“Cheese is goooood,” Vinny bleated. With his sister still hogging the bag of oats, he’d begun to chew on an old shoe.

“Cheese?” Pearl asked. This plan was getting more confusing by the second. “But what does Twanabeth have to do with cheese?”

“What Mr. Tabby means is that we needed bait. Which is why I sent Twanabeth to find Max. She is carrying a message for him.” Dr. Woo sat on a crate. Sensing a story was about to be told, Pearl and Ben gathered closer. “A few days ago, Mr. Tabby, Metalmouth, and I flew back to Iceland. I’d left a few things behind that I needed to retrieve. One of those items was a photo that I’d taken years ago of the reclusive Nemean lion.”

“He was scary,” Metalmouth said. “He bit off the doctor’s finger!”

Dr. Woo held up her hand. “Yes, he did bite my finger. He thought that I’d come to hurt him.”

“But you’d never hurt anything,” Pearl said softly.

“The lion was acting on instinct when he bit and scratched me.” She pointed to the scars on her face and neck. “The claws of a Nemean lion are sharper than a sword and can cut through armor. Its golden fur is impervious to attack. I wouldn’t have gone near him, but Max forced the encounter.” Her sigh was long and weary, as if the memory brought great sadness.

Pearl tried to breathe as quietly as possible, not wanting to miss a single word. Ben held perfectly still. Violet and Vinny stopped chewing. Metalmouth’s and Mr. Tabby’s ears perked up. The sasquatch stopped stacking, and the fairies pressed against the side of the fairy trap, waiting for the story to continue.

“Max and I were working as apprentices to my grandmother Diamond Woo. We had just finished delivering cold medicine to a leprechaun family when Max disappeared without a trace. We were worried, of course. He’d never taken off before, and we had no idea what had happened to him. Days later, a call came in that the Nemean lion was in trouble. Grandmother and I found the lion in a trap, with Max trying to take one of its claws. Grandmother attempted to reason with Max, but his mind was poisoned with greed. Fortunately, Vinny arrived in the Portal and wrestled Max to the ground. Trying to help, I opened the trap. The lion lashed out at me.” She looked at her hand. “That was one of the last times Max worked as our apprentice.”

“So the photo of the lion is going to be some kind of bait?” Ben asked. “I don’t get it.”

“The lion represents a huge loss to Max. It was a creature that I took from him. And he has never forgotten. Now I’ve taken something else that he wants—the fairies. I wrote a message on the back of the photo. It says, ‘You can’t have them.’ He will not be able to resist such a challenge. Twanabeth will allow herself to be caught. She will shed enough fairy dust for Maximus to summon the Portal.”

Dr. Woo stood, her voice growing louder as she made the following proclamation. “Maximus Steele will come here ready for a hunt, but we will become the hunters. We will defeat him once and for all, and when we do, his days in the Imaginary World will be over!”