Chapter 32
Halloween Disaster
"You turned Lily into a baby!" Eddie cried.
Tanja snapped back, "I heard you the first time!"
"Can you turn her back?" Viv asked.
"Of course not!" shouted Tanja. "It was all the bracelet's fault! Not mine!"
"What do we do?" yelled Viv. "We can't leave her like this!"
"No need to panic!" said Hassan. "I'm sure one of the magic books here has the answer to our problems. We just need to look for it."
"Good idea," said Oliver. "Let's all split up and start searching. Viv, you stay here and keep an eye on baby Lily."
"Got it," Viv said with a nod. She turned to pick the baby up, but then froze. "Where's the baby?"
"Huh?" Everyone looked down again.
"She's gone!" Eddie cried out.
"But she was just here!" yelled Oliver. Even he was starting to panic.
Tanja pointed and shouted, "Look! Over there!"
Over by the exit, baby Lily was seen riding on top of a floating green book as they slowly drifted out of the room.
The gang gave each other glances and then ran after the flying baby. They chased her down the hall and were just in time to see her reach the end where she vanished in a flash of light. Then they all screamed their heads off.
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAH!"
"After her! After her! AFTER HER!" screamed Oliver.
They all piled onto the magic circle that zapped them out of the secret hideout and back to the library where they split up to look for the baby. But no matter where they looked, Lily could not be found.
"Now what do we do?" moaned Viv.
After a fruitless search, they all gathered behind the checkout counter. There was no one else around and the librarians were away to help out with the school's Halloween event that was set to begin within the hour.
"She can't have gotten far," said Oliver. "Let's split up and - !"
He was interrupted by an adventurous jingle coming from his pocket. After answering his phone, he put it to his ear and said, "Now's not a good time, Francis. Can I call you back la-?"
"HELP!" screamed Francis Yorkshire, Oliver's roommate. "Some blue parrot made the grim reaper costume I was going to wear to the Halloween party come to life and now it's trying to kill me!"
Oliver blinked. "What?"
Over Francis' screams was a cackle like from an evil phantom straight out of an old-timey cartoon and then a different, familiar voice that sent a chill down the teen detective's spine.
"You heard the young man, detective," said the blue parrot. "Better hurry before his soul is taken."
The line cut off there.
Oliver swore and put his phone away. "Bad news, guys," he said. "The parrot's got my roommate. I need to go save him!"
"But what about Lily?" asked Viv.
"We were going to split up anyway," said Oliver. "While I go help Francis, you guys can - !"
He was interrupted again, this time by the lights suddenly shutting off.
"Now what?" he groaned.
The darkness was temporary as soon blue light filled the library. But it wasn't from any lamp of the library. This supernatural glow came from a skeleton dressed in a nurse's outfit from the late Eighteen-Hundreds that popped out of the floor and flew over to the gang. It was the ghost of the matron that haunted Tanja before.
The ghost tauntingly sang, "I'm baaaack!" And then she flew away and circled around the library. Each bookshelf she passed over shook and rattled, sending books and decorative knickknacks tumbling to the floor in a messy pile.
"Aah!" screamed Alejandro. "She's messing up the library!"
"I just fixed that shelf!" moaned Melody.
"Quick!" yelled Hassan. "We gotta stop her!"
As the library helpers scrambled to deal with the cackling ghost and stop her from ruining the library further, Tanja spoke up and said, "Say, Oliver. Don't you think it's a weird coincidence that we've got the parrot and the matron showing up right when we've got a runaway baby to deal with?"
"Not at all," said Oliver. "This whole mess has the Schemer's name written all over it. He's definitely behind Lily turning into a baby and then disappearing to who-knows-where."
"What do we do?" asked Eddie.
"No change to the plan," said Oliver. "We split up. Divide and conquer, and all that. I'm going to go save Francis from his Halloween costume. We'll leave the library helpers to deal with the matron and clean up the mess she made. You three look for Lily."
"I'll go back to my room and check the school's cameras," Tanja said before running off. "I'll message you if I find anything!"
"Got it!" Oliver called out to her. "Okay, Sapphire Society. Disperse!"
**********
For some reason, nobody batted an eye when a baby passed by while riding on a flying book. In fact, they didn't seem to even notice. They continued to walk on without giving her a glance, many dressed in costumes for Halloween. There were the usual werewolves, vampires, witches, wizards, zombies, Frankenstein's monsters, and ghosts. Fairy tale princes and princesses also walked among them, as well as police officers, firefighters, and doctors in scrubs.
Just what on earth is going on? Lily wondered.
To be clear, she was still herself on the inside. Her mind, at least, had not been babyfied.
While the others had been distracted, the book that she found herself sitting on had suddenly started floating up like a balloon and took her out of the hideout. At the library, the doors swung open on their own, allowing the book and baby to go outside. Lily knew she should have gotten off the book when it started flying, but she missed her chance and was now stuck.
Where is it taking me? She wondered as they drifted down the road across campus. She wanted to ask, but the only thing that could come out of her infant lips was nonsense babbling. The book likely wouldn't answer her anyway since books can't talk. At least as far as she knew.
Eventually, the book came to a stop at the history building. Right in the middle of the main hall, it lowered the baby down and made her slide off and gently land onto the floor before going away.
Huh? What? Seriously? Lily thought. You kidnap me out of nowhere and now you're just going to leave me here in the middle of some random hallway?
Lily didn't like it here one bit. It was a hallway devoid of life, covered in fake spider webs and other creepy Halloween decorations. And now that she was a baby, everything looked bigger to her now, which just made it even creepier. Her instincts started to kick in and she let out a whimper. The whimper would have turned into a full bawl, but then a door opened, and feet appeared in front of her.
A familiar voice exclaimed, "What in the world?"
Lily looked up to see her uncle gaping back at her in surprise. He wore a blue, coat-like robe and a black hat with a round, red top. Taped to the side of the hat was a piece of yellow paper with Chinese writing on it.
"What is a baby doing here?" he wondered aloud.
Great, just great! Lily thought glumly to herself. Of all the people to find her, it had to be her uncle, the one person she wanted to see least right now.
Uncle Viceroy's costume, by the way, is a type of Chinese zombie called a Jiangshi. Lily recognized it from some old Hong Kong movies her parents liked to watch sometimes.
"Alright, up you go."
He scooped Lily into his arms. She didn't like it but resisted the urge to make a fuss. When he straightened up, two boys suddenly showed up. One wore a black cape and a pointed hat while the other had butterfly wings taped to his back.
The boy with the butterfly wings gasped and cried out, "Oh no! It's finally happened. Mr. Lin's become a full-blown criminal!"
The caped boy followed up and added, "And not only that, of all things, it's kidnapping!"
"Ha ha, very funny, Mr. Fowl, Mr. Potter," Uncle Viceroy said sarcastically.
"Apologies, sir," said the winged boy named Fowl. "It was just a joke. But in all seriousness, why is there a baby with you?"
Uncle Viceroy replied, "She's not mine, if that's what you're thinking, though she does look really familiar for some reason."
Lily's heart skipped a beat and she broke out in cold sweat as her uncle stared at her face intently. For a moment, she was afraid he was going to figure everything out. But to her relief, he turned away and continued to speak with the boys.
"I just found her in the middle of the hallway."
Potter raised an eyebrow. "By herself?" he said. "Think she somehow gave her mum or da the slip?"
"That's probably the case," said Uncle Viceroy with a shrug. "Anyway, I need to let security know and have them look for her parents. You guys go on ahead and have fun at the Halloween festival."
Lily watched as the boys leave and was then carried off to a small room at the end of the hall with a big window that allowed a good view of the worktable, steel file cabinets and huge, black computer screens inside. She thought she'd be left there; but after a brief word with the guard there, Uncle Viceroy took her back with him to his office instead.
This room's surprisingly neat and roomy, Lily thought as she looked around. Five steel file cabinets were lined up against the back wall while against perpendicular wall was a simple office desk. On top of the desk were three tidy stacks of papers, two on the right side and one on the left. Between the stacks was a computer with a big ledger book resting on top of the keyboard. There were also, on all sides of the room, posters of characters from Japanese cartoons.
After sitting in his black leather chair with Lily settled on his lap, Uncle Viceroy flipped open the ledger book to a page in the middle where a red silk ribbon laid flat.
He bent his head left and right, making popping noises from his neck and then picked up a pen. "Alrighty then. Sit tight, little lady. Uncle Viceroy's got some work to do."
Lily replied with a, "Guh!" She looked up at her uncle with her mouth hung open like a blank-faced goldfish.
Uncle Viceroy flashed a warm smile and nuzzled her hair with his cheek before grabbing a sheet of paper from the left stack. He gave the piece a quick glance, wrote something in the ledger, and then moved it to the right before moving on to the next. He would repeat this cycle for the next several minutes in complete, peaceful silence.
**********
Meanwhile, at Oliver's dorm room . . .
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAH!"
"AH HAHAHAHAHA!"
Two teenage boys screamed their heads off while playing Tug-of-War with a scythe against a cackling skeleton wearing black robes with a hood.
And over at the library . . .
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAH!"
"AH HAHAHAHAHA!"
The library helpers were running around screaming their heads off while swinging giant butterfly nets at a cackling skeleton nurse lady flying back and forth near the ceiling.
And outside as the sun was setting . . .
"LILY! LILY, WHERE ARE YOU?"
Viv and Eddie pushed through throngs of costumed Halloween revelers trying to call out for their friend over loud, pounding music.
Over on a bench by a tree, a guy in a Darth Vader mask stood flashed peace signs with both hands and yelled, "Trick or Treat! Smell mah feet!" And then he jumped into the arms of his friends below. After planting his feet back on the ground and straightening up, they all screamed at each other's faces, "YEEEAAAAAAAAH!"
**********
As Viceroy Kevin Lin worked on his ledger book, baby Lily watched. She had never seen this side of her uncle before, looking all hard-working and serious like a proper adult. He was always doing something ridiculous like having full-blown conversations with pigeons under a tree or using a dancing inflatable and voice recording to do his classes for him.
If Grandma and Grandpa saw him now, Lily thought, they'd probably say something like, "If only he was like this all the time."
Done filling in his ledger book, Uncle Viceroy tapped the spacebar of the keyboard, and the computer instantly blinked to life showing a picture of himself with a little girl sitting on his lap. Both of them had big grins on their faces as they stared into the camera.
Lily instantly recognized the girl as herself when she was younger. Well, technically she's younger right now having been turned into a baby while the girl in the picture was around five years old.
"Ooh."
Uncle Viceroy looked down and smiled. "Interested in that picture?" he asked in a high voice. "Know who they are?"
"Ooh!"
"That's right," said Viceroy, though he definitely didn't understand what Lily was saying. "That's me. And the big sister there is my niece. Her name's Lily. Can you say 'Lily'?"
"Eeh."
"You know, I used to play with Lily a lot when she was thiiiis small," Viceroy told the baby, pinching air between his thumb and index finger in front of her. "Just like you are now. But then her mommy and daddy got really, really good jobs so they all had to go far, far away. We couldn't play together anymore. I really missed her."
That's right, thought Lily. It's all coming back to me now. Uncle Viceroy used to take care of me all the time whenever I visited Grandma and Grandpa's house when I was really little. He was always so nice. There's just no way he could be the cruel Schemer or one of the villain's just-as-cruel followers."
But just as Lily became convinced of her uncle's innocence, a visitor appeared who flipped that conviction upside down.
A knock at the door made uncle and niece turn their heads.
"It's open," Uncle Viceroy called out.
As soon as she saw who had come in, Lily's heart leaped to her throat. It was the Schemer looking as he always did in his blue robes with his face hidden beneath the shadow of his hood.
Uncle Viceroy, however, was not perturbed in the slightest by the visitor and asked, "Ah . . . fancy meeting you at this hour. Do you need my help for something again?"
The Schemer glided into the room; head bent down to fit beneath the door frame. He turned the void beneath his hood to Lily and a deep, artificial voice said, "Who is this little one?"
"Not sure," said Uncle Viceroy, giving the baby a glance. "I just found her in her lonesome out in the hallway. I already let security know. I'm sure they'll find her parents soon."
"One can only hope," said the Schemer, staring intently at the baby.
Lily shrank away and whimpered.
"Oh, what's wrong?" Uncle Viceroy asked her. He lifted her up to his shoulder and gently pat her back. "Hungry?"
"Never mind her for now," said the Schemer. "As you've correctly guessed, I need you to do something for me."
"Is it school related, or magic related?" asked Uncle Viceroy.
Lily's blood ran cold as she heard the word "magic" come out of her uncle's mouth. And it went even colder when the Schemer replied back, "Magic related. Can I count on you?"
Without a hint of hesitation or reluctance, Uncle Viceroy said, "Sure. Just say the word . . . and I'll get it done."
"Gah!" Lily yelled in dismay.
"Good," said the Schemer. "The pests are at it again and causing me headache. I want them dealt with."
Pests? Could he be talking about me and the others? Lily wondered. She felt tight squeeze on her heart.
Uncle Viceroy frowned. "Seriously? You'd think they'd learn after last time."
Last time? As in that time the others got turned to stone? Lily thought. The squeeze on her heart got tighter and blood rushed to her head.
"Don't worry . . .," said Uncle Viceroy. "I'll make sure this time that they're stopped for good. They won't bother you, me or anyone else ever again!"
Unable to take it any longer, Lily wailed. She screamed at the top of her lungs, startling Uncle Viceroy who cried out, "What's wrong? Is it hunger? Need a diaper change? What?"
The baby, of course, didn't answer, and instead tried pushing her uncle away with all her might. There was no doubt in her mind at this point that her uncle, Viceroy Kevin Lin, was a villain. She had had enough and wanted to get away.
Suddenly, light flashed from her bracelet's jewels and an explosion of energy finally split the two apart.
Viceroy skidded to a stop with his chair in the middle of the room. When he looked up, his eyes popped out in shock as he watched the baby disappear into the light only to be replaced by his red-faced niece.
"Wha-? Lily!?"
A burst of magic had turned her back to normal.
She glared at her uncle without saying a word, tears streaming down the sides of her face. And then she turned and ran out of the room.
"Lily! Wait!"
Viceroy chased after her, leaving behind Julius Bluestone who stood alone, wearing not his Schemer costume, but his normal every-day suit. The director and owner of Bluestone Academy listened to the sound of doors banging against a wall and feet thundering against the floor quickly fade. When he left the office, he found a blue parrot waiting for him in the adjoining classroom.
Perched on top of the teacher's lecture table, the parrot asked, "Was this the push you were talking about? Really? This?"
Director Bluestone looked away and did not answer.
**********
Lily ran out of the history building as fast as she could, covered in a veil of blue light that helped her exceed the top speed of a race car. She cut across the grassy courtyard and turned left along the road, streaking past her peers who thought the light they saw out of the corner of their eyes belonged to someone's costume. Close at her heels was her Uncle Viceroy keeping up with her magical speed.
"Lily! Stop!"
She refused and kept running.
Among the people they passed by was Viv and Eddie.
Viv looked at her brother and said, "Was that light just now . . . ?"
Eddie nodded. "That was Lily! And I think she was being chased!"
"Come on! We need to go after her!"
A distance away, after finally subduing his roommate's killer (literally) costume, Oliver came to meet the twins, spotted them rushing off somewhere and followed.
Lily went all the way from one side of the school to the other and then circled back around to the middle where the Castle sat. She zoomed up the stairs and dove in through the main entrance, went down a corridor and descended a flight of stairs to the underground level. That turned out to be a mistake because her uncle soon caught up and trapped her at a dead end of the right hallway.
Lily and Viceroy faced each other, both out of breath and drenched in sweat from their impromptu exercise.
Viceroy spoke up first. "Lily - "
"No!" she shouted. "Just stay away!"
But her uncle would not budge.
"Lily," he said again. "Just tell me what's going on. Why are you freaking out like this?"
"I! SAID! STAY! A! WAY!"
She stomped hard on the ground and, again, her bracelet unleashed a wave of light. Suddenly, words appeared beneath her feet in the shape of a circle, adding their own supernatural glow to the bracelet's.
Viceroy had a bad feeling about that light and reached out to pull Lily away from it. But he was too late.
Oliver, Viv and Eddie arrived just in time to join the history teacher and together watched as Lily disappeared before their very eyes.
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