“And he’s not finished with us,” Sabrina said. “He’s got one more plan. It involves the baby.”
Sabrina looked to her mother. Veronica had kept her secret as long as she could.
“Henry, I don’t know how to tell you this,” Veronica said as she took her husband’s hand into her own. “The night we were abducted, I had an important announcement.”
“The night we were poisoned and put to sleep?”
Veronica nodded. “I was going to tell you that we were going to have a baby.”
Henry blinked. Then he blinked, again. “A baby?”
Veronica nodded.
“Veronica! We have to get you out of this book. This could be too dangerous. You need to be at home, resting, taking vitamins, other baby stuff like that.”
Veronica shook her head. “This is going to be shocking.”
And then Veronica told Henry about the baby boy that had been born during the two years they had been asleep. She told him about the magic that was used on her that helped Mirror deliver the child and that she herself didn’t know the baby had been born until the night the Scarlet Hand had attacked the fort. She apologized to him for not telling him right away, but she saw he was under pressure, and to keep him safe she decided to wait until some of the chaos in the town subsided. She didn’t need him running off into the night in search of the child.
“And that’s why we’re here,” Daphne said. “Mirror had a nursery hidden in the Hall of Wonders. He’s been taking care of Joshua ever since.”
“Joshua?”
“I’ve been trying to come up with a name for him,” Daphne said.
“I have a son . . . ,” Henry said.
Veronica burst into happy tears, as did Granny Relda.
“You can name him whatever you want,” Daphne said, sheepishly. “None of my ideas have really stuck.”
“I was a big fan of Oohg,” Puck said. “But personally, Puck is a wonderful name for a boy.”
Henry raised an eyebrow.
Daphne’s expression turned serious. “The point is that Mirror has the baby and he brought him into this book. He can use it to change history. If he does . . . something bad is going to happen.”
“Bad in what way?” Granny asked.
Sabrina continued for Daphne. “He’s going to try to steal our brother’s body for himself. He wants to be real, not an Everafter—and not trapped in the Mirror. He’ll have all his powers, and as a human child he can step through Wilhelm’s magic barrier into the real world.”
“And you helped?” Granny said as she turned her attention to Pinocchio. “Your father will not be happy when he hears about this.”
Pinocchio scowled.
Granny Relda reached into her handbag and dug through a dump truck’s worth of makeup, pencils, binoculars, a pad of paper, and eventually a leather-bound book straight from the family’s collection of journals.
“What’s that?” Sabrina said.
“The journal of one Trixie Grimm,” Granny said. “Your great-aunt. She was quite a character—an unrepentant bohemian who spent her time painting and marrying an endless stream of rich men. She walked down the aisle more than a dozen times and traveled the world before taking on the family business. She was a real can-do type. She negotiated a treaty between cyclopes and centaurs, helped Little Bo Peep find her sheep, and most importantly, had some experience inside the pages of the Book of Everafter.”
Granny flipped through the pages. “She wrote extensively about the Book of Everafter and its origins, but most importantly she wrote about how magic linked the Book to actual history. She was integral in creating safety standards to make sure the stories remained unaltered. Even then she knew the Book was dangerous to have lying around so she locked it in a room in the Hall of Wonders. She didn’t even label it. Most of the family didn’t know it even existed.”
“Mirror knew,” Veronica said.
“Well, come along,” Granny Relda said. “We have a baby boy to rescue.”
The old woman whispered into the ball of yarn, “Lead us to the story of Snow White.” It popped and crackled but sat still. “Something seems to be wrong.”
“The Editor told us that story was off-limits,” Daphne said.
“The Editor?” Henry said.
“Yes, the guardian of the Book,” Granny said. “Trixie helped invent him. After the magic messed with the Book, she discovered that someone needed to put the stories back together if they were changed. He is described as the man in charge. I suppose we should pay him a visit. Come along, children.”
“That’s not going to be so easy,” Daphne said. “The only way to get into his library is if he opens the door himself.”