"He would say, all the weakness and softness."
"I'm not weak," said Mack.
"That's his mistake," said Yo Yo. "That's our secret weapon. He thinks you're weak because he always managed to hide his kind heart under a mask of jokery and rages and malice. But it was there, and it kept him from utterly destroying people. Once you were... born, Mack, then there was no restraint on his will to evil. It could grow and grow. Bit by bit. Without you in his heart, he turned himself into the devil."
"Meaning that he is the real devil? Cause Puck lies?"
"He lies," said Yo Yo, "but it doesn't mean that whatever he says is the opposite of the truth, either. That would be just as sure a guide as telling you the truth in the first place."
"Yo Yo," said Mack. "The stuff you're telling me. What difference does it make? I think I'm a free man, you think I'm secretly Oberon. So what?"
"So you can do things that we need. We can use you," said Yo Yo, "to set up the old dragon and—"
"Kill him?" Mack whispered.
"No, but castration and stomach stapling seem appropriate," said Puck.
"Is he fat?" asked Ceese.
"No, I just want him to throw up every time he eats more than three little bites of a meal."
"We got to get out of the jugs," said Yo Yo. "And not just set free. Protected till our... souls are given back."
"Why should we free his soul?" asked Mack, thumbing at Puck.
Puck let out a long, loud fart. Fortunately odorless. In fact, knowing Puck, it probably wasn't a real fart.
"Don't, if you don't want to," said Yo Yo. "Just remember that without me, Puck would belong completely to Oberon. No more attempts to make it possible for you to avoid letting people hurt themselves."
"My head is spinning," said Grand. "I want to go home and go to bed."
"I didn't invite you," Puck said cheerfully. "Feel free to leave any time."
"What exactly is the plan?" asked Mack. "And what can we do to help?"
"Nothing," said Yo Yo. "It's too powerful for you. Thanks for all you did so far, but except for one tiny thing, we don't need you at all and don't intend to put you at risk."
"What's that one tiny thing?" asked Mack.
"Get us out of those jars."
"How?" asked Mack.
counterword. So we do need you to get that. You or somebody."
"Where do I learn this 'counterword'?" asked Mack.
"Oh, you already know it," said Yo Yo. "You just don't know that you know it. In fact, you think you don't know it. But you know it."
"So you do need me."
"Just a little bit. Then we're on our own."
"Okay," said Mack. "I'll help you find that password—"
"Counterword," said Puck with all the smugness of Alex Trebek.
"But you got to help us, too."
"We are helping you," said Yo Yo. "Once we get out of those jars and put back together properly, then we can go find Oberon's pony and shut him down. Put him out of business. Stuff the genie back into the bottle. So to speak."
"Won't he know you're out?"
"Well," said Yo Yo, "probably."
"So won't he come down on you the second you're free?"
"That's the other little thing we need."
"The counterword and something else."
"We need a distraction. We need—"
Grand Harrison interrupted her. "What you need is a fairy circle."
Yolanda looked at him like he was insane. "Do you know how many fairies it takes to make a decent circle?"
"But it's what you need, isn't it?" said Grand.
"We got no fairies to work with," said Puck. "Oberon keeps a tight rein on them. He only lets the ones he absolutely trusts to come out to... um... play. So we can't raise a circle."
"He lying?" Mack asked Yo Yo.
"Do you believe him?" asked Yo Yo in reply.
"Can't get a straight answer into a crooked mind," said Puck.
"What do you mean by that?" demanded Mack.
"I mean the only time you believe me is when I lie."
Grand Harrison spoke up again. "If he can suck our wishes out of us, why can't you use us mortals in your fairy circle?"
"And that's really starting to bother me," said Puck, rising to his feet. "What do you know about fairy circles?"
"It's how you do truly great magicks. You bring together a bunch of fairies and they form a circle and all of the power of all the fairies in the circle becomes part of the great thing you're trying to do."
"And you learned this where?" asked Yo Yo.
"The Blue Book of Fairy Tales," said Grand. "Or the Red one. Or whatever."
"Not in those books," said Puck.
"Stay on topic, Puckaroo," said Yo Yo.
"If I had any real power, she'd drop dead when she called me that," said Puck. Then he grinned at Yolanda. "Just kidding, darling."
"Fairy circle," said Ceese. "Grand's idea."
"It might work," said Yo Yo. "Except we don't know just how much of him he's put into his pony. If it's all there, except for the part that is Mack—then we could do it using a fairy circle made of mortals. But if part of him is here in this world, and part of him in Fairyland, that would be like lassoing a one-inch-thick snake with a lariat that won't get any skinnier than two inches in diameter."
"Will this be on the geometry test?" asked Mack.
"So to do a fairy circle in order to confine him long enough for us to get free, you have to find out where he is, exactly," said Ceese. "And in order to find out where he is, you need—let me guess—Mack, because he is Oberon. Sort of."
"That's right," said Yo Yo.
"Only Mack doesn't know it," said Ceese.
Puck suddenly had a moustache and twirled it. "Little does he know..." The moustache disappeared when everybody looked at him and nobody laughed.
"So how you going to get your counterword and your information out of a guy who doesn't actually know the things you think he knows?" asked Ceese.
"He's seventeen!" said Ceese.
"It's the time-honored tradition," said Grand. "Fairy queen needs to find out something from a mortal. She gets him into Fairyland, boffs his brains out, and then he just won't go away. Mortal stalks her until she takes pity on him and makes him forget."
"Blue Fairy Book or Red?" asked Mack.
"He's just making this up," said Puck.
"I'm a folklorist," said Grand. "Amateur. Started with slave narratives and slave magic beliefs.
Then I branched out. I never thought it was real."
"If you think this is real," said Puck.
"Shut the Puck up," said Yo Yo.
"Ha ha," said Puck. "Aren't we the class clown."
"But you've got to do it all at once," said Grand, "which is impossible. Because you can't use the fairy circle to bind him unless you two fairies are in control of it, and you can't get control of it till you're reunited with your imprisoned selves. And you can't be liberated until the fairy circle has distracted him."
"Plus I ain't sleeping with you," said Mack.
Both Puck and Yo Yo looked at him like he was crazy. "Everybody wants to sleep with her," said Puck.
"Not me," said Mack.
"Yes you do," said Yo Yo. "You think I don't know?"
"Oh, I want to," said Mack. "But I don't want to."
"Try English this time," said Puck.
"I want to sleep with her but I don't choose to sleep with her."
Yo Yo was on her feet in an instant. "Why not? What's wrong with me? I have never had a mortal turn me down!"
"Because I'm not sleeping with a girl I'm not married to," said Mack.