Angelo was sitting under the window and looking inside with a periscope. He was observing professor Kafka for a while. He was lucky to notice the key detail. Just for a moment Kafka took out a jar from his desk. Inside the jar there was a fairy. Angelo had no doubt. It had to be the kidnapping victim. He and his friends simply had to wait for Kafka to leave. Then they could go inside and take the fairy to safety. Angelo was carefully observing the room waiting for the right moment to break in. Suddenly something weird happened. Angelo saw Kafka going into a closet. Not only that, but it seemed he was going down. As if there was no bottom. Angelo put his periscope away from his face.

“That’s strange…,” he said.

“What is it?” asked Ursula.

“It looked like he just passed through the floor.”

That has caught Sarah’s interest.

“Is that some kind of magic too?” Sarah asked.

“I don’t think so,” said Angelo. “I supposed he just entered some kind of secret room.”

He folded his periscope and hid it in his backpack.

“Anyway, I guess it’s time to go inside,” he said. “Giovy, can you open the window?”

“Yes, darling,” said Giovanna.

She pulled out another magical card from her pocket. This time it showed a gate. It was clear as if made of crystal. The card picked Sarah’s interest. Or rather its lack of folds.

“How do you keep your cards so straight?” she asked.

“Simple. I keep them in a case,” said Giovanna, pulling out a red box filled with cards from her pocket.

“Well, that makes sense,” said Sarah, surprised by the simplicity of this solution.

She heard a quiet click from Angelo’s hands. When she turned she saw him standing with a strange tool. On a closer look she saw it was a crossbow. A real crossbow. It looked like it was made out of carbon fibre. It was already loaded with a wooden quarrel. Angelo’s belt was pierced with an uncountable amount of spare quarrels.

“Jacked up and good to go,” said Angelo.

“What is all of that?” asked Sarah.

“I’ve got that from Mr. Ovid,” Angelo said. “Better safe than sorry.”

Sarah simply sighed and eschewed any further questions.

“Okay. Everybody, step back from the window!” said Giovanna.

She stepped to the wall and placed the card on the glass. She started chanting a spell in her language, which Sarah this time correctly interpreted as Italian.

“Apri per me una strada. Mi lascia trovare una entrata.”

Giovanna let go of the card. It seemed stuck to the window. To the astonishment of Sarah and mainly Sarah, the card started growing. It was also fusing to the window. Soon Giovanna’s card seemed to be a half-transparent engraving on the glass. Giovanna pushed her hands against it. It sank in the glass. Giovanna grabbed the window by its frame and tried stepping through it. Her leg went right through the glass and landed on the inside windowsill. Soon she went through the window with her entire body and stepped down on the floor. She looked at her friends.

“Aperto, amici,” she said with a subtle smile.

“Well, let us go,” said Ursula.

She touched the window and went through it the same way as Giovanna. Angelo joined them and went inside too. Sarah looked at them with disbelief of what just happened.

“Are you coming in or are you gonna stand there?” Angelo said to her out of impatience.

“Yes! I’m coming!” said Sarah as she stepped to the window.

She touched the glass with her finger and pushed it through. Moving through the glass felt very strange for her. As if she was moving through water. But not running water. It felt more like a fragment of a sea suspended in the frame. Sarah slowly entered the building and jumped to the floor. It was a pleasant surprise for her that she did not feel wet at all.

“Watch out!” said Angelo. “Kafka is hiding under the floor. We don’t want to alert him.”

“Right. Sorry,” Sarah apologised.

Ursula looked around the room. She noticed a shiny name badge on the desk.

“Professor Anton Kafka, Dean of the German Studies Department,” she read the badge. “So now we know his full name.”

Angelo stepped towards the closet. He remembered he saw Kafka hiding in it.

“I’ll watch the closet.” he said to the girls. “I’ll try to stop him if she shows up. You three look for the fairy.”

“Got it.” said Ursula and started looking around the desk.

Angelo opened the closet and pointed his crossbow at the bottom. Giovanna and Sarah were looking through the shelfs. Ursula opened the drawer in the desk and noticed it was as empty as the countertop. Then she opened the case under it. Inside she noticed a jar with something inside. Ursula took a closer look and noticed it was a fairy.

“Hey, guys! I think I have found her!” she said.

She pulled the jar out and placed it on the desk. The fairy inside turned towards Ursula and looked into her eyes. Ursula knew fairies have their own language, so she could ask her only one thing.

“Do you speak English?”

After a while the fairy answered.

“Yes. Poorly,”

“What is your name?” Ursula asked the fairy.

“Lifkip,” the fairy said.

“Good. Listen, Lifkip. We are here to help you.”

“Help?”

“Yes. We are going to save you. To get you to your mom.”

“Mom?”

“Yes. Exactly.”

“So is our job done?” asked Sarah.

“It seems so,” said Giovanna.

“I think we should stay for a bit,” said Angelo. “We still don’t know what is going on here. I know Kafka didn’t kidnap that fairy without a reason.”

Sarah was going to the window as she wanted to leave.

“Maybe I could get her to safety and you will look further?” she asked.

“Good idea,” said Ursula.

Suddenly Angelo heard something. Some kind of knocking under the closet.

“Quiet!” he whispered. “I hear something.”

The girls froze in place. Angelo concentrated as much as he could. The knocking was getting louder and louder. And finally the bottom popped out of the closet. Kafka looked outside.

“Don’t move!” said Angelo holding Kafka at gunpoint.

Kafka moved back to the tunnel and closed the closet’s bottom.

“Well… That was disappointing,” said Angelo.

“Shall we continue with our plan?” asked Sarah.

“Hold on…,” said Angelo. “I hear something else.”

From the bottom of the closet Angelo was hearing a voice. He was hearing it quietly as if it was a whisper. He couldn’t understand it, because it was too drowned out. But he couldn’t shake off the feeling that it was a foreign language. Then there was a deafening bang and a column of fire shooting out from the tunnel under the closet. Angelo jumped back and saved himself from the blast at the last moment. From beneath the closet rose Anton Kafka holding a bottle in his hand. He had an evil grin on his face.

“I knew something was wrong,” said Kafka. “From the moment I realised I’ve been given fake berries. Tell me, was it your idea?”

“Maybe yes, maybe no. Does it matter?” said Angelo.

“You know what? You are right,” said Kadka. “Anyway, I’m glad that you’re here with me. I’m always happy to get new specimens.”

Angelo didn’t like how that sentence sounded. Something was telling him that he and the girls were about to discover something sinister. Kafka looked at Sarah. Then at the window.

“Run!” Angelo shouted.

But Kafka has already started chanting a spell in yet another language, which could be German looking at his badge.

“Das Tor soll geschlossen bleiben.”

Sarah panicked and tried to jump out the window through which she entered the office. When her hands touched the glass she felt the familiar wetness. Just when Sarah passed through the window Kafka finished chanting his spell.

“Der Durchgang soll sich zerreiben!”

As he was pronouncing the final word he threw a bottle at the window. On impact the bottle has crashed and a powder has covered the glass. When it disappeared the window was completely clean of all signs of magic and Giovanna’s card had fallen in the grass. Sarah noticed it and came to the window. She knocked on it, but her hand couldn’t pass through it. That confirmed the window was once again completely solid. Kafka came to the door and locked it with a key.

“So now you are trapped here,” said Kafka.

Angelo had to react quickly. He fired a warning shot over Kafka’s head. He was not scared a bit. He even giggled.

“You missed,” said Kafka.

Angelo was trying to find a place to back out to. But he only saw one possibility.

“To the closet!” he shouted.

Angelo jumped down the tunnel and tried to reload his crossbow in mid air. Ursula and Giovanna jumped after him. Kafka has simply smiled.

“There’s no way out from there, my dear guests,” he said. “But it’s okay. I love new test subjects.”