Page 15 of Love at Full Tilt

Vale of Villainy, Fableland

Orlando, FL

Brave ye be who take a bite. What’s inside cannot be found by sight.

—The Curséd Apple’s slogan

“Is that even a real door?”

Tess has her hands on her hips as she watches me mount a small set of rickety stairs.

With each step, the stairs waver, like a slatted bridge extended over a wide ravine.

Issy hisses the next time the staircase shakes, but I know from my time on F 3 that they won’t fall. This is part of the illusion.

“That’s the whole point,” I say. “People walk right by it.”

I was shocked this morning when Tess didn’t fight me about starting our day at Vale of Villainy to chase the first clue: Here the sweetest treat tastes of death. Dare to take a bite. But she’s been as excited about visiting the Curséd Apple as Issy and me.

Originally, we planned to wait for Carter and Mason to join us when the parks open to the general public in an hour, but I’m so sure I’m right that we decided to go on our own. I’ve read more than enough about this candy shop and its deceptive treats.

I need to rely on my alliance with Mason as little as possible so it’s easier when it has to end.

Issy glances over her shoulder. “Are we supposed to be backhere?”

Other guests are wandering through this part of Vale of Villainy, but we’re the only ones in the small alleyway.

The sides of the buildings that surround us are themed like the rest of the area, with dark, medieval-looking facades and flickering candles in the windows.

Crooked signs hang over most of the doorways, swaying in a nonexistent wind, as if no one has wandered this way in decades.

The only conspicuous thing about the Curséd Apple is that it doesn’t have a sign.

Its dark windows gape like lifeless eyes and cobwebs stretch across their sills.

But at the center of its elaborately carved door, visible only if you know to look for it, is an apple split in two.

When I reach out and push both pieces at the same time, the door pops open and sways smoothly backward. Welcoming, despite the darkness within.

Behind me, Issy squeals and claps, and Tess is already clomping up the steps, making the entire staircase shake. “This is incredible,” she says, hip-checking me in her affectionately brutish way as she shoves through the door.

I have to rub away goose bumps from my arms, even though the air this morning is so muggy it feels like we’re breathing in a swamp. My friends’ excitement fills me up, and I want to hold this moment in my hands, freeze in place everything I’m afraid we’re losing.

I let Issy slip through the door ahead of me.

As soon as I step inside, the scents of chocolate and caramel and fruit overwhelm me.

Squat black cauldrons turned upside down and circled by short stools serve as tables.

Ancient bookcases display glass jars with questionable contents, like eyeballs and ears and strange-looking plants floating in murky liquid.

Hung all over the walls are brooms and stuffed birds and wide-brimmed pointed hats.

I recognize a black broom with purple straw as Magabel the Dark’s from The Witching Time, Fable Industry’s most popular Halloween movie.

Stretching wall to wall across the back of the room is a case full of desserts. Issy is crouched in front of it, hands splayed against the glass. Tess and I join her as a woman sweeps through a curtained door behind the display.

She’s wearing dark robes that hang open to reveal a corseted gown of ebony silk.

Her blond hair is braided and wrapped around her head like a crown of snakes, and her smoky eyes and deep-red lipstick stand out against her pale white skin.

My favorite thing, though, is that she’s the same size as me.

Proof you can be beautiful and powerful without needing to be thin.

Her dark eyes narrow as she takes us in. “The first brave souls I’ve encountered in a fortnight.” She’s not performing an accent, but she still manages to sound sinister.

Issy’s face lights up. “Not a lot of people find this place?”

“None but a few, my dear.”

Issy and Tess turn to me with wide eyes and the biggest smiles on their faces like we’re twelve again.

“We each get to sample one, right?” I run my finger along the counter.

The top shelf houses truffles in every color and variety, along with stacks of chocolate-covered caramels and crèmes.

The next one has everything you could imagine dipped in chocolate or caramel or marshmallow: pretzels, graham crackers, fruit, cookies, some stranger options like jalapenos and butter crackers and bacon.

The bottom shelf cradles what looks like pastries and uncut fruit.

“Ah. No.” The woman waves an onyx-painted nail at me. “As my first customers, you get to sample them all. ”

Excitement buzzes through me. This is something I’d never read about.

Tess crosses her arms. “And how much is that going to cost?”

“Tess.” Issy’s voice is tense. She’d most likely offer up her entire college fund to taste these desserts.

“You risk only yourselves.” A wicked, close-lipped grin spreads across the woman’s face. “Here at the Curséd Apple, nothing is as it seems.”

That’s the beauty of the Curséd Apple. It’s got layers of secrets.

Finding it is exciting enough, but eating its candy is a whole other experience.

Nothing in this shop looks like how it tastes.

I’ve read about people ordering salted dark chocolate truffles that tasted like peanut butter and banana, and others who had white-chocolate-dipped pretzels that were actually shortbread.

Someone ordered a chocolate jalapeno that turned out to be blown sugar with strawberry jelly inside; another bought coconut chocolate bark that was made with potato chips.

Most of the surprise flavors are delicious, but now and then someone will get something disgusting, like mashed potatoes or meat or cheese.

The Curséd Apple is not a place for finicky eaters.

We settle down at one of the cauldrons, and for the next half an hour, we try at least twenty different desserts. Issy acts as the photographer, snapping photos of each plate and then texting them to Tess and me. She’s also recording videos of our reactions for her channel.

Of course, I nominate Tess, queen of shrimp brownies, to be the taste tester.

“Don’t,” I say with a finger pointed in the air, “tell us what it is. I want to see your expression.” Half the fun is watching her face change as she figures out the flavor.

Twice, she spits her bite back out on the plate.

The first time because she didn’t expect a peanut butter cup to taste like raspberry and lemon.

The second time because the crème in her truffle was gravy flavored.

Issy and I roar with laughter as Tess wipes her tongue on a napkin. “No one wants Thanksgiving with their dessert, thanks,” she mutters.

Finally, the woman sets the last dessert in front of us. It looks like a simple mandarin orange. The exterior has the same feel as an orange peel, and when squeezed, it has the same consistency. There are wedges inside when Tess breaks it open.

“So help me, if this tastes like peas, I’m suing,” she says, sending Issy and me into another fit of giggles.

Sucking in a breath, Issy wipes tears from her eyes. “I don’t think I’ve laughed this hard since Tess wrote that Sunspark self-insert fanfic and was so proud of it that she read every line to us out loud.”

Tess sucks in a breath, her fists jamming into her hips. “Isabel Morales, how dare you. We swore we’d never speak of that again.”

My cheeks are hot from laughing so hard. “I’m pretty sure I can still recite from memory the part where you swing from the jib sheet to save Princess Elorra from the vicious mermen.”

“Especially because you can’t swing from a jib sheet.” Issy cackles.

Tess’s face scrunches up as she crams the first piece of orange into her mouth. “Listen,” she says around her bite, “not all of us are rich enough to have been on a boat, okay ? Thirteen-year-old Tess was doing the best with what she had.”

Her throat bobs violently as she swallows, but when Issy asks how it tastes, Tess smiles and says, “Refreshing. It really is an orange.”

Which is a lie that Issy and I don’t discover until we’ve each greedily crammed two slices in our mouths. They’re soft like mousse and taste like carrots, but without the spices and sugar that make carrot cake good.

We cough our bites into napkins at the same time.

Tess erupts into laughter. “Revenge,” she declares. There’s a sharpness to her voice that pulls my eyes to her face. Tess loves to joke around and tease us, but if we do the same to her, she sometimes gets upset. Like she’s afraid our jokes have too much truth behind them.

I make sure to laugh along with her as I stand and take a big swig of water from my stainless steel bottle to wash the taste of the carrot from my mouth.

Issy follows me to the counter. She wraps an arm around my shoulders and rests her temple against the top of my head. “Thanks for making this happen.”

“It was the clue.”

She gives me a little shake. “I mean the whole trip. We needed it.” Her arm tightens, pulling me closer. “I needed it.”

“One last hurrah before college,” I mumble. The exact thing she and Tess have been saying for weeks.

“No. Soaking up as much Lia time as possible.” Her voice trembles. “I need reserves for when I can’t hug you whenever I want.”

I wonder if she knows how bad I needed to hear that. A tear slips down my face, and I pretend to scratch my cheek to wipe it away.

It’s a relief when the woman wanders over to check on us. We’ve still got five whole days here, and all summer before Issy and Tess leave. I can’t get this emotional already or I’ll fall to pieces when they actually go.

Time to refocus on the contest.

At this rate, we’ll be able to knock out the three clues before ten-thirty. Part of me can’t wait to see the look on Mason’s face when he arrives and we’re already on to clue two. Maybe this time, I’ll get to ask him if he needs help. The thought makes me giddy.

The woman smiles at me from behind the counter. “Do you dare to try another?”

I laugh. “Not today. But I can’t find the QR code to scan.”

I knew the second I popped a piece of the white chocolate truffle in my mouth and tasted that bitter burst of star anise on my tongue that I’d found the answer to the clue.

White chocolate is the sweetest kind, and I honestly believe star anise shares a flavor profile with rotting corpses.

Issy agreed that, of everything we sampled, the white chocolate truffle most closely matched the riddle.

And as if to confirm it, when the woman set the dessert down, she said, “Fear for your life, sweeties.”

Here the sweetest treat tastes of death. Dare to take a bite. There’s no question we solved it.

But there was no QR code beneath the truffle, and I hadn’t seen one anywhere in the shop as we wandered around. That must mean the attendant needs to direct me.

The woman’s dark eyebrows arch. “What’s that, deary?”

“The QR code. For the scavenger hunt.”

“You’re speaking in tongues.”

Maybe since it’s the second day and things are getting more difficult I have to make it crystal clear. “Here the sweetest treat tastes of death. Dare to take a bite. The white chocolate truffle with star anise. I ate the whole thing.”

“I don’t know what you mean. I barter not in death.”

Though she stays in character, the woman offers me the slightest shake of her head before turning away. It’s enough to tell me that she knows what I’m asking. That she understands exactly why I’m here.

And that I’m wrong.