“Be my guest!” she cried. “If you haven’t noticed, I don’t have any magical powers. I’m not an Everafter. I’m just a girl from New York City.”
And then there was a fourth and final explosion. A strange, red-haired man appeared over her. He wore a black tunic, heavy boots, and a long scabbard. In one hand he had what Sabrina would later find out was called a flail—a handle connected to a chain connected to a heavy steel ball. He looked at her and smiled, but it was not friendly. It was like a hungry tiger looking at his wounded prey. Then he glanced over at Prince Charming’s lifeless body and he laughed.
“William, I’m disappointed,” Atticus said. “I wanted to kill you myself.”
In the confusion, Sabrina watched Granny Relda rush to the door that had materialized. She turned and looked back at the family. For a moment, her familiar eyes locked onto Sabrina, but then the old woman shook her head as if dizzy and her smile turned to a sneer. She darted through the doorway and disappeared.
“What is this?” Atticus said. “A doorway to the real world?”
No one answered. The man seemed to steal their confidence. Sabrina knew that she—or someone—should block his path. There was something in Atticus’s face that made it clear the world was not ready for him, but her courage had vanished with Granny Relda.
A moment later, Atticus stepped through the portal and was gone as well.
“Kids, we have to go,” Henry shouted as he scooped Puck’s unconscious body out of its glass case. “The revisers are coming!”
Veronica clung to her baby boy and dashed through the doorway just as the pink creatures scuttled down the hillside. There were thousands of them, eating and ripping at the ground, the trees, even the air, leaving only a blank white plainness behind them.
“Grimms, you must leave,” the Editor cried from the open doorway. “I cannot stop the revisers. This story is a page-one rewrite.”
Daphne and Henry dashed forward into the abyss with Puck flung over Henry’s shoulder. Sabrina looked out on the disappearing world, then followed.
After retrieving Pinocchio from the Editor’s library and saying their strained good-byes to the Editor himself, the family locked the nameless door to the room that held the Book of Everafter and made the long trek out of the Hall of Wonders. Luckily, there was no sign of Atticus or their own possessed grandmother.
When they stepped through the portal into Granny’s front yard, Sabrina stared, shocked and horrified. Very little of their home was left standing. When Pinocchio’s marionettes had unlocked the doors of the Hall of Wonders, they had released all manner of terrible creatures. Those creatures had stampeded through the mirror and demolished what four generations of Grimms had called their own. Elvis, the family’s two-hundred-pound Great Dane, raced forward. He knocked Daphne down and showered her with happy licks. She kissed him back and scratched behind his ears. Then she introduced the dog to the newest member of the family, though Veronica looked as if she would never let him go.
Henry set Puck on the ground and leaned against Granny’s ancient car, which had surprisingly remained untouched in all the chaos, and then he went into the house. Despite Veronica’s warnings that it was unsafe, he said he had to go back in to retrieve as many of the family journals as he could. When he returned, carrying a sack over his shoulder, he happily reported that he had saved all of them. He opened the trunk of the car and eased them inside. Then he set the magic mirror on top and closed the trunk carefully.
Pinocchio sat down in the yard as if unsure of what to do next. They all waited for a minute, silent.
“Well?” Daphne said to Sabrina.
“Well, what?”
“Are you going to wake Puck up?”
“We tried,” Sabrina said. “He ate part of a poisoned apple.”
“Did you kiss him?”
Sabrina wasn’t sure she heard her sister correctly. “What?”
“You have to kiss him. He needs the kiss of someone who loves him.”
“Absolutely not!” Henry shouted.
“It has to be a romantic kiss too,” Daphne added slyly. “Listen, he’s asleep, and if anyone knows about that spell it’s the Grimm family. If there is even the teensiest chance that you love Puck, you have to kiss him.”
“There’s no chance at all!” Sabrina said, wracking her brain for a really great excuse. “I don’t love him. It won’t work.”
“Then he’ll sleep forever,” Daphne said.