“Puck, that’s not very nice,” Granny said. “We’re sorry we woke you but Goldilocks is here. She’s going to kiss Henry and wake him up.”
“Who? What?” the boy said.
“Goldilocks, my father’s former girlfriend,” Sabrina said. “She’s going to kiss him and break the magic spell that’s kept him and my mother asleep for two years.”
“There’s a magic spell on them?” the boy said. “I thought they were just really lazy.”
Sabrina growled.
“We’re glad you’re here, Puck,” Granny Relda said.
“I’m sure you are,” the boy said, letting out another fart. This one was so loud it made Elvis jump in fear. “Is there any food at this shindig?” Granny shook her head. “You people throw the lamest parties.”
“Goldi, please, just kiss my dad,” Sabrina cried.
Goldilocks nodded, leaned in, and nervously touched her lips to Henry’s. The kiss was gentle and a little longer than Sabrina would have liked. It was clear to Sabrina that it had a big impact on Goldilocks. Her face was bright red and she looked as if she had just been caught doing something illegal. But her expression was nothing compared to the looks on the faces of Sabrina’s uncle and grandmother. Both of them looked defeated.
“What? What’s wrong?” Sabrina asked.
“It should have worked already,” the old woman said.
“Try again,” Uncle Jake urged.
Goldilocks bit her lip but did as she was told. She took a deep breath, as if it might be her last, and bent over to kiss Henry once more. When she was finished she hovered there, inches from his face, and whispered something Sabrina couldn’t hear.
“Perhaps Goldilocks has fallen out of love with Henry,” Mirror said. “It has been more than fifteen years since they were a couple.”
Goldilocks shook her head but said nothing.
“Then what’s wrong?” Sabrina cried, fighting a bubble of panic and despair rising up into her throat.
“Let’s try one more time,” Daphne said hopefully.
“It won’t help,” Uncle Jake said. “Briar said the result would be immediate.”
Granny nodded sadly. “I’ve read accounts of these spells being broken. The moment her lips touched your father’s he should have woken up. This must be some unique version of the spell. We’ll just have to go back to the drawing board and find another solution.”
Daphne flashed Sabrina a look that said “don’t freak out,” but it was too late.
“This has been a stupid wild-goose chase!” Sabrina exclaimed. “The Master and the Scarlet Hand are probably getting a big laugh out of this right now!”
“Don’t give up hope, Starfish,” Mirror said.
“Give up hope! I haven’t had any hope in two years.”
“Bummer!” Puck said. “Well, maybe whoever is pounding on the door downstairs can wake him up.”
“Puck, could you answer it for me?” Granny asked.
“What am I? The butler?”
“I’ll get it,” Sabrina said. She needed to get out of the room. The disappointment was hanging in the air, threatening to suffocate her.
“Whoever it is, don’t forget to invite them to move in with us,” Puck said sarcastically. “Don’t forget to show them where the towels are!”
“Freaking out isn’t helping Mom and Dad,” Daphne said as she raced down the stairs after Sabrina. “Everyone wanted Goldilocks to wake up Dad. So it didn’t work. Exploding in frustration every time we have a setback is, well, annoying.”
Sabrina marched to the door, then turned to face her sister. “First of all, you don’t even know the meaning of most of the words in that last sentence. I’ll be angry and upset if I want. I have a right to be angry. My life is horrible.”
Sabrina threw the door open and there, standing on the porch, was a rail-thin woman with a hooked beak of a nose and eyes like tiny black holes. She was dressed entirely in gray. Her handbag was gray. Her hair was gray. When she smiled, her teeth were gray.
“I think it’s about to get a lot worse,” Daphne groaned.
“Hello, girls,” the woman said.
“Ms. Smirt!” Sabrina cried.
“Oh, you remember me. How it warms the heart,” she said as she snatched them by the wrists and dragged them out of the house and across the lawn where a taxicab was waiting in the driveway.
“Where are you taking us?” Daphne cried, trying and failing to break free from the woman’s iron talons.
“Back to the orphanage,” Smirt snapped. “You don’t belong here. Your grandmother is unfit. She kidnapped you from your foster father.”
Sabrina remembered the last foster father Smirt had sent them to live with. Mr. Greeley was a certifiable lunatic. “He was a serial killer. He attacked us with a crowbar.”
“The father-child bond needs time to develop,” Smirt said as she pushed the girls into the backseat of the taxi.
“You can’t send us back to him,” Daphne shouted.
“Sadly, you are correct. Mr. Greeley is unavailable to take you back due to an unfortunate incarceration. But don’t worry. I’ve already found you a new foster family. The father is an amateur knife thrower. He’s eager for some new targets … I mean, daughters.”
Smirt slammed the cab’s door shut and tossed a twenty-dollar bill at the driver. “You got automatic locks in this thing?”
Suddenly, the locks on the doors were set.
“To the train station, please,” Smirt said. “And there’s another twenty in it if you can make the 8:14 to Grand Central.”
The taxi charged out of the driveway and tires squealed as it made a beeline toward the Ferryport Landing train station.
“You can’t take us back to the orphanage,” Sabrina said. “We’re not orphans anymore. We found our mother and father.”
“Such an imagination you have, Sophie,” Smirt said. “There’s really nothing as unattractive in a child as an imagination.”
“My name is Sabrina!”
In no time, the taxi was pulling into the train station. Ms. Smirt pinched the girls on the shoulders and hustled them onto the waiting train. The doors closed before Sabrina and Daphne could make a run for it.
“Find a seat, girls,” the caseworker said as the train rolled out of the station.
“Daphne, don’t worry,” Sabrina whispered as she took her sister’s hand and helped her into a seat. Sabrina had many talents but her greatest was the ability to devise effective escape plans. While she comforted her sister, she studied the exit doors, windows, and even the emergency brake. A daring escape was already coming together when she noticed the complete lack of worry on her little sister’s face.
“I’ve got this one covered,” Daphne said.
“You what?” Sabrina asked.
The little girl put her palm into her mouth and bit down on it.
“What’s going on, Daphne?” Sabrina continued, eyeing the girl suspiciously. Daphne had never plotted an escape. Escaping had been the exclusive domain of Sabrina Grimm for almost two years. What did her little sister have in mind?
“Zip it!” Ms. Smirt snapped before Daphne could explain. “I don’t want to have to sit on this train for two hours with a couple of chatterboxes.” The caseworker snatched a book out of her handbag and flipped it open. Sabrina peered at the title:
The Secret
.
“Ms. Smirt, have you ever heard of the Brothers Grimm?” Daphne said.
The caseworker scowled and set her book on her lap. “What do you want?”
“I was wondering if you have ever heard of the Brothers Grimm.”
“They wrote the fairy tales,” Ms. Smirt said.
Daphne shook her head. “That’s what most people believe, but it’s not true. The Brothers Grimm didn’t write stories, they wrote down things that really happened. The fairy tales aren’t made-up stories, they’re warnings to the world about Everafters.”
Sabrina was stunned. Daphne was spilling the family’s secret to the worst possible person. They couldn’t trust Smirt any further than they could throw her.
“What’s an Everafter?” the caseworker snapped.
“It’s what fairy-tale characters like to be called,” the little girl explained. “‘Fairy-tale character’ is kind of a rude term. Like I was saying, the Brothers Grimm wrote about Everafters because they are real. Take Snow White. She’s a real person and the story really happened—poisoned apple and all. Cinderella, Prince Charming, Beauty and the Beast, Robin Hood—they’re all real people. They actually live here in Ferryport Landing. The Queen of Hearts is our mayor. Sleeping Beauty is dating our uncle.”
“Debbie, you are going to look so adorable in your straitjacket,” Ms. Smirt said.
“It’s Daphne,” the little girl said.
“Please be quiet,” Sabrina whispered into her sister’s ear.
“OK, kid, I’ll bite. So, if fairy-tale characters are real, how come I haven’t met any?” the caseworker said with a cackle.
“Because there’s a magical barrier that surrounds this town that keeps the Everafters inside. Our great-great-great-great-great-grandfather Wilhelm Grimm and a witch named Baba Yaga built it to stop some evil Everafters from invading nearby towns.”
“Oh, of course,” Smirt said sarcastically. She slapped her knee and let out a ghastly laugh that sounded like a wounded moose. Sabrina had never seen the nasty woman laugh before and hoped she never would again. Daphne ignored Smirt. “The barrier has made people in the town angry, and a lot of the Everafters don’t like us much,” Daphne said. “But—”
“Daphne, stop. You’ve told her too much,” Sabrina begged.
“Let me finish, Sabrina,” Daphne said calmly. “Like I was saying, we have a lot of enemies in Ferryport Landing but we’ve managed to make a few friends.”
Suddenly there was a tap on the window. Sabrina gazed out, expecting to see the Hudson River rushing past. Instead, what she saw nearly caused her to fall out of her seat. In the window was a familiar ragged-haired boy in robots-fighting-monkeys pajamas. Held aloft by two giant pink insect wings, he soared alongside the speeding train, grinning and sticking his tongue out at her. Sabrina had never been so happy to get a raspberry in her life.
Ms. Smirt, however, was horrified. She screamed like she had just found her name on Santa’s naughty list. She tumbled onto the floor and scampered underneath her seat like a cockroach. When she mustered the bravery to take another peek, Puck had already zipped ahead and out of sight.
“Did you see that?” Ms. Smirt stammered, slowly creeping back into the aisle and then dashing to the window for a closer look. “I must be tired. I thought I saw a boy out there. Flying! Outside the window!”
Just then, there was a horrible, eardrum-blasting
clunk
, followed by the screaming of metal on metal. Something sailed past the window and Sabrina watched as it disappeared. It was part of a door, much like the one the girls had stepped through to board the train. Sabrina looked back at her sister, who was grinning from ear to ear. “Did the two of you plan this?”
“Someone’s got to do the thinking in this family,” Daphne replied matter-of-factly.
A moment later Puck came strolling down the aisle with his beautiful wings extended proudly. “Well, well, well. Look at me. Here I am saving you two again. You know, you’re really quite helpless and pathetic. It amazes me that you can even dress yourselves in the morning.”
Ms. Smirt cried out and once again fell to the floor and scooted back under the seat.
Puck turned to Sabrina. “What is she doing down there?”
“Hiding, I guess.”
Puck leaned down and poked his head under the seat. “I found you.”
Ms. Smirt shrieked.
Puck lifted himself to his full height and laughed. “She’s fun.” He leaned back down and she screamed again. “I could do this all day. Can I keep her?”
Daphne shook her head. “You know the plan.”
Puck frowned. “Fine!” he snapped, then dragged the caseworker out from under the seat and to her feet.
Daphne stepped up to the trembling woman. “Ms. Smirt, I have something to say to you.”
Smirt said nothing and seemed unable to take her eyes off Puck and his wings.
“We are not going back to the orphanage. Not now, not ever. We are not going back to any foster parent, either. Our family is in Ferryport Landing and we’re staying. You are never going to come back to this town. You are never going to bother us again. This is good-bye, Ms. Smirt.”
“Right after the merciless kicking, right?” Puck said. “We talked about the kicking.”
“I vetoed the kicking, remember?” Daphne said.
Puck scowled.
Just then, the train’s conductor came over the speaker system. “Next stop is Poughkeepsie, folks. Next stop, Poughkeepsie.”
Suddenly, Puck’s face fell and his ever-present mischievous grin melted. “Uh-oh.”
“What’s
uh-oh
?” Sabrina cried, looking around. Every time she heard “uh-oh” something bad happened. It usually involved running from monsters or giants.
“The barrier,” Puck shouted as he spun around and ran in the opposite direction of the train’s rolling. “I forgot about the barrier!”
“Uh-oh,” the girls said in unison. No Everafters could pass through the barrier, and so when the train passed through it Puck was sent sailing down the aisle. He flailed helplessly.
“How do you stop this thing?” Puck cried as he was pushed by the invisible force.
Sabrina remembered the emergency brake cord hanging on the wall. She ran to it and yanked the handle as hard as she could. Brakes screamed, and the train whiplashed as it decelerated rapidly. Unfortunately, it wasn’t slowing down quickly enough, and Puck was fast approaching the steel door at the end of the train car. There was no way the train would stop before he slammed into it.
Puck flopped about like a fish in the bottom of a boat. Sabrina knew what he was trying to do. If he could spin around he could trigger a metamorphosis. Besides flying, he had the ability to change his body into animals and a number of inanimate objects. Usually he changed into things that would annoy Sabrina, like a three-legged chair or a skunk, but from time to time he could transform into something useful. Sabrina could do nothing but watch his awkward effort and cheer when he finally succeeded. His arms and legs shrank to thick, treelike stumps. His body plumped up hundreds of pounds and his skin hardened into a gray armor. A hairy horn erupted from the top of his head. In a matter of moments, Puck was no longer an annoying boy in desperate need of a soapy bath, but a full-size rhinoceros. He lowered his head and his diamond-hard horn plowed into the train door, blasting it off its hinges and causing a great commotion in Sabrina’s eardrums.