Unlucky Charms (The Cold Cereal Saga) by Adam Rex

A—”
    Mick returned from the kitchen with a pot of tea. “Helped myself,” he told John. “Hope yeh don’t mind.”
    “Of course not. Why …?”
    “Yeh’ll see.” Mick lifted the lid of the pot and dropped a four-leaf clover and a little yellow primrose into the steaming tea and swished it around. “Hey, fellas,” he said to the goblin Reggie. “Yis want a cuppa?”
    “NONE FOR ME, THANKS.”
    “Biggsie?”
    Biggs took the teapot from Mick and opened the goblin Reggie’s jaw like a change purse. The goblins gargled and growled. Then Biggs poured a stream of scalding tea down the passable replica they’d made of Reggie’s throat.
    They sputtered. They cursed in dead languages. Then they shuddered and rattled and their Reggie skin peeled like a banana.
    “Yeesh,” said Merle.
    “That’s what we’re going to do to the queen?” said Scott.
    “She’s not the queen,” said Emily from her corner of the sofa. “And if she is, it’ll just be tea with some yard clippings in it.”
    The goblins, now laid bare, tried to wriggle out of their chains. Biggs pulled them tighter. One goblin sat atop the other’s shoulders. They were wearing familiar little suits.
    “This isn’t Pigg and Poke, is it?” said Scott.
    “The same.” Pigg grinned.
    “Cretinous hobgoblins!”
    “Yis two really get around,” said Mick. “Who’s ’mpersonatin’ the queen, then?”
    “Misters Katt and Bagg,” said Poke. “Took over for us after we got demoted to permanent Reggie duty.”
    “And where’re yis supposed t’ meet wi’ them? Where was fake Reggie gonna meet wi’ the fake queen?”

    “Ah, you know about that, eh?” said Pigg.
    “They’re clever, Mister Pigg,” said Poke. “There’s no gettin’ around it.”
    “The royals’re sending a car tomorrow mornin’,” said Pigg. “Location TBD, though I unnerstand it’ll probably be the British Museum.”
    “They’re being awfully helpful all the sudden,” said Emily.
    “Maybe it’s the horseshoes and clovers and such,” said Poke. “ Makin’ us help.”
    “Or maybe we’re secretly wonderful people,” said Pigg.
    “Everyone except Biggs, upstairs,” Emily ordered. She started up the spiral staircase past the goblins, and the others dutifully followed. Finally the goblins were left alone with Biggs. They jiggled their chains.
    “Left behind.” Poke smiled sadly at Biggs. “They don’t trust you.”
    “Trust me to do muh job,” Biggs replied, staring over their heads.
    “What’s your job, big feller?” sighed Pigg.
    “Peel your skins again if yuh try to ’scape.”
    And now the goblins were still.
    “Our group should leave right away for Somerset,” Scott whispered as soon as they were upstairs. “It’ll take a couple hours just to get there, and we’re not even sure what we’re looking for exactly. Apart from the Queen of England.”
    “The Freemen files definitely didn’t say anything specific except that she’s being held in Avalon?” Merle asked Emily. She closed her eyes.
    “I … I don’t think so.”
    “You don’t think so?”
    Emily scrunched up her face. “I don’t remember! Why are you asking me? Ask the owl! I told him everything I learned.”
    Archimedes turned his head and whistled, and Merle looked at his watch.
    “‘In a secure location in Avalon,’” he read. “I guess that’s all the Freemen knew.”
    They reviewed their plans for the next day, such as they were, and separated. Scott, Merle, and Mick left for Somerset in the poppadum truck. Erno scooched up to Emily with Mr. Wilson’s poem.
    “Wanna work on this?”
    “I just want to go to bed,” she replied, and no wonder—she looked tired. “You know that kind of headache where it feels like someone’s rummaging through your brain?”
    “… Nnnnno.”
    “Good night, Erno.”
    She left him alone in an odd little room that didn’t look like it got much use. It was snugly fitted with furniture that was better to look at than sit in,