And there were only three people who could have taken her.
She gasped. Somehow, the villains had gotten past the guards! “What are we going to do?”
But Ben didn’t look alarmed. Instead, he looked sheepish and a bit embarrassed. “Mal, I have to show you something,” he said. He brought up a screen on his phone, which showed a lizard in a similar domed pedestal. “That’s a live feed.”
She looked at it. “But how? But that’s…”
“Maleficent. When I returned from Camelot, I had her moved from the library to the museum just in case someone tried to do something funny. She’s been there the whole time. She hasn’t changed or transformed at all, and she’s safe.”
“But all the guards?”
He looked abashed. “They’re there for show, but there’s nothing to guard.”
“And mother’s still just a lizard,” Mal said with a laugh.
“Just a lizard.” Ben smiled.
Later that day, Ben asked the four villain kids to meet with him to discuss the problem of the talismans. “Obviously, we can’t have them around,” he said.
“Yes, we have to neutralize them,” agreed Mal. “But how?” Where could they find magic powerful enough to purge the talismans of evil? And she still had to figure out how to hatch her Dragon’s Egg. She’d peeked at it this morning, and it was definitely starting to glow green at the edges.
“Shall we ask Merlin?” said Carlos.
“The three good fairies?” said Jay.
“Neverland, for sure,” said Evie.
But Ben surprised them. “No, I think the person we’re looking for is right here.”
“Fairy Godmother,” said Mal. “Of course!” It was her magic that had collected all the villains of the land and trapped them in the Isle of the Lost in the first place. The most powerful sorcerer in Auradon was their chubby-cheeked middle-aged headmistress, who preferred to teach children how to live without magic, but she would know what to do.
“She’ll be back from Cinderella’s ball by the end of the week, and we’ll consult her then. For now, keep an eye on those things,” said Ben.
“And we still don’t know where our parents are,” reminded Jay. “We saw signs of them in the Catacombs, but they still haven’t turned up.”
But Mal had a theory about where they could be. “Evie, will you do the honors?” she said, motioning toward the Magic Mirror.
“You think it’ll really work this time?” Evie asked.
Mal nodded encouragingly.
Evie held up the Magic Mirror. “Magic Mirror in my hand, show us where the villains stand!”
The mirror swirled, cloudy and gray, and then…
There they were: Evil Queen powdering her nose back at her castle, Cruella de Vil pawing through the racks of fur coats for just the right one, and Jafar inspecting a device a goblin had just brought into the shop.
“But how did they get back there?” asked Evie, who sounded as if she didn’t quite believe what she was seeing.
“Merlin, right?” Ben guessed, turning to Mal. “They must have been somewhere in the Catacombs nearby when he cast the spell.”
“Yeah, I think they were following us out of the tunnels,” said Jay. “And they must have overheard us talking. They knew we’d found the talismans.”
Mal nodded. “Then Merlin sent everyone back where they belong
ed, and it must have returned them to the Isle of the Lost.”
“If they’d been down there for so long, I wonder why they never found the talismans?” asked Evie.