by Zoe Arden
Dean picked up on the first ring. "Hello?"
"It's me," Colt said. "They made the attempt tonight. I got them, but it's not over."
"Stay where you are. Don't let the king out of your sight."
"I won't. Will you tell Ava I'm safe?"
Dean hesitated. "I'll tell her."
"You have been giving her my messages, haven't you?"
"Of course, I have."
Colt felt the hairs on the back of his neck electrify with anger. "We're engaged. You have to tell her I'm okay. It's part of COMHA's rules and regulations."
"Who do you think wrote the rules and regulations? I've told her."
Colt knew he had no choice right now. He had to trust Dean. When he could, he would get word to Ava himself. For now, he had to do his job. He had to protect the Goblin King.
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CHAPTER
ONE
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"Hurry up, Ava," cried Eleanor. "We're wasting time." She was filling box after box with assorted pastries. We were working in the front room of our bakery, The Mystic Cupcake, doing Eleanor's favorite thing in the world—multitasking. By working out here instead of in the back, we could still help customers when they came in.
"I'm going as fast as I can," I said, spinning the cake around on its stand so that I could finish frosting it. I blew a strand of blond hair out of my eyes. Eleanor did the same with hers.
The buttercream was thick and sweet. I spread it over the vanilla cake layer, putting a little extra in the center just as the special order indicated. I held my breath then picked up the chocolate layer and set it on top. I began the process all over again, spreading frosting, spinning the cake, holding my breath.
"Relax, both of you," said Trixie. "We're right on time. Early even. We still have an hour."
"An hour isn't that long," said Eleanor. "What if they come early?"
"Otis Winken is a sweetheart," said Trixie. "You know that. Even if we were two days late, he'd be too polite to say anything."
"But I don't want to disappoint him," said Eleanor. "Besides, I'm not late. Ever. For anything."
Trixie rolled her eyes. "I know. I've only been your sister for—"
Eleanor shot her a look. "Don't you dare say it."
"What?" asked Trixie innocently. "You're not that old." A sly smile played on her lips. "Well, I'm not that old anyway." Eleanor was glaring at her. Trixie's deadpan expression only infuriated her more.
"I mean, you are my older sister," Trixie continued. "So, I guess by definition, you have to be at least a little bit old. Comparatively speaking, I mean."
I giggled.
"You think it's funny?" said Eleanor, rounding on me. She lifted her eyebrows. "Wait until you're old, then we'll see if you still think it's funny."
"Ava won't be old for years yet," said Trixie. "No one in their twenties even thinks about things like that. Anyway, she has the benefit of knowing that you will always be the oldest person in the room." She batted her eyelashes rapidly at Eleanor, smiling as if she'd just paid her a compliment.
If people hadn't known us, they'd still have known in an instant we were related. We had the same gold-blond hair, the same fair skin, and the same snarky temperament. We liked to poke fun at each other, but it was all harmless fun.
"You're lucky I don't hex you right now," said Eleanor.
From the corner, Rocky lifted his head and yawned. He let out one low woof then lowered his head back to the floor and resumed his nap. His large gray and white body rose and fell with each heavy, sleepy breath.
"I think Rocky agrees with Eleanor," I said.
"Rocky would agree with anyone who gave him bacon on a weekly basis," said Trixie. "You can't trust a wolfhound."
Eleanor scoffed. "Rocky is the epitome of objectivity. His being a wolfhound has nothing to do with it."
Trixie shot me a look and rolled her eyes. "He's your familiar. Of course, he's going to agree with you."
Eleanor's lips pinched tightly together. "Have you heard from Colt lately?" she asked me, changing the subject.
I shook my head.
"It's been a while, hasn't it?" asked Eleanor.
Trixie looked up from the cupcakes she was frosting, a slight frown on her face.
"A few months now," I told them. "I keep asking Dean Lampton about him, but he won't tell me anything."
"I thought he had to," said Eleanor. "Wasn't that part of the reason you and Colt got engaged? So, he'd have to keep you apprised of Colt's situation?"
I shrugged. "I guess Dean has his own ideas about keeping me apprised of the situation."
My father stepped out of the back room just then. He was carrying a tray of dark chocolate brownies with happiness extract, one of my specialties. It was impossible to eat one and not break out in a smile as wide as the Mississippi River is long. If you ate too many, you might even start to giggle.
"All done, last one," my dad said, saving me from having to answer any more questions about Colt. He set the tray down and wiped his brow with a napkin. He tossed it in the trash then turned to Eleanor. "How's it going out here?"
"Just fine. If by fine, you mean we're running forty minutes behind."
"We're not forty minutes behind," I said.
Eleanor always got anxious when a special order came in. It didn't matter how well she'd planned everything, every special order produced a fresh anxiety in her, which was only squelched when said order was complete.
"I wouldn't stress out too much," said my father. "It's a small birthday party that Otis is throwing. He said it wasn't going to be anything fancy, just some cake and—"
Eleanor shot daggers at him with her eyes. "Eli, you know as well as I do that it doesn't matter how fancy or not fancy a party is, it's all to do with who the party is for."
"That's a good point," said Trixie. "Tadpole is a VIP in this town."
"Precisely. This town loves Tadpole. If word got out that we'd given him any less than our very best, we'd never hear the end of it."
"Tadpole is just as sweet as Otis," said my dad. "He'd never complain."
"As long as you have Tadpole's potato chips," Trixie said, "he'll be happy, which means that everyone will be happy."
"Oh, my word," Eleanor screeched, her voice going so high that it could have cracked glass. "The potato chips! I almost forgot." She turned to me. "Ava, did you get them ready?"
"I finished them yesterday. There are three kinds—caramel covered, chocolate covered, and fudge filled."
"How do you fill a potato chip with fudge?" asked Trixie.
"It was tricky. I ended up making one batch of ultrathin potato chips and using the fudge to stick them together. More of a potato chip sandwich, I guess, but Tadpole is going to love them."
"Perfect," said Eleanor. She glanced at the clock. "Fifty minutes."
"Relax, Eleanor, before you make yourself sick," said my dad. "Otis is picking them up. We don't even have to deliver."
He began putting the brownies he'd made into a box and then set the box aside. He grabbed another box and began placing cookies in it. He prepared four more such boxes, each with a different type of cookie. There was chocolate chip, peanut butter, white chocolate macadamia, and my personal favorites, oatmeal raisin with dark and white chocolate chips.
I made sure to infuse each cookie with some sort of extract. I wanted to keep people happy and peppy, so I'd made extra strong batches of both. If someone ate more than three of my peanut butter cookies with peppy powder, they were going to be bouncing off the walls like they'd had a dozen cups of coffee. They might have the tiniest bit of a hangover in the morning, but it would sure keep the party lively.
The doorbell chimed, and I looked up to see a goblin stroll into the store. My eyes bugged out of my head. I spun around to get Eleanor's attention and knocked my shoulder into the cake. It wobbled on its stand then fell to the floor with
a loud splat.
Eleanor screamed. My breath was pulled from my lungs, and my heart dropped into my stomach.
"It's okay," I told her, feeling sick.
"It's okay? How is it okay?" Eleanor's face had gone three shades of white. Her eyes were wide, and she looked as though she was about to pass out.
I scratched my head and looked at my dad. He shrugged.
"I can fix it," I told her.
"You can't fix this, Ava. The cake is all over the floor. What are you going to do, scoop it up and tell them the dirt and hairs they find mixed in with the frosting are part of a new theme we were going for?"
Trixie laughed. "Yeah, the Dustbuster theme."
Eleanor glared at her. "It's not funny."
I sighed and looked back at the display cases, hoping that a miracle might pop out at me. The goblin was standing by, waiting patiently for us to help him. I'd almost forgotten he was there.
"Aunt Eleanor—"
"Sure, when you're in trouble it's aunt. The rest of the time it's Eleanor this and Eleanor that." She was bending over the splattered cake, appraising it from all angles. "I think some of it can be salvaged. This top part hasn't even touched the floor. It's not anywhere near it."
"Eleanor," I said, trying again.
"If we just scrape off the bottom layer we can still use it."
"But it's all smushed," said Trixie.
"It doesn't matter how smushed it is," said Eleanor, "it will still taste good."
"Eleanor..."
I was looking at the goblin, who seemed to be getting impatient. He was about four and a half feet tall and a dark gray color. I had no idea how he'd made it to Sweetland Cove from Goblin Territory without being seen by any of the human tourists who permeated the island. Then again, most of the tourists who came to Heavenly Haven liked to drink margaritas in the middle of the morning and hang out at the beach in the afternoon. If any of them had seen this goblin, they probably would've thought they were drunk or suffering from heat stroke.
Also, goblins had powerful magic. It wasn't well-understood magic, though—the extent to which their powers ran was hidden from most people, witches and wizards included, but there was talk that they could cloak themselves when they wanted to. I had no idea whether or not that was true but thought it would be pretty neat if they could. Not even witches and wizards could turn themselves invisible.
The goblin, finally tired of waiting, cleared his throat. It sounded like a lawnmower running through the store. Eleanor's head snapped up. Her eyes widened.
"Oh, I'm so sorry, I didn't see you there," she said. "Someone should have said something." She shot me a look.
"I've been trying to tell you for the last five minutes," I said, folding my arms grumpily across my chest.
Eleanor giggled nervously and turned back to the goblin. "How can we help you? Some cookies? A nice cake?"
The goblin stepped forward. Though on the short side, his body was as wide as a dumpster. His eyes were dark brown bordering on black. When he spoke, it was with a low, throaty voice.
"My name is Perx. I am King Zulubar's head guard." He threw his head back and stuck his chin out, clearly proud of his title. "King Zulubar of the goblins is missing, and we need your help to get him back."
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CHAPTER
TWO
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Trixie handed Perx another cup of tea while my dad placed a plate of snickerdoodles on the table. We had temporarily closed up the shop and moved to the back room, taking the top of Tadpole's cake with us and setting it on a table. The ovens made everything hot, but Perx didn't seem put off by it. In fact, he was the only one of us not sweating.
Do goblins sweat?
I pushed the thought from my head. It wasn't important right now. I had to focus on what he was saying, not the fact that he was a goblin. Besides, I'd seen hundreds of goblins before. Still... the little girl in me who'd grown up knowing nothing about magic got excited whenever a goblin came into the room.
"I'm not sure I understand," said Eleanor. She was pacing the room while my dad, Trixie, and I sat at the table with Perx. "Why do you need our help? This sounds like a matter for you and your men."
"We're out of options." Perx's dark eyes darkened that much more. He shook his head sadly. It must've been hard for him, as head guard, to ask someone else for help. Especially an outsider.
"I'm not sure what we can do," I told him.
Perx looked at me. "Your shop catered our ball last year. You know our people, and our people know you. They loved your cakes and pastries at the ball. They'll talk to you."
"And they won't talk to you?" asked my dad.
"I have spoken to everyone in our territory. They have told me what they know, but I believe there are things they're keeping for me."
"Why would they keep things from you?" I asked.
"They might think they are protecting Zulubar," said Perx, "and not realize they are actually causing him harm."
"Protecting him from who? From you?" I said.
He shook his head. "We don't know what's happened to him. He has received threats in the past but none recently. Some of the past threats, though, have come from goblins." He paused and puffed out his chest importantly.
"I've always told our king to be careful with outsiders, but he respects you and your bakery, and so do I." He rose from the table and bowed deeply to us before sitting back down. I felt my cheeks color slightly.
"What sort of threats has he had?" my dad asked. "I thought everyone liked Zulubar."
"For the most part, yes. But you cannot please every goblin. Some are just jealous. King Zulubar is royalty. They want what he has, but they cannot ever possibly get it."
"And you think that if we speak to the goblins," Eleanor said slowly, "that they'll tell us something they wouldn't tell you?" She was already shaking her head. "That seems unlikely."
"Well," said Perx, "not just you." He cast his eyes quickly to the floor before looking back up to face Eleanor. "We were hoping your Sheriff Knoxx might assist."
Eleanor's face changed. The lines around her eyes hardened. Now everything made sense.
"My husband has very particular feelings regarding the goblins," Eleanor said.
"We're aware of his feelings regarding our species. But he is one of us whether he likes it or not."
Eleanor looked around the room at me, Trixie, and my dad. None of us knew what to tell her. Ever since Eleanor had married Sheriff Knoxx, people had been coming to her trying to get to him. When you were the sheriff of a small town like Sweetland Cove, on a small island like Heavenly Haven, people always wanted something from you.
"Can you ask the sheriff to get my cat out of the tree?"
"My neighbor is mowing his lawn at five in the morning. Can you make him stop?"
"I'm positive my boss is a dark spirit. He made us stay at work an extra thirty minutes last night and didn't even buy us dinner!"
So, Perx's request, though surprising, was not out of nowhere. Sheriff Knoxx was part goblin, after all.
I never could remember just how much goblin he had in him. I think it was about one-sixteenth, though I wasn't even sure if he really knew himself.
His great-great-great-grandmother or someone had been a full-witch, but the man she'd married had been a full-goblin. It was an awkward pairing, to say the least. Goblins did not typically marry outside of their own species; there were just too many difficulties with it. Yet somehow those two had come together, though from what I understood, there had been a bit of magic involved.
Sheriff Knoxx's great-great-great-grandmother, or whatever, was a powerful witch who wanted a man who would do what she told him, when she'd told him. Rather than find a nice warlock to settle down with, she had gone into Beggars Forest and returned with a male goblin whom she disguised as a human. Some of the details have been lost over the years, but it sound
ed as if they had lived a full life together and had been relatively happy.
It was Sheriff Knoxx's link to the goblins that made Perx ask for his help now.
"I can speak to my husband on your behalf," said Eleanor, "but I can't make any promises."
"Even without your husband, you can still be of use to us," said Perx. "There are places that witches can get into where goblins would have a harder time. Places like restaurants and barbershops and candy stores. Places that humans populate."
"You didn't seem to have much trouble getting down here," I said.
"We can get around humans easily enough when we want to, but it is something of an inconvenience."
"I don't know..." said Eleanor.
"I think it sounds fun," said Trixie. "A missing goblin king... who knows what we might find on an adventure like that."
"It is not an adventure," snapped Perx. "Zulubar is our King, and he is missing." He let out a heavy breath that smelled of rotten eggs. "For all we know, he may already be dead."
"I'm sorry. I meant no disrespect," said Trixie, but I could see the gleam in her eyes. Goblins had a way of bringing out one of either two things in people: excitement or disgust. Perx should've just been happy it was not the latter.
"Do you really think he might've been killed?" I asked.
Perx nodded, his chin almost touching the floor as he bent low to the ground, holding his stomach. It looked like he was going to be sick.
"Yes," he croaked.
"You mean like... murder?" I asked.
He nodded again and lifted his head to look at me.
"I know you have helped solve other crimes before. This one is no different. If you enlist your uncle's help, I'm sure you'll find success. I... I would do anything to see our king returned to us."
