The Enchantress Returns (10 page)

Buster barked up at the Fairy Godmother. Oddly, he hadn’t been fazed by the newcomers in their home.

“Grandma, please, we need to know what’s going on—” Alex managed to say through her tears.

“It’ll have to wait. Right now I need to speak with Sir Lampton,” Grandma said.

“What does he have to do with anything?” Conner asked, remembering the friendly head of Cinderella’s Royal Guard he and his sister had met in the fairy-tale world.

Grandma bent down and looked into Buster’s uneven eyes, and the dog sat straight up. The twins had never seen him look so obedient.

“Sir Lampton, have you seen anything strange or out of the ordinary?” Grandma asked.

Conner glanced over at Alex. Had their grandmother lost her mind? Did she forget dogs couldn’t talk in their world? And why on earth was she calling him Sir Lampton?

Buster barked a single bark at her and nodded, as if he had understood perfectly.

“Oh, forgive me,” Grandma said apologetically and waved her wand toward the dog.
“Speak.”

A flash of light traveled from the tip of her wand and into the dog’s mouth. Buster began barking, but the sound slowly morphed into the sound of coughing—
human coughing.

“Pardon me,” the dog said. “My word, it’s been a long time since I’ve had to pronounce anything.”

Both of the twins gasped. They weren’t strangers to talking animals, but hearing their own dog suddenly speak left them completely flabbergasted.

“Nothing out of the ordinary at all,” the dog said. “Charlotte left for work this morning and hasn’t been home since.”

“Sir Lampton?”
Alex peeped through the hands covering her mouth.
“Is that you?”

“You’re our
dog
?” Conner said.

“Indeed, children,” the dog confessed and lowered his head. “I’m sorry I couldn’t reveal my identity to you. Your grandmother wanted someone looking after you but thought having a soldier living in your house would cause you to worry, so she turned me into a dog.”

Conner turned to his sister, reddening by the second. “We can’t even have a
dog
without it being a magical conspiracy!”

“It’s been very challenging,” Sir Lampton said. “Dog food and cleaning oneself are some things I don’t think I will ever get used to. And the urges to taste and smell
absolutely everything
are quite bothersome. But for you two, I would walk to the ends of the earth.”

It was a sweet sentiment from their late father’s old friend, but the twins didn’t have any room for gratitude in their heads.

“Did you know about this, Bob?” Alex asked.

Bob had been so still the twins had almost forgotten he was there. He had turned a pale shade of green and was holding his stomach. It was clear by the horrified look on his face he had nothing to do with it. This was the first talking animal he had ever seen.

“I hope you can forgive me for casting a little spell on you at the shelter, but I had to make sure you chose Sir Lampton to bring home,” Grandma said. “I thought you were just a friend of Charlotte’s; I had no idea you were so…
involved
.”

“I… I… I…”
Bob muttered.
“I think I’m going to be sick!”
He ran straight for the bathroom on the other side of the house. Obviously, Bob had reached his surprise limit for the night.

“So this whole time we thought we had a dog when really we had a babysitter?” Alex asked, trying to wrap her head around it.

“A protector, not a babysitter,” Grandma said.

“A protector from what?” Conner asked.

Their grandmother and Sir Lampton looked at each other. The twins knew they were set on keeping as much information from them as possible without being dishonest.

“I promise to share with you the appropriate information
as I learn it,” Grandma said. “It’s a concerning time in the fairy-tale world and it’s kept me very occupied. The situation recently reached a peak and I was worried it would affect you, so I made the proper arrangements to make sure you were protected. Unfortunately, it seems your mother has fallen victim to it.”

“Speaking of precautions, Fairy Godmother,” Xanthous interrupted, “we should position the gnomes while the neighborhood is empty.”

“Gnomes?”
Conner mouthed to Alex.

“Very well,” Grandma said and looked to the other guards she had entered the house with. “I’d like you to take the first shift watching the inside of the house. The rest of you, please follow me outside so I may place you.”

Grandma and Xanthous quickly led the soldiers outside to the front lawn. The twins followed closely behind them, with Sir Lampton at their feet, and watched from the porch. Even though they knew she was a veteran leader of the fairy-tale world’s Happily Ever After Assembly it was still strange watching their small grandmother give orders to the large soldiers.

“Take your places,” Grandma instructed.

The soldiers positioned themselves on the perimeter of the Baileys’ front yard. Their house looked like a miniature Buckingham Palace. The Fairy Godmother waved her crystal wand and one by one turned each soldier into a lawn gnome with a bright flash. They all had pointed red hats and white beards.

“They look just like the gnomes in our neighbor’s yard,” Conner said. “I almost tripped over one today.”

“That was a soldier, actually,” Sir Lampton said down by
his knee. “He’s been watching the outside of the house for a couple of months.”

“Creepy,” Conner said.

“What’s going on out here?” said a sweaty and green-faced Bob, stepping out of the house. “Where’d all the soldiers go—and where’d all those gnomes come from?”

“You just answered your own question, I’m afraid,” Alex said.

Bob’s eyes darted around the front lawn as he understood. The twins felt sorry for him; in less than an hour he had discovered his girlfriend had been kidnapped and had ties to the fairy-tale world. But overall, they thought he was handling it well.

“After the fourth time I vomited, I realized I wasn’t dreaming,” Bob said. “I have no history of mental illness in my family, so my best self-diagnosis is that
it’s just one of those nights.
”

“Don’t worry, Bob, the shock wears off eventually,” Conner said to him. “I think—Alex and I have only known for a year and we’re still waiting.”

Grandma walked back to the porch with Xanthous, giving him careful instructions as they went.

“The soldiers may be an eyesore for the neighbors, but at least they’re disguised,” she said. “I want you to stay here and watch over the twins. No one is to enter or leave this house without my permission.”

Alex and Conner only heard the tail end of their conversation but it was enough to infuriate them.

“What do you mean no one can come or go?” Conner said. “We’re going to be stuck in our own home?”

“Until it’s safe,” Grandma said.

“But I have to work,” Bob said. “I have patients and surgeries to attend to. People need me.”

Grandma thought on this for a few moments. “You may come and go as you wish,” she said. “With all due respect, it’s my grandchildren I’m worried about.”

“What about school?” Alex asked.

“You can go back as soon as everything has settled down and we figure out where your mother is, but for right now we can’t risk it,” Grandma said. “The less contact with the outside world, the better off you’ll be. I’ll write to the school and tell them you’ve both fallen terribly ill.”

“You can’t lock us up!”
Conner yelled—loud enough for the whole street to hear.

“We haven’t done anything wrong!”
Alex shouted.
“Why are you punishing us like this—”

Their grandmother waved her wand at each of them and they went silent. They tried speaking but no sound came out; she had magically muted them.

“Please obey my instructions,” Grandma said. “Even with several soldiers, Xanthous, and Sir Lampton watching over you, I’ll be worried sick.”

Grandma looked down at Sir Lampton.

“I’d like for you to stay a dog for the time being,” she said. “The gnomes will attract enough unwanted attention as it is.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Sir Lampton said with reluctance—he had been quietly hoping his dog days were over.

“Now, I must be going,” Grandma said. She waved her wand and the voices of her silenced grandchildren returned.

“So that’s it, then?” Conner said. “For a year we hear nothing from you and now suddenly it’s, ‘Hey, kids, your mom’s been kidnapped and, oh yeah, I’m putting you both on house arrest’?”

“I never thought you could do something like this to us, Grandma,” Alex said and looked at her grandmother as if she was a stranger.

Their grandma took these comments to heart. She didn’t like disappointing them, but unfortunately she had no choice—she could only do what she thought was best and hope they’d forgive her one day.

“I know you dislike me a great deal at the moment,” their grandmother said. “But you’re the only family I have left. You mean more to me than anything else in the world. One day when you have families of your own, you’ll learn that there is no length you wouldn’t go to to ensure their safety, even if they end up hating you for it.”

She left them on the porch, in the hands of the others, and walked off into the night, slowly disappearing into soft, sparkly clouds.

“I love you both,” she said sadly, and a second later, she was gone.

“We should get inside before anyone sees us lingering on the porch,” Xanthous said.

He and Lampton escorted Bob and the twins inside. Whether the lockdown would last days, weeks, months, or years wasn’t certain. But for the time being, the Bailey twins were prisoners in their own home.

The first few days of captivity went by very slowly for the twins. They couldn’t eat or sleep; all they could do was worry about their mother. The question that haunted them the most, however, was
why
had she been taken?

How could their mother, a simple nurse at a children’s hospital, have gotten involved in all of this? Why had their grandmother been taking such measures to protect her grandchildren in another dimension? Was their mother even in this world, or had she somehow been taken into the fairy-tale world?

Xanthous and Lampton were tight-lipped about the whole thing. Despite the daily pleas from the twins to tell them something—
anything
—they insisted no news was the best news.

Unfortunately, the twins’ imaginations did little to soothe their distress. Were the Troll King and Goblin King seeking revenge on the twins for stealing their crown a year ago? Had the Big Bad Wolf Pack somehow resurfaced? Did it have something to do with the Evil Queen and her Magic Mirror?

The twins didn’t have any answers and it was driving them mad.

Also testing their sanity was how crowded their home had become. Their rental house felt small with just three people and a dog, but now a dozen grown men had been added to the mix. The guest room had been filled with cots, and most of the downstairs looked like an army camp, with swords and shields and pieces of armor everywhere you looked.

Xanthous ran a tight ship while he looked after the Bailey home. He was very strict about the soldiers’ shifts, making
sure they rotated being gnomes and being in the house evenly. Meals were always served at precisely the same times every day. The twins were only allowed outside once a day, in their backyard, and only if Lampton was watching them.

Xanthous was very devoted to his duties, too. He spent every day glued to the window facing the front yard, and the twins never saw him sitting down for more than a few seconds.

Bob had been very kind and checked up on the twins every morning on his way to work. His stories of the sick children he was taking care of at the hospital were the only contact they had with the world outside, so they looked forward to it every morning.

The bags under his eyes were a clear indicator that he felt as helpless as the twins did. He also unsuccessfully tried getting information out of Xanthous and Lampton. At one point he tried bribing Lampton with a bright bouncy ball in exchange for Charlotte’s supposed whereabouts, but it just offended him.

The twins tried making small talk with the soldiers they were practically living with, but it was apparent that they knew as little as the twins.

“Do you enjoy your time as a gnome every day?” Conner asked a soldier.

“It isn’t altogether unpleasant,” the soldier said with a shrug. “It gives me a lot of time to think.”

“Speak for yourself,” the other soldier said. “I had a pigeon sit on my head for four hours yesterday, and he left a present on me, if you catch my drift.”

“Gross,” Conner said.

“Can’t you just turn back into a man and shoo it away?” Alex asked.

“I wish,” the soldier explained. “We can only transform back if there’s danger. Otherwise we’d all be shooing off pigeons and blowing our cover.”

Alex and Conner made a mental note of this.

Later that night, the twins had just finished dinner when a bright flash came out of nowhere. The twins looked up, and floating down from the ceiling was a sky-blue envelope.