"Daphne! Wake up!" Sabrina shouted but the little girl was sound asleep. From past experience, Sabrina knew that sometimes her sister was impossible to wake, so she raced out of the room alone.
Down the stairs she went, two at a time. Without bothering to put on shoes or a coat, she darted out the front door and around to the side of the house.
"Mom! Dad!" she cried, as she turned the corner and ran smack into something enormous. She fell to the cold ground and looked up. The Jabberwocky was standing over her. On each of its disgusting hands was a puppet, one sewn to resemble a man with blond hair and the other a woman with raven locks, crudely similar to her parents. Sitting on the beast's shoulders was Little Red Riding Hood.
Sabrina crawled backward across the frozen grass, desperate to get away. The Jabberwocky tossed its puppets aside. Reaching down, it snatched Sabrina off the ground and dragged her close to its thousand gnashing teeth. Red Riding Hood leaned down and smiled as if they were great friends.
"I want to play house," the little girl said. "And when I want something, I get it."
That's when Sabrina woke up.
Her pajamas were soaked with sweat and her head was pounding. She looked around the bedroom to double check that she was indeed awake and fought the urge to cry.
She awkwardly crawled out of bed and tiptoed across the floor, then slipped into the hallway. She crept down the steps and into the living room where her uncle was sleeping on the couch. His overcoat, with its hundreds of pockets, was draped over the back. Sabrina knew that Little Red Riding Hood's medical file was in one of them. She could wait for her uncle to wake, but time was wasting. She stepped softly to the couch and lifted the long coat. She quickly found the file, but before she could grab it and hurry back upstairs, Uncle Jake's hand seized her arm.
"You're good," he said.
"Let me go," Sabrina said.
"You missed the creaky beam on the bottom step. I could never get around that. Your grandmother caught your father and me more times than I can count because of that last step," he said.
Sabrina tried to pull away from his grasp but he held on.
"You could have just asked for it," he continued. Her uncle reached into his overcoat and removed Red Riding Hood's rolled-up medical file. He released Sabrina's arm and handed her the file.
"I couldn't trust you'd give it to me." Sabrina tried to explain. "Granny keeps telling me all this Red Riding Hood stuff is too dangerous. I figured you'd just say the same."
"Now I know your father never told you anything about me. I love my mom, but we rarely agree on anything," Uncle Jake said with a laugh. "Listen, your grandmother's right. These people who took your parents are dangerous, but we still have to face them to get Henry and Veronica home. I think we should do it together. I figure that way we can get both of them home a lot faster."
Faster was what Sabrina wanted. She nodded and Uncle Jake leaped off the couch. "Good, let's get started. But first we need a little magic." He led her into the kitchen and flipped on the light, then searched through every cabinet until he finally found what he wanted--a can of coffee. "Ah, liquid magic," he said with a grin.
Sabrina's mom and dad were coffee fanatics. They drank it morning, noon, and night. She'd seen her mother wait in hour-long lines and pay more than five bucks for a cup of foam she called a latte. When her father was late for work, he drank a mug of coffee in the shower. Sabrina had once asked for a sip but her dad had refused. "It's not good for a kid," he'd said, as he swallowed a big gulp. "It'll stunt your growth."
Uncle Jake found some coffee filters in a drawer and an ancient instruction manual for the coffee maker. In no time, the smell of fresh roast was filling the room and his magical elixir was dripping into the pot. When the coffee was finished, he poured out two mugs worth and handed one to Sabrina.
She took a sip. It was bitter and gross and tasted a lot like mud. She spit it out into the sink, turned on the faucet, and stuck her mouth under the cool water to wash out the taste.
"When you get older, you'll love it," her uncle said.
"If this is what I have to look forward to when I'm older, I think I'll stay eleven."
"You know, I wanted to apologize about the other night," Uncle Jake said. "But you kids wouldn't give me a chance to explain who I was."
"We generally don't give the benefit of the doubt to weirdos hanging around in burnt-out buildings," Sabrina said.
"Takes one to know one." Uncle Jake laughed. He opened the sugar bowl and spooned three heaping helpings into Sabrina's mug. "This will kill the bitterness."
Sabrina stirred the concoction and took another sip. It was better. She nodded at her uncle and he smiled. He led her into the dining room and they both sat down. Sabrina set Red Riding Hood's medical file on the table and her uncle opened it.
"I looked through this earlier but I didn't understand much of it. There's a lot of medical mumbo jumbo in here. But I have discovered one thing," Uncle Jake said.
"What's that?"
"Little Red Riding Hood is a certifiable loony tune."