After I hung up with Emily, I stood in the middle of my room and hissed out, “Chrissy!” several times. I was afraid that she wouldn’t come for days and by that time Tristan could have been eaten by—well, whatever unfortunate creature in the food chain was designated to eat frogs.
Nothing happened. I kept calling Chrissy’s name, all the while hoping that Emily would call me back and tell me Tristan had come home, it was all a mistake, he hadn’t been missing at all. That didn’t happen either, but after a few minutes a fountain of sparkles erupted in my room, and then there she was, decked out in a black cocktail dress complete with spiky black heels and a sequined handbag.
She put one hand on her hip and eyed me over in a disappointed fashion. “You really need to develop some patience. Do you think princes just appear spontaneously every time you make a wish? These things take time, you know.”
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“I didn’t call you here to talk about princes.”
“Good, because frankly I was getting tired of all that whining.” She smoothed down the front of her dress.
“What do you think of my new outfit? It’s to die for, isn’t it—and you’ll never believe the bargain I got on these shoes. They were such a good price I had to buy some in yellow too, and I don’t even own a yellow dress. Well, not yet anyway.”
“Look, do you know anything about Tristan Hawkins disappearing? Because I distinctly remember telling you that I didn’t want you to turn anybody into a frog.”
“Oh, that.” She flipped her hair off her shoulder in an unconcerned manner. “Of course I didn’t turn him into a frog. He was much too nice for that.” The way she said it confirmed my fears. I grasped hold of the front of my shirt in an attempt to keep my heart from pounding its way out of my chest. “But you turned him into something else?”
“Not yet; I’m still in the process.”
“In the process?”
“Of turning him into a prince.”
“What?”
She straightened her purse strap on her shoulder as though she were about to leave. “You gave me a long list of things you wanted in a guy and he fit them all, except for the fact that he’s a commoner. So I sent him back to 140/431
the Middle Ages with the instructions that I would bring him back after he became a prince. Your orders.” She gave me a bemused shrug of her shoulders. “I don’t understand it. He’s been there for months and he’s not even a knight yet. I really expected more of him.”
“He’s been there for months?” I gasped out.
She let out a sigh. “I’ve explained the time thing to you before. One hour here equals a week back—”
“Yes, I understand the concept. What I meant was that you’ve got to bring him back right now. You can’t just zap people from their bedrooms and drop them into the Middle Ages.”
“I can if you ask me to,” she said with a smile.
I shook my head. It felt like the room was closing in on me. “I never asked you to do that.” She opened her purse, pulled out the scroll and unrolled it. “You said you wanted a prince type of guy. That leaves emperors, czars, and dictators. I thought it would be easiest just to turn him into a prince.”
“That’s not what I meant!”
She lowered the scroll from her face. “Then I guess you need to learn to articulate better.” I let out several deep breaths and tried to think about this logically. Which was very hard to do since I could feel myself sliding into a full-blown panic. Tristan was missing. He’d been in the Middle Ages for months and it 141/431
was my fault. “Okay, if my wish sent him there, then how about I just wish that you bring him back?” She rolled the scroll up and placed it back in her purse. “You’ve already used up all of your wishes. First you wished to be Cinderella, then Snow White, and lastly you wished to send Tristan to the Middle Ages to become your prince.”
I clenched my hands into fists. “No, that was the same wish that you just messed up a bunch of times!”
“Hopefully he’ll accomplish the whole prince thing by this prom,” she said as if she hadn’t heard me at all. “But if not, don’t worry. You didn’t specify which prom and there are a lot of other guys I could send to medieval times to make their fortune. Eventually one of them is bound to become a prince, right?”
“No,” I said. “You can’t do that. You have to bring—,” but she didn’t listen to the rest of my sentence.
With a flash of light, she disappeared.
Chapter 9
I stood there for several more moments, just gasping at the empty space in my room. I called her name. I demanded she come back. I even stomped my foot, but she didn’t return. And every minute I stood here, Tristan was back in the Middle Ages experiencing—how much time exactly? Every ten minutes that went by here was more than a day there. Four hours was a month. I didn’t have any time to spare, and yet I had no idea how to bring him back.
I paced the room for probably a complete day in Tristan’s time, and then decided that if I couldn’t talk to Chrissy, I could at least try to talk to the leprechaun.
Maybe as an ex-assistant he had some leverage on Chrissy and could make her undo the last wish.
I looked around the house in places I thought a leprechaun might be—under the beds, in drawers, hiding in the kitchen cabinets. I remembered Chrissy had said something about him playing poker with the computer gremlins so I did a thorough check of all the computers.
Then I walked around the backyard, looking behind trees and pushing away branches of bushes so I could see inside them. “Hey, Mr. Bloomsbottle,” I kept 143/431
whispering. “I need to talk to you. It’s urgent.” I checked another bush. “Clover? Where are you?” I peered around a tree and saw Jane standing there, eyeing me suspiciously. “What are you looking for?”
“Uh, nothing.”
Oh no. That was a lie. And there was the consequence, already growing between my teeth. I rushed to the nearest large bush so Jane couldn’t see what came out of my mouth. The whole time I ran I was afraid that if I didn’t make it in time, whatever it was squirming around in my mouth would try to crawl down my throat.
When I got to the bush, I leaned over and spit up a gecko. And yes, I knew it was a gecko because I recognized it from the TV commercials.
As I stood there gagging, Jane walked over. “So this is your new method of making me feel guilty? You’re pretending to be bulimic?”
“I am not pretending to be bulimic.”
“Oh. You just throw up every time I’m around, then?
That’s a real subtle message.” Even though Jane was being unnecessarily snotty, I decided to tell her everything. First of all, it would save me from spitting up more geckos every time I talked to her. Plus she was smart enough to possibly find a solution to this problem.
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So I did. Right there in the backyard I told her about Clover and how I needed to find him because he knew my fairy godmother and I needed advice about undoing wishes.
The whole time I spoke she folded her arms and gave me this humorless stare. When I finished she just nodded and said, “Okay, don’t tell me what you’re looking for. I don’t care.” Then she turned on her heel and went back inside.
I sighed and looked around the lawn again, trying to fend off the overpowering feeling of helplessness. How did one contact a leprechaun? They made a point of staying hidden, and it’s not likely he’d walk into a trap—that is, unless I made it an especially tempting trap.
I went to the store and bought a package of Ding Dongs and some Barbie doll furniture. Then I went back home, took my dad’s gopher traps out of the garage, and hauled them inside. I set up furniture in all the traps complete with Ding Dong slices and little cups of milk.
Just for good measure I threw a flash drive into each of the traps. If a few computer gremlins were lured into the traps along with the leprechaun, all the better.