“I’ll be fine,” the little girl said impatiently, and rolled her eyes.
A moment later, she and Uncle Jake were gone.
“He said we could watch them from the magic mirror,” Briar said.
Mirror’s face appeared in the reflection. “Hello, ladies and gentlemen. What can I show you this evening?”
“We want to watch Uncle Jake and Daphne in Paris,” Sabrina said.
“Coming right up,” Mirror replied. “Just say the magic words.”
“Mirror, Mirror for goodness sake, let me watch Daphne and Uncle Jake.”
Mirror smiled. “That’s more like it.” His face dissolved and the mirror’s surface revealed a narrow avenue lined with elegant apartment buildings. Each building had a smoky bar, or a cozy restaurant, or a little boutique on its ground level. People were spilling out of all of them, drinking wine and gazing to the heavens. High above, fireworks filled the sky. Streams of blues, greens, reds, and whites shot across the horizon, then fizzled before the next round. In the distance, an enormous steel tower hovered above it all. It was illuminated by thousands of little lights, and at its top a beacon flashed a brilliant spotlight three hundred and sixty degrees.
Sabrina turned to Briar to gauge her reaction. The woman was awestruck. “That’s the Eiffel Tower,” she said. “It’s amazing.”
Sabrina suddenly realized what Briar must feel. She had been trapped for more than two hundred years in a little town. Now, all at once, she could see the outside world so vividly it seemed real. Paris was a place, Sabrina suspected, Briar never expected to see again.
Uncle Jake and Daphne stepped out of a doorway and gaped at their surroundings. They stood still for a moment in awe of the city.
“There she is!” Briar said, pointing at a woman walking down the street. Sabrina searched the crowd. It was indeed Goldilocks, their elusive savior. She was grinning from ear to ear, obviously enjoying the sights and sounds of the city of lights.
“She’s there, Jake!” Briar cried.
“Sorry, he can’t hear you,” Sabrina said. “It doesn’t work like that.”
“How frustrating,” Briar complained.
Luckily, Uncle Jake seemed to spot Goldilocks as well, and they watched him and Daphne follow the woman down the street.
“I’m not sure how she’s going to react,” Puck said. “If they asked me to come back here I don’t think I would. They’d have to stuff me in a sack and drag me back against my will.”
Sabrina was unnerved by Puck’s words. She had never once thought that Goldilocks might not want to come back to Ferryport Landing, but the more it spun around in her head, the more troubling the idea became. Why would she want to come back? The town was controlled by the Scarlet Hand. She would be trapped inside the barrier again. Her true love was married with children, and from a letter of Goldilocks’s that Sabrina had read, the woman seemed to believe she was responsible for the death of their grandfather, Basil Grimm. If the roles were switched, would Sabrina return? She realized the answer was no. An army couldn’t drag her back to this horrible little place. What would they do if Goldilocks refused?
Just then, a black motorcycle tore down the street. The hair on the back of Sabrina’s neck stood on end. The driver was the same man they had seen in Venice—the same man who was terrorizing Goldilocks.
“What’s going on? Who’s that?” Briar asked.
“That dude in black is following her everywhere,” Sabrina explained. “He’s one of the Scarlet Hand.”
Sabrina watched her sister and uncle bolt down the street, weaving in and out of pedestrians and knocking a waiter carrying coffee cups to the ground. Sabrina shouted for them to be careful, knowing full well they couldn’t hear her. Still, it made her feel better to try.
Goldilocks spun around in the street. She must have spotted the motorcyclist, because she quickly hailed a taxicab and got inside—moments later she and the cab were roaring away.
“If we were there we could track her by air,” Puck said.
Sabrina nodded. She should be there, helping her sister, making sure she was safe. She felt an incredible anxiety rip through her. She realized that this was the first time she and Daphne had been separated in a very long time. Daphne could be injured. This lunatic on the motorcycle might hurt her. Anything could happen.
Briar seemed to sense her fear. She reached out and squeezed Sabrina’s hand. “They’ll be fine, Sabrina.”
Sabrina nodded and watched Daphne and Uncle Jake jump into their own taxi in hot pursuit. With the image focused on her family, Sabrina couldn’t see Goldilocks, but she saw the motorcycle race past their cab. She watched Daphne roll down the window and crane her neck out to see where he was headed. When the cab made a sudden turn, she nearly fell out and Sabrina screamed.