going to mention what she had seen in Silas’s face to Grawl but then chalked it up to a trick of the early morning fog, which was rumored to contain old spell remnants. Grawl let out an audible groan as the two of them rounded the corner to enter the school’s main courtyard, and Gabbie saw why right away. There were Florinda and her coven of friends, making an absolute mess of things on the north lawn of the House of Ghouls.
“Isn’t that the lawn you just finished hedging?” Gabbie asked.
“Yes,” Grawl moaned. “Now I’ll have to start all over again. I’ll never get done in time.”
“Well, we’ll see about that!” Gabbie snorted, tying her hair behind her back.
“Gabbie, it doesn’t matter,” Grawl said, though he knew that once she started tying her hair behind her back, it was on like popcorn.
“Florinda!” Gabbie roared, striding over to the other girl. “Knock it off! Set it back the way it was!”
“Or what?” Florinda sneered, looking at Gabbie from under half-lidded eyes.
“You’ll find out what!”
“Are you threatening me, Beast?” Beast was Florinda’s cruel nickname for Gabbie since she started in the work-study program. You know, as in beast of burden.
“I promise you that if you don’t put that lawn back like you found it, you’ll have me to deal with!”
“Please, Beast, you and I are no longer in the same league. Things have changed for me over summer holiday, you know. Apart from the obvious change in our stations—helped by no doubt your father’s shenanigans—I got my stripe, something I daresay you haven’t, looking at your rat’s nest. So if you want to have it out, we can, though you’ll come up on the wrong side of things.”
Gabbie noted too late that Florinda’s face suddenly changed. Gone was the superior and haughty expression, and her eyes softened and welled up. Gabbie knew in a flash that she had been trapped. There was also the whistle that tipped her off from behind.
“Oh, bats!” she spat. Florinda pointed behind her and Gabbie slowly turned to come face to face with Lady Grimm. Grawl stood next to her, a helpless look on his face.
“Of course, anything you want, Gabbie,” Florinda wailed, “anything you need. Only please don’t hurt us. We just want to get to class is all.”
“Miss Del Toro,” Lady Grimm said in her low voice. “It’s awfully early in the morning, wouldn’t you say?”
“Yes ma’am.” Gabbie knew there would be no point in arguing.
“Come along then, I’ll see you in my office. Bring your things with you.”
Gabbie trudged after the acting principal with Florinda looking triumphantly after her. Grawl heaved a heavy sigh.
When Gabbie and Lady Grimm were well out of sight, Florinda’s cold eyes narrowed on Grawl.
“Not so fast, troll,” she uttered, the words sending a chill down Grawl’s spine.
Walden
“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
