Jake & The Gingerbread Wars (A Gryphon Chronicles Christmas Novella) (The Gryphon Chronicles) (3 page)

CHAPTER THREE

’Twas the Night

Jake’s run-in with the bobby had rather dashed their merry mood, so they returned to Everton House and cheered themselves up by devouring all the goodies they had managed to buy before getting thrown out of the dueling bakeries.

Unfortunately, t
oo many sweets in too short a time had a predictable effect. All four grew slightly queasy, which resulted in them griping at each other.

This
was most unlike them, but nobody felt well after practically pouring sugar down their gullets for an hour. They all felt rather stupid for having done this to themselves and started blaming each other: “Why did you make me eat that?”

Isabelle got a headac
he. Dani ran around in circles with her dog for half an hour, giggling in the most annoying fashion, before suddenly collapsing in exhaustion on the couch.

Archie shocked them all with an uncharacteristic outburst of fury over a smudge on his spectacles. “Blast it, I just cleaned these!”

He threw his glasses across the room, and they might have broken if Jake had not caught them from several feet away, using his telekinesis. He levitated them slowly back to his usually good-natured cousin.

Archie clear
ed his throat. “Sorry,” he mumbled. “I don’t know what came over me. I don’t feel so well.” Indeed, he looked a little green around the gills. Archie stiffly marched out of the parlor to go and clean his glasses again.

Jake
sprawled back in his arm chair once more, holding his stomach. He felt as fat as Santa Claus.

He frowned
at the empty bakery boxes, still littered with powdered sugar like a sprinkling of snow. He usually had an iron stomach, but even he felt a little nauseated. “I hope there wasn’t something wrong with those sweets.”

“Of course not. We ju
st ate too much of them. Ugh. We’re a bunch of pigs.” Dani pulled a pillow over her head with a groan.

They ate a very small supp
er of
salad
and
vegetables
that evening, and though they had pretty well digested their splurge of sweets, they were all still grumpy.

Jake figured the others were
irked at themselves for wasting the afternoon trying to recover from the unpleasant aftereffects of their binge. But as for him, he knew exactly why he was still in a bad mood. Constable Flanagan, mainly.

And that arrogant
French lady.

A
nd, of course, the unseen fairy who had made a fool out of him in public. But no matter.

He’d soon ha
ve his revenge. He was already plotting the pest’s removal from the bakery. He would need some assistance, however.

The question was, who would help him
?

Isabelle
still had no interest in the whole affair. Dani didn’t dare participate, for fear of angering Aunt Ramona and losing her position as paid companion to the older girl. That left Archie, who had his doubts about Jake’s mad scheme, but was too loyal to make him go it alone.

Jake feared he was
a bad enough influence on his straight-arrow cousin. But he assured Archie that he wouldn’t have to do any breaking and entering. He’d do that part himself.

The boy genius would be stationed
outside the shop to keep watch and warn him if anyone was coming.

Like another policeman.

For his part, Jake had no qualms about sneaking into the bakery. He had certain dubious skills from his pickpocket days, like how to pick a lock. He also had a gift for stealth when the situation required.

Flanagan’s warning to behave himself still rang in his ears, but it wasn’t as though he’d be breaking into the shop to steal
any more sweets.
Blech
. On the contrary, he’d be quite happy if he did not have to look at another cake or piece of candy until Easter.

Tonight’s
adventure would only be a pest-removal mission—but there was one problem.

H
e had no idea how to catch a fairy.

For that reason
, he called in the best expert he knew on all matters pertaining to the fey folk: Gladwin Lightwing of the Queen’s own royal garden fairies.

Gladwin
sometimes served as fairy courier to Queen Victoria herself. She had been very busy lately delivering Christmas greeting cards for the royal family. In any case, Jake sent her an Inkbug message, asking her to come to Everton House at her earliest convenience.

She
arrived after supper, buzzing in through one of the unused chimneys upstairs. Their favorite fairy came flying down the grand staircase and into the parlor, where the four of them were still strewn about like so many sacks of potatoes.

Even the Gryphon
was lazy, curled up in front of the fireplace, enjoying a snooze on that dark winter’s evening. Red’s golden beak rested on his front paws, his scarlet wings tucked against his tawny lion sides.

He looked up
pleasantly when Gladwin came speeding in, leaving a golden sparkle-trail behind her.

The five-inch fairy was
dressed in her tiny fur-trimmed coat for the season. It had holes in the back so her magnificent, sparkly wings could poke through.

“
Good evening, everybody! Hullo, Jake. I got your Inkbug message. What’s afoot?” She landed on the end table beside the sofa, the sparkles still fading behind her. Bracing her tiny hands on her waist, she looked around at all of them with a frown. “What’s wrong with you all?”

“We’
re in a bad mood,” Dani said.

T
hen Jake explained all that had happened that day, and what he meant to do about it.

Gladwin stared at him for a moment, her wingtips wiggling uncertainly
as she pondered Jake’s proposal of capturing the fairy in the bake shop. “And why do you want to do this, exactly?”

“Because he made a fool of me! And because he’s helping Marie cheat in the baking contest against Bob.”

“So? It’s just a baking contest,” Gladwin said with vexing logic.

“Would you just trust me?” Jake exclaimed
. “I can’t explain it. I just
know
there’s something funny going on in that shop. I’ll bet you bones to biscuits that this fairy is behind it!”

“Calm down,” she chided. “Sweet bees’ wings, you are all out of temper tonight. Humph! Well, I certainly do
n’t see the need for violence, if you insist on taking this fey person into custody. You don’t want to get any of the fairy nations angry at you, Jake. We might squabble and make war amongst ourselves from time to time, but let a human wrong a fairy, and all the fey folk tend to band together against your kind. Trust me, nobody wants that.”

“Of course not, but I’m telling you,
this is no ordinary fairy. He or she is a menace.”

Gladwin
furrowed her brow, then glanced over at Red. “What do you think?”

The Gryphon
shrugged his scarlet wings.

Gladwin turned back to
Jake with a thoughtful frown. “I’m sure it’s all just a big misunderstanding. The fairy probably just got scared and felt he had to defend himself. But very well. If one of my people is in there causing trouble, then, as an emissary of the Queen, I suppose I should at least step in and try to have a word with him. Maybe we just need to hear his side of the story.”

Jake was relieved that she had agreed to cooperate
, but he still had his doubts. “Thanks, Gladwin. Knew I could count on you. All the same, I doubt this little fellow’s going to come out of that shop peacefully. More likely, we’re going to have to drag him out kicking and screaming. And there’s the problem. He’s too fast. We’re going to need some way to stop him or at least slow him down long enough to make him talk to us.”

She hesitated. “The fairy freeze spell would do it.”

“Great! You can teach it to me,” Jake said. “I’ll go get my wand.” He started to head for the hidden safe in the cellar, where Aunt Ramona insisted all magical equipment be stored away when not in use.

Wands were not toys, after all.

“Jake, come back!” Gladwin called. “You don’t need your wand. I cannot teach you this spell.”

“Why not?”
He paused and turned around.

“It’
s forbidden for any of us to teach it to the non-fey.” She squared her tiny shoulders. “If it comes down to it, I will use it on him myself so he can’t get away.”

At that moment, the grandfather
clock beside the wall started bonging. Jake glanced at it. “Nine o’clock. I think that’s when the shop closes. That means we can go. C’mon, Arch.”

While the boys ran to get their coats,
Red jumped to his feet and shook himself awake. He would provide their transportation—and keep a protective eye on them, too.

Before returning to the others, Jake snuck out to the stables that belonged to Everton House, the London mansion he
had inherited from his parents, as opposed to Griffon Castle out in the country.

In
side the stable, Jake found an old gunnysack made of rough brown burlap. He shook the last few pieces of the horses’ sweet grain out of it. Then he folded it up small, tucked it into his coat, and hurried back to the house.

He was willing to give Gladwin a chance to talk to the trickster
in the bakery, but privately, Jake had no intention of going in there unprepared.

If she co
uld not persuade the troublemaker to leave
Chez Marie
by his own free will, then Jake would follow his simpler plan of catch and release. Namely, he would catch the fairy in the gunnysack, then set him free somewhere out in the country beyond the boundaries of London, where he could not bother anyone.

Once Jake returned
to the house and Archie said he was ready, the boys climbed on the Gryphon’s back. They held on tight as Red pushed off from an upstairs balcony, lifting into the frigid night sky with his powerful wing beats.

Gladwin kept pace with them, flying alongside Jake’s shoulder.

It was the first time Archie had seen London at night from the air. True, he was an inventor of flying machines and other strange contraptions, but, as reckless as he was in the pursuit of science, not even the boy genius was mad enough to attempt flying the Mighty Pigeon at night.

He ooh’ed and ahh’ed in wonder at the rows of streetlamps like tiny golden beads lining the grand thoroughfares
, like Regent Street and Pall Mall.

Big Ben glowed in the dark, while Westminster Abbey and Buckingham Palace were
adorned with green wreaths and scarlet ribbons for the holiday. White wisps of smoke rose from all the chimneys, and groups of carolers below went singing door to door, collecting coins for some charity.

The boys
smiled at the sight of tiny-looking ice skaters swirling along the Serpentine lake in Hyde Park.

But a
s charming as London was at this time of year, Jake was all business; he pointed to show Red the way.

At last,
the Gryphon swooped down from the starry sky, landing on the roof of the building across from the bakery. That way, the boys could survey the area before going in, make sure the coast was clear.

“T
hat’s the place?” Gladwin asked, fluttering in midair.

Jake nodded.

Archie scanned the dark street through the Vampire Monocle, one of his favorite devices they had unea
rthed on their last adventure. It provided the wearer with excellent night vision. “No sign of your friend, the bobby,” he reported.

“Good. Take us down, Red.”

The Gryphon waited for a carriage to pass below before plunging off the side of the roof and coasting down gracefully to the snowy street outside the double-bakery building. The boys got off the Gryphon’s back.

“Good luck,
Jake!” Archie whispered, backing into the shadows to keep watch through the Vampire Monocle.

“
Remember, three raps on the window if you see anyone coming.”

“Righty-ho
.” Archie leaned against the wall, becoming almost invisible in the shadows.

Gladwin
murmured that she would go in first. Jake watched her fly up to the bakery’s roof, then she disappeared, diving in through the chimney.

A few minutes later, he
could see her sparkle-trail glowing through the shop’s bay window. She buzzed around inside, making sure that Mademoiselle Marie and her employees were not still in there working.

By now, ten o’clock, t
he fabulous pâtisserie was empty. The bakers had baked, the cake decorators had decorated, the clerk had counted the day’s money, and the cleaners had cleaned up.

All was quiet.

Jake waited with a tingle of nervous anticipation running across his skin. His heart pounded. Sneaking in after hours like this—why, it felt like old times. Good thing he had grown adept at sneaking around back in his thieving days. He steadied himself for the mission at hand when Gladwin appeared at the front door.