Sabrina scampered to her feet and prepared to fight.
“Calm down,” the Editor said.
“You sent those monsters to eat us,” Sabrina said. She helped Daphne to her feet. Puck was already behind her.
“If that were true, why would I send a door and bring you here?”
“Maybe you want to try and kill us yourself,” Puck said.
The Editor sighed. “I do not want the three of you dead. I want to hire you.”
The trio stared incredulously at one another as the Editor got up from his seat and poked at some dying embers in his fireplace. A dozen of his revisers scurried out from underneath his chair and scuttled across the floor. They clambered up the shelves like fat spiders and seemed to melt into the shadows on the far-distant ceiling.
“You want to hire us?” Sabrina said.
The Editor placed his hands together and lightly tapped his fingers as if in serious thought. “You are detectives, correct? The last member of your family I had in my book claimed it was a family business.”
“Excuse me?”
“The one who called herself Trixie Grimm,” he said.
“Great-Aunt Trixie,” Daphne said. “She was Grandpa Basil’s sister-in-law.”
“I find myself in a most peculiar situation that requires your kind of skills,” he said.
“What do you want us to do?” Sabrina asked.
“I want you to find a missing person,” the Editor said. “Detectives do such work all the time.”
“A missing person? Who?” Sabrina asked suspiciously.
“Pinocchio,” the thin man said as his face tightened into a scowl.
“Pinocchio! I almost forgot he was here,” Daphne said. “He jumped into this book right before we did.”
“And not unlike the three of you, he is causing a great deal of trouble for the Book,” the Editor replied. “While you three are running through one story, he’s causing mayhem in another. I’ve been working overtime trying to make sure these stories are put back the way they were meant to be before they can change history. Then it dawned on me—why not hire you three to chase him?”
“How does that help you?” Daphne asked warily.
“Setting you on Pinocchio’s trail will mean that all four of you will be in the same stories at the same time, cutting my work in half. Plus, you can help me prevent the boy from reaching his ultimate goal, which is to change his history.”
“What does it matter, really?” Sabrina asked. “Anything Pinocchio changes you can rewrite with your little pink monsters.”
The Editor shook his head. “The revisers work like white blood cells, seeking out an infection in the body. In this case, the Book is the body and you intruders are the infection. Unfortunately, they won’t recognize him as a problem if he finds his way to his story—in some ways he belongs there. They won’t be able to tell what’s wrong and what’s meant to be. They’ll erase everything but what he changes, so I’ll have to rebuild a new story around his alterations. I fear that despite the best intentions of the Everafter who used magic to manipulate this book, the spell isn’t foolproof. Certain deleted elements struggle to make it back into her story. The slightest change could cause the whole tale to fall apart. Who knows what could happen in the real world.”
“We’re not interested in your offer,” Sabrina said. “While we’re hunting down that little traitor, Mirror might get to his story—and if what you’re saying is true, he can make whatever changes he likes in his story and there’s nothing the revisers can do. We can’t risk missing our chance to stop him.”
“Don’t be so hasty, sugar bear,” Puck said with a devilish grin. “He wants to hire us. We could use that money for the wedding. Ice sculptures of minotaurs and cyclopes are not cheap! Plus, don’t forget about the poison ivy for your bouquet.”
Sabrina scowled.
“I can assure you Mirror will never reach his story,” the Editor said. “His particular story is off-limits, bound by powerful magics few could break. He will never attain whatever goal he has, thus you three have all the time in the world to find the puppet for me. Afterward, I will take you to Mirror and help retrieve your brother.”
Daphne said. “Is Mirror’s story the one that’s falling apart? Is that the story the Everafter altered to change her history?”
“That is none of your concern. Do we have a deal?”
Sabrina looked to her sister. “What do you think?”
“If what he says is true and Mirror can’t change his story, I think we can help. It would be nice to not have to worry about those things anymore,” Daphne said, pointing to one of the pink monsters hovering by the Editor’s leg.
“Children, my revisers are beautiful creatures, but they are not immensely intelligent,” the Editor said. “They will eat everything they can get their teeth into. If you see one, it would be advisable to run in the opposite direction.”