Page 18 of Magical Moonbeam

He froze, completely and unnaturally so.

Then he slowly and theatrically turned and stared at me.

His face twisted into a look of pure outrage. The look wasn’t his usual playful exaggeration or goblin dramatics.

No. This was different.

Insulted.

Offended on a soul-deep level.

“Howdareyou,” he hissed, as if I’d just accused him of hexing puppies or misusing sacred snacks.

I blinked. “Um... what?”

He bent, snatched a handful of pebbles from the soil, and with a sound between a squeak and a war cry,chucked themat me.

“Hey!” I yelped, ducking just as one pinged off the doorframe. “What are youdoing?!”

Another pebble whizzed past my head.

“Twobble! Stop—wait!”

But he didn’t.

He advanced, slinging pebbles from a frantic slingshot of vengeance. I squealed, slammed the door, and pressed my back to it as another rockthuddedagainst the wood.

“What in magical madness is going on…”

Before I could finish the sentence, the skyboomed.

A gust of wind swept past the cottage like a warning cry, and the ground beneath me trembled. I jumped back from the door just as theshadow of wingspassed across the kitchen floor.

Then came the unmistakable sound of stone on stone.

Karvey.

And not just Karvey. The others were with him.

I rushed to the window, and Twobble was now backed against the garden fence, his form slightly hunched, eyes darting wildly as three of the gargoyles landed around him in a protective triangle.

Even though he just threw pebbles at me, I needed to get out there and save him from the cottage’s protectors.

But none of this made sense.

Karvey hovered just above, his wings outstretched and lined with flickering blue marks, his eyes glowing faintly with warning.

Twobble let out a sharp hiss andtwitched, like a glitch in an illusion spell.

And for the briefest second, the form rippled.

It wasstillgoblin-sized, still vaguely Twobble-shaped, but it wasn’tright. The eyes were too sharp, his mouth was too wide, and the shadow it cast... it didn’t match the light or the dark.

Karvey extended a clawed hand toward the creature, which seemed to pulse in place like it was deciding whether to fight or flee. It let out a guttural sound. It wasn’t a word, but something older. The words were sour and sticky with magic.

I covered my mouth with one hand, heart pounding, when I realized that I wasn’t looking at Twobble.

Then, in a blink, the creature was gone.