exists." In which it's time for the small, sleepy town in Nowhere, Maine to wake from its twenty-eight-year nap. When Emma Sw...
