Читать книгу The Longest Halloween, Book Three: Gabbie Del Toro and the Mystery of the Warlock's Urn - Frank Wood - Страница 14

“Lady Grimm, if you’ll just let me explain...” Gabbie was attempting to plead her case with the no-nonsense acting principal.

“That’ll be enough, Gabriella,” Lady Grimm retorted, leading Gabbie around the hallway to her voluminous and dreaded corner office, positioned in order to view the entire front lawn of the school. Gabbie noticed a portrait of Principal Croft being hoisted into place along the wall adjacent to the office.

“Sorry to hear about Principal Croft,” she said.

“Yes, it was indeed unfortunate,” Lady Grimm said, “but you and your family are not unacquainted with misfortune either, this year.”

Gabbie also noted that her father and his student teachers' portraits had been removed from the hall.

“Really! He hasn’t been proven guilty, you know,” Gabbie retorted.

“They’ve just been removed for economy’s sake—doing some remodeling, you know,” Lady Grimm said. Gabbie didn’t buy it. “But to the matter of you and Miss Evers,” Lady Grimm said, thinking it best to change the subject. “You don’t have to let her bait you so, Miss Del Toro,” Lady Grimm continued, leading Gabriella into her cluttered office. “I am quite wise to Miss Evers’ cruel ways.”

Gabbie was less than satisfied. “But you let her get away with it!”

“I was actually doing you a favor, Miss Del Toro,” Lady Grimm said. “Miss Evers has progressed over the summer. It wouldn’t have been an even match at all.”

Oh, Gabbie thought to herself, the stripe thing. “Hopefully I’ll be getting my stripe soon.”

“Of course you will, Gabbie. You’re twelve this year, right?”

“Yes.”

Lady Grimm looked at her patronizingly. “Well sometimes there are genetic reasons for these things.”

Not in my case, Gabbie thought.

Gabbie was about to reply when they heard a loud explosion of laughter from the lawn outside. Lady Grimm and Gabbie gazed out of the window together to see Florinda using her wand to propel Grawl up and down about the lawn’s periphery, to the horrible delight of the gathered children.

“Do you see what I mean?!” Gabbie almost yelled at the principal, who started toward the door to return to the courtyard.

A bright sheen of green light filled the Lady Grimm's room. Outside, a huge hand, all green, cut across the lawn, snatched Grawl from the air where Florinda had him dangling, and gently placed him down out of harm’s way on the balustrade of the school’s front door. With a snap of huge green fingers, the North Lawn returned to the original state in which Grawl had left it in that morning. Then the hand vanished into a million green bubbles, and from the sky three members of the Warlock Sentry floated to the lawn on their uber-cool brooms.

“Walden!” Gabbie squealed in delight from the window of Lady Grimm’s office. She dashed down to the front lawn despite any protestations that the principal might have mounted.

The Warlock Sentry, incredibly tall warlock-soldiers entrusted with safekeeping the House of Ghouls and enforcing the laws of the Halloween March, were the absolute coolest enforcement officers the students of Ghoul School had ever seen.

Gabbie emerged from the school’s doors and plowed for the center sentry. It was his magic that had trounced Florinda’s machinations so definitively.

She fell into his arms. “Walden, your timing is perfect!”

He smiled down at her. At a mere six feet eight inches, Walden was one of the shorter members of the Warlock Sentry. Everyone knew him for the smoked purple glasses he wore and the bright lime green hair he sported; that, and of course his incredible recent history of heroically riding with Zeldabub herself during last Halloween’s Barbary Mansion adventure. Walden had held his own against the Needlander crew and been instrumental in rounding up the rogue witch, Leticia Corvalis, and her den of werewolves. That he managed to be so successful yet still keep his his avant garde style and drumbeats made him one of the favorites of the kids at Ghoul School. He managed to make being a nerd a cool thing.

Gabbie was so proud that for her, he was even more. “When did you get back, Uncle Walden?”

“Just today, Peaches,” he replied. That was his nickname for her ever since he had found her hiding in a barrel of peaches when she was younger during an outing to the Harvest Market. Walden was her uncle on her mother’s side of the family. He was adopted by Zeldabub and her mom’s mother, her grandmother Zeldamum, and her only uncle on her mother’s side of the family. “I had to come directly to your school to see how you were.”

“Well that’s not true, but I love hearing it.”

“Yo, Walden, thanks for saving me back there,” Grawl managed to say, a bit embarrassed.

“You looked like you were in a bit of a fix there, dude,” Walden said with a smile. “Glad I could lend a helping hand, so to speak.”

One of the other two sentries, a bit taller than Walden, black with a bush of brown hair tipped blond, cleared his throat and motioned to Walden to join them to enter the school. They were obviously here on serious business.

“Well, I’d better go. Duty calls,” Walden said. “You two stay out of trouble.”

“You’ll stay for a bit, won’t you? Mother will be dying to see you,” Gabbie said.

“We’ll see, Peaches.” He gave her a wink.

The first bell—a horrid banshee’s shriek—rang and the kids, all now appropriately excited by the early morning events, begrudgingly headed off to class. Gabbie met up with Grawl in the main courtyard. Bemused, Gabbie saw that Florinda was behind Grawl, struggling to carry his heavy scrollsack.

“You sure there’s only scrolls in here, troll?” Florinda grunted.

“What’s up with this?” Gabbie asked, a smile tracing her lips.

“Grimm’s making Florinda carry my scrolls to class for the next week,” Grawl grinned. “Turns out that new teacher saw what Florinda was doing before Walden showed up, ratted it all to Grimm, and insisted that Florinda be made to pay.”

Grawl nodded to the new teacher, a medium-sized witch with strawberry hair and round spectacles, who watched from the entrance to one of the kitchen wings.

“We trolls need to stick together, eh, Mister Grawl?” she called out before turning into the wing.

Gabbie remembered that the new teacher had been introduced as Lady Lois Hulcey-Hester on Introduction Night. She would be taking over for their father.

“I think she’s being so nice to me because I helped with getting her room all wired up. She says she’s got troll blood, though from the looks of her I doubt it,” Grawl said. “Too tall.”

“Oh, would you two please hurry up? This sack weighs a ton!” Florinda moaned behind them as the children lined up to enter the seventh grade tower where most of their classes were held.

“Who’s the beast now, Florinda?” a male voice called as Florinda heaved Grawl’s sack to its resting place next to the lockers.

Gabbie had to laugh, but then recalled she had left her own scrollsack in Lady Grimm’s office.

“Come on, Gabbie,” Grawl said.

“Oh bats!” she spat. “I’ll be right back. I forgot my scrollsack!” She headed back to Lady Grimm’s office to retrieve her sack.