no sign?” Abigail asked, ruffling the chocolate-colored bangs that obscured Gabbie’s eyebrows.
“No, Mother.”
“Well, try not to worry. You’re just special is all, and special beings often have to tread a harder pathway.”
“Yes, Mother.” Gabbie wet her lips and cleared her throat. “Mother, I saw her last night. She’s been there for the last two nights, now that I think about it.”
“Saw who, Gabriella?”
“You know who—that witch.”
“Gabbie, Ghoulsville is filled with witches,” Mrs. Del Toro sniffed.
“Yes, but you know the one I mean—with the long yellow hair and the shiny black cape,” Gabbie said. “Mother, you have to be curious. Who is she? What does she want?”
“I’m sure she’s one of your father’s many contacts. He wants us to be safe in his absence, Gabriella.”
“Are we not safe, Mother?”
“Of course we are, child. But you know how your father worries about us when he’s not around.”
“I suppose she could be a member of the Night Guard.”
“Yes, you’re probably right, Gabriella.” The Night Guard was a community organization of concerned witches and warlocks who came together to make sure that their homes and streets remained safe, though it wasn’t clear to Gabbie what they needed to be safe from. Her father and Uncle Niall had been among the founding members. “You’ve got everything you need to perform your stewardship?”
“Yes, Mother,” Gabbie replied. Given the family’s recent difficulties, the Del Toro kids, which included Gabbie and her adopted troll brother Grawl, would be tasked with menial chores around the school grounds that they could fit in before the actual learning day started. The Del Toro siblings included her twin brothers Galen and Gilbert, who were six and not yet school age, and her older brother Efrian, who was missing in action over the last year after taking on a mission for Ghoul School’s now deceased former principal, Barnabas Croft. Her parents feared the worst regarding her older brother. According to her father, a lead to Efrian’s whereabouts formed the basis for his alibi on the night of the Pumpkin Hill Plunder, an alibi that unfortunately was lacking in evidentiary support. Gabbie had a thing for legal proceedings, mysteries and crime stuff.
What made this year even worse for Gabbie was that her best girlfriend, Pinkie Anderson, would not be joining them at school this year as her parents had whisked her off to parts unknown. As Pinkie’s parents were gypsy witches, it was not an unexpected thing for them to do. Though for Gabbie, it was still disappointing.
Gabbie heard Grawl’s heavy footsteps entering the kitchen. Not quite as tall as Gabbie but as wide as a tree, Grawl was a solidly built troll boy with deep olive skin and a crop of white hair that sat messily atop his thickly browed head. Huge arms poured out of a cut-off top and impossibly wide bare feet crammed into specially made sandals. Though it was the fall of the year, trolls’ body temperatures stay on the hotter side. He also wore a pair of spectacles on the top of his head.
“Good morning Grawl,” Gabbie’s mother called, continuing her flitting about the kitchen. “Late night reading?” she asked, noting the glasses.
“A bit, ma’am,” he replied.
She sat two steaming bowls of mush at the table—one smallish but normal-sized and one, for Grawl, a much larger and heavier bowl.
Grawl sat across from Gabbie at the table. Gabbie and Grawl had been friends forever, ever since she had rescued him from that mudslide when they were younger. It had been a pretty bad mudslide that had changed the whole topography of the Crescent, of which the city of Ghoulsville was one of the points. That mudslide had wiped out the entire troll city apart from Grawl. Gabbie’s father and Uncle Niall, on one of their Night Guard missions, had done the actual rescuing, but it had been Gabbie who had first spotted Grawl clinging for life in that mudslide. Grawl had lost his whole family. Thankfully, Gabbie’s family had taken him in.
Though they were witches and warlocks, Gabbie took pride in the fact that her family was far more liberal-minded than others in the witches and warlock sect. You see, normally no one liked trolls, just for the fact that they were trolls. But Gabbie and her family felt that was wrong.
Grawl had warned them that taking him in would bring them bad luck—he was prone to looking on the dark side of things—but the Del Toros would hear none of that. As fate would have it, things did not go so well for the Del Toros after they added Grawl to the family.
“You’ve let Graymalkin out?”
“Yes ma’am.” Graymalkin was the family’s dog, a monstrous Caucasian Shepard dog that looked more frightening than he actually was.
“You have all you need?”
“Yes ma’am,” Grawl replied.
“Good enough then,” Mrs. Del Toro said, wiping her hands. “You need to eat and be on your way. I hope Grandmamma gets here soon; the twins’ll be stirring momentarily, I suppose.”
“They were sleeping like the dead this morning, Mother,” Gabbie said, munching on a piece of toast.
“Fly safely, Gabriella,” Mrs. Del Toro called over her shoulder as she headed back into the hallway, "and mind the canopy!"
“Yes, Mother.”
The canopy was a large, dome-shaped cover that fell over the whole of the town of Ghoulsville and stayed in place from eventide until dawn. Constructed by the Night Guard, it was designed to help keep the city safe. Since the arson at Pumpkin Hill and its mysterious implications, the town understandably had been on high alert, though against what or whom Gabbie had no idea.
Grawl groaned. “I don’t suppose we’ve got time to walk, after all?” He hated to fly.
“Oh Grawl, it’s not as if Ghoul School is that far away ... and my flying’s gotten a lot better.”
Grawl groaned again.
“Come on now,” Gabbie said, putting her plate into the sink. She grabbed her sweater and scrollsack—students at Ghoul School carried scrollsacks—and headed for the staircase that would take them to the rooftop deck where they would launch.
Grawl drank down the rest of the contents of his big bowl and reluctantly followed Gabbie up the staircase to the roof, his scrollsack and gardening tools strapped across his broad back.
Dodging through the twins’s flying apparatus (set up over the Del Toro home to assist in their flying lessons), Gabbie retrieved her broomstick from the family’s broom closet. The small, spindly broom shook with excitement as she removed it.
“Hello, Elvira,” Gabbie said to the broom, as all brooms had names, “ready for some exercise?” The bristles of the broom shimmered in response.
“Ready, Grawl?” Gabbie called over her shoulder as her adoptive brother straddled the broom behind her.
“Not really,” he moaned and then asked, “are you sure this broom can hold me?”
