Everything was falling apart. The screaming was just the icing on top of the cake.
George darted behind the bookcase, wondering how to get out of this mess. He should have been invisible to the elf now cowering on his daughter’s bed, but there was no misconstruing that panicked reaction. They'd spotted him. All three elves, although the two children were taking this much better than their musophobic father.
“Oh, it’s so cute! Daddy, can I keep it? Can I keep it?”
“No, you can’t keep it, and it isn’t a mouse, either,” Bobby said.
Drat. That boy’s innate paranormal sensitivities were a problem. But perhaps George could communicate a succinct telepathic message to shut up?
He squeezed his beady eyes shut and willed Bobby to hear his words.
Nothing.
This was bad.
“No, you cannot keep it!” George heard Pipaluk tell his daughter. “Do you know how many diseases wild mice carry?”
“Daddy, you’re messing up my blanket.”
George twitched his whiskers. He couldn’t make himself invisible, and he couldn’t communicate with others. All signs pointed toward one thing.
They'd fired him.
“What on earth is going on here?” asked a stern feminine voice.
His little round ears perked up. Emma. She was a sensible elf, and he’d already met her when he was in raccoon form. Maybe he could get a message across to her?
“Daddy saw a mouse,” little Sue told her mother. “I’m gonna name him—”
“George,” Bobby interrupted his younger sister. “His name is George.”
That boy really was trouble.
“It ran behind the bookcase!” Pipaluk exclaimed. “Not five minutes ago!”
“Get down from your daughter’s bed,” Emma instructed her husband. “I need you to get me that special snowsuit you created—you know, the one that can protect against the worst of Lily’s blizzards. And while you do that, I’ll take care of the mouse situation.”
George heard a thud as Pipaluk jumped down to the floor.
“You’re the best, Emma. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”
“Ew, they’re kissing!” Sue whined.
If a mouse could have rolled its eyes, George would have.
Footsteps left the room. He followed them with one ear while the other rotated to follow a second set of footsteps, heading toward Sue’s bed.
“Honestly. Of all the things that could scare him, it had to be mice,” Emma muttered. “Look at all these footprints on your bedspread, Sue. What did he step in? We’ll have to wash this.”
“Can I keep it, Mommy? Can I keep the mouse?”
“No, you can’t keep it. Where did it go? Behind the bookcase? Not that it’ll still be there. If it has any sense, it’s already found whatever hole or crack it used to get in here and is long gone. I didn’t think mice could even survive here at the North Pole…”
Emma grunted as she pushed one end of the bookcase away from the wall. George sat up on his hind legs and twitched his whiskers.
She stared at him.
How had she realized he wasn’t a raccoon before? Was there something he’d done to let her know?
“Oh, look! See how cute it is?” Sue asked, peeking around the bookcase. “He wants to stay with us! Can I keep him, Mommy? Please? Can I keep him?”
“No,” Emma repeated. “Go put your comforter in the wash. Bobby, help your sister.”
“His name is George,” Bobby said. “He used to be a raccoon.”
Bless that boy.
Emma’s almond-shaped eyes widened and rounded. George saw recognition in their chocolate brown depths.
“A raccoon, hm?”
He nodded.
She pursed her cupid’s bow lips together as she studied him. “Not the same raccoon who set Lily up for murder?”
His ears drooped. He would never live that one down.
Not that he had time to worry about that right now.
He put his front paws on the ground and scurried toward her, then he sat up on his haunches again and grabbed the cuff of her hot pink snowsuit, tugging at the nylon fabric. Help, he cried in his mind, although the message went nowhere.
“And now, you want my help,” she summarized.
He nodded frantically. If any mortal could help him in his current situation, it was this elf. Her combination of intelligence and common sense made her a valuable ally—or a formidable foe.
She sighed. “Well, better hide before Pipaluk comes back. Maybe you can help me, too. Lily is… in a bit of a state.”
George darted up her leg and dove into her pocket just before he heard Pipaluk’s timid voice return.
“Is it gone?”
“Yes, it’s gone, Pipaluk. Did you find that snowsuit?”
“Right here!”
George could picture that wide, goofy smile beneath those thick, googly glasses.
“Yuck. Did you have to pick such awful colors?”
“Oh, that. I forgot to re-dye it after testing. But it works great! It has a little heater built in right here…”
George tuned the pair of elves out while he reviewed his situation. He’d possessed his abilities when he came here, hadn’t he? The mouse form was his natural state on the mortal plane, but before he’d chosen to materialize here in Pipaluk’s home, he’d been in his preferred form for the immortal plane. He couldn’t hide himself now, though, and he couldn’t communicate telepathically…
The only explanation was that they'd fired him and retracted his abilities since he’d arrived here. Meaning a committee meeting had taken place without him.
A cold shiver ran down his spine.
If that was the case, was he stuck on the mortal plane… forever?
Or however long a mouse lived?
He wrung his little paws. Even if he could return to the immortal plane, he wouldn’t be able to change his appearance there, either, would he? Which meant Wendy would see him for what he truly was. And if she did…
What if she left him?
His tiny heart pounded faster and faster.
After all this—after everything they’d been through—would she leave him?
No. She couldn’t. She wouldn’t.
He shook his head. He needed to focus. Retrieve and destroy the book, find Lily, help her break the curse, and then they’d have to give him his job back. If all went well, Wendy wouldn’t see him again until this was all over.
He felt Emma walking.
No!
He poked his head out of her pocket and shook his head. She looked down at him and frowned.
“What now?”
He pointed at her children’s open bedroom door.
She sighed. “Look, I have something very important I have to do—”
He pointed again, jabbing his toe at the air.
“Wait, is this about the book?”
He nodded.
“It isn’t there. It’s with Crystal on an ice floe in the Atlantic Ocean, somewhere northwest of Africa, which is where we’re heading. We fly out right after I change.”
That was fine. George didn’t want to read the book. He wanted to destroy it, and dropping it in the Atlantic Ocean would effectively do that. Then he would have fulfilled the first condition needed to get his job back, the task he’d been trying to complete when they’d fired him, those trumped up old fuddy-duddies. As if none of them had ever written true stories and passed them off as children’s fairy tales. It was a legitimate side business.
Although granted, it was general practice to wait until all mortals involved in the story were dead and buried…
A few minutes later, he stood on Emma’s nightstand, staring at a picture of her and Pipaluk and under strict instructions not to turn around. He reached out a paw and caressed the glass. The couple looked so happy. His arm around hers, both wearing bright smiles, an explosion in the background—that was a photo finish they’d never replicate. Mad scientist and wife. Always free to express their love to each other, no matter the circumstances.
It made George jealous.
Even after taking the risk of speaking Lily’s unspoken curse, he and Wendy had only a few minutes with each other every day. And they still couldn’t kiss. And he’d never told her, but he somehow knew they couldn’t touch if he was in his true form.
He froze.
Did this mean he’d never get to touch her again?
All of this had been for her.
He’d been happy as a low-ranking imp until he met her, and then he’d climbed through the ranks to reach a top position which allowed him unlimited access to the mortal plane. He’d taken pains to do everything right, everything by the book, so nobody would look closer and see the clandestine meetings between him and a fairy godmother. That sort of pairing wasn't supposed to be a pairing. They shouldn’t like each other, let alone love each other.
But how could he stop himself from loving her?
He remembered the first time he saw that tall, willowy figure bending over Lily’s cradle, bestowing her blessing. Her long, slate gray hair tumbling down her back, her smokey wings curling around their black veins—most fairy godmothers took on a more cheerful, lighthearted appearance, Disney-style, but Wendy chose a darker, gothic look. A look that appealed to an imp with a preference toward the lighter side.
She liked a darker look for him, too. It had taken plenty of experimentation to hit on the right combination, but he’d finally found it: a weathered, floating skull with bits of yellowed bone flaking away, purple and pink smoke lighting up the braincase, dull bronze orbs in the eye sockets, sharp canine teeth, and long, rattling chains hanging from pointed ear bones.
She said it made him look cool.
But if he couldn’t control his appearance anymore, she would never think he looked cool again.
“Alright, let’s go.”
Emma stood next to the bed, dressed now in a snowsuit splattered with all shades of the rainbow, plus a few soot stains. She held her pocket open, and George jumped inside.
“Okay, I already told the pilot to standby, so he’ll take us back to the dragons.”
Dragons?
“The mother dragon knows the way to Crystal and Lily, so she’ll take us there, and then I’ll parachute onto the ice floe.”
Parachute?
“Just hold on tight, and you’ll be fine. As long as you don’t try to give my children a gift without running it by me first again.”
Uh oh. Here it was. The lecture Emma had given Wendy just last night, which Wendy had relayed to George over breakfast earlier that morning.
“I am their mother, and it is my job to protect them. I can’t do that if they think it’s okay to accept gifts from strangers. This time, it was fine, but what about next time? This could have turned out very badly.” She sighed. “I need to give them this lecture, not you. When I get back…”
Well, that was anti-climactic.
And so was the plane flight, although he hadn’t expected that to be climactic. Emma was quiet. George slipped out of her pocket to explore the little privately owned plane, piloted by a middle-aged man with a paunch and pictures of Crystal’s mother, Gemma, plastered all over the cockpit. George couldn’t see the attraction himself, but to each his own.
The dragon might be a break for him. Maybe.
Dragons carried mail from his particular neighborhood of the immortal plane to the handful of darklings who had set up shop on the mortal plane, and under normal circumstances, he would have no trouble getting a message to Wendy via a dragon. But would his natural proclivity for reptiles allow him to communicate with one, even when his supernatural abilities were gone?
He climbed onto the seat next to Emma and sat on his haunches, slumping against the backrest.
There was no way of knowing until he met the dragon.
If he missed his date with Wendy tomorrow…
He sighed.25Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡZwB1vafYxH
