Double Trouble 56

A/N: Hi readers, it's the delinquent author returned. Sorry for the long break between chapters, it was unplanned and not fun. I've been unwell and depressed so I haven't had the energy or confidence to write lately. Thanks to everyone who left reviews and sent me such kind messages. A big 'hi' to new readers as well. Updates should be more regular from now on. Thanks for sticking with me. Reviews taste like cookies :).

Re-cap of 55:

Emma and Regina found out from Mr Gold that the curse wasn't really broken and now it's out to take revenge upon its creator, Regina. He tells them that in order to stop it they need to make a True Love Potion, but only if they are certain of being each other's True Love or else Henry could cease to exist. Gold also reveals that he has been teaching Henry magic and that their son is the one responsible for bringing Em and Ri to Storybrooke by casting a Reflection Curse.

Emma's eyes unfocused for a minute as she thought it all over. "Now we know why the girls are in Storybrooke and how they got here but that still doesn't answer the main question. The curse isn't broken but what made the border start to shrink in the first place?"

Gold's answer was accompanied by a shrug. "That I do not know."

"I know someone who does." Regina's eyes darkened. She turned on her heel and fled the shop.

Chapter 56 The sorcerer's apprentice

Regina flew into the house at 108 Mifflin St with her heels clicking rapidly on the floor. She stood at the base of the stairs with her hands on her hips and called out in a stern voice. "HENRY JAMES MILLS! Get your little tush down here right this minute!"

Emma ran in after finally catching up. "Regina, maybe you should-"

"Don't tell me to calm down," Regina snapped. "I'll handle this. He'll probably laugh if you try to discipline him. I have ten years of revoking his TV privileges under my belt. I know every trick in his book."

Mary Margaret and David appeared to find out what all the noise was about. Earlier, Mrs Meadows had dropped Henry off after collecting the kids from the movie theatre and as there was no-one home she called his grandparents over. By now Henry was upstairs asleep in his bedroom (or so they thought). The Charmings assessed the scene, wondering what had happened between the two women tonight. If it wasn't one of them yelling it was the other. It seemed like Regina was furious about something and was gearing up to give her son the parental lecture from hell. Emma was standing around not doing a thing to intervene this time.

"HENRY!" Regina yelled. "I'm going to count to three and if you're not down here by then I'm donating your xbox to charity. ONE!"

"What's going on?" said Mary Margaret, confused.

Emma shrugged and held up her hands in surrender. "Hey, don't look at me. I'm not getting involved or she might punish me as well. This is between them apparently."

"TWO!"

"Is something wrong? Why is Henry in trouble?" asked David.

"We found out that he's been messing around with dark magic," said Emma.

"Oh my goodness, is that all?" Mary Margaret sighed in relief. "I thought you were going to say drugs."

"THREE!"

A small tornado of purple smoke appeared in the foyer and when it cleared an eleven-year-old boy was standing there in his pyjamas. Henry's face was subdued and wary, obviously he knew that he was in Big Trouble with his Mom. The adults stared at him in shock at the sight of him appearing magically out of nowhere in the same manner that Mr Gold, Cora, and Regina herself often used.

Emma gaped. "Kid! How did you do that? Since when can you apparate?"

"It's not that hard," said Henry.

Regina bent over to her son's level. "I am not impressed, young man. Mr Gold told us everything. What do you have to say for yourself, hm?"

"Um, sorry?" Henry tried on his cute lopsided smile but it would have no effect on a parent who was well-used to that tactic. He gulped when he saw that it wasn't working.

"What have I told you about Mr Gold! Don't ever trust him. How could you let him teach you magic? You know how dangerous he is. You've read in your storybook about how that imp Rumpelstiltzskin corrupted me and the price I paid for those lessons. He told us you used dark magic to cast a curse!"

"Hey, you did that too!" Henry frowned at her for the hypocrisy. Regina stood up to her full height, but the time in which she towered over him had passed and he wasn't intimidated. "You used magic all the time, Mom. But you still didn't get your happy ending. Our life sucked while the curse was here. We were both lonely."

"And you think magic is the answer to that? Anything worth having can be gotten without magic."

"Not always!"

"Why would you do this, Henry?"

"Because," Henry argued. "The curse was bad but everything that happened since it broke sucked worse. We lost Emma and Mary Margaret down a portal, then Cora came and turned you evil again. Nobody trusted you anymore and Mary Margaret made it so that you'd kill your mother. You and Emma were barely talking. I hated it. My whole family was falling apart! They're supposed to be heroes but they would've killed you to stop you from killing them first. You're my Mom. You can't die. Things were supposed to get better when the curse broke, not worse. None of it even made sense. You guys were ruining everything by fighting the whole time. I love all of you, you're my family, and I don't want to lose anyone!"

The adults shared uncomfortable glances at Henry's diatribe, hearing their shameful actions through the eyes of a child. They'd tried to protect him from it but it'd affected him far more than they'd realised. Regina didn't interrupt either.

Henry went on, pleading his case to all of both his parents and grandparents now. "I wanted to get rid of magic but that didn't work. Everyone else was using magic to get stuff they wanted - Mom, Emma, Mr Gold, Mary Margaret, David - all of you used magic and it wasn't always for good things. So I did it too. But I did something good with it."

"Henry, you can't know that for sure," said Regina, still in lecture mode. "Once you've unleashed magic it does what it wants to. When you cast a dark spell you can never be certain what effect it might have. Villains- people like me- we don't care, but you should. I raised you to be good. I raised you to be better than me."

"We're the same, Mom. When I nearly got expelled for using magic at school the kids started calling me the Half-blood Prince, because you're the Queen. They say I'm just like you."

His words left Regina visibly stricken. She went over to sit on the last step of the stairs and covered her eyes with her hands.

Henry watched her go sadly and then looked down at the floor near his feet. Parental disapproval always hurt more than being yelled at for some reason. He thought that if anyone would understand why he'd cast a dark curse it'd be his Mom. Maybe she wouldn't be able to forgive him this time. He'd given her a lot of trouble over the past year or so, he'd tried to push her away and hurt them both in the process. Maybe this would be the last straw and she wouldn't want him anymore.

"Mom?"

Emma took her turn then, bending to Henry's level to try to catch his eyes. She ruffled his hair. "Kid, it's ok. The reason your Mom is so angry is because she's afraid for you. The town is in danger and we need your help to save it. Do you think you're up for that?"

"You're going to let me help?" Henry nodded eagerly. "Yeah! What do we have to do?"

"The curse wasn't really broken..." Emma explained everything that Mr Gold had told them about the curse returning, not only for Henry's benefit but to inform her parents as well. Because Henry was listening she deliberately omitted a few of the more scary details (like Regina being the target and the fact that Henry could cease to exist if they screwed up the making of the True Love potion). She also explained Henry's role in bringing the teenagers to Storybrooke for her parents' benefit.

"So that's how Em and Ri got here," said Mary Margaret. The puzzle pieces were finally falling into place. "You brought them here, Henry?"

"Yes," said Henry. "The Blue Fairy wouldn't give me my wish so I found another way to make it come true. She was kinda mean about it actually. I can't figure out whose side she's really on."

"But why did you need the girls to come here?" asked David.

"Mr Gold said he knew something about me in the future. He said that if my parents didn't get together the curse would never be broken and I wouldn't exist. It's just like in Back to the Future. Marty McFly helps his parents get together in the past to stop himself from disappearing in the future. I cast the Reflection spell from Cora's book to bring my Moms' younger selves here to help them get together. But it wasn't enough to ensure that I was born because they're both girls. So I used my wish. Astrid helped me. I got some fairy dust from her and cast it over Em and Ri while they were sleeping. I don't know if it worked though."

Emma cleared her throat. "It did. Em's pregnant."

"WHAT?!" shrieked Mary Margaret. Her fingertips flew to her lips. "She's - Oh my goodness. She's so young. My baby girl."

"How did this happen?" said David, in similar shock to his wife.

"The wish," sighed Emma. "Apparently it translated into Em and Ri making a baby together somehow by magic. Gold has this enchanted globe thing that can show your blood relatives. He realised Henry wasn't his grandson because his blood only shows Neal in New York. Neal isn't Henry's father, not really. I'm still not sure I've completely wrapped my head around it. It's crazy but … Ri is involved somehow. Who knows what effect magic has on genetics. Maybe he has always has been hers, we just didn't know it."

Henry smiled and raised his eyebrows. "So it did work! I mean, of course it did. I knew that. I must've been born because I'm already here."

"Trust me, kid," said Emma. "You were definitely born. I was there. I remember you and your big head. When did you make the wish, Henry?"

"It was the night that you guys went to the Council meeting."

Emma side-eyed her parents. "That was the first night that Regina and I had a 'sleepover'."

"She got you pregnant when you were teenagers here?" growled David. "I think I need a sword. Or a shotgun. Perhaps both. Maybe even a shotgun with swords for ammo."

Mary Margaret was open-mouthed, searching for words. "I - I have no idea what to say. When my daughter was born if someone had said to me: 'Guess who she's going to fall head-over-heels for and have a baby with when she grows up?' I absolutely would not have guessed: 'my arch enemy, the Evil Queen Regina'."

Emma mumbled. "She didn't seem evil that night when she was naked in my arms and moaning my name."

"Emma Evelyn Swan!" hissed Mary Margaret. "Your eleven-year-old child is standing right there."

"What are you talking about?" said Henry suspiciously.

"Nothing," said Mary Margaret. "Right, Emma?"

"Um, yeah, whatever you say. Er, my middle name is Evelyn? Since when."

Henry patted Emma on the shoulder indulgently. "That's how moms make sure you know you're in trouble. When they use all your names like that."

"Does Em know she's pregnant?" asked David.

Emma shot a glance at Regina before answering, since the question ran perilously close to the topic of the fight that'd ripped them apart. "We don't know. She's only a few weeks along. You can't count on Em to realise what the physical symptoms mean. She's had crap-all education and that includes sex-ed, even though she thinks she knows everything. I didn't figure it out until after I was in jail and when I did I realised that I'd been feeling yuck for a while without knowing what it all meant."

"How many weeks were you when you found out, Emma?" said Mary Margaret. "Won't that tell us when the girls are going to go back to the past?"

Emma shrugged. "I didn't know back then. By the time I got to see a proper doctor I couldn't remember the relevant dates so they estimated the due date based on the baby's size at the ultrasound. But nobody cared all that much about a pregnant teenager from the streets who'd ended up in jail, especially one who didn't know exactly how she got into that state. I was all alone."

Mary Margaret's face crumpled and before Emma knew it she was encircled in a tight hug by both her parents at once. David's hand cradled her head as usual, he always did that for some reason. It was as though he thought she was still a newborn without the neck strength to hold her own head up. By all rights, her parents ought to have been more worried about the town and people's memories and the prospect of forgetting each other. Instead they were comforting their daughter, putting her first for this one moment.

The last time Emma saw them she had been yelling at them after dinner at their house so she didn't feel very deserving of love at present. It was only now that she was a parent that she could understand why they still did, because children deserved to be loved even when they were bad. Her parents had taken her into their hearts so easily, and Em too, even when she was being an obnoxious brat. They loved her even as she shot insults at them and pushed them away. It was time to start showing them openly that she loved them back as their daughter.

"I'm r-really sorry," Emma whispered to her mother's neck. "About before. I-"

"You'll never be alone again, you hear me?" said Mary Margaret tearily. "Even if you run away I will track you down, and I will find you and smother you with hugs."

They each drew out of the embrace in time. David got out his handkerchief to wipe the tears from Emma's cheeks and it made her laugh with embarrassment. Opening up to them was hard for her, but their steady parental love was bringing her walls down one by one.

Once again it was the youngest observer who got them back on track.

"So the curse wasn't really broken... but why is the town in danger?" said Henry. "Why is the border trying to come back?"

Emma had hoped that he would've missed that bit of her explanation but he was too smart. Little nerd. That was one-hundred-percent Regina's fault for raising him that way.

She glanced at Regina who was still sitting silently on the bottom step, seemingly ignoring the rest of them. All of this must be hurting her deeply and Emma hated to see her like this. She wanted to go and comfort her, but after their knockdown-drag out fight over Henry earlier she wasn't sure if it would be welcomed. She was scared for her and for more than one reason. But she didn't want Henry to know the truth about the dire threat to his mother. It would scare him, he was much too young to deal with that. He'd been through enough family problems already this past year.

"Kid, it's-"

"It's me," Regina broke in wearily. "The curse is coming for me."

"Regina!" Emma hissed.

"He deserves to know the truth. No more lies."

"But-" Henry looked around at each of the adults. "Everyone will lose their memories. Magic will be gone. What's going to happen to Mom?"

"I won't survive." Regina stood up calmly and gestured to the door. "Emma, you have to take Henry and get out of Storybrooke. Now."

"What?!" cried Emma. "We can't leave. No!"

"Yes. Neither of you were cursed so you will be able to pass through the border unscathed. You were right. You should have taken Henry ages ago and left us to deal with all of this fairytale nonsense ourselves. You should have taken him away from me. I have no regrets. I know who I am and what I've done, but I never wanted my son to turn out like me. Take him before the carnage begins. We have to put him first."

"Regina." Emma put a hand on Henry's shoulder because he was looking guilty again. "He's a good kid and you're a good mother. You raised him well. But eventually kids have to go out on their own in the world. And yeah, they're gonna screw up but it doesn't mean you're responsible for everything they do. That's pretty much everything I know about parenting. I'm an expert on screwing up but that's it. I don't want to do this without you. The best way to put Henry first is to keep his family safely together. We're all getting out of this, ok?"

"Are you really mad, Mom?" mumbled Henry. "I did it for you. For all of us."

That finally broke Regina. Tears slipped down her cheeks and she shook her head. Her voice was thick. "Henry, no. You should never have had to."

"But, Mom, we weren't happy. Not really. We were missing Emma and we didn't even know it. If Emma and I leave now it'll be just as bad because then we'll be missing you. I did it so the three of us could have the chance to be a real family."

"Henry, we are a real family. It's never mattered to me how you came into the world. I love you. I wish I could be the mother you deserve. Without me you would never have been exposed to all of this, to magic and dark curses… none of it. I will fix this for you, sweetheart, if it's the last thing I do. It may well be."

"No," said Emma firmly. "You won't. Henry did this so he's going to be the one to fix it. That's how kids learn from their mistakes. It's our job as parents to help him, not swoop in and live life for him."

Regina stepped towards her with a fierce glare and grabbed Emma's jacket in her fists. "We are NOT risking our son's life to teach him a lesson in self-reliance! This is hardly the time for you to test out your free-range parenting skills."

"Saving the town is up to us. He just has to make the potion. You can help him with that right?"

"Mr Gold said potions were your specialty, Mom," said Henry. "Please, let me do this? I need you. I don't want anything to happen to you. Please, Mom, please?"

Finally, Regina sighed in resignation having encountered a method of persuasion she was powerless to resist. What was it about her child's tone of voice and his pleaded eyes that made her resolve crumble? It had worked at supermarket checkouts when he pleaded for candy and it had worked when he begged to be allowed to go to Ethan G's fourth grade party because everyone else was going - she hadn't wanted to allow it and for good reason.

Regina let go of Emma's clothes and paced a few steps with her fingertips at her temples. "Tell me exactly how you cast the Reflection curse, Henry. I need to know."

Henry held out his flat palm and a scroll of old paper appeared in a puff of purple smoke. It was the missing page from Cora's book rolled up and he showed it to her. It was rather like a cooking recipe, with a list of potion ingredients and instructions for making the curse from scratch. Regina wasn't the only one who recognised it.

"Is that what I think it is?" asked Mary Margaret.

"Yes, it's from my mother's book of spells," said Regina. "Emma and I found out that there was a page missing."

"That's the page that was ripped out of Cora's magic book?" said Emma. "It has the Reflection Curse that brought the teenagers here on it? But I thought you said the missing page had the Barrier spell on it?"

Regina turned the paper over and held up the reverse side. "See? It is the same page. The Reflection curse is on the other side of the page with the Barrier spell. We assumed that whoever stole the page was after a curse to reverse the town's border protection but in actual fact it was the other side that was of interest."

"Well," said Emma. "I guess we know how someone broke into your house and stole it. He didn't have to break in."

Regina leveled a stern glare down at her son and held up the ripped page. "Henry, I did not teach you to treat books this way. You tore the page out."

Henry flinched. "It physically hurt me to do that."

Emma's rolled her eyes at them. "Nerds! Both of you. You're more concerned about the book getting defaced than you are about its theft and the magic going awry."

"I'm sorry, but I had to!" Henry ignored Emma's smart remarks and entreated Regina to understand. "It's like you said, Mom, curses have to be cast from originals. I tore out the page so you wouldn't realise the book was missing."

"What did you do then?" Regina asked.

The boy explained the steps to in casting the Reflection curse for the everyone else's benefit and then Regina read out the familiar handwriting.

Fillet of a fenny snake,

In the cauldron boil and bake.

Eye of newt and toe of frog,

Wool of bat and tongue of dog,

Adder's fork and blind-worm's sting,

Lizard's leg and owlet's wing,

For a charm of powerful trouble,

Like a hell-broth boil and bubble.

Double, double toil and trouble,

Fire burn and cauldron bubble...

David smiled at how apropos the words were. "Double trouble? That sounds exactly like what Em and Ri brought to Storybrooke."

"They brought more than just that," said Mary Margaret with a twinkle in her eye.

Regina checked the whole scroll over again and frowned. "Henry, are you sure you performed these steps correctly? This list says 'Horseflower', not 'horseraddish' like you just said. Did you forget to let the toad sit under a cold rock for a month until the poison seeped from its pores?"

Emma's jaw dropped. "He stuffed up casting the curse?!"

"Hey," said Henry, taking offense at the slight against his magic skills. "I got it to work."

"But how? How did you know how to make a magic potion? Where did you get all that weird stuff?"

"I used my chem set and some ingredients that Mom has at home."

"Regina!" Emma said incredulously. "How could you keep that stuff lying around at home when you have a kid."

Regina gave her a mild glare. "My mother left her supplies behind. In my defense, Henry wasn't living with me after I got my powers back. He's not a one-year-old who needs to be watched every second of the day. I don't hide the poisons away and lock the toilet seat anymore either."

"Why the hell would anyone lock a toilet?"

"It's a drowning risk," Mary Margaret put in. "Also, young children like to stuff objects in there. We've had the plumbers out at the school twice already this year because of the kindergarteners. They put things in toilets and block them."

"Or toddlers drink out of them," said Regina.

The others were horrified, none more so than the child in question himself.

"Ewww, kid! You drank out of the toilet?" Emma made a face of distaste like she was considering never letting him share her food ever again.

Henry denied it. "No, I didn't!"

"It was only once," Regina said casually. "He was fine. Toilet water isn't harmful as long as the toilet itself is clean and free from bleach and other chemicals."

"Holy crap, I think my lie detector is broken," said Emma. "I can not tell if you are having us all on right now, Regina. You're not making it up for effect or something? Huh, if it is true I bet you weren't this calm when it happened. No way. Fifty bucks says you went straight to the Emergency Department and terrorised the doctors into running every test imaginable... Geez, drinking toilet water. Kids really do things like that?"

"You have no idea do you," said Regina, with an amused twist of the lips. "You missed out on the gross and unfortunate situations that children cause nonstop. You get used to it. When it's 3am and both you and the sick child are covered in three types of bodily fluids the only thing to do is get in the shower with him and hope for sunrise so that you can burn the bedsheets. Then there's exploding diapers, eating bugs, and leaving sticky surprises in Mommy's purse."

"Oh, that's cute!" Emma laughed. "You think you've got the market cornered on the disgusting aspects of motherhood? I'll take that challenge. Pregnancy is so gross, you have no idea. It's nine months of throwing up in your mouth, peeing when you sneeze, and your body not being able to decide whether it prefers constipation or diarrhoea. Oh! and let me tell you a thing or two about the so-called 'miracle of birth'. The baby isn't the only thing that comes out of you when you push… Then for weeks afterwards it's like a crime scene in your underwear. The blood just doesn't-"

"STOP!" David had his hands near the sides of his head. "Stop. Please. This is painful to listen to."

All three women gave him dangerous glares, as if they were offended on behalf of all women, but it was Mary Margaret who backhanded his shoulder. "Painful to listen to?! You think you have it bad, David? I was the one who had to go through that to bring your daughter into the world. She's blunt and impatient just like you."

David stammered, trying to backtrack. "Ah, y-yes. And she's - she's wonderful. Well done, my love."

"Thanks, Dad," said Emma sweetly. "She did do a good job. I am awesome aren't I?"

"You sound like Em," said Henry.

Mary Margaret and Regina shared a rueful look, silently commiserating with each other about their spouses as if to say 'is this what we really have to put up with?' Emma and David started snickering between themselves in a proud Daddy-Daughter conspiratorial manner. They tried to cover it up and then Henry joined in as well.

"Enough shenanigans," said Regina, with halfhearted annoyance. "Can we please get back to the Reflection curse. If Henry mistakenly altered the curse's ingredients then it could've had an unpredictable effect on the result. Something about Em and Ri's presence in Storybrooke might've changed. Perhaps the reverse side of the page, the Barrier spell, was activated as well and that's what is causing the border to shrink."

"Wait a minute," said Emma. "Do you remember what Gold said, Regina? He seemed to think that the girls weren't really here. That they were just magical apparitions or something. What if he was wrong and I was right? The girls really are time travellers here from the past. Could that be what went wrong with the spell?"

"I've never heard of a time travel spell being successfully cast before. But it's possible. It would mean that they are our actual younger selves, not just mirror images."

"Then they have to go back to the past. Soon. Or you and I could cease to exist, which means Henry won't exist and neither will Storybrooke itself. What if the our pasts have changed so much that we've ruined the fabric of space-time? Or whatever it's called."

Henry piped up. "But Mom's curse was called 'the curse to end all curses'. What happens to the Reflection curse when we make the True Love potion and break Storybrooke's curse for real?"

"There can be no more curses," said Regina in a somber voice. "Even if we survive and the town remains, the border will be gone."

"What happens to Em and Ri?" said Emma.

"They'll be gone too."

Mary Margaret suddenly remembered that no-one but Henry had been home when she and David arrived. "Where are Em and Ri right now?"

Mills family vault, Storybrooke Memorial Grounds

The cold of the stone floor brought Ri awake feeling groggy and disoriented. A shooting pain radiated in her head and she winced. The teen sat up and took in her surroundings. She was inside a place that was strange and dark and scary. It looked like she was in the Mills family's vault, but it wasn't the one that belonged to her mother on the estate at home. This one was hers.

What am I doing here? I can't think.

Ri tried to think back to what happened that evening. She cooked dinner, Em loved it, they went for a walk, they got engaged…

EM! Her mind screamed at her and the events came flooding back. Em was gone! That horrid Mrs Gander had kidnapped her or taken her or something. She had to find her. She would never forgive herself if anything happened to Em or the baby.

Ri ran to the door of the vault and tried unlocking it but it wouldn't budge. She pulled the handle repeatedly and bashed on the door. She tried appealing to the blood magic that sealed the door but it was reluctant to obey. Her fledgling magic was still unpredictable.

Back in her own land, threatening to harm one of the Royal family was an effective though despicable method of political blackmail. It seemed that Gander was employing an old tactic here. Ri would be forced to pay whatever ransom was demanded for her girlfriend's safety. The vicious Goose probably didn't realise that she'd actually taken two hostages. Em had a stowaway on board that no-one but themselves knew about.

I should have taken better care of her - of them! She is with child and no-one else knows it but me. I have to be the strong one right now. She's relying on me to save her. She needs me.

She remembered reading in one of Regina's books on magic that she must learn to focus and then let her emotions awaken her raw power. Any strong emotion could be harnessed as a source of power as long as it was identified in the correct manner by the person seeking to use it. Love was the most complex and difficult to exploit of emotions, while Anger was the easiest and a readily available resource.

I must focus and use my anger. I have plenty of that. Ri's mouth curved into a smile. She'd make sure the ancient enemy of her family would regret this latest threat.

Ri clenched her trembling hands into fists and heard a crack. She jumped backwards when the lock destroyed itself in a puff of yellow smoke. The sound she had heard had not been her knuckles cracking, it was evidence of her anger manifesting itself in her environment. The presence of her magic no longer scared her though. It was satisfying feeling the power readying itself to be put to her purpose.

The vault's doors flew open by themselves. The young and future Queen stepped out into the night.

Outside, it was fully dark and the weather had taken a turn for the worse. Ri shivered in the chilly wind and rubbed her bare shoulders. She took a single step and nearly trod on something that was lying in the grass. The teen crouched to the ground to retrieve Em's phone, realising that her girlfriend must have dropped it there (either accidentally or deliberately) when Gander had taken her.

No longer a stranger to technology, Ri navigated the buttons and icons as deftly as any other girl her age. She scrolled through the Contacts list searching for a particular address. Mary Margaret being the organised schoolteacher that she was had all the information Ri needed to track down a house in Storybrooke.

She tapped the screen and a map accompanied by pedestrian directions appeared via the magic of the internet. She did not plan on walking to her destination, this situation definitely justified running.

I'm coming for you, Em!

Ri saw flashes in her mind of Em being grabbed and taken away from her. Memory merged with imagination as she pictured all of the horrible ways in which the ancient Gander family traditionally inflicted pain and death upon those who exhibited magical power or consorted with lower beings like fairies. What was Mrs Gander planning to do to Em?

My heart feels everything so strongly and right now it's terrified for them, my True Love and my baby son. You don't know what you've done, you wicked old Goose. But you are about to.

Lucy Gander had badly underestimated Ri as many others had done before. She had picked a fight with the Swan-Mills family and it would be the worst mistake she would ever make.

Hurt them and you will pay dearly.

Ri didn't realise it but she wasn't alone in her pursuit. A tiny figure in white pyjamas followed at a distance with all the stealth of a practiced ninja.

A/N: The quoted material in this chapter is from Shakespeare's Macbeth Act IV Scene 1. "Fillet of a fenny snake,..."