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shaped like a frog. “Poor Felix,” Millie said with a catch in her voice as she touched the blanket with tentative fingers. “Whoever took him had better not hurt him. If they do, I’ll hunt them down myself. This is my fault, you know. My mother asked me to look after Felix, and I let someone kidnap him!”
    “You didn’t let anyone do anything,” said Audun, wrapping his arms around Millie and pulling her close. “Your mother also asked you to take care of the kingdom, which is what you were doing. And now we’ll deal with this. We’ll find your little brother before anything can happen to him.”
    “But what if something already has?” said Millie.
    Audun’s expression became cold and hard. “Then the monster who hurt that baby will have two dragons who won’t stop until every last scrap of him is torn to shreds. But before we plan his demise, let’s see what we can find. Our eyesight is better as dragons. Maybe we’ll see something everyone else has missed.”
    Millie nodded. “Unless it was a ghost, he must have left some sign that he was here, and a ghost can’t carry off a baby.”
    It took them only a moment to turn into dragons. The room had looked well scrubbed and spotless while they were human, but now Millie could see every speck of dust on the chair backs and the lid of the trunk, every smudge on the floor, and every piece of lint on the baby’s bedding. Her hearing was better, too, and she could make out the distinct sound of each raindrop hitting the wall outside the window.
    While Audun inspected the area around the door, Millie moved toward the window, casting back and forth, with her nose inches from the stone surface. “Look here,” she finally said, pointing to a spot just under the window ledge. “There’s dirt on the floor here that I haven’t seen anywhere else in the room.”
    “Let me see,” Audun said, lumbering toward her.
    “What do you think?” Millie asked as Audun sniffed the dirt.
    Using his talon, he poked the little clump until it fell apart. “Looks like dirt to me.”
    Millie sighed and sat back on her haunches. “I don’t know what to do, Audun. If my mother were here, she could say a spell and have the walls tell us what happened.”
    Audun laughed. “From what I know about the Green Witch, she could have the dirt talk to us and tell us where it came from. You should hear what the dragons back on King’s Isle say about her!”
    “I wish she were here,” said Millie. “Grandmother was right, in a way. This probably wouldn’t have happened if Mother had been home.”
    The rain that had been pouring so fiercely just minutes before had begun to slack off. Millie was looking out the window at the now-brightening sky when she heard the faintest of sounds. Scritch! Scritch! She turned around, bumping into Audun as he too turned to see what was making the sound. Scritch! Scritch! The sound came again.
    “It’s coming from the trunk,” said Millie. “Maybe it’s a mouse.”
    Something thumped in the trunk. “It would have to be an awfully big mouse,” said Audun. He lifted the lid and jerked his head back in surprise. “Millie, I think this might be a friend of yours.”
    Millie peered into the trunk and gasped. Two small bats lay on top of the folded baby clothes. “Zoë!” Millie exclaimed. “Li’l! Who did this to you? Are you all right?” Her two friends were struggling to sit up when Millie reached into the trunk and lifted them out.
    “I could hardly breathe in there!” said Zoë.
    “Did you find your brother yet?” Li’l asked, her eyes frantic.
    The air shimmered around Zoë as she changed back into her human form. Her mother, Li’l, had married Garrid, a vampire, which was why her children could become human.
    “What do you know about Felix?” said Millie. “Did you see whoever took him?”
    Zoë shook her head. She picked up her mother and carried her to the nearest bench. When Li’l fluttered to her daughter’s shoulder,