Maguire was waiting for me when I returned to the park, trying to appear nonchalant but I could read the tension in his shoulders. He wasn’t afraid, but he was nervous, and that made me nervous.

  “See anything interesting?” I asked, startling him.

  “We have five people who are still the way they were when they got here. Otherwise, everyones been switching any time they spend more than two minutes talking to someone. No ones caught on yet, but I think a few are starting to get suspicious,” he explained.

  “Had a feeling that’d happen sooner rather than later. We need to collect all of the stones and return them to the fairies before sundown, and we might have to play musical rocks to get everyone back to the way that they were and the longer that it takes, the more difficult it's going to be to figure out who is actually who.”

  “Please tell me you have some tricks up your sleeve for this?”

  “Oh, you know I do.”

  I looped my arm through his and started pulling him towards one of the picnic tables, explaining the pieces of the plan I managed to figure out as I went. He nodded along, laughing occasionally to hide the fact we were having such a strange conversation.

  And what a strange conversation it was. Fairy magic could be a tricky thing to deal with in the best of times, especially when humans got involved. Fairies were quick, flighty things, while humans are more slow and steady and consistent, resulting in spastic effects that didn’t follow any specific set of rules.

  That meant we were going to have to experiment a bit to figure out what the rules were in this specific instance so we could get everyone’s minds back in the correct bodies.

  “How are we going to do that without arousing any suspicions?” he asked softly.

  “I’m not sure we can. Once we start messing around with the fairy magic, things will get weird, especially if the fairies notice what’s going on. The Jacks who usually watch this area went for the subtle approach, but they did have some interesting ideas for damage control in case things got complicated. It’s a little more direct than I usually like to do things, but since this is fairy magic, it should be fine.”

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  “Alright. What do we have to work with and what’s your idea?”

  I flipped through the journal with one hand, fishing out some of the artifacts I snagged from the cabin out of my bag with my other hand. Maguire listened closely as I explained the gist of my idea, which was basically to get everyone’s attention fixed on something, then start working on getting the minds swapped back into the right bodies.

  “We will undoubtedly have to improvise, but anything more complicated will probably backfire,” I explained.

  “I'll use some of my good, old-fashioned northern charm to get everyone's attention while you work your charm to disarm them. Then we can do the untangling.”

  “And be sure to keep alert. Anything starts to feel off in any way, speak up.”

  “Of course. Always assume there's a trick and you'll never be caught off guard.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Let’s do this.”

  And so, we did. Maguire started by convincing the kids to join him in a game that probably came from the Pole, though its true origins were probably lost to time. Whatever it was sounded fun and the kids weren’t able to resist the playfulness of his charisma. That got the attention of the parents, who were naturally somewhat concerned by the strange man playing a game with their children, but no one started freaking out immediately.

  As he drew attention to himself and started explaining how the game works to the crowd beginning to surround him, I started to walk in a circle around the park, making sure everyone was on the inside. Beside me, I sprinkled a trail of gravel mixed with finely diced mushrooms. It wouldn’t keep out a pack of very determined fairies, but it would at the very least calm them and give me some time to figure out a way to talk them down or distract them. Plus, it would make sure none of us trying to fix things broke anything important outside of the circle.

  On my second circling, I moved in closer and started to ring a little handbell gently as I went. The bell looked like something you'd find for sale at a gas station, and it probably was at one point. A very dangerous person managed to turn it into a deeply cursed thing before they were caught by the Jacks not long before I joined the Society. It had taken a team of enchanters a few months to unravel the curse enough that it became more of an artifact than a weapon. Then it was passed down to me and I continued working on it, reteaching the magic ingrained in the metal to be much more gentle than it was originally made to be.

  This didn’t work for all cursed things, but sometimes it did. And with this bell, I was able to lull everyone into a sort of spaced-out stasis where they stood.

  Including Maguire.