"Child, you are mistaken," Canis said. "I can smell such things. No one has been injured."
"Sabrina, it's late. You must have been having a bad dream," Granny said. "Your Opa Basil used to walk in his sleep too."
"No! I
saw him. He was right here. We have to look for him!" she cried.
Uncle Jake walked around from the front of the house. He was his normal self. No scar on his neck and no goatee. "What's all the commotion?"
Sabrina suddenly felt woozy. Her eyes filled with little flashes of light and her face grew hot. "You were hurt... ," she tried to say, but then everything went black.
*
When Sabrina awoke the next morning she felt as if she had been asleep for a hundred years. She was groggy and awkward, and her legs felt like cooked spaghetti as she descended the steps to join her family for breakfast. When she saw that Uncle Jake was working his way through a box of donuts, she began to wonder if her grandmother was right. Maybe the entire incident had just been a vivid nightmare.
"Feeling better?" Granny said, entering the dining room with a tray of what looked like magenta-colored hash browns. The old woman scooped a spoonful on everyone's plate and a second helping onto Puck's. Elvis hovered under the table, licking Sabrina's feet as if to remind her that he had seen the odd incident as well.
"I'm fine," Sabrina said, though her head felt full of sludge.
"We were worried when you fainted. I fear you may have accidentally touched something at Baba Yaga's house that made you hallucinate," Granny said.
"What does 'hallucinate' mean?" Daphne asked.
"It's when you think you see something that isn't really there," Sabrina said.
"It usually means you've lost your marbles," Puck added.
"We're going to have to be more careful when we go back," their grandmother said as she sat down to eat.
"Go back?" Sabrina exclaimed. "There's no way we're setting foot in that loony-bin again!"
"I can't wait to go back," Puck said. "Baba Yaga is very punk rock."
"Sabrina, of course we have to go back when we find her wand," Granny said, kissing her on the forehead. "Now, hurry up and eat and then get dressed. We've got another busy day ahead of us."
"Are we back on the case?" Daphne asked in between bites. Granny nodded. "But first we have to pay our taxes."
*
The courthouse was a grand building with a dome and marble columns. It sat just a few doors down from the police station. Outside, a huge crowd of people milled around carrying signs and shouting angrily.
"Looks like a protest," Sabrina said, noticing a sign that had the word tax painted on it with a big red slash through it.
Mr. Canis pulled the car over to the side of the road to park. "Relda, I don't believe it would be wise for me to walk through that crowd in my current condition."
Granny agreed. "Yes, a seven-foot man with a tail might attract some attention. Stay here. We'll be back in a jiffy."
The Grimms eased their way through the angry mob and up the steps of the building. The people they passed looked desperate. An elderly man grabbed Sabrina by the arm and pleaded, "They can't do this to us. We've got nowhere to go."
Frightened, Sabrina pulled away and caught up with her grandmother and sister. They entered the double doors of the courthouse and immediately spotted an armed guard who gave them directions to the tax assessor's office.
"Is there much of a line?" Granny asked the man.
The guard shook his head. "You're the first people I know of who have the money to pay."
Following his directions, they soon came to a door at the end of a long narrow hallway, tax assessor's office was stenciled on the door and a little red tag hanging from the doorknob read b e back in 15 minutes.
"I guess we have to wait," Granny said.
Fifteen minutes turned into two and a half hours. Eventually they spotted a short, stocky person approaching from the other end of the hallway. As she came closer Sabrina recognized Mayor Heart, the former "Queen of Hearts" from the famous Alice adventures documented by Lewis Carroll. Sabrina thought she looked like a demented beauty pageant contestant. Her face was painted in bold, harsh colors--bloodred lips, dark purple eye shadow, mahogany brown eyebrows, and a black hole of a beauty mark on her left cheek. She was wearing an elaborate crimson gown of silk and lace that had little red hearts sewn into it. She also held an electronic megaphone in one bloated pink hand. The angry mob followed behind her, waving their tax assessment letters in the air furiously. Mayor Heart seemed to be enjoying their frustration and hopelessness, or perhaps she had applied a permanent smile with her obnoxious makeup. Sabrina couldn't be sure.
"People, what's done is done," Mayor Heart said through the entirely too-loud megaphone. Her words blasted the people and echoed off the walls, causing a high-pitched feedback that rang in everyone's ears. "The city needs the funds, and you're going to pay them or you're going to move."