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wrapped-up bundle to Elliot.
    “What’s this?” he asked.
    “Food. Carrots and beets and some turnip juice. And a couple of pickles.”
    Elliot already knew about the pickles. Pickle juice was leaking from the bundle onto his brother Reed’s slippers, which were pretty much ruined by now.
    “Thanks,” Elliot said, although ever since he’d learned the Pixies planned to kill him, he hadn’t felt very hungry, not even for pickles. He set the bundle on the ground for when Tubs woke up. Tubs would be hungry no matter who wanted to kill him. Elliot had once seen Tubs so hungry at the Quack Shack that he ate his entire duck burger without taking the paper wrapping off it first. And rumor had it that Tubs had once buttered his lunch tray at school. He’d broken off a tooth trying to take a bite from it.
    “Nice clothes,” Patches said with a giggle.
    Elliot glanced down at his checkered pajamas. “I didn’t have time to change into clothes before we were kidnapped.”
    “Pixie led.”
    “Huh?”
    “You were Pixie led, not kidnapped exactly. Did you see a mist last night?”
    “Yeah.”
    “That was the Pixies leading you to their snare.”
    Elliot folded his arms. “Tubs was Pixie led. I was Tubs led.”
    Patches frowned. “Humans know how to escape being Pixie led, right?”
    Obviously, Elliot didn’t know. “How?” he asked.
    “Just turn your clothes inside out. It confuses them.”
    “I wasn’t going to turn my clothes inside out in front of a bunch of Pixie girls,” Elliot said.
    “Don’t worry. Princess Fidget would’ve gotten you here one way or another,” Patches said, as if that should have made him feel better. “She always gets what she wants. What we must do now is figure out how to fix this.”
    “Do you think I should release Grissel?” Elliot asked.
    “No!” Patches said. “Before long, he’d get the Goblins to start eating us again.”
    Which, Elliot agreed, would be bad. No matter what, releasing Grissel was not an option. “Any advice?” he asked.
    Patches shrugged. “I don’t know about them, but in school my teacher told us that hundreds of years ago, if two Pixies couldn’t settle an argument, they took a ‘time-out.’ The winner won the argument, and it was done.”
    “Time-out,” Elliot mumbled. “I know about those. So I guess to win, I just have to stay in time-out the longest?”
    At just that moment, Mr. Willimaker appeared. His bushy gray eyebrows were pressed close together, telling Elliot he had not made any progress with Grissel. Princess Fidget poofed in immediately after. On either side of her were two larger Pixies with sour looks on their faces.
    “Like, get rid of the Brownie king first,” Fidget said to the Pixies with her. “Mind wipe the other boy if you can, and totally return him to the surface. If you can’t, then get rid of him too.”
    The Pixies pulled out their wands and pointed them at Elliot, who backed up and stumbled over Tubs on the ground. He said, “Wait! Princess Fidget, I demand a time-out.”
    Her eyes narrowed. “A time-out?”
    “Yeah. Me and Grissel together. If I win, you set me free. If he wins, I’ll set him free.”
    “No, Your Highness,” Mr. Willimaker cried, but it was too late.
    Stretching her hand to study her nails, Fidget said, “Under the terms of a time-out, if you lose, Grissel goes free. And if he decides to leave you alive, which he probably won’t, then you must remain here as my servant for, like, forever.”
    Elliot glared at Patches. She might have mentioned that. Still, it was better than being killed in here. “Okay,” Elliot said. “I want a time-out.”
    Fidget clasped her tiny hands together. “What-ever. I’ll prepare the battle zone. If you somehow survive the time-out with Grissel, which you probably won’t, I’ll totally have you for a servant, human.”
    “It looks like the rules are in Grissel’s favor,” Elliot said.
    “Nobody ever said time-outs were fair,” Fidget said,