“Act natural, but not too natural,” Kira is saying as we approach a dead-end block called Quill Way. “Stop fidgeting. Don’t pull on that heinous floral dress Corden put you in. What was he thinking? Blue and green are not a good color combination for ogres. The least he could have done was give you fun earrings. I have nothing to play with. Oh! We’re here!”

I frown. This is not the village business district. Teakettle homes are percolating, a child is skipping rope on her front lawn, and a mother and her children are walking down the street, talking about what they need to buy at the market. This is definitely not where I’d expect scroll headquarters to be. “Are you sure this is the right address? I don’t see a sign for Happily Ever After Scrolls anywhere.”

Sasha pushes ahead of us. “You won’t find one. The location is top secret.”

“Why is that?” Heath scratches one of his ogre-sized ears.

“Do you know how many people would show up trying to get their stories published?” Sasha asks. “Or barge in yelling about a scroll post that they didn’t like?” She shakes her head. “I’m sure Misty Scorchfire deals with that all the time.” She touches her ear and listens to something her kobold says. “Oh! Brilliant. Okay, look for the gumball machine. We each need to chew a piece of gum to get inside.”

“Gum?” Heath takes the lead. “How is that going to help us?”

“My kobold says the gum is the key.” Sasha skips ahead of him. “There it is.”

She rushes toward a small green square with a park bench and a sculpture between two houses. As we get closer, I realize the sculpture is actually a glass canister filled with brightly colored gumballs—it must be five feet tall. Underneath it is a sign: ONE PENCE EACH. HONOR SYSTEM! A silver bowl sits beside the canister on a stone pedestal.

“Here goes nothing.” Sasha looks at us, then drops her coin into the bowl. Zoom! A bright-blue gumball rolls out. She pops it into her mouth and starts to chew.

“Nothing is happening,” she says.

“Try blowing a bubble,” Logan suggests.

Sasha gets the gum into position and blows the largest blue bubble I’ve ever seen. Still, nothing happens.

POP! The bubble bursts, and Sasha falls through a trapdoor in the grass. I don’t even hear her scream.

“Why does everything we seem to do outside Royal Academy involve plummeting to the ground?” Logan moans.

“I could not handle this entrance every day,” I agree.

Heath steps up, gets a green gumball, pops a bubble, and disappears.

One by one, we pay for our gum (mine is mint green and tastes like peppermints), and free-fall through a tube into the lobby. I land on a giant, squishy sack, then spring up before Logan can land on me seconds later.

“You’re right! That was fun,” Logan says to the kobold in his ear. He looks at me, grinning ear to ear. “I was nervous, but Vol said, ‘Just get it over with.’ So I did, and WOW. That wasn’t bad at all!”