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almost an hour, the Borden kids were more or less on their own—a rare situation that apparently inspired Woody and Sky to raid the kitchen. They were pawing through the refrigerator looking for a snack, or maybe another egg to drop on somebody’s head, when Ludmilla arrived early.
    What happened, according to Woody’s subsequent confession, was that he and Sky heard Ludmilla’s big feet stomping down the hall, and while they were scrambling to put things back where they’d found them, somebody spilled a big pitcher of orange juice. The juice ran down all over everything, through all the refrigerator shelves, and onto the floor. When Ludmilla thundered into the room, Woody, who could run faster, got away, but Sky didn’t.
    Abby and Paige had just arrived from school and were starting work on a math assignment when suddenly Woody burst into the room with a strangely unwarlike expression on his face.
    “Hey, Woody, what’s up?” Paige asked cautiously.
    Woody didn’t answer, but Abby was getting the impression that his intentions were somehow different than usual.
    “Well, say something,” Paige said. “Don’t just stand there looking stupid.”
    That snapped Woody out of it. He made a gargoyle face by pulling down the corners of his eyes, pushing up on his nose, and sticking out his tongue, and started out of the room. But Abby was left with a strange feeling. It wasn’t visual like the Magic Nation thing, but it certainly wasn’t quite normal. What it felt like was… sheer terror. Hair-raising, skin-tingling terror that came to her not because something was threatening her, but as a faint echo of another person’s fear. An echo that came from not far away and was getting stronger every second.
    “Woody?” she heard herself asking, without really having known she was going to say it. “Woody, where’s Sky?”
    But the door had slammed and Woody was gone. Abby quickly pushed back her chair and got to her feet.
    “What is it?” Paige stood up too. “Where are you going?”
    “I’m not sure,” Abby said. “I just think we’d better find out what’s happening to Sky.”
    Paige snorted. “Why should I care what’s happening to that little monster?” She picked up her pencil and bent her head over the math assignment.
    “Yeah, okay,” Abby said, “but I think I’ll just go downstairs for a minute. Want to come along?”
    But Paige was already engrossed in what she was doing. “Uh-uh.” She shook her head. “Not right now.”
    So Abby went down the back stairs, and as she went, the waves of fright got stronger and clearer. The rushing current chilled her skin, throbbed in her ears, and smelled of salty tears. She kept going until she reached the kitchen door, where fear surged out around her like a silent scream. As she pushed the door open, the first thing she saw was a huge shapeless blob on the floor in front of the refrigerator. A blob that turned out to be Ludmilla down on her hands and knees mopping up orange juice.
    And against the counter, sitting stiffly on a three-legged stool, was a small inconspicuous shape—a quieter, paler version of the usually only-too-noticeable Skyler Borden. One quick glance at Sky’s face told Abby whose fear she had been sensing.
    “Oh. Hi, Ludmilla,” Abby said. “What’s happening?”
    Ludmilla slowly pulled her head and shoulders out of the refrigerator, and as she wrung a stream of orange juice out of her cleaning rag, she said, “This young zentleman and his brozzer have just made a zhambles of my keetchen. An absolute zhambles.”
    Noticing how hard it was for Ludmilla to reach the back of the refrigerator, Abby said, “Can I help? Here, let me do that.”
    Ludmilla lunged to her feet and then stood silently while Abby crawled halfway into the oversized refrigerator and finished mopping up the orange juice. It took a while. Ludmilla kept handing her clean rags and urging her to go over everything again. But when the orange juice was finally