"Cake?" Henry asked. "My assignment is cake?"
Regina smiled as Henry surveyed the elaborate layered cake on the dining room table.
"Not exactly, dear," Regina said. "But you can have a slice of whichever is your favorite when we're done."
"There's going to be more than one?" Henry asked, excited. Despite the fact that his mom was an excellent baker—you don't use pastries to poison people if you're not—they didn't often have sweets around the house.
Regina laughed, "Yes, there will be. But let's start with this one, shall we?"
Henry nodded, "What do I do?"
"One of your action figures is somewhere in the cake," Regina explained. "Before you do anything else, I want you to tell me which one it is and then where it is. Once you know both of those things, I want you to extract the figure, damaging the cake as little as possible in the process."
"Cool," Henry said, though he was clearly already studying his assignment.
Regina took a seat on the couch, glad she'd selected an open floor plan for her curse-created house. It certainly made this particular project easier; she could make herself comfortable and still have a clear view of Henry and the action-figure cake.
She felt the moment that he began magically searching the cake for his toy. The hair on her arms and legs stood up, and she wanted to scrap the energy off herself. If only it worked that way.
Uncountable moments later, the feeling dissipated.
"Spiderman. Second layer from the bottom, a half inch below the blue flower," Henry declared confidently.
Regina nodded. "Good. Now get him out."
Henry screwed up his face in concentration, and Regina felt the energy running across her skin in all directions, fighting against itself.
The cake exploded.
Henry looked at his mother, worried about her reaction. Her super-clean house was covered in cake-goop.
Regina took in the picture of her son, spattered with cake and frosting, a stricken expression on his face, and the spiderman figure clutched in his right hand. When the blue frosting flower fell from the ceiling onto his head, she burst into laughter.
"Don't worry, Henry," she assured him as she continued to laugh. "I knew this was a possibility. We'll clean it up later."
Henry began laughing too. The sight of his straight-laced, serious mom speckled in pieces of cake and doubled over in laughter was infectious. He grinned and held up the figure, "I got it out."
His declaration caused them both to laugh harder, and Regina swiped tears away from her eyes. "You did indeed," she said.
With a wave of her hand, a new cake appeared. "Try again," she said, even though neither of them had quite recovered from their fit of laughter.
Henry smiled. "Okay!"
A few cakes later, and the living room was a multicolored mess of confection, and Henry was tense with frustration.
"Come here," Regina said, patting the space next to her on the sofa and suppressing a smile as her son stalked over and plopped down beside her.
She pulled him into her side. "You're doing really well, Henry," she told him. "This isn't easy magic, and you've only been doing magic for two days. Two days and you can already levitate things, break binding spells, and locate and identify objects. That's really good, Henry."
"What if I kill them?" he asked in a small voice. He didn't have to say their names for both of them to know he meant Emma and Snow.
"You won't," Regina declared with certainty.
"How do you know?" Henry asked.
"Because I've done a lot of magic, and I've seen a lot of magic," Regina said. "You won't kill them." She could see that her son was not convinced. "Your love for them will cause your magic to protect them, whether you think about it or not."
Henry raised an eyebrow in an expression that he only could have learned from her. "Really?" he asked, his skepticism obvious.
"Really," Regina confirmed. She took a deep breath and continued, "Besides, as hard as it may be to believe, this cake-assignment is harder than the spell you'll be doing to bring Emma and Snow home."
"How can it be easier to find them when they are in another dimension?" Henry asked, feeling better already, but not ready to admit it.
"The fact that Snow and Emma are related to you by blood will make it easier for you to find them than a piece of plastic, cool as that piece of plastic may be. And distance in time and space is not the impediment we would assume it is," Regina tried to explain. "It's hard to understand, but it's true. The success of location spells has much more to do with whether what or whom you're trying to locate wants to be found. Your action figures aren't alive, so they aren't going to help or hurt your search to find them. Ms. Swan and Snow, on the other hand, will be fighting hard to get back to you, making it easier for you to use magic to do it."
"That's kind of cool," Henry said. "So, they don't have to do magic to help me do magic?"
"Confusing as it sounds, yes," Regina answered. "How do you think your grandparents kept finding each other in all of those stories?"
"But they don't know magic," Henry asserted.
"Love is magic, sweetheart," Regina said, her heart clenching painfully. "Now, why don't you try again?" she suggested, waving her hand to conjure yet another cake.
Almost instantaneously, Henry was holding batman in his hand. "Look!" he said, excited.
Regina smiled, recovering from the residual of the intense static induced by another round of Henry's magic. Her cake had a gaping hole in its side but was otherwise intact. "Good job," she said and waved her hand again.
The hole was smaller this time. She waved her hand again.
A yet smaller hole.
"Nice work, Henry," Regina said. "This time, as you pull the action figure toward you, fix the cake behind it. You'll have to pay more attention to the cake before you start extracting."
Before Henry could start, they heard a key turn in the lock, and David walked through the door.
"David?" Regina asked.
"I got worried when you didn't call, so I—" David stopped mid-sentence as he took in the scene before him. Mother and son, on the couch, covered in the remains of several baked goods, as was the rest of the living room and, he discovered as he walked in further, the dining room.
Henry started giggling at the look on his grandfather's face. "Want some?" he asked, pointing at the chocolate cake on the ceiling.
David started laughing. Never had he thought he would see the prim and proper queen covered in and surrounded by such a mess, and he certainly never thought she would be so unfazed by it. With her arm around his giggling grandson and a broad smile on her face, she'd never been more beautiful. And that was saying something.
"What time is it?" Regina asked.
"Nearly four," David said, studying her closely.
They had been at their cake drill for nearly two hours. No wonder a thin layer of sweat coated her. "Henry," she said. "Let's save this next step for after you and David get back from working with the animals, okay?"
"Okay," Henry agreed. His brain was getting tired. And he wanted to see the kittens his mom delivered.
"How about you go and get cleaned up, kiddo?" David said. "The animals are going to fight each other trying to eat you if you don't scrub that sugar off."
"Mom, can't we just magically clean me up?" Henry asked hopefully.
"Not this time, dear," Regina replied. "We'll use our magic get-out-of-cleaning-free card when we clean the house later. For now, I'm afraid you'll have to get clean the old-fashioned way."
Henry rolled his eyes but headed toward the stairs. He didn't see what the big deal was. It was just a little more magic. But he and his mom had been having fun, and he didn't want to push his luck.
David slowly approached Regina, stopping in front of her as he heard the door to the bathroom upstairs close. "You're not getting up," he said.
"No," she confirmed.
"You haven't moved at all since I've come in here."
"You just got home," she countered.
"Okay, so stand," David challenged.
Regina gave him a petulant glare but didn't move.
"You are busted, my dear," David said, looking down at her.
The glare intensified.
"Later, we are going to discuss this, and we are going to talk about how you need to let me help you," David stated firmly. "But, for now, I am going to take you to your room," he scooped her up in his arms, "And you are going to rest while Henry and I spend a couple hours at the shelter." He took the stairs two at a time. "We will bring pizza home for dinner, and you will eat at least two slices without complaint."
"Fine, but they'd better be veggie," she demanded.
He slipped her under the covers. "Done."
She looked at the sheets around her and scowled. "I'm covered in cake."
He shook his head affectionately. "I'll help you wash them later. Now, rest," he said firmly.
"Okay," Regina sighed, and let her eyes drift shut. She was so tired. And her nerves felt jangly. They jangled less now, though, after David carried her up the stairs. They always jangled less when he touched her. It must be from the true love magic . . . .
David looked at her fondly and tucked the covers around her tighter before leaving the room and closing the door behind him.
The envelopes were stacked neatly beside her coffee cup. All she had to do was give them to someone. Everything else was taken care of in her usual impeccably thorough manner.
Regina's heart felt heavy. She missed Henry and David.
But they were still living with her—for at least one more night. How was it possible to miss people who weren't gone?
Regina had woken up Tuesday evening to two slices of pizza delivered to her in bed by a smiling Henry and an assessing David. The pizza had been surprisingly easy to eat—she had been hungrier than she realized—and, after listening to her boys regale her with tales of their shenanigans at the shelter, David had watched them perform more "cake magic," as Henry had taken to calling it, until Henry was mending the cakes like a professional as he removed his action figures.
David had sent Henry to get ready for bed after Regina conjured the tenth post-pizza cake.
"You're wearing yourself out," he said.
"I'm fine," Regina replied.
"You're making me hate that word," David said, his aggravation bleeding into his voice.
"Sorry," she said sarcastically.
"Regina," he said, forcing himself to sound more patient than he felt, "You're wearing yourself into the ground. I don't want you to make yourself sick."
"Well, I don't want Henry to rip apart the fabric of space and time," Regina snapped.
David's temper flared, but he resisted the urge to snap back. Underneath the prickly, cake-covered exterior, he knew Regina was scared for her son.
"Regina, I know you're nervous," David said softly.
"Well, good for you," she replied sharply. "You know I'm nervous. All our problems are solved."
David growled in frustration. Things would never be easy with this woman.
"You've left me no choice," he said. Without further words, he strode over, sat down beside her, and pulled her into his arms.
"Cheater," she accused. "You know I don't have the energy to push you away."
"Ahh," David replied, "But this way you get to pretend that you actually want to push me away."
"Shut up," Regina said. She really was drained. Her banter was not up to its usual acerbic wit.
"Regina," he murmured against her hair, "I know you said the phases of the moon are important, but maybe we should wait until next Thursday to do the spell."
"Henry will be ready this Thursday," she said.
"What's the harm in waiting a week?" David asked. "You can get your strength back up; it will be safer for Henry."
"You're cheating again," Regina protested, even as she completely relaxed against his chest. His magic, their magic, it was so nice against her jumping skin and her spiky nerves. "Not fair using Henry's safety against me. Besides, he'll be safe either way. We should do it this Thursday. One less week for something bad to happen to Ms. Swan and Snow in the Enchanted Forest, and one less week for the fear to hang over Henry's head."
"All right," David agreed. "But no magic for either of you tomorrow. You both take the day off and rest before performing the big heroics on Thursday."
"Fine," Regina begrudgingly accepted his terms. "But we need at least three more cake-tests tonight then."
"Is it really necessary?" David challenged.
"Yes, it is." The conviction in her voice was clear despite her exhaustion.
"Okay," David said. "I'll get Henry, while you eat this piece of pizza."
Regina wrinkled her nose in disgust. "Do you have a thing for fat women, Charming?"
"More to love," he replied with a wink, before disappearing up the stairs.
It had taken six more cakes, but Henry had learned how to find only the action figures Regina told him to retrieve and leave the rest in the cake. And the cakes looked impeccable when he was through.
All that was left to do was bring Emma and Snow back.
And talk to Granny.