By Elizabeth Jane Shelton
“Whoa, whoa, slow down!” Siobhan tried to calm the hysterical little girl who’d introduced herself as Kate before dissolving into tears. “What happened to your kitten?”
“A sock gremlin took her!” Kate wailed, covering her tear-streaked face with her hands. “I’ll never see her again!”
Adam, the newest employee at Ruthie’s Magical Pest Control, frowned at Kate. “A sock gremlin? Are you sure?”
Kate nodded and sniffed. “My mommy said the people in the pink uniforms could help.”
Siobhan grimaced and glanced at hers and Adam’s neon pink coveralls. Unfortunately, Siobhan was Ruthie’s artificer; she wasn’t supposed to manage pests. But the girl was so distraught, she had to do something.
She straightened. “Let me get my things, and you can take us to your home.”
Adam followed her into the equipment room. “I hate sock gremlins.”
Siobhan grinned. “I think they’re kind of cute. All small and green and furry.”
“They’re nothing but trouble. Besides, isn’t this a little unusual? Sock gremlins typically go after, you know, socks. And hairbands. And pens. Not pets.”
Siobhan shrugged. “Maybe, but we can’t leave the poor kitten trapped in the sock gremlin’s den. Besides, I’ve watched the others do this a hundred times.”
Since Siobhan was an artificer and Adam was in training, they should have waited for Ruthie to come back. But retrieving items from a sock gremlin was pretty straightforward, right?
“What could go wrong?”
***
Kate’s house was empty and unlocked when they arrived. “Where are your parents?” Siobhan asked, pulling out her Pocket Dimension Locator.
“At work.”
“Shouldn’t we wait for them?”
Kate’s eyes filled with tears. “But my kitty!”
“Okay, okay, don’t cry! Why don’t you grab a snack while we look around?”
As soon as Kate was out of sight, Adam said, “I have a bad feeling about this.”
“We’ll be fine.” Siobhan turned in a slow circle, pausing when the Locator’s needle shot up. “This way.”
Siobhan followed the Locator’s readings through the living room and down to Kate’s basement, mostly unfinished with concrete walls and exposed pipes.
When the needle began spinning wildly, Siobhan placed the Locator on the ground, turned a dial to activate Gateway Mode, and gestured for Adam to back away.
With a flash, a glowing doorway opened in the air over the Locator.
“Ready?” Siobhan asked.
“No.”
Siobhan rolled her eyes and pulled Adam through the portal, the icy-hot sensation of portal hopping washing over her.
Siobhan gaped.
She’d been in sock gremlin dens before, always tucked into pocket dimensions like this one. The dens were usually fairly small, though, with piles of single socks, hairbands, pens and pencils, and anything else the sock gremlin liked to collect.
This den, however, was a maze of shelves packed with every kind of item Siobhan could imagine. “It’s like the Room of Requirement,” she muttered.
“I still don’t like this.”
“We’re here now.” Siobhan led the way deeper into the dimension. “Here, kitty!” she called, gawking at the sheer quantity of stolen items. She spotted vertically stacked books, antique candelabras, vinyl records, paintings with cracked and peeling paint, and carved wooden ducks. But no kitten.
They soon emerged into an open space.
An eight-foot-high pile of socks loomed in the center: white socks, rainbow socks, frilled socks, tube socks, socks with toes, socks with bows, socks with illustrated comic book characters. In true sock gremlin fashion, Siobhan didn’t spot a single sock with a pair.
“This is incredible,” she breathed.
The pile shuddered and mewed, and a little fluffy head poked curiously out of the middle.
“There you are,” Siobhan said. When she reached out, the kitten’s image wavered, then vanished.
“Let’s get out of here,” Adam whispered.
“Leaving so soon?” A chill ran down Siobhan’s spine as she turned to see Kate blocking the path back through the maze.
“Kate! How did you get here?” Siobhan asked.
“I just walked in! This is my home, after all.” Kate giggled as her outline blurred, and suddenly a two-foot-tall sock gremlin with matted green fur and inch-long claws appeared.
Luminous yellow eyes blinked above a grinning mouth full of too many teeth.
And since when could sock gremlins speak?
“What do you want?” Adam asked, eyes narrowed.
It tilted its head. “You, of course! I need real people to complete my collection!”
Siobhan swallowed. “As fun as that sounds, I really think we should be going.”
“Going? No going!” The gremlin bared its teeth and launched itself at them.
“Run!” Adam yelled, pushing Siobhan the other direction.
Siobhan took off, sprinting toward the portal, Adam on her heels. The gremlin’s scraping footfalls echoed behind them, but she didn’t dare look back as she wove between shelves and vaulted over chairs.
At last, the glowing door appeared.
She dove through, landing sprawled in the basement. A second later, all the breath left her body with an oof as Adam landed on top of her.
When Siobhan opened her eyes, a figure in a familiar neon pink jumpsuit stood over them.
“Ruthie!”
Ruthie snatched up the Locator, and before the sock gremlin could come through, the portal sealed shut. She glared down at them. “What exactly do you think you’re doing?”
Siobhan explained while she and Adam hauled themselves to their feet.
When she finished, Ruthie said, “We’ve been tracking this sock gremlin for weeks after getting reports of larger and larger things going missing! Do you have any idea how dangerous this was? You could have gotten trapped in there forever!”
“I think that was its plan,” Adam muttered.
“It was my fault.” Siobhan sighed. “I thought we could handle it.”
“That wasn’t your decision to make.” Ruthie shook her head. “Be more careful next time, will you?”
“I will.” Siobhan looked at Adam. “Sorry for putting you through that.”
“It was a good learning experience, I guess.” He smiled, and Siobhan knew she was forgiven.
“I think I agree with you now, though.”
“About what?”
“Sock gremlins are nothing but trouble.”
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