“What if you get caught sneaking out?” Conner asked.
“Don’t worry, I won’t,” Bree said. “I’ve been sneaking out of the house since I was eight. I put a wax head on my pillow and leave a cassette playing of someone snoring in case my parents check my bedroom.”
“That’s both impressive and scary,” Conner said.
Bree shrugged. “It’s just like Laurel Thatcher Ulrich said. ‘Well-behaved women seldom make history.’”
She climbed into the hospital, carefully stepping on the remaining floorboards so she didn’t fall into the basement below, and had a seat next to Conner in the doorway.
“You weren’t home, so I figured I’d find you here,” she said.
“I wanted to take one last look at the damage before the inspector starts digging around tomorrow,” he said. “You know, just in case there was something we missed.”
“Any luck finding Alex?”
“Not at all,” Conner said with a sigh. “It’s been a week since she disappeared and we haven’t found a single clue to where she went. My mom and stepdad have looked all over town, but there’s no sign of her. Jack, Red, and Lester are searching the fairy-tale world as we speak, but so far they haven’t returned with anything.”
“It’s so bizarre,” Bree said. “I barely know her, but it seems so out of character for her to run off like that. Has she done anything like this before?”
Conner’s knee-jerk reaction was to defend his sister’s reputation, but the more he thought about it, the more he remembered it wasn’t entirely unlike her to go missing.
“Sort of,” he recalled. “Alex went through this weird phase not too long ago. She would get overwhelmed about something and lose control of her powers. But the circumstances were so different—she was really stressed out and easy to provoke.”
“What was she stressed out about?”
“It was back when we were searching the fairy-tale world for our uncle Lloyd,” he explained. “All her hunches about him were right, but no one wanted to believe her. The Fairy Council thought she was becoming reckless, so they ordered her to stop looking for him. Alex got so upset, she disappeared into a ball of flames, but she resurfaced a couple of days later.”
“Oh,” Bree said. “So maybe it isn’t out of character.”
“Disappearing, maybe, but she’s not the type who abandons her friends in their hour of need,” Conner said. “Things were finally looking up for a change. We had just recruited all the characters from my stories. We were finally ready to fight the Literary Army in the fairy-tale world. So why would she vanish now? It makes no sense.”
“The detective in me wants to believe your uncle had something to do with it, especially if he was the reason behind her previous outbursts,” Bree said. “But Emmerich and I were with him the entire time he was in the Otherworld. Alex never laid eyes on him. If she was provoked, it was by someone else.”
Conner nodded. “And that’s what I’ve been trying to figure out.”
Alex’s behavior puzzled them as much as the vanished bathroom puzzled the fire department, and just like the firefighters, they knew they were missing a piece of the story. Unfortunately, there was no specialist they could call to help them solve Alex’s disappearance.
“How are all the characters doing?” Bree asked.
“They’re a little stir-crazy from being cooped up in the commissary,” Conner said. “We have to let them outside for fresh air in shifts so no one around here gets suspicious. Bob has been teaching the Merry Men and the Lost Boys how to play football at the park to burn off some energy. My mom has rewrapped all the mummies with fresh bandages, so the commissary smells a lot better. The Cyborgs have blown every fuse in the hospital from using the outlets too much. The Ziblings have been patrolling downtown at night to get their hero fix, so the city’s crime rate has gone down. And the Starboardia pirates found a television and have been watching I Love Lucy reruns non-stop—it annoys everyone else, but at least it keeps them occupied.”
“I’m glad everyone’s hanging in there,” Bree said. “I can’t imagine what it’s like for you. Being in the Cemetery of the Undead for a couple of hours was surreal enough for me, but you’ve been surrounded by your creations for days. It’s got to feel like a trippy family reunion.”
“Once you’ve seen your elderly grandmother slay a dragon, everything else pales in comparison.” Conner laughed. “Speaking of family reunions, did Cornelia and Emmerich get to Germany safely? It was so kind of her to offer him a ride home.”
“Thankfully,” Bree said. “Cornelia said Emmerich and Frau Himmelsbach were very happy to be reunited. They’re also moving to Australia to get as far away from Neuschwanstein Castle as possible. Wanda and Frenda had been stranded in Bavaria since your uncle Lloyd kidnapped us, so Cornelia picked them up and they flew back to Connecticut yesterday.”
“I was amazed at how well Cornelia handled it all,” Conner said. “Usually people freak out when they learn about other dimensions, but she barely flinched.”
Bree forced a smile and nodded—she hadn’t been completely honest with Conner. He knew Bree was in Connecticut when she learned Emmerich had been kidnapped, he knew Cornelia had generously offered to fly Bree to Germany so they could help Emmerich’s mother look for him, and he knew they happened to be in Neuschwanstein Castle when Uncle Lloyd brought Emmerich back to the Otherworld. However, Conner had been so overwhelmed by Alex’s disappearance, Bree thought it was best to leave out the other details.
She never mentioned why she had gone to visit her family in Connecticut—that she’d discovered they were part of a secret league known as the Sisters Grimm, or their extensive history of tracking portals into the fairy-tale world. Bree hoped a better time would present itself to fill Conner in, but the longer Alex was gone, the more inappropriate it became.
“At Cornelia’s age, there’s not a whole lot that shocks her,” Bree said. “In fact, when you get a minute, I’d love to tell you more about my trip to her—”
Bree was interrupted by the sound of footsteps coming from the hallway behind them. A moment later, Trollbella appeared in the doorway of the missing bathroom. The young troll queen immediately crossed her arms and scowled at the sight of Bree and Conner in the same location.
“Well, you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t keep her away from your man,” Trollbella quipped.
Conner rolled his eyes. “What do you want, Trollbella?”
“I came to let you know that Beansprout, the Frog Mistress, and Plucky McGee have returned,” she said.
“Who?” Bree asked.
“She means that Jack, Red, and Lester are back from the fairy-tale world,” Conner said, and quickly jumped to his feet. “Maybe they know something about Alex! Trollbella, will you let my mom and Bob know? They’re working a night shift on the third floor.”