Sabrina quickly wiped her mouth on her sleeve, leaving a lipstick stain on her shirt. She quietly cursed herself for not washing well. “Nothing,” she said sheepishly.
“Puck, we appreciate you looking after us,” Granny said, stepping between Sabrina and Puck. “I know Mr. Canis would feel better knowing you are taking over his duties. I guess it can’t hurt to have a ‘security detail’ around the house, but perhaps the bathroom might be the one place we don’t need an extra set of eyes.”
“Suit yourself, but if a dragon crawls up the pipes and toasts your rear ends, don’t come crying to me,” Puck said with a snort and headed back to his room.
Daphne peered into the toilet. “Could a dragon really fit in here?”
Granny Relda assured the little girl that her rear end was safe from dragon attacks. She praised Elvis for his bravery and scratched him behind his big ears, then encouraged everyone to go back to bed. “We’re going to visit Mr. Canis bright and early tomorrow,” she reminded them.
Another wasted trip, Sabrina thought to herself.
Granny, with Elvis trotting behind her, returned to her room, leaving Sabrina and Daphne alone with their uncle.
“Have you been up all night?” Daphne asked him.
Uncle Jake rubbed his bloodshot eyes. “Want to see where she is?”
“Absolutely,” Sabrina replied.
The girls followed him back down the hall to the door to the spare bedroom. The room was sparsely furnished, with only a full-length mirror against the far wall and a queen-size bed in the middle. Lying on the bed were Henry and Veronica Grimm, Sabrina and Daphne’s parents, who were currently the victims of a spell that kept them sound asleep. Nothing Sabrina and her family had tried could wake them up. They were like two Sleeping Beauties, only one of them needed a shave. Recently, there had been a glimmer of hope for the sleeping Grimms—a woman from Henry’s past who might be able to right the family’s tragedy. Uncle Jake had been keeping a close watch on her via one of the Grimms’ most valuable magical possessions—a magic mirror.
Mirror wasn’t exactly the best word to describe what it was. Mirrors reflect back what is in front of them, but this mirror was reflecting something else—or rather, somewhere else. Gazing into the silvery surface, Sabrina saw a beautiful curly-haired woman with a round face and green eyes. She had a splash of freckles on her button nose and her blond hair looked like precious gold against the bright blue sky. She was wearing a billowy white dress and sitting atop a camel. There were other people with her, each also on a camel, and they were snapping pictures of an ancient pyramid standing in a rocky desert.
“Goldilocks,” Sabrina whispered to herself.
“It looks hot,” Daphne said as she peered into the mirror.
“I think she’s somewhere in Egypt. It’s hard to tell exactly where, though. The place is overrun with pyramids,” Uncle Jake said as he knocked on the edge of the mirror. “If this thing had sound I might be able to make out her tour guide’s dialect.”
“Last week she was in the Serengeti, the week before—South Africa. Why does she keep moving around so much?” Daphne said.
“Who knows?” Sabrina complained. “She’s never in one place more than a few days and then she’s jetting off somewhere completely different! How are we going to get a message to her? She’s got to come back here. She’s got to help us wake up Mom and Dad!”
Daphne and Uncle Jake seemed taken aback by Sabrina’s sudden temper, but she felt she had a right to be angry. At one time their search to find a way to break the spell on her parents had seemed hopeless. Now that they knew this woman had the solution it was almost harder than before, as they had to watch her dart around the world on a silly vacation.
“Be patient, ’Brina,” Uncle Jake said to calm her. “We’ll track her down.”
As if on cue, the image faded in the mirror, and in its place, a fierce, bulbous head appeared floating in the silver surface. He had strong features and thick lips and his eyes were as black as midnight.
“Hello, Mirror,” Sabrina said.
“Hello, girls,” Mirror said. “Could the two of you drag your uncle out of here? He’s been lurking around this room for two weeks. He needs something to eat, and if you ask me he’s long overdue for a bath.”
“He’s right,” Daphne said to her uncle. “No offense, but you are getting a little rank.”
Uncle Jake shrugged and threw up his hands in surrender. “Fine, I can start up again in the morning.”
“After a bath,” Mirror repeated.
Uncle Jake turned to the girls. “You two should run off to bed as well. You’ve got a big day tomorrow.”
“More sitting outside the jail, hoping they will let us in to see Mr. Canis,” Sabrina muttered. “It’s a waste of time. Sheriff Nottingham won’t let us in. We could be using the time to find Goldilocks.”
“You may not see Canis, but I’m sure he appreciates the effort, Sabrina. What if you gave up on the day Nottingham had a change of heart?”