Chapter 48
PANDORA’S DIARY
Gifts: Cursed
Boyfriends: Also cursed
Weapons: Not a wiffle bat
After we explained to our “elders” what had happened in the cursed woods—such as the fact that the woods were cursed—the vibe switched from “no big deal” to “we’re so dead.”
“We can fix this,” I promised them, though I didn’t entirely believe my own words. “Once we get to the manuscript, we’ll find a way to—”
I stopped when the basement door swung open. Leora stepped through, looking frazzled and confused. Even her bright red hair seemed dimmer than usual. “Is—is everything okay up here?”
“We’re fine!” Leo said. He stepped forward and hugged her tight. “We’ll all good, we—how’re you holding up?”
She shook her head slightly, like she was trying to clear out cobwebs. “How can we possibly have rabid coyotes on the island?”
“I know, right?” He took her hand. “Just stay here where it’s safe. Pan and I are going to find help.”
“We need you to keep the guests calm,” Leonard told her, putting a hand on Leo’s shoulder. “We can’t have them wandering around getting into trouble.”
She blinked. “Are—are you sure?”
“Absolutely,” Leonard said.
Leo kissed her head. “Trust us, Mom. We’ve got this.”
For the first time I really saw how the two of them worked together to care for her, to handle her confusion.
I was struck by their sweetness, but also by regret that it was necessary.
Then my mood was broken when my mom brayed, “Get your placid butt back downstairs, Leora, before the guests start talking about refunds!”
“I’ve got her,” Leonard said, giving Leo a significant look which I saw differently now that Leo had confessed how much time they spent caring for her.
Shit. Was I starting to feel empathy for Leo?
I couldn’t worry about that now. When Leora headed off, Leo and I shoved food in our faces, preparing to leave the safety of the Inn and race for the library.
Sheila offered to go with us, but Mom refused to let her leave the kitchen, standing up to her for once because, as she said, “You won’t be any help, you’re knee-high to a goblin yourself.
Plus I need you here at headquarters. We’ll send pixies to check everyone who isn’t answering their phone.
Make sure no one else is trapped by goblins.
We need to arrange boats too. Sheila, you know all the lobster- and fishermen—at least, that’s what my seafood bill tells me. ”
“Right, babes!” Sheila said, agreeing with my mother for once. “I’m on it.”
I was beginning to lose faith in myself, but Leo murmured, “Looks like it’s you and me.”
“I still don’t like you,” I told him.
“I know. But you can do this.”
I felt sick. “Why couldn’t I just be normal?”
“You’d still be out there battering rabid coyotes with a wiffle bat.
You’re incredible, Pan, normal or not. Did you free the folk from the manuscript?
Yeah, and that’s fucking amazing. We’ve been living with magical beings who’ve been extinct for centuries!
The goblins aren’t your fault. That’s on whoever is behind all this.
And once you get your hands back on the book, you’ll fix this. I know you will.”
“Dames right I will.” I may still have been mad at Leo, but that didn’t mean I didn’t appreciate a pep talk. “But who is behind all this?”
“I don’t know, but we’ll figure it out,” Leo declared, before his voice turned more uncertain. “Uh, and before we go, I’m sorry about everything I—”
“You can shut up, now,” I said, and left through the side door.
Leo grabbed his father’s oar and followed. My parents’ cart was still wrecked and abandoned on the road, so we crept through the fading sunlight toward Leo’s house to take theirs. Violet stood on my shoulder like a warrior, making me miss Daffodil that much more.
“I hope Daffodil’s okay,” I murmured to Leo. “I haven’t even checked on Deja or Gabe.”
“We found Shrig,” he said. “We’ll find Daffodil too. And Deja and Gabe are tough. They can take care of themselves.”
Out of the corner of my eye I saw Violet nod resolutely as we headed toward the now-abandoned glamping tents.
Except they weren’t abandoned.
Leo grabbed my elbow and nodded toward a half-collapsed tent. “There’s someone inside.”
My grip tightened on the small cast-iron skillet I’d nicked from Sheila.
Please don’t tell her, Diary. There’s no re-seasoning cast iron after killing goblins with it.
And don’t mock my choice of weapons! Magical creatures don’t handle iron well.
In fact, the only reason faerie-kin aren’t allergic to the stuff is because our human ancestry is so pro iron.
Anyway, I held my skillet tighter and Leo adjusted his grip on his oar. We slunk closer to the rustling tent, then Leo looked at me, silently asking if we should check inside or sneak past.
Sneaking past made sense. I didn’t want to fight more goblins, I wanted to magically banish them. So I gestured for him to follow me—and Violet gave an excited eep, leaped from my shoulder, and darted through the tent flap.
“Gah!” I said, which wasn’t quite the battle-cry I’d imagined.
I followed fast, raising my skillet to smash goblins, but when Leo opened the tent flap, all we found was a bunch of the original folk clustered together.
Four pixies fluttered in relief and launched themselves at Violet, their fast-beating wings invisible in the dim light.
We heard a faint whistle and Jera led a handful of disheveled gnomes toward us, shouldering oversized pickaxes and shovels and coils of rope.
There were even a few brownies wearing camouflage.
Well, two were wearing camouflage while the others were wearing the pelts of stuffed animals.
A few wore skinned teddy bears—one looked like a pig, another like a bunny, and one like a bright red lobster with pincher claws flopping around.
“What—what are you doing here?” I asked.
All five pixies immediately started miming furiously.
Making goblin faces then spinning around and leaving trails of pixie dust behind, while the gnomes shouldered a log like a battering ram and started marching in place.
The brownies, of course, milled around aimlessly.
Except the bunny-dressed one, who hopped around aimlessly.
“You want to fight the goblins?” I asked them.
Leo groaned. “They’ll eat them alive.”
“I know that!” I said, then told Violet, “You can’t fight them.”
She put up her tiny dukes as if about to engage in fisticuffs, and she looked laughably harmless.
“Exactly,” I said.
She stuck her tongue out, which hardly convinced me.
“We appreciate the offer,” Leo told her, then knelt to address the others, “but even we aren’t going to fight them. We’re going to avoid them and slip into the library for the manuscript.”
One of the teddy brownies “slipped” when Leo said “slip,” as if he’d stepped on a cartoon banana peel—so naturally the rest of them followed suit.
“Even though you’re all incredibly fierce,” Leo added.
“You’re almost too scary,” I told them, as I dragged Leo away. “But stay here and, um, guard the tents.”
We headed across the blueberry field to his parents’ house, which seemed suddenly sinister in the sunset. Still, after Leo checked that Bob was safe in his pocket—napping again—he slipped inside for the cart keys without trouble.
When he returned, he slid into the driver’s seat beside me. “Okay, we—wait.”
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
He turned toward Violet, who’d refused to abandon us. “As the pixie flies, which way is town?”
Unsurprisingly, Violet pointed toward town.
“Right,” Leo agreed. “But the gravity of the illuminated manuscript?” He pointed in the other direction. “It’s coming from that way now.”
“The opposite side of the island?” I asked. “Are you sure?”
“Positive.”
“You can feel the manuscript from all the way across the island?”
“Faintly, but definitely.”
I drummed my fingers on my skillet. “So whoever we’re after moved it.”
“The goblins went after books, maybe they were looking for the manuscript or—” Leo frowned. “Huh. You know who lives on that side of the island?”
“Philip? The Shrigleys? Hattie?”
“Albert.”
“Albert!” I felt my brow furrow. “He had access to the manuscript. The book first appeared in the library. He is the library.”
“Plus, he’s sinister as fuck,” Leo said.
“Right? And nobody on the island knows as much about books as Albert!”
“Excuse me?”
“Yeah, but as much as I hate you right now, you are not the villain in this story.”
“I’m not the villain in any story.”
“You wanted to sleep with me then throw me away.”
“I did not! I wanted to sleep with you and then… keep sleeping with you. I wanted for us to stay close!”
“Stay close? What, we’d exchange Arbor Day cards after you dumped me for not being good enough?”
“That’s not what I mean!”
I started to respond when Violet fluttered in front of me and pushed at the glove compartment with both tiny hands, like she’d move the cart herself if she had to.
“Violet’s right,” I said. “We don’t have time for your excuses, we need to save the island. Start driving.”
“Fine!” Leo said, and a series of thumps sounded from the back of the cart.
My pulse jumped. I spun in my seat, raising my skillet to bash a goblin. Instead, brownies in animal costumes scattered while the gnomes in the back seat unfolded a medieval-looking umbrella reinforced with mosquito netting to shield themselves from the threat of my frying pan.
“What are you doing here?” I demanded.
Violet’s pixie friends flew in front of me, fluttering and miming.
“You’re going to help us? No. Get out. Go, shoo!”
The pixies turned their backs on me like stubborn children. Jera glowered and the brownie who’d fallen from the cart clambered back inside.
“We don’t have time to argue with them,” Leo said, and stomped on the accelerator. “I read something about goblins getting stronger after dark. They’re bad enough now. I don’t want to see what happens when the sun goes down.”