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  “Of course.”

  “Why ‘of course’?”

  “It has always been this way.”

  “For like, what, a year?”

  “For as long as I have known Lorelei.”

  “Which is like, what, a year?”

  Gruffy glanced at Theron like his Dad did when Theron tried to explain what lattice math was.

  “Okay fine,” Theron said, standing up. He wiped his eyes. Gruffy slowly rose to his majestic height and looked down at Theron.

  “I’m going to figure another way out of here,” Theron said.

  “Of course you will,” Gruffy said. “You are Doolivanti.”

  “You can say that twice. You can say that twice,” Pip finally piped up.

  “At least we have a rope made out of shirt and griffon feather,” Theron said.

  “We do have that,” Gruffy said.

  Theron looked around the room, staring at the crack that the shaking had left in their cell, barely the size of his fist. They could try to stuff the feather rope up the crack, but what good would that do?

  He let out a breath and turned around. They had a griffon, a human boy, a thin rope and a toucan in a cage. And a crack. And a bunch of new puddles of water on the ground. There wasn’t anything else that . . .

  Theron’s gaze fell on the splintered bird cage that the fire kitties had left behind. He looked at the twisted little wires that had made up the bars.

  Lore never gave up. She always came up with something.

  “Okay,” he said. “We’re going to pick the lock.”

  Twenty

  Knock, Knock, Who’s There? Never Mind

  My words filled the room with a golden light, and the fire that was about to toast me from nose to toes swirled in front of me instead. I fell back from the wash of heat, but the flames turned back toward Jimmy.

  I blinked through the fumes. The Skitterspark had bounced away from him and now danced in the air.

  “Hey,” he yelled, grabbing the spider off his shoulder and clenching it. He raised his fist like that was supposed to do something, but nothing happened. The Skitterspark continued dancing, the golden light of my spell sparkling around it.

  Then it zoomed at Connie. She threw up her hands to ward it off, but it went straight through and vanished inside her. She clutched her chest, then her arms fell to her sides and her face went slack.

  Come on, Flicker. Come on!

  But only Connie stared back at me. Flicker did not appear. The thooming footsteps came closer, and heat pushed out of the huge doorway.

  “Fine. I don’t need fire to kill you,” Jimmy said. His king’s robe became jeans and a black hoodie that sprouted inky tentacles, reaching out from his shoulders and over his head. “I’ll—”

  A loud mewling cut him off, and we both looked to the other door, the human-sized door, on the far side of the room. Cat eyes the size of dinner plates peered through it.

  The House Cats!

  The Flickapaw shrunk to horse-sized and bounded into the room. Two more followed, with Jayla crouched on the back of the second one.

  “You . . .” Jayla said in a tone so frosty that this inferno actually seemed to cool off. I gripped my pen. I’d seen that same look on her face when she’d found out that Shandra had stolen her bike, the one her mother had bought her for Christmas.

  She pointed at Jimmy. “Him,” she said to her House Cats. “Get him.”

  “Those cats are in cages!” Jimmy said.

  The House Cats mewl-roared and leapt at Jimmy. He shouted and jumped into the air. Inky tentacles sprouted from him, and he stuck to the ceiling.

  “Cat Singer, stop it,” he shouted. “I told you that we would—”

  One of the cats jumped and swiped at him. The flaming claws tore through his tentacles, splattering ink all over the wall. Jimmy dropped a few feet, then sprouted more tentacles and scuttled across the ceiling.

  “Idiot,” he snarled. “You’re ruining it! I told you that we would—”

  “You put me in a prison,” Jayla hissed. “You put my cats in a prison!”

  One of the cats jumped up, spun upside down, and sunk its claws into the ceiling. It started after Jimmy.

  Jimmy fled. His tentacles carried him across the ceiling, away from the House Cats and out the door to the hallway.

  The House Cats mrowled in fury and charged after him, taking Jayla with them.

  “Jayla, wait,” I called.

  No, okay, that was good. If she could keep Jimmy busy, that would give me time to—

  Flames roared behind me. I spun around to the blasting heat coming out of the Grimrok-sized doorway. I had to put that indestructible door back together. I had to—

  A giant silhouette appeared in the smoky doorway, surrounded by glowing red light.

  Bummer.

  I clutched my chest with one hand, bracing myself for what would have to be a quick, Wishing World ripping story. I raised my pen.

  The door mended itself.

  I screamed. Pain burst through me, and it felt like a sledgehammer hit my head. I fell, I think. Or the ground jumped up and smacked me.

  Everything went black.

  Twenty-One

  One Of Those Days

  Ever have one of those days when you trip stepping off the curb, stumble into rush hour traffic, get run over by an eighteen-wheeler, skid into an open manhole, and get set on fire?

  So I’m only about an hour on the job, and that’s about where I am. Worst. Vella Wren. Ever.

  I got played by Jimmy who got played by Connie who got what she always wanted: the lady of flaming doom, who I happily freed thinking I was doing something peachy. Now she’s going to burn up the Wishing World. Oh, and blog update, I ripped open the sky again, maybe bigger than ever.

  And I can’t just run away to Earth like last time and let everything go back to normal, because normal hopped a bus to Mars.

  My eyes felt like they had been melted shut, but after a second, I forced them open. Everything was a big blurry fire.

  And how am I still alive?

  Things came into better focus, and in front of the blurry fire was a blurry figure, giant and bulbous, standing over me.

  “Flicker?” I said hopefully, and my voice sounded like it was coming from a crispy frog that had been stepped on.

  “Your very tread stains this ground,” said a stern voice.

  She came into full focus. The woman was ten feet tall, and her head was like one of those giant papier-mâché heads. She wore a heavy, floor-length black dress with long sleeves. She had a white cloth over her planet-sized-head and white cloth around her spindly neck, draping down like an apron for her shoulders. Her hands were enormous. Her nose was beak-sized, hooked and sharp, and her eyes were deep-set. Her hair was pulled back into a bun so tight that it stretched her face. Just looking at her, I felt like invisible branches were closing in on me. Her glittering eyes and pointy nose stabbed at me. My arms trembled and I couldn’t swallow.

  “You . . . You must be Agatha,” I said. “I’ve heard so much about you. Sorry about the door.” I had to keep joking, so I’d know my lips still worked. Agatha was a warped nightmare of an adult. And since adults weren’t allowed in the Wishing World, that meant this thing was Connie somehow. A big, twister-rippled part of Connie.

  “It is time to burn, witch,” Agatha said.

  “Yeah. About the burning thing. Some of us like our fires in the fireplace, so if you want to burn, that room in there looks like a great place to play.” I pointed past the shattered iron door.

  “You are unaware,” Agatha said. “A cockroach carrying the pestilence of sin. You refuse to understand that you threaten all that is good, so you must be cleansed. You and all the other witches in this unholy place.”

  “You’re a Salem witch trial person,” I blurted. I suddenly knew where I’d seen that type of outfit. It was in my history book at school. She was a Puritan. The people in New England in the seventeenth century wore clothes just
like that. They also liked to burn people. Hang them. Crush them with rocks.

  That revealed a lot about Connie. Vella was from England during Shakespeare’s time. Connie might actually be from New England during the time of the witch trials. Her outfit should have given that away, but I thought she was just making a Goth statement. But Connie was a modern name, wasn’t it? Shouldn’t she be named Chastity or Prudence or Makepeace or something?

  “You will be cleansed from the Earth,” Agatha said.

  “We’re not, you know, on Earth,” I said. “So technically, you’d be cleansing me from a comet. Which is funny, if you think about it.” I paused. “No?”

  She raised her giant hand—

  “Enough,” Flicker said. She stood at the center of the room in the raging flames. She gestured, and the smoke settled. The roaring fire quieted down to a . . . well, to a flicker.

  I wrenched my limbs into action and stumbled away from Agatha. I could see the whole room again. Lashtail was still fighting himself. Licorice Man seemed to be losing the battle to untie himself. Jimmy hadn’t returned and neither had Jayla. Blue Blobby Bobby was squeaking as he bounced off the walls.

  The Skitterspark I’d forced out of Jimmy now hovered in the air between the two physical manifestations of Connie Cobblestone’s fractured personality.

  The skitterspark trembled like it was trying to go toward Flicker, but was being drawn toward Agatha.

  “You can’t stay here, Agatha,” Flicker said, walking slowly toward the Skitterspark. “Go back or I’ll put you back.”

  Agatha’s lip curled. “Constance doesn’t want you, demon. She set me free because she knows what is at stake.”

  Constance. See, that sounds like a Puritan name. Constance, Connie. Now I was caught up.

  “The world is disintegrating,” Agatha continued. “Children yanked away from their families. Children governing themselves, using unholy powers, sacrificing their purity. It is an abomination.”

  “Well, we’re fond of abominations here,” I said. “So maybe you—”

  “Run, Lorelei,” Flicker interrupted me with a stare that was like getting poked with a fork. “You have to run now.”

  Agatha held up her hands. The smoke and fire all around the room swirled and began to flow into her fingertips. Flicker blasted fire at her, but it got sucked away like everything else.

  The Skitterspark wobbled, wavered, then flew into Agatha’s chest.

  Flicker’s feet slipped out from under her, and she slid toward Agatha.

  “Run, Lorelei,” Flicker shouted. She elongated into a thin, flaming stream and got sucked into Agatha’s fingers.

  “Flicker!” I screamed. I held my arm up to protect my face from the heat and squinted at Agatha.

  “Cleansed,” she breathed in a gravely voice. Her body expanded, as though she was swelling with all the fire she’d just eaten. She got so big that her shoulders pushed into the ceiling. She bowed her head and bent over, putting her enormous hands flat against the rock like Atlas.

  Flicker was gone. I was spent. Breaking the door took everything I had, and when I’d tried to mend it, Agatha had smacked me down so hard she knocked me out. I needed a moment. I should run, but . . .

  I looked at the Jimmythugs fighting themselves because of me. Agatha was going to “cleanse” this room. She’d kill them all.

  Agatha had glutted herself on a Flicker snack, and she was reveling. I took the moment and reached into Eric’s story. Into Luke’s. Into Blue Blobby Bobby’s. They all wanted to stop fighting themselves. Good, but not perfect. I dug deeper. I needed the permission of their story. I needed to move with it. Yes, there it was. Every one of them wanted to live. That, I could use.

  I carefully wrote on the air: The Jimmythugs stopped fighting themselves. They got to safety. The golden energy zoomed toward them, puffing into them at lightspeed. No chest burn. No shaking mountain. Only sparkly, happy tingles.

  Lashtail stopped whacking himself. Licorice Man unwound himself. Blue Blobby Bobby gave a sigh of relief when his blue-ball self landed and unfurled into a blue blobby boy shape.

  “Get out,” I told them.

  The golden light from my spell swished around the room, like it was searching for something, like it wasn’t done yet, then it flowed out the human-sized door.

  The Jimmythugs glanced up at the giant-headed Agatha, then they glared at me. They drifted together into a gang and started coming toward me, all of them scowling.

  . . . and totally ignoring the giant flaming woman in the center of the room. Lashtail smiled and smacked his oversized fist into his palm.

  Oh, for the love of— “She’s going to kill you, ya big derps,” I shouted. “Get out!”

  Agatha blinked, coming back from her happy place. She shrank down from titan-sized to her normal giant size, and gazed at all of us.

  “No one leaves here,” she said. “Not a single witch.”

  “Crap,” I said, raising my pen—

  “Nom e nom e nom e nom!”

  The Enterruption burst into the room, golden glitters trailing behind them from my last spell. They brushed me aside and plowed Agatha into the ground. They ran around the room and picked up Blue Blobby Bobby, Licorice Man and Lashtail. Their “nom e nom’s” got faster and faster as they realized that the room was on fire. The littlest one trailed the group, squeaking, “Nom e nom a heek a yikes a hootie!” With thick branches wrapped around their struggling Jimmythug cargo, the Enterruption ran out of the room.

  I blinked. Okay. That was bizarre. But the Jimmythugs were safe, and that was what mattered.

  Now it was just me and Agatha. As it should be. One-on-one. Girl v. girl. The battle of the century. Rahr.

  Yeah. I ran.

  Twenty-Two

  Ready? Set? Mouse

  I ran like I’d never run before, back into the hallway where Flicker got doused. Agatha hissed behind me, flopping about, struggling to lift her bulbous head off the ground and stand up.

  I didn’t know which way I was going, but I had about six seconds to get there before she started shooting fire. Left here. Right there. Another right. Another left. Another and another and another and . . . I was completely lost.

  I stopped, hands on my knees, lungs burning. I hung my head and breathed. I’d created a disaster. Again. And now—

  “Squeak.”

  I raised my head. He was at the end of the short hallway. In a flash, he crossed the distance and stood underneath me, looking up, almost nose-to-nose. He looked singed, but otherwise unharmed.

  “Where’d you go? It would have been nice to have someone squeaking sense to me,” I said.

  “Squeak,” he said.

  “Yeah, well, I went and blew up another palace,” I said.

  “Squeak.” He shrugged like he had expected that. It’s Lorelei, you know. She blows stuff up and sets everything on fire.

  “Yeah. I’m feeling pretty tiny right now,” I said. “Ripped the sky again. Didn’t listen to Vella’s advice. Haven’t found Theron. Haven’t found André. Or Gruffy or Pip. I lost Jayla. Really, I’m a big walking hole in the smartness of the world.”

  Squeak became a blur, sketching something on the dirt of the flat rock floor right in front of my face. What was that supposed to be?

  “What is that?” I asked. “An eight with sharp edges?”

  Squeak shook his head.

  “Spiky space-age sunglasses?”

  He sighed, put his little mouse hands on his hips.

  “Hey, that’s an hourglass,” I exclaimed.

  Squeak rolled his eyes. He nodded.

  “You found André?”

  “Squeak.” He pointed his nose up the hall.

  Hot diggety mouse. I picked him up and kissed him on top of his furry head. “You’re absolutely forgiven for leaving me all alone—”

  A boom behind us made me jump.

  “But let’s celebrate later,” I said.

  “Squeak,” he agreed.

  He ran an
d I followed.

  Twenty-Three

  Why is Lorelei Broken? Wait for It . . . Yes. Literally. Wait.

  Squeak led me down the tunnels until we came to an enormous cavern. The dome-like ceiling far above us was lit up orange by the lake of lava that came right up to the doorway. One tiny wave and it would slosh down the tunnel. Flames as tall as me flickered on top of the lava, raced for twenty or thirty feet, then vanished as though they had just ducked back under the surface. There were seven doorways spaced equally apart along the wall, but the only way to reach any of them was to be a lava fish and swim. Unless, of course, you wanted to try to walk on the teeny tiny shelf all the way around the room. And that looked like a quick trip to a hot swim.

  And it was hot. Really hot. No offense to Flicker, but I was getting pretty tired of feeling baked all the time. I think I’d run out of sweat.

  In the center of the lava lake was a small island and a column of lava rock with a throne on top.

  “Flicker’s throne,” I murmured, nodding at the island.

  “Squeak,” Squeak agreed. He became a flash, ran to the right along the tiny ledge just past the first doorway. He stopped between it and the next doorway.

  “Squeak,” he said.

  I squinted through the heat waves over the lava, trying to see what he was pointing at. There was a ladder built into the wall. A trench had been dug from Squeak all the way up the sloping dome, and then out to the top of the ceiling. The ladder stopped right over the throne. There, and only there, the drop from the ceiling was about six feet. Everywhere else, the drop was about a hundred feet.

  “Excuse me?” If a person could get across without getting flambéed, it would be like climbing across twenty monkey bar sets. There had to be a hundred rungs there.

  “I can’t do that,” I said. “I’d get halfway and fall.”

  “Squeak,” Squeak said, holding his paws out.

  “No,” I said.