"Donald, you remember Lena," Gladstone said once they had settled in Uncle Donald's living room.

Huh. Louie hadn't realized that Lena already knew Uncle Donald. Judging by the cold look he gave her, though, they hadn't exactly been friends.

"So…" Louie broke the awkward silence that had blanketed the room. "Magica's gone."

Lena wheezed out a mirthless laugh. "Magica's never 'gone.'"

Louie didn't miss the glare that Uncle Donald shot at her. Or the way that she shrank down in her seat.

"She's like a bad penny. She keeps turning up," Gladstone said.

Uncle Donald frowned. "That is a terrible choice of metaphor."

"But it is accurate."

"So then what do we do?"

Gladstone and Uncle Donald were quiet. They looked at each other, and then Gladstone shrugged.

"Not much we can do."

Louie's eyes practically bugged out of his head. "Are you telling me that we're supposed to just sit around and wait until she shows up and tries to kill us again?"

"Pretty much."

Next to Gladstone, Uncle Donald slapped his hand to his forehead.

"Don't worry!" Dewey said. "We can make booby traps!" He sprang up and started gathering things from behind the houseboat. "I practically have a photographic memory. We can make our own versions of Uncle Scrooge's old booby traps easy."

"You barely remember what you had for breakfast this morning," Huey accused.

"Psh, that's because that's not important," Dewey said. "Booby traps, though? Booby traps are important."

Huey rolled his eyes.

"Scrooge's booby traps weren't enough to keep Magica from deposing the King of Scotland. Do you really think yours are going to work any better?" Louie said.

"We won't know until we try!"

"You're wasting time that we might not have. We have to come up with something better."

"Yeah? What do you have in mind, Captain Lost?"

"Hey!" Huey said, smacking Dewey in the arm. "Be nice!"

"What? We have six years' worth of insults and name calling to catch up on. Better get started now."

But Louie barely heard them. He couldn't get the last half an hour out of his head. The way Magica had tossed Gladstone aside without so much as laying a hand on him. The way she had possessed Lena. The way she had come so close to seriously hurting…all of them. Gladstone now looked drawn and weary in a way that contrasted sharply with his usual buoyancy, and Lena's face was set in a pained grimace. And the image of Magica pouring out of Lena's eyes was going to haunt Louie for a long, long time.

"Is it me that she wants?" Louie asked. "Does it have anything to do with me? Because if it is me, I might as well—"

"It's not you," Lena said. "She wants Scrooge's dumb dime."

Uncle Donald took Scrooge's Number One Dime from his pocket and gave a low whistle. "I can't believe you had this the whole time."

"Then we should give it back to him, right?" Louie said. "Let him deal with her…" Louie searched for the right word, "insanity."

Uncle Donald's face darkened. "Because it worked out so well last time."

"What does it matter to you? You haven't talked to him in six years!" Louie said.

"It's more complicated than that."

"Is it, though?" Louie said. "You live on a boat. At the first sign of trouble, you can raise anchor and get out of here."

"Either way, we should probably tell Uncle Scrooge about Magica," Gladstone said, turning to Uncle Donald.

"You can tell him about Magica. As far as I'm concerned, he can fend for himself."

"I still think we need a better plan than Dewey's booby traps." Louie watched as Dewey managed to get his ankle tangled in a coil of rope that he'd slung from the ceiling. "Even I remember that Scrooge never had a trap like that at the old Money Bin."

"Do you have any better ideas?" Dewey said accusingly.

The words run away came to mind. Louie still couldn't shake the idea that Magica was after him and that his presence was putting everybody in danger.

But instead, he said, "No, that's why I'm asking the adults."

Both uncles looked up in surprise.

"Uncle Scrooge would probably have some ideas," Huey said nervously.

Uncle Donald's fist came down hard on the arm of his chair.

"That man killed my sister and my nephew—"

"But Scrooge didn't—"

"I'm right here."

Uncle Donald stood, pointing his finger in Gladstone's face and seething with anger. "Everything changed that night! It can never go back to how it was!"

"Do you want to know what happened that night?" Louie said. "I'll tell you what happened—"

Uncle Donald swiveled to face him. "You don't know what happened! You were a child!"

"Not for much longer I wasn't!"

Uncle Donald looked like he'd been struck. He deflated, and his hand dropped back down to his side. "No," he said. "I suppose you weren't." He sank back into his chair, curling into himself, shoulders hunched as if he were carrying a huge weight. There was a faraway look in his eyes, as if he were in another time, another world.

The room was frozen in silence.

Louie felt like he was going to cry.

"Right." Lena stood painfully. "If none of you are going to do anything about this, I'm getting out of here."

"Whoa, whoa, hey," Gladstone said. "You aren't going anywhere."

"Oh?" Lena said. "Watch me."

"Be reasonable, kid. How are you going to manage out there on your own? Against Magica?"

"The same as I managed before I stumbled across you."

"In a new city?"

"A city's a city."

"The rest of the world moved on in the last six years. Edinburgh went backwards. You're staying here, with us."

"Gladstone's luck has to be good for something. At the very least, it can buy us enough time to make a plan," Louie added.

"Yeah, like that worked before." Lena wiped her beak on her sleeve. "It didn't stop Magica from…" she trailed off, looking suddenly queasy.

Louie felt bile rise up in his throat, too. "We won't let that happen again."

Lena shook her head. "It's better that I get out of here. I can't risk…I can't be around the next time she shows up."

"Look. If you're leaving, I'm leaving, and we can't both run away from our problems."

"Nobody's running away," Huey cut in. "We've done enough running. We can't have her hanging over our heads for the rest of our lives."

"Ok," Louie said. "Now that we've decided what we're not going to do…" He looked around at everyone's tired and idea-less faces.

Gladstone shrugged. "I've got nothing aside from telling Uncle Scrooge."

Louie saw his brothers flinch at the mention of the name, but this time, Donald didn't seem to hear it.

"Maybe Lena can help," Dewey ventured. "You know plenty about magic, right? Can't you figure out some way to counter Magica?"

Louie saw Donald's beak press into a hard, thin line.

"Me?"

"Yeah, you."

"The space that magic used to take up in my brain is now filled with survival."

Donald pressed his beak even tighter. Lena caught sight of him and shrank into herself.

"If you don't want to tell Scrooge, Donald, it might be our best shot," Gladstone said.

"I spent years under Magica's control. If I couldn't do anything back then, what makes you think I can do something now?"

"It's too risky," Donald cut in brusquely. "There's no way of knowing what would happen."

"I know exactly what would happen—"

"No."

"Even if I could do something on a normal day, I can't do anything now." Lena gestured to the window. "Haven't you noticed what's happening in the sky?

Louie looked outside.

The clouds weren't covering the sun.

The moon was covering the sun.

Even Louie knew what that meant for Magica.

"But—" Gladstone tried.

"I said no!" Donald thundered.

Lena flinched and threw her arms over her head. Louie found that his own heart was racing. He tried desperately to keep his breathing steady. Lena didn't seem to be nearly as successful—her eyes suddenly looked very wet and her beak twitched. She abruptly turned and walked right out of the houseboat.

Those still inside were left in an uncomfortable silence. Louie wasn't sure how anyone else felt, but he was shocked. He sprang up and ran after her.

It turned out that Louie didn't have to run particularly far. Lena was down on the dock, looking out at the water.

Louie quietly came up beside her, staring straight ahead to give her some privacy. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw her furiously wipe her eyes.

"I know you've had a rough day, but we'll…figure it out. All of us," Louie finally said. He offered her a shaky smile. "It'll be ok."

"Not everyone has a good and loving family to go back to," Lena said, her voice cracking. "Some families are a curse." She took a deep breath. "You don't know what it's like to be controlled and manipulated and possessed."

"You-you have me! And Gladstone!"

"Do I, though? Do I really?" Lena asked. "Why would Gladstone bother with a street urchin like me when he can return to his world of glittering riches? And you." Lena sat, pulling her knees to her chest and hugging them tight. "We're not family. We barely even know each other. There's nothing keeping us together. If anything, you should hate me."

Louie looked out into the darkening ocean. "I hear we used to be friends."

Lena looked at him sharply.

"Before, I mean. Back when I was Prince Louie. For real."

"Yeah," Lena said, her voice cracking. "We were."

"You never told me that part."

"Yeah, well." Lena let one of her legs dangle over the edge of the pier. "There's only so much you can teach a guy in a couple of weeks."

"I would have thought that detail would have been important."

"It would have made things too complicated."

"Why did we stop being friends?"

"Uh, hello? You died?"

Louie shook his head. "No. Before that."

Lena was quiet. "I think I liked it better before you remembered anything."

Louie waited.

Finally, Lena sighed. "Aunt Magica created me out of her shadow and got me a job at the Bin as a scullery maid. Nobody paid any attention to me; I was invisible. I'd tell her about everything I saw and heard, and sometimes," Lena swallowed hard, "sometimes I'd set her traps around the Bin. That all changed when I started to become friends with Webby."

"Who?"

"Mrs. Beakley's granddaughter." Lena smiled sadly. "She was my first real friend. I started thinking about what Aunt Magica was doing and what it would do to Webby. Then I started becoming friends with you three, and I couldn't do it anymore. Aunt Magica didn't like that, of course." Lena rubbed her arm as if she was remembering an old injury. "I tried to stop her, but there wasn't much I could do. You saw what she's capable of." She took a deep breath. "So yeah. Some families are a curse."

Louie looked out into the ocean. "I'm starting to think that my family might be a curse, too."

Lena looked at him in surprise. "But isn't this exactly what you wanted?"

"This?" Louie said. "We've had to lie and con to even get either of my uncles to look at me. Everyone's been arguing since we've got here. This is not the big, happy family I dreamed of." Louie sank his head down to rest in his hands. "And now I've put them all in danger.

Lena dropped her head to rest in her hands, too. "I know how that feels."

They sat in silence. This couldn't be it. This couldn't be all there was to the world, to life. Surviving and running and searching and finding and back again. There had to be more. There had to be some way to break this cycle.

"How much magic did you know, anyway? What can you do?" Louie suddenly asked.

"Does it matter?" Lena asked.

"We're going to need everything that we have."

"I can't do it anymore," Lena said.

"Have you tried?"

"No. No, I haven't tried." Then, more quietly, "Not since the Revolution."

"Then how do you know?"

"Trust me. I know."

"What about that purple thing Magica had? Would that help? Or the eclipse? If that makes Magica more powerful, shouldn't it—"

"I said no!" Lena snapped.

"Ok," Louie acquiesced. "Ok. We'll think of something else."

Lena nodded slowly, staring down at her hands.

"Maybe we should go to Uncle Scrooge for help," Louie mused. "If we leave now, Donald can't stop us."

"I don't think I want to give him any more reasons to hate me."

"No offense, but I don't think you've got much to lose there."

Lena conceded the point. "But what about you? You have everything to lose."

"Yeah, and I'll lose it all anyway if Magica kills everybody."

"So…to the Money Bin?"

"To the Money Bin."