Ian's staff began to shake, but by now he was used to this, and easily held it steady. From the tip of it, violet orbs appeared and encircled Barley's feet. It began to move upwards, and where Barley's normal feet once were, was instead lavender light. It continued up to Barley's neck, at which point he waved with his lavender glowing arm, and shouted, "Ian! See ya on the other-" the orbs covered his mouth. The orbs quickly finished their work and disappeared, leaving a purple, luminescent replica of Barley in their place for about five seconds. Then the glowing dissipated, and Barley was gone.

"Whoa," said Colt. "I'll never get used to that."

"Better follow him pretty quickly. Don't want him to wander off," Laurel told Ian. Ian moved to where Barley had previously stood, pointed his staff at himself, and repeated the spell. The violet orbs reappeared. They tickled his feet at first, but as they moved upward, it began to burn. Ian didn't dare move, for fear of stopping the spell from finishing, but it began to hurt really, really bad! How had Barley withstood all this? He glued his mouth shut, refusing to scream in pain, but when it reached his neck, it hurt so bad, he let out a whimper, just as the orbs sealed his mouth in light. He had barely enough time to see his mother's face shift from happiness to worry before his eyes were wrapped with brilliance. He remained there, reveling in the bright, hot pain before the light faded to blackness, and Ian lost consciousness.

…

Ian's vision came back slowly. The blackness slowly opened up to a blurry brown. He could just barely make out a mahogany floor underneath his feet. He felt something tugging on his arm and looked towards the sensation. A hand clapped over his mouth and pulled him back into a small, dark space.

"Ian!" It was Barley. He was whispering and held Ian still.

"Barley?"

"Yeah! We're inside a house!"

"What? Did the spell not work?"

"No, it worked fine. In fact, it worked too well!" Ian heard footsteps outside their hiding place. Both brothers fell silent. Ian felt course cloth underneath his hand. They were hiding in a closet!

"Lilith Blair Wald, go to your room right now!" A male voice spoke close to the closet.

"Why?" The voice of a teenage girl rang out, defiant and cold.

"You know why."

"That is a stupid reason. Make me believe I deserve to go to my room."

"Lily, you have to understand this kind of behavior is unacceptable."

"You know what's unacceptable? Blaming Zoey for your problems. She's 10!"

"Go. To. Your. Room."

"Fine. Zoey, come on." Footsteps, hard and deliberate, pounded past the closet. Smaller quieter footsteps followed. After they stopped, a door slammed hard.

"Door open!" the man called. Ian heard the door squeak slowly open. He watched through the crack under the door as the man's feet thumped upstairs, and he slammed his door shut. Barley and Ian waited for about five minutes before quietly opening the closet door, and sneaking out. Ian quickly took stock of the situation, seeing no obvious exits.

"How long were you here without me?" he whispered to Barley.

"It was for about 5 minutes. They were in the middle of a fight in the living room when I got here, so I hid in the closet and watched under the door for you to get here. They almost saw us. The dude was walking down the hallway when we got inside the closet."

"This is insane."

"Yeah. What do we do now?"

"Uh, I don't know." Ian sat down on the couch in the living room. Barley sat next to him. Ian yawned. "Barley, I'm exhausted. That spell really took it out of me. I'm going to take a nap. Wake me up if we need to go."

"Ian, that's not a good idea." Barley's words fell upon deaf ears, however, as Ian was already sound asleep. "Well, okay." Barley sat there, and soon after his eyes began to close themselves. Without quite realizing it, he too fell asleep.

…

They slept soundly, so soundly in fact, that neither of them awoke when a small girl with curly hair and glasses walked out of the room she had entered with her older sister nearly six hours earlier. As she came upon the sleeping elves, she stopped, abruptly turned around, and went back to her room. Lily was sound asleep in her bed. The small girl, Zoisite Ruby Wald, or Zoey for short, did not know the strange men asleep on her couch and did not care to face them without the assistance of her much more intimidating sister.

"Lily," she said, gently shaking her sister's shoulder. "Lily! There are strangers on the couch!" Lily slowly woke up, registering the words her little sister said one at a time very slowly.

"There...are...strangers on the couch? Strangers on the couch!" Lily woke up very suddenly. "Zoey, go see how many bottles Daddy finished last night, okay?" Zoey nodded and hurried up the stairs. Outside her father's locked door, she counted one, two, three, four, five, six empty bottles of beer. He was out cold and would be severely hungover in the morning. She went down the stairs as fast and quietly as she could, avoiding the living room as much as she could, giving a wide berth to the sleeping people on the couch. Dashing into the bedroom, she said "He finished six. He's thoroughly incapacitated." Lily nodded, grabbing the baseball bat next to her bed, one of her few possessions.

"Well, no help from that loser," she said. "That's okay, though, Zoey. We're tough enough to face a couple of weirdos who sneak into houses to fall asleep in them." Zoey stood up straighter and smiled, and then followed Lily out of their small, cramped bedroom.

Zoey noted that Lily had changed out of her PJ's into a well-worn t-shirt and jeans while Zoey was upstairs. All of a sudden, Zoey felt rather exposed in her thin, thread-bare pajamas she had worn every night since she was five.

Lily grasped her bat tighter and approached slowly. She flicked on the light switch and peered over the couch's arm to look at the intruders. Zoey admired her graceful movements and copied her to get a look as well. She gasped at what she saw

There were two of them, and they were blue. A pale shade of robin's egg. Their hair was dark blue, and had a light sheen to it, like human hair. They had ears that were long, and where it should be round, they instead tapered out to pointy ends.

"Must be cosplaying for something," Lily muttered under her breath.

"I don't think this is make-up, Lily." Lily shrugged and poked them a couple of times with her bat. The shorter thinner one mumbled something and blearily opened his eyes. Then his eyes widened and he backed into the couch, vigorously shaking the other one's shoulder.

"Barley, you idiot!" he whispered loudly. The other one began to wake up as well. He took one look at the situation and leapt off the couch, desperately looking for an exit.

"Barley, they've already got us. We're not going anywhere." Guess we know who the smarter one is, thought Zoey. Barley defeatedly made his way back to the couch and sat down.

"Okay," Lily started. "We have a couple of questions. First, What are you doing in our house?"

"Easy," said Barley. "Ian here transported us here from another realm."

"Haha." Lily made a face at them. "We don't care about your costumes, or what 'world' you came from. What we want to know is why you broke in here in the first place, and then we want you out of here!"

"We didn't come here on purpose!" the smaller one, Ian, exclaimed.

"Stop it! You're here, asleep on our couch. You had to break in here! There's no way you just appeared!" Lily was angry now. Zoey could tell. Her hands were clenched tight around her bat and she raised it high to strike the intruders before she stopped suddenly. "How-how is your make-up not smudged on the pillows?" Removing one hand from the handle of her bat, she pointed at the pillows.

"What make-up?" asked Barley. Lily let out a short bark of a laugh.

"What do you mean 'what make-up'? You're blue!" Stepping forward, Lily licked her thumb and rubbed it vigorously on Ian's cheek. When she brought her thumb back to examine it, no trace of blue had come off.

"Wha…" Lily's voice trailed off. A glazed look came over her eyes. She backed up to the wall, slid down and sat there. Zoey walked over to her and waved a hand in front of Lily's eyes. She didn't blink, or respond in any other way. Zoey figured since her sister had become incapable of any intelligent action, it was up to her to figure out who or what these strangers were. She walked over to the strangers and stuck out her right hand.

"Zoisite Ruby Wald. My friends call me Zoey." Barley tentatively shook her hand first. Then Ian. "I assume that you-" she pointed to the one with the awesome jacket and beanie. "-are Barley, and you-" she pointed to the one so skinny he could be a telephone pole. "-are Ian."

"Uh, yeah," Ian said. "Shouldn't we be quieter? Won't your dad come down and find us?"

"Oh, him? He's dead drunk. Won't be up for hours." Ian looked very surprised.

"Hey, did we break your sister?" Barley pointed at Lily, shivering against the wall.

"Oh, Lily? She'll be fine. She's good at adapting to stuff. So, um...what are you?"

"Us?" Barley pointed at his chest and laughed. "We're called elves."

"Elves? Are you immortal?"

"Hah! No! Where'd you get that idea?"

"Are you responsible for making presents on Christmas?"

"Uh, what's Christmas?"

"Any magical powers?"

"Actually, yeah! My brother-" Barley slung his arm around Ian's neck. "-is a wizard!"

"Oh! Cool!" Zoey ran towards him. "What powers do you have? Super speed? Super strength? Keen intellect? Can you alter the weather? Manipulate plants? What can you do?" Ian looked very uncomfortable. He backed away and sat down again on the couch.

"I-I mostly just do spells, I guess. I can-" Ian began to count on his fingers."- levitate objects, create a bridge out of thin air, do a disguise spell, shoot lightning, create fire, enlarge things, shrink things, and create velocity on stuff very quickly. Ooh, and most recently, I can travel to this realm. I couldn't do any of that without my staff, though." Ian leaned towards the other side of the couch pulling a long stick from where it was previously leaning against the arm.

It wasn't very remarkable. Just a long brown stick maybe three or four feet long. Any person could mistake if for a regular dead branch from a tree. All the same, it was much more than Zoey would ever be, so she looked at it with awe and respect.

"I have two questions for you, Zoey," said Barley. Zoey turned her attention away from the staff, and looked at Barley.

"Fire away,"

"First, what do you call your species?"

"We call ourselves humans."

"Humans. Okay, and second, how did you know Ian could do magic?"

"Uh, well that's harder to explain." Zoey ran into her room and grabbed an old fairytale book her mother had given her before she disappeared. She practically had it memorized. She sat down on the couch in between Barley and Ian and flipped through the pages.

"Let's see… Hobgoblins, unicorns, imps, faeries, centaurs, aha! Elves." Zoey spread the musty old pages flat in front of her and began to read from it.

"Elves are magical, wise, and often extremely good-looking creatures." Barley elbowed Ian in the ribs and winked. "Their powers are related to nature most of the time, but a rare few have advanced physical attributes, such as super-speed, increased strength, or sharp hearing. They are distinguishable from humans with their long pointy ears and height. As they have so many things to be proud of, elves are often arrogant. This can lead to their downfall if a clever person can use their weakness to exploit them." Zoey closed the book and looked at the elves.

"This contains everything I know about mythical creatures. It's my favorite book."

"Who wrote it?" Ian took the old tome carefully out of Zoey's hands and checked the front cover.

"It doesn't say," Zoey informed him. Ian flipped through the pages, and Barley leaned over Zoey to look.

"Wait, wait, wait!" he said, causing Ian to fumble with the book, which eventually fell to the ground. Barley picked it up and flipped to the back cover, where scribbles of writing were inscribed. Zoey had never been able to decode it.

"Ian, this is ancient Elvish!"

"Wait, what?!" Ian scooted over Zoey to the other side of Barley to see the writing. Barley grinned at Ian.

"See, I told you that the Ancient Languages elective would pay off!"

"Yeah, yeah. What does it say?!" Ian jabbed a finger at the book.

"Hold up. I'm getting there." Barley held up a hand to placate Ian before turning his attention to the wizened old book. "It says...translated into English by Albert Hoffheiner. Written by...Ezpar the Forgetful!" Ian and Barley shared an expression of awe.

The awe melted off of Ian's face as Lily smashed the bat into his head.