"What's wrong?" Sabrina asked.
"Great magic blocks our path. Your wish cannot be granted," he said, and as quickly as he and the others had appeared, they were gone.
"Why not?" Sabrina shouted, angrily. She took the obnoxious magic hat off her head and shook it, but the monkeys did not return.
Mirror gave her a sad, pitying smile but Sabrina couldn't bear to look at it. She was exhausted and angry and not a single step closer to finding her parents. How many more dead ends could she come up against?
She forced a smile and handed the Golden Cap back to Mirror. The little man nodded and put it inside its room, shutting the door and locking it behind him.
"Thanks, anyway." She sighed as she took her key ring and silently walked away. She stepped through the portal without looking back and found herself alone again, in the empty room. Crossing the floor, Sabrina suddenly stopped, turned, and looked at herself in the mirror's reflection.
"Mirror?" she called out, softly. A blue mist filled the glass and the little man's squat, muscular head peered out at her.
"Want to take a look?" he asked.
Sabrina nodded.
He winked. "You know how it works."
"Mirror, mirror, near and far, show me where my parents are," the girl said. Once again, the mirror's surface changed. As the little man's face disappeared, Sabrina's parents, Henry and Veronica Grimm, appeared instead. They were lying on a bed in the dark, fast asleep.
Sabrina looked at her parents' faces and sighed. Her father had a round, warm face like her sister's, framed with blond hair. Her mother, Veronica, was beautiful, with high cheekbones and jet-black locks. They looked vulnerable lying there surrounded by darkness.
"I won't let another Christmas go by without you. I'll find a way to bring you home," Sabrina said as she reached out to touch them. Her hand dipped into the magic mirror's reflective surface and her parents' image rippled the way a pond does when a stone is thrown into it. Sabrina stared at them until they faded away.
"Same time tomorrow night?" Mirror said as his face reappeared.
"See you then," Sabrina said, wiping the tears from her cheeks and flashing Mirror a hopeful smile. The little man nodded and his face faded away.
The girl tiptoed back down the hallway, but just as she reached her bedroom she heard a painful groan coming from the room opposite. Mr. Canis was having another difficult night. Sabrina stood in the hallway listening to his painful breathing. She imagined that at any moment the door might explode and the Big Bad Wolf would catch her up in his jaws. What would they do if the Wolf beat Mr. Canis and got loose? What if the old man wasn't strong enough to keep him inside?
But Mr. Canis wasn't the only Everafter she had doubts about lately. The charm of living in a community where fairy godmothers and cowardly lions were her neighbors had worn off and Sabrina was beginning to view the Everafters with suspicion. After all, one of them was responsible for kidnapping her parents. She had decided to keep an eye on them all until her parents were home-Mr. Canis included.
"Go to bed, child," a voice growled. "Or are you going to huff and puff and blow the door in?" The voice startled Sabrina-it sounded like a combination of Canis and the Wolf-and she quickly darted into her bedroom and closed her door tightly. Leaning against it, she realized how dumb she had been. Of course he could smell her through his bedroom door.
2
Chapter 2
There were three things that Sabrina took great pride in: one, she had successfully arm wrestled every boy at the orphanage (including two extremely humiliated janitors); two, she wasn't afraid of heights; and three, she wasn't a sissy. But when one wakes up to find a giant hairy spider crawling on one's face, one should be allowed to throw a hissy fit. Which was exactly what Sabrina did.
And her bloodcurdling scream caused Daphne to wake up, see the spider, and scream, too. Daphne's scream just made the whole thing that much more horrible for Sabrina, so she screamed even louder, which caused the little girl to scream at her sister's scream, resulting in a mini-concert of hysteria that went on and on for about five minutes.
Granny Relda burst into their bedroom with Elvis at her side. Granny's gray hair, still streaked with its former red, was rolled up in huge curlers and tucked underneath a sleeping cap. She wore a bright blue nightgown patterned with little cows jumping over little moons and her face was covered in a mossy-green mud mask that she swore kept her looking young. But her mud mask was not nearly as startling as the deadly sharp broadsword she held in her hand and the fierce batde cry that bellowed from her throat.
Scanning the room for attackers, the old woman said, "My goodness, lieblings-what is the matter?"
"That!" Sabrina and Daphne shouted in unison, pointing at a black tarantula the size of a baked potato that had leaped off the bed and now clung to a nearby curtain. Its eight long, hairy legs and vicious-looking pinchers clicked and snapped as it climbed up the drapes.
"Oh, children, it's just a spider," Granny Relda said as she crossed the room and picked the creepy-crawly thing up with her bare hands. Daphne squealed as if she had been the one to touch it and crawled under her blanket to hide.
"Just a spider?" Sabrina cried. "You could put a saddle on that thing!"
"He's South American I believe," Granny said, petting the spider like it was a kitten. "You're a long way from home, friend. How did you find your way here?"
"Like you have to ask!" Sabrina cried.
"Now, now," the old woman said. "It's just a harmless spider."
Elvis trotted over and sniffed the creature. The tarantula raised up two legs and hissed at the Great Dane, causing the usually fearless hound to leap back and yelp in surprise.
"Is it gone yet?" Daphne's muffled voice came from under the covers. "Has it been squished?"
"Girls, Puck's just being a boy. Brothers do these kinds of thing to their sisters all the time," Granny said soothingly.
"He's not our brother!" Sabrina shouted as she crawled out of bed and stomped across the room toward the door.
"Where are you going?" Granny Relda asked.
"To tell Puck's face what my fist thinks of him," the girl said, marching past the old woman and out the door.
"Don't leave me in here with the spider!" Daphne begged, but her sister ignored her plea. Puck was long overdue for a sock in the nose and Sabrina was just the person to give it to him.
Puck, like Mr. Canis, was an Everafter, a four-thousand-year-old fairy in the body of an eleven-year-old boy. Rude, selfish, smelly, and obnoxious, the boy had been taunting Sabrina since he had met her. He'd dumped a bucket of paint on her, rubbed her toothbrush in red-pepper seeds, filled her pockets with bloodworms, and put something in her shoes that still made her shudder when she recalled its smell. Puck also had a slew of magical pranks. He could shape-shift into any animal and several inanimate objects. Sabrina couldn't count how many times he had morphed into a chair and then pulled himself out from under her when she sat down. Why Granny Relda had taken to him was beyond comprehension, especially with his well-documented history. Everyone from William Shakespeare to Rudyard Kipling had warned about Puck's exploits, yet Granny treated him as if he were one of the family and had even invited him to live with the Grimms. Now Sabrina was determined to make the "Trickster King" wish he had declined the invitation.
She marched down the hall to his bedroom. No one had been in Puck's room since it had been built. Glinda the Good Witch and the Three Little Pigs used nails, hammers, and magic to create it and when it was finished, the rude boy hadn't bothered to invite anyone in to see the final result. So, when Sabrina opened the door and stepped inside, she was amazed by what she found. Puck's room was impossible.