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every direction. Confused and hungry.
    The smelliest of them all focused a stare on her, and his eyes narrowed. Patches ran for the fish tank at the back of the room. She scooped the one fish inside into a cup and then pulled the rest of the tank over on its side. Water splashed across the ground, making instant mud. Two of the Goblins backed away from the water. As long as the ground was wet, they wouldn’t touch her.
    Two Goblins? Wait, where was the third?
    “Gotcha!” a voice said, and as she looked up a claw reached down from the ceiling and snatched her off her feet. A Goblin lifted Patches into the air, hanging her by her pants. She squirmed and kicked but could not make him let go.
    “Put me down or you’ll be sorry,” Patches said.
    The Goblin laughed as he crawled across the ceiling. “What could a weak Brownie ever do to make a Goblin be sorry?”
    Patches had no answer for that. And she had bigger problems right now than coming up with a clever reply. Like staying alive for the next five minutes.
    Usually when Brownies are afraid, they get very quiet and worry until they have upset tummies. Sometimes they get loud hiccups and can’t stop sneezing. When Patches was afraid, she talked. Even more than usual. “I didn’t know Goblins could crawl on the ceiling,” Patches said to the Goblin who carried her. “How do you do that?”
    “I’m not sure, but it’s pretty fun,” Grissel replied.
    “If I could crawl on the ceiling, then I’d just live there all the time. I’d do everything on the ceiling except drink from a cup, because the water would just spill out onto the floor.”
    “I wouldn’t know,” Grissel said. “Goblins don’t drink water. Now be quiet, because all this talking makes it harder to steal you.” Keeping hold of Patches, he nimbly dropped to the ground. “Let’s go,” he said to the other Goblins. Then he threw Patches over his shoulder and walked away.
    If you’ve never been carried over a Goblin’s shoulder, you should know that it’s as uncomfortable as it sounds. Goblin shoulders are made of muscles so hard you might as well be carried by a rock, so even a thick layer of Brownie fat isn’t enough to protect against them. And poor Patches didn’t have as much fat as the usual Brownie, since her favorite food was carrots.
    “Where are we going?” Patches asked.
    “Flog. You’ll be our guest there for a while. And don’t even think about poofing yourself away. I order you not to do it.”
    Patches frowned. Most Goblins wouldn’t have remembered to do that. She tried another idea. “I’ve got a bad case of burps. If you eat me, you’ll get them too.”
    “I’m not going to eat you. We have some questions for you.”
    “About what?”
    “About how to get rid of your human king.”
    “He’s my friend. I won’t help you do that.”
    Grissel laughed. “Yes, you will. You will, or else I’ll stop your burping for good.”
    Which normally would’ve been a good thing. But something told Patches that Grissel had meant what he said in the very worst way possible.

Elliot had spent the entire day thinking about whether he wanted to become the Brownie king. He thought about it during recess when he should have been watching the ball that smacked him in the face. He thought about it during lunch when he should have told Dorcas, the lunch lady, he most definitely did not want lima beans on his tray. And he thought about it during science when the teacher asked what he’d get if he mixed hydrogen and oxygen. Elliot had said, “Brownies.” He was given detention on Friday for that.
    What Elliot finally decided was that he was no good at making decisions. If he couldn’t decide whether to become king, how could he possibly make decisions for the Brownies? And he didn’t like the idea of fighting a war with the Goblins. He remembered the Goblins he’d met on Halloween three years ago, the way their skin had boiled and bubbled. He’d been lucky that the water