Eva burst through the kitchen door just as the toast popped up. She snatched it out of the toaster and shoved a piece into her mouth.
“Eva,” Annie started, wanting to tell her about the missing magic. “Things seem a—”
“Delicious!” Eva announced, crumbs scattering everywhere as she interrupted Annie. She then took another bite as Jamie followed in behind her.
Annie’s heart lifted to see him.
He smiled at her while Tala barked out his objections at having his toast stolen.
“You’re a dog. You don’t even need it toasted,” Eva declared, throwing a floppy piece of bread at him.
It hit him in the muzzle and plopped down onto the counter. He barked one more time and, using his nose, nudged it toward Annie, an offering.
“You eat it,” she told him. “I’ll make some more. Do you want some, Jamie?”
“Yes, please, but you don’t have to make it for me,” he said, settling into his seat. “Where is Gramma Doris?”
“No idea,” Annie answered, thinking about Aquarius House’s enchanted cook and their biggest maternal figure after Miss Cornelia. “I just got here. Besides that, I’m not sure why, but things seem a little off today.”
“Off? Nonsense! Today is a super amazing fantastic day for celebrating US. Last night’s party was just the beginning. And Gramma Doris is sleeping like a vampire in Alaska, probably,” Eva said through a mouth full of toast. “Brounies can’t handle too much of a party. Not important. ANYWAY, what is important is how we should all celebrate our first day as bona fide heroes.”
She chugged some orange juice out of the container, not bothering to get a glass.
Annie raised her eyebrows at Jamie.
“I’ve seen worse,” he admitted.
She had, too. The Wiegles, her last foster family, were not known for their table manners, or any manners, actually. She shuddered, remembering.
“Would you like a glass or something, Eva?” she asked, taking one out of a cabinet.
“That’s just more work. You have to wash a glass.” She dropped the juice back on the counter. “I’m done anyway. No worries!”
She belched.
“I’m supposed to say ‘excuse me’ after that.” She belched again, wiping her mouth with the back of her forearm as she put the glass back in the cupboard.
They all waited for Eva to say “excuse me.”
And waited.
“What?” Eva demanded, glaring at them.
“You’re supposed to say ‘excuse me,’ remember?” Annie gently prompted.
Eva threw her hands up in the air just as more toast popped out. “Excuse me!”
She snatched the toast out of the air and tossed one slice to Annie and another to Jamie. Annie handed hers to Tala. He refused it.
“You look hungry,” she said.
He shook his head.
“Halfsies,” she insisted, ripping the toast into two. “I’m not eating my half unless you do.”
The dog gave up and scarfed down his half.
Eva turned to Jamie, exasperated. “She’s too nice. I mean, it’s good to be nice and everything, but you’ve got to take care of yourself, too, Annie. You’re the Stopper and all. Stoppers have to stay healthy and keep their magic up.”
Jamie put more toast in the toaster and began wandering around the kitchen, pouring more juice, finding some cereal and apples. “What happens if they don’t?”
“Let me help you, Jamie.” Annie took the apples from him and washed them in the sink even though they seemed as if they were already pretty clean. “Yeah, what happens if Miss Cornelia or I …” She couldn’t figure out the best way to say it.
Jamie finished for her. “Get sick or something?”
“Yeah,” Annie agreed, flashing him a thankful smile. “What then?”
“Well, Miss Cornelia’s magic is part of what holds Aquarius House and Aurora all together. The Gnome of Protection, obviously, shields our town from the eyes of evil and keeps people who have never been in here out.”
“Wait,” Jamie interrupted. “But the Raiff … He used to live here. Does that mean he can come in?”
Eva staggered backward, hands dramatically clutching each other over her heart. “Seriously? You guys remember nothing. The Raiff is in the Badlands. Miss Cornelia put him there after the Purge. It weakened her to do so. It took a lot of magic. In fact, it weakened all of us.”
Annie and Jamie exchanged a glance.
“And that means?” Annie prodded.
“AND THAT MEANS!?! DUH!” Eva stomped around in a circle. “It means that that evil Raiff monster can’t come back, nor can all his people. He is stuck there.”
“But I read—” Annie started.
“What do you mean, ‘you read’? ” Eva interrupted, hands back on her hips.
Annie shrugged. “There are all these books in my room, and they all want me to read them. They sort of beg every night when I go to sleep. It would be rude not to read them.”
“Look, Stopper, if you worry about hurting books’ feelings you are just Way … Too … Nice,” Eva insisted. She tweaked the unicorn horn that was the lever on the toaster with each word to make her point.
“Plus,” Annie continued, “they are teaching me things.”
“That is not very heroic of you,” Eva countered. “Heroes act. They do not read.”
“Of course they do.” Annie appealed to Jamie for help.
“Books teach you things that you don’t know yourself. They let you feel things. Every time you read a book with a hero in it, you become that hero.” Jamie poured the cereal into bowls and then added some milk.
Annie remembered to say “thank you” for the cereal. Eva was too flabbergasted to be polite. Plus, it took a lot for Eva to ever remember to be polite.
“I can’t believe either of you.” Eva shook her head and started eating, not pausing to chew before finishing her sentence. “I’m going to have to do a lot of work to make forever heroes of glorious glory out of you.”
Annie gave up trying to argue with the dwarf and stirred her cereal and told them what she’d read last night. It was a book about portals and the history of Aurora. The book said that portals can transport beings from one place to another. Miss Cornelia had cast the Raiff over to the Badlands through a portal, trapping him there forever.
“There was a lot of science in the book. I didn’t really understand some of it,” Annie admitted reluctantly.
“I’ll try to explain the science parts to you,” Jamie offered and then added, “If you want.”
“Stop being so shy!” Eva pounded her fist on the counter. “The two of you. Freaking A. It’s all reading books and being polite and being all self … self … self-depreciating?”
“Deprecating,” Jamie corrected. “Actually. Self-deprecating.”
“Whatever!” Eva roared. “Own your awesome! Be like me. Strut it out! Come on. Let’s practice our struts.”
Annie shirked. “Oh, no … that’s really okay.”
Eva yanked Jamie off the chair. “Work it, James Hephaistion Alexander. Work that strut. Own your awesome. Come on.”
Jamie gave Annie a tortured save-me look as Eva forced him to push out his chest and stand up straight and swagger toward the refrigerator. Annie collapsed into giggles. Tala whimpered in doggy sympathy.
Annie desperately searched for a way to save him from Eva’s strutting lesson.
“Wait!” she announced. “Eva! You said that Miss Cornelia’s magic keeps Aurora and Aquarius House running. But the stuff in the fridge isn’t singing anymore. What does that mean?”
Eva stopped midsashay. Her mouth dropped open. Jamie reached over and gently closed it for her.
“What do you mean, Annie?” Jamie asked. He silently mouthed the words, “thank you.”
Annie cleared her throat and stood up, walking over to the fridge to demonstrate. “I was trying to mention it before, but what I mean is that yesterday when we were in here all the f
ood sang and stuff when we opened the fridge. Today? It’s all quiet.”
Eva and Jamie hustled over. Annie opened the fridge. They all peered inside. One tiny radish whispered sadly, “Rad-ish-es are de-lic-i-ous.”
Eva jumped back, windmilling her arms to try to keep her balance. She failed, falling with a thud next to Tala, who used his thick, doggy muzzle to push her back up to a standing position.
“Oh, no!” she whispered.
“Oh no what?” Annie asked, steadying her on her feet.
“Something’s off with Miss Cornelia’s magic.”
“What do you mean?” Annie stared into the dwarf’s eyes. Annie was fearless and intense.
So intense that Eva looked away as she said, “The inanimate stuff in the house starts losing its magic if Miss Cornelia starts losing hers. Like, I mean she’s been losing it forever, but it’s super gradual. Like the food doesn’t sing quite as loudly as it used to and stuff, but it still sings. Or the walls stop bossing you around constantly and only do it sometimes. Or the mosaic on the ceiling in the library doesn’t move.”
“But …,” Annie urged.
“This is different, isn’t it?” Jamie said, putting away the cereal bowls as he spoke.
Annie agreed. “The whole place feels different. She must be sick or something or just suddenly really weak or … or …”
“Or missing,” said a voice from the door. Bloom, the very last elf, stood there, his perfect blond hair glowing radiantly despite his worried expression. “I think Miss Cornelia is missing.”
2
Feelings Schmeelings
Eva rushed at the elf until she stood a mere inch away from him. Her nose came up to his belly, but the height difference didn’t bother her at all. “YOU will not be saying such things! That’s ridiculous.”
He scoffed, leaned on the fridge, and said calmly, “You’re ridiculous, Eva.”
“I’m ridiculous?” She poked his stomach with her index finger, but it was solid and didn’t indent much. “I’m not the one saying that Miss Cornelia has gone missing! Miss Cornelia can’t go missing!”
“Why not?” Bloom rushed to the window, peering out it this way and that as if searching for enemy invaders.
Eva huffed out a breath but didn’t answer.
Annie’s voice softened the atmosphere of the room. “Yeah, why, Eva? Is it impossible somehow?”
“It’s impossible because we got rid of the crow monster! The gnome is back and so our town is protected from bad things that want to do us harm!” She stomped her foot so vigorously that the salt and pepper shakers shook and let out a tiny, weak squeal. “Do none of you remember what we did last night? We saved the town from that bird monster thing! We returned the gnome! We’re heroes.”
Jamie and Annie exchanged a glance as Bloom declared there were no visible threats at the perimeter of the property from what he could tell from the faulty vantage point of the kitchen window.
“Are you seriously still not getting it?” Eva threw her hands up in the air and stomped away toward the counter. She hopped up onto the stool and then the counter’s surface. “There are no threats in town. Nobody would take Miss Cornelia. And she wouldn’t just ‘go missing’ by herself. It’s ridiculous to even think that.” She pointed at Bloom. “You, elf, are ridiculous.”
Bloom’s face reddened. “Enough with that word, Eva!”
“Then tell us why you’re saying ridiculous things!” she demanded.
“I just had a feeling,” he admitted.
Eva scoffed and muttered, “Feelings schmeelings … Pshaw. Elves are as bad as humans, I swear. Always going on about feelings.”
Annie, Jamie, and Bloom just stood there for a moment, awkward and insulted.
“Feelings are good things,” Annie whispered to Jamie, “aren’t they?”
“Of course they are,” Bloom answered, gliding purposefully toward the counter. “Feelings are what let us know there is trouble coming. Feelings are what make us remember how to be kind and how it feels when someone”—he stared pointedly at Eva—“is not kind to you.”
Eva harrumphed.
“I get feelings about things a lot,” Jamie admitted, remembering how he felt coming down for breakfast and the dream he’d had last night about a woman with swirly skirts, whisked away on a horse. Maybe that had been about Miss Cornelia.
Annie jerked back to attention. “And what do you feel now? About this?”
Jamie thought for a moment. “I agree with you, Annie. Something is off. Something is very off. The house doesn’t feel the same, but I can’t tell if it’s because Miss Cornelia is sick or tired or missing or—”
“SHE IS NOT MISSING!” Eva roared, jumping off the counter and landing with a thud at Annie’s feet. “The gnome is back in town so we are protected. How can you all not get that?”
There was a tiny silence. Annie cowered a bit by the refrigerator, and Bloom refused to make eye contact with anyone. Only Jamie was brave enough to break it.
“Because there were two monsters we saw that day. Well, two evil things at least …,” he began.
“That’s right!” Annie hit her head with her hand, totally upset for not thinking it herself. “There was the crow monster but also that dark horse. Remember?” she appealed to Bloom and looked to Jamie for backup. She didn’t appeal to Eva because she knew how stubborn she was. “It was huge and felt really mean and evil.
“And it obviously was since it was running with the crow monster,” said Annie. “Maybe the horse is still here in Aurora. We should find Miss Cornelia and ask her.”
Eva rolled her eyes. “You just said she was missing! Now you want to find her! How about instead we just eat third breakfasts and bask in being heroes for a bit?”
“Because something is wrong, Eva!” Bloom said. He pulled out his dagger, stared at it, and then resheathed it on his belt. “I know I’m supposed to be positive all the time because I’m an elf, and you are supposed to be negative all the time because you are a dwarf, but I cannot ignore this.”
“Whatever. The only evidence you have that something is wrong is your feelings.” Eva glared at him. “Feelings are not evidence! Feelings are silly.”
Jamie thought this was interesting since Eva was exhibiting a lot of feelings herself right then—frustration, rage, annoyance.
“Are you afraid to fight another monster?” Bloom asked, eyes squinting as he stared at her.
It was a brilliant move because Eva was all about being brave even though she had a tendency to pass out sometimes when she was really scared.
Bloom asked again, “Is that it, Eva? You just want to sit here and do nothing because you are afraid of a big horse?”
Eva took the bait. “NEVER! Eva Beryl-Axe would never fear to fight a monster!”
“Well, there you go, then …” Bloom smiled, and spread his arms triumphantly. “Let’s all look for Miss Cornelia and find out about that horse.”
“Sounds like a plan,” Annie agreed. She power fist-bumped Bloom’s outstretched hand a bit awkwardly and then bumped Jamie’s fist and reached out to Eva.
“ ‘Sounds like a plan,’ ” Eva mimicked, but she fist-bumped Annie back. “Everyone always agrees with the elf. Always.”
Despite her grumpy misgivings, Eva followed them out of the kitchen and into the hall, ready to hunt for Miss Cornelia.
Nearly four hours later they had searched the entire house, or at least all the rooms that they could find, and hadn’t located Miss Cornelia anywhere. They asked the mermaids in the foyer fountain, the fairies, everyone they came across. Nobody had seen her. They hunted for her in the library, the front rooms, the kitchen, and assorted bedrooms.
Annie didn’t feel right snooping around other people’s rooms. Before Aurora, this would definitely have been a reason for her to get kicked out of a foster home. She had grown up trying really hard to obey people’s house rules, and even though Miss Cornelia was always saying that Annie and Jamie had a forever home here in Aurora,
she still worried about misbehaving and disappointing everybody. There was a niggling doubt that filled up her heart: What would happen if she did something really wrong?
Or worse, what would happen if Miss Cornelia really was missing? Who would be her foster mother, or foster grandmother, or … oh, whatever Miss Cornelia was? Would Annie have to leave? Would she have to go back to living at a place like the Wiegles’ again? A place where she was a nobody, meant to act like she didn’t exist? A nothing?
“I will not be a nothing,” she whispered as the others moved on to search another room.
Panic filled her heart. They had to find Miss Cornelia, and they had to find her soon!
As Eva and Bloom headed down the dark corridor toward the front stairs, Annie gently pulled Jamie aside.
“What is it?” he asked, head tilting slightly to the left.
“I’m really worried,” Annie admitted.
“Me, too.” He petted her arm awkwardly. “But I’m sure it’ll all be okay.”
“But what if it isn’t?” Annie asked, peering down the hallway where Bloom and Eva were arguing about something. Again. Eva was stomping and had even emphasized her points with her ax. “What if Miss Cornelia is sick or something? She’s kind of old. What if she dies? I mean, I know we’ve only known her for a little while, but I kind of feel like … like … I love her.”
The words were hard to say.
“You’re biting your lip. It’s bleeding,” Jamie said gently.
“Oh!” She stopped and wiped at her lip with the back of her hand.
“It will be okay, Annie.” He sighed out the words. “I mean, we have to believe it’s going to be okay.”
“Yeah,” Annie agreed with him. “But, I don’t know how to believe that it’s going to be okay, you know? I mean there were all these ghosts in my room this morning and they seemed … like they knew something was happening. So, how do I believe it’s all okay?”
“You’ll believe it once we find Miss Cornelia.” He elbowed Annie in the side as they started walking again. It was a hearty rah-rah elbow that was much braver than either of them actually felt. “Right?”