Granny set her battle-ax on the floor and smiled. “Honestly, Sabrina, I think you’re a little old to be scared of the boogeyman.”
The old woman lifted the toilet lid. There was the little man, rubbing a red knot on the top of his head and glaring at the crowd.
“What’s the big idea?” he growled.
Startled, Granny slammed the lid down just as Sabrina had done. Sabrina, Daphne, and even Uncle Jake cried out in fright and backed out of the bathroom.
“Now do you believe me?” Sabrina said.
“Oh, my!” Granny cried. “I’ll never doubt you again!”
“What should we do, Mom?” Uncle Jake asked the old woman.
“Elvis!” Granny Relda shouted.
Seconds later an enormous blur of brown fur barreled up the stairs, knocking a few pictures off the wall as it stampeded into the bathroom and came to a screeching halt. Only then could Sabrina see him properly: Elvis, the family’s two-hundred-pound Great Dane. He barked at the toilet fiercely, snarling and snapping at the lid.
“Get him, boy!” Daphne ordered.
“You better surrender!” Uncle Jake shouted at the toilet. “Our dog is very hungry!”
Just then, another door opened down the hall and a shaggy-haired boy in cloud-covered pajamas stepped into the hallway. He scratched his armpit and let out a tremendous belch. “What’s all the racket out here?”
“There’s something horrible in the toilet!” Daphne shouted.
“Yeah, I think I forgot to flush,” Puck said.
“Not that! A little man,” Granny Relda said.
“Oh,” Puck said. “That’s just Seamus.”
“And who is Seamus?” Sabrina demanded.
“He’s part of your new security detail. Now that Mr. Canis is in jail, the house needs looking after, and to be honest, I’m too busy to do it myself. So I hired you all a team of bodyguards.”
“Why is he in the toilet?” Uncle Jake pressed.
“Well, duh! He’s guarding it, of course.”
“Whatever for?” Granny asked.
“The toilet is a vulnerable entrance into this house,” Puck explained. “Anything could crawl up the pipes and take a bite out of your—”
“We get the idea,” Granny Relda interrupted. “What are we going to do when we need to use it?”
“Seamus takes regular breaks and has lunch every day at noon,” Puck said.
“This is ridiculous,” Sabrina said. “We don’t need bodyguards and we don’t need you to put some freak in the toilet!”
Puck frowned. “You should really watch who you’re calling a freak. He’s a leprechaun.”
Seamus lifted the lid and crawled out of the toilet. He now had two purple lumps on his head and an angry look in his eyes. “I didn’t sign on for this abuse, Puck. I quit!”
“Quit? You can’t quit,” Puck said. “Who will I get to replace you?”
“Go find a toilet elf. What do I care?” the leprechaun shouted as he stomped down the hall and between the legs of Uncle Jake, leaving a trail of little wet footprints behind him.
Puck frowned and turned back to Sabrina. “Now look what you’ve done—you’ve made Seamus quit! Do you know how hard it is to find someone to sit in a toilet all night?”
“How many more leprechauns are in the house?” Daphne asked, peering behind the shower curtain.
“That was the only one,” Puck said.
“Good!” Sabrina said, relieved.
“But there’s about a dozen trolls, some goblins, a few elves and brownies, and a chupacabra staking out the other vulnerable areas of the house.”
Sabrina gasped. “There are freaks all over the house?”
“Again, freak is a really ugly term. It highlights how ignorant you are. This is the twenty-first century, you know,” Puck replied.
Sabrina clenched her fist. “I’m going to highlight your mouth, pal.”
“Give it your best shot!” Puck shouted. “Wait a minute. What’s that on your lips?”
Sabrina quickly wiped her mouth on her sleeve, leaving a lipstick stain on her shirt. She quietly cursed herself for not washing well. “Nothing,” she said sheepishly.
“Puck, we appreciate you looking after us,” Granny said, stepping between Sabrina and Puck. “I know Mr. Canis would feel better knowing you are taking over his duties. I guess it can’t hurt to have a ‘security detail’ around the house, but perhaps the bathroom might be the one place we don’t need an extra set of eyes.”
“Suit yourself, but if a dragon crawls up the pipes and toasts your rear ends, don’t come crying to me,” Puck said with a snort and headed back to his room.
Daphne peered into the toilet. “Could a dragon really fit in here?”
Granny Relda assured the little girl that her rear end was safe from dragon attacks. She praised Elvis for his bravery and scratched him behind his big ears, then encouraged everyone to go back to bed. “We’re going to visit Mr. Canis bright and early tomorrow,” she reminded them.
Another wasted trip, Sabrina thought to herself.
Granny, with Elvis trotting behind her, returned to her room, leaving Sabrina and Daphne alone with their uncle.
“Have you been up all night?” Daphne asked him.
Uncle Jake rubbed his bloodshot eyes. “Want to see where she is?”
“Absolutely,” Sabrina replied.
The girls followed him back down the hall to the door to the spare bedroom. The room was sparsely furnished, with only a full-length mirror against the far wall and a queen-size bed in the middle. Lying on the bed were Henry and Veronica Grimm, Sabrina and Daphne’s parents, who were currently the victims of a spell that kept them sound asleep. Nothing Sabrina and her family had tried could wake them up. They were like two Sleeping Beauties, only one of them needed a shave. Recently, there had been a glimmer of hope for the sleeping Grimms—a woman from Henry’s past who might be able to right the family’s tragedy. Uncle Jake had been keeping a close watch on her via one of the Grimms’ most valuable magical possessions—a magic mirror.
Mirror wasn’t exactly the best word to describe what it was. Mirrors reflect back what is in front of them, but this mirror was reflecting something else—or rather, somewhere else. Gazing into the silvery surface, Sabrina saw a beautiful curly-haired woman with a round face and green eyes. She had a splash of freckles on her button nose and her blond hair looked like precious gold against the bright blue sky. She was wearing a billowy white dress and sitting atop a camel. There were other people with her, each also on a camel, and they were snapping pictures of an ancient pyramid standing in a rocky desert.
“Goldilocks,” Sabrina whispered to herself.
“It looks hot,” Daphne said as she peered into the mirror.
“I think she’s somewhere in Egypt. It’s hard to tell exactly where, though. The place is overrun with pyramids,” Uncle Jake said as he knocked on the edge of the mirror. “If this thing had sound I might be able to make out her tour guide’s dialect.”
“Last week she was in the Serengeti, the week before—South Africa. Why does she keep moving around so much?” Daphne said.
“Who knows?” Sabrina complained. “She’s never in one place more than a few days and then she’s jetting off somewhere completely different! How are we going to get a message to her? She’s got to come back here. She’s got to help us wake up Mom and Dad!”
Daphne and Uncle Jake seemed taken aback by Sabrina’s sudden temper, but she felt she had a right to be angry. At one time their search to find a way to break the spell on her parents had seemed hopeless. Now that they knew this woman had the solution it was almost harder than before, as they had to watch her dart around the world on a silly vacation.
“Be patient, ’Brina,” Uncle Jake said to calm her. “We’ll track her down.”