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Caspar said.
    "'What a ...' Did you say leprechaun?"
    My bedroom doorframe brushed my head and popped me in the shoulder. "Oopsie!" Balthazar trilled. "Mind the corners, laddies."
    They hustled me down the hall, through the kitchen, and into the den, where Caspar withdrew from my midsection long enough to repeat his lasso trick on the back doorknob. Footsteps entered the living room. Voices called my name.
    "Help!" I hollered as three leprechauns ran me headfirst through the open back door into the sunshine outside.
    "Watch the stairs!" Balthazar barked. "Lively now, lads!"
    We jolted down the three back steps, around the corner of the house, and through our side yard toward the street. An ambulance was parked at the curb, its emergency lights revolving. Mrs. Douglas and the other neighbors stood on our porch, waving an EMT across the lawn. My body cleared the driveway just as my mother's Civic pulled in. She was out before the car stopped rolling, leaving her driver's door open.
    "Lily!" she cried, sprinting right past me on her way to the porch. "Lily!"
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    "Mom!" I shouted desperately. "Mom, help!"
    She rushed into the house without even turning her head. None of the neighbors glanced my way either as the leprechauns ran me over our grass to the sidewalk.
    "Help!" I screamed. "Why doesn't anyone answer me?"
    "That'll be the binding gold, Lil," Balthazar's voice said beneath me. "A bit o' magic there--immobility, plus it makes you completely silent to anyone outside the clan. Hated to use it, but you forced us a bit. The end will justify the means--you'll see. Bear to the left, lads, into the street!"
    They trotted me down the bike lane in broad daylight, past houses and cars and pedestrians. Nobody noticed us. Nobody heard a thing. My mind raced with the need to get free, but my body was paralyzed. Panicky tears jiggled down my upturned face as block after block slipped by.
    "Bal ... Bal ... Balty," Maxwell wheezed. "I've got ... to put ... her down."
    "Not yet!" Balthazar huffed, out of breath himself. "Almost ... there."
    We bumped up over the curb and into my neighborhood park, running practically under the noses of the Mommy-and-me crew at the sandbox. Sunshine blazed into my face, searing past wet lashes.
    "To the rocket! The rocket ship!" Balthazar cried.
    By then it wouldn't have shocked me if they were space
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    aliens too, but when they jogged around the back of the park's maintenance hut, I saw what they were talking about.
    A huge play rocket ship lay on its side, its disassembled metal legs rusting in a heap. The leprechauns charged in through the rocket's open base, carrying me headfirst. For a split second, I welcomed the shade. Then the stifling heat trapped inside hit me like a frying pan.
    "This'll do," Balthazar panted. "Heave ho, laddies."
    Three pairs of hands thrust upward at once. For a moment, I was airborne. Then I hit the curved floor of the fake rocket like a sack of bowling balls.
    "Ow!" I cried. "Why are you doing this?"
    "Sorry, Lil," Balthazar said. "Can't be helped."
    "I'm pretty sure it can! Take me home!"
    "We're working on it," he assured me. "Just as fast as we know how."
    "I can't breathe. It's a million degrees in here!"
    "At least," Maxwell agreed, wiping his dripping face on his green coat sleeve.
    Balthazar's face was flushed purple above his full beard. "We'll just be here a moment. Give us a chance to regroup."
    "I'm for opening a door," Caspar said.
    "And how do you propose doing that before the trial?" Balthazar asked. "Use your bean, lad, I'm begging."
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    "We'll have to whistle for the cart," Maxwell said.
    "Whistle away!" Caspar invited sarcastically. "It's only three miles off. We should have told Fizz to wait here."
    "Right," Maxwell retorted. "Because none of these humans would have noticed six dogs and a--"
    "By every coin and nugget!" Balthazar shouted. "If the pair o' you don't shut up and start helping me, I'll have you both before the council!"
    They all fell