The Book

Mister knew he needed to calm himself and that he had to act cool around Justin and Pearl until they had fallen all the way asleep. He got himself dressed and went out to the kitchen to see what they had rustled up to eat. He knew they had to be cooking something good, because he could smell it in the air when he opened the bathroom doors. He followed his nose as quickly as possible straight to the pot that was simmering on the stove.

"Mmmmm..this smells good, what are you cooking?" He asked with a warm smile on his face.

"It's not much, son," Pearl said sweetly,

"just a little something to fill our bellies with."

"I'm sure it will be delicious," he said with a cool smile,

"now let's eat," he told her,

"I'm starving."

The group went on and settled in for their meals. There were few words spoken between them, mostly due to their sheer exhaustion. Instead, they sat together somberly and enjoyed their food and warm fire in silence.

After the meal, Pearl and Justin cleaned up the dinner mess, while Mister stoked the fire. When he was satisfied that it was just right, he took a seat in the huge, luxurious chair by the fireplace. He stared absently at the flames for a while before he stretched a big dramatic stretch and faked a giant yawn. He then told Pearl he loved her and pretended to go to bed... and she pretended to buy it. She wasn't quite sure what he was up to, but she knew him well enough to know that his mood had suddenly and mysteriously changed. She also knew that he was trying to hide it from her, and that was what made her extremely nervous.

She watched him suspiciously as he meandered towards his great grandmother's room. She wasn't surprised at all because she figured he wanted the chance to snoop through her things. What she didn't know was that he really hoped to find some information on the Old Crone, and what she had done that was worthy of exile and then imprisonment. Her powers were told to be almost without limits, but nobody had ever really been specific about it. Again, she was one of the biggest dirty secrets that the ancient castle and its grounds had been keeping all of this time.

That said a lot, due to the recent revelations that had been made about the origins of Queen Rebecca. It was revealed that she had been the product of rape, and that her pregnancy had been the cause of her mother's suicide. Whatever this woman had done must have been awful if it was worse than that, he almost didn't want to know.

Mister closed the doors to his great grandmother's suites behind him and made double sure he had locked them. He turned up the radio and he started to dig through the desk.

There were plenty of interesting things in there, just nothing on the Old Crone. He eventually got frustrated and decided to open the closet and rifle through everything in there. Once again there was plenty to see, but still not what he was looking for.

He then walked towards the bed, stepping on a weak spot in the floor on the way through. That instantly struck him as out of place, so he stopped in his tracks and backed up, inspecting the board that happened to be underneath of a large throw rug in the middle of the room.

He stepped back and he pulled the rug over, revealing the hardwood floor beneath. Just as he had suspected there was a very loose board on the floor, and it didn't look accidental.

He slightly kicked the board with his toe, watching it flip over and reveal a hidden compartment below. He giggled to himself a little as he crouched down and reached inside and he pulled out a very large, dusty old book. It was emerald green and encrusted with the little green stones all over its cover.

"This must be exactly what I've been looking for," he mused to himself as he sat down on the floor and opened the cover of the heavy book and was suddenly filled with anticipation.

Just as he opened it, though, a window suddenly blew open and a cold blast of winter air rushed through it. That caused him to instantly jump to his feet and run to close it. When he did that, he accidentally dropped the book back into the hole in the floor and then he heard a loud metal sound that he had never heard before. He didn't stop to investigate though, because he was stuck struggling to close the huge window by himself.

When he finally achieved his goal and came back to the book, he realized his mistake and he immediately stuck his hand into the dark hole tried to retrieve it again. He was enraged when he found that it had been caught in some kind of metal trap that resembled a big claw and was set in the level below where the book had originally been found.

"Damn it!" He shouted out loud to himself. He was so pissed at his constant run of bad luck lately, that he was about ready to fight the whole f*cking universe.

Once he calmed himself enough to think, he found a flashlight in the drawer of the nightstand. He brought it back to the hole in the floor and he tried to figure out the locking mechanism, but it would not reveal its secrets. He ran his hand over the top of the trap one more time just to be sure he wasn't missing anything, but this time, he found a small metal flap that could be turned to its side. It revealed a small key hole of some kind, but it was not meant for any ordinary key. He shined the light directly on the key hole and suddenly it hit him like lightning, and he knew exactly what the key was. His excitement quickly turned to disappointment though, when he remembered where it was, and he remembered that he could not get to it on his own anymore.

"Son of a bitch!" He shouted angrily as he slung the flashlight across the room. He was so pissed because the key was his family ring. It boasted their code of arms, and it was still lost inside of the couch in his study back in the main castle. He had lost it when he stuck his hand in the couch to retrieve his phone before he had been "killed" and it had slipped off of his finger... and it was still there. He had not had time to fish it out that day because there had been total chaos going on at that time.

"How the f*ck am I going to get that damn ring back?" He asked himself in a disgusted tone. He sat there for a while looking at the trap and the lock, trying to figure out another way to open it without causing any harm to the ancient book, but it was no use. The trap was just not going to open without that ring.

The frustration was so explosive that he could barely contain it. He growled and cursed his bad luck some more as he got up off of the floor and covered it all back up until he could figure out what to do next. He was so freaking angry because he should be able to just walk into his own castle and retrieve his ring. He but he couldn't because he knew that his cousin, Queen Rebecca, had taken on all of his great grandmother's magic when she became queen on the night that old Queen Esmeralda had died gone into the wind.

She had far more magic now than he or Pearl did, even if they combined their powers they would not be strong enough to kill her and take their home back. She had already "killed" them once and he had no intention of letting her do it again. Besides, she might kill them for real this time. No, he was going to have to find some way in and out without being seen.

He had really hoped that he wouldn't need to involve anyone else in this. He knew that The Old Crone was really not anyone to be played with. He really didn't want to even go to her himself, but he didn't think that he had any choice at the moment, not if he was going to get his castle back. He was most definitely going to need some help.

'But who?' He thought to himself as he sat at the desk and stared into nothingness, while he racked his brain for answers. That's when his eyes were drawn to a book that was tucked into the back of the stack of things that were piled there. It was a book about how to use your fairies and Fae folk.

Mister's eyes lit up as he sat up in the chair and he fished the book out, quickly opening the cover and thumbing through the pages.

"Now this is something I can use, thank you my queen," he almost sang out, as he instantly got to work reading that book as quickly as he could. It didn't take long for him to figure out what he needed to do. He very clearly saw how he could get the ring back, he confirmed that he needed to try and summon the sprite queen, Queen Lacey Losedraws... but he needed to have something really good to bargain with.

He still wasn't very sure of what she would consider a "good" trade. He figured that there was only one way to find out. He checked the time and decided that it was a little bit too early to do anything at all yet, because he didn't think that Pearl and Justin would be asleep at the moment. He decided to get comfortable and read the rest of the handbook. He wanted to be as prepared as possible when the time came.

After a good long while had passed, he went to check to see if everyone else was asleep yet. He crept out as quietly as he could and he tiptoed around the castle. To his anxious delight, no one was up. When he was finally satisfied that it was safe to go, he wrapped himself up in heavy clothes and he went out of the back door. He swiftly made his way to the woodshed that was not too far away from where he was standing at the moment.

Once he was safely inside, he lowered his hood and he shouted out into the night.

"I summon you, Lacey Losedraws, Queen of the sprites. Come to me now, I wish to have an audience with you!"

It didn't take very long at all for the air to sour around him and the stench of sprite to filled his nose, causing him to gag and almost vomit. He managed to keep it together long enough to say a few words, but not much longer than that. He already had a weak stomach from the malnourishment that he had been enduring over the last few weeks and he had forgotten how bad even regular sprites smelled. Their queen, however, was most certainly the most wrank of them all.