Gort allowed them to look for the spell book.

After a while, Luke ended up taking his jacket off and asked, "What does it look like?"

"It's a giant leather book," Maisie replied. "Hard to miss it." Somehow, she was missing the spell book. It was sort like looking for something and it just being in front the whole time.

"I can't let this happen," Gort said, dropping some stuff on the floor.

Gort said, "My beautiful dirt cleaned? My wonderful junk sold in a yard sale?" He growled.

Maisie wanted to say that Gort sounds like her when Gwen wants her to clean her room. Sure, her room may be a mess, but it was her mess.

"Don't you have some sort of, I don't know, a filing system?" asked Luke.

"Of course I do," Gort replied. "I keep all my scabs under the porch."

Maisie made a disgusted sound while Marnie said, "Ew."

"Ugh, I'm sorry I asked," replied Luke.

Marnie suddenly screamed and Maisie went over to see what was wrong.

There was a giant cockroach in the pile of junk that Marnie was looking through.

"Hey, Spike," said Gort, going to his pet cockroach. Gort went to pick up the cockroach, "My boy, my boy. Come to papa."

Maisie guessed that even mean creatures have beloved pets. 

Gort proceeded to hold Spike on his back to tickle his belly, like Spike was a cat. Spike even had a spiked collar and name tag.

Maisie does the exact same thing to her cat, Wednesday. But Maisie calls it the 'Baby Hold'. 

Marnie looked disgusted and was pointing in disbelief.

"Yes," Gort spoke to Spike. "Okay. Go play, but you play nice." 

"Oh," Marnie said in disgust. "I don't think the spell book is here. We've looked everywhere."

"Maybe we came far to back in time," Luke suggested. "Maybe before she even lost the spell book."

"Well, she did say that she hasn't seen it for decades," Maisie replied.

"We couldn't have come that far back," Marnie said.

"Hey," Gort said. "Is this book you're looking for leather?"

"Yes," Marnie said.

"With some kind of fancy writing on the front?" continued Gort.

"Biblio Magica," Marnie said, growing excited. "Yeah."

"I remember it," Gort told them.

"Really?" asked Maisie, growing excited too.

"Calabar bought it from me about fifty years ago," Gort said.

Maisie threw her head back and groaned, because of course the former mayor would foil their plans fifty years ago. 

"That's really bad," Marnie pointed out.

"Calabar must've been working on this world-domination thing for decades," Luke said.

Maisie wondered how Calabar even found the time to have a son, if he was busy being mayor and plotting world-domination.

"Well, that means Kal must've had Grandma's other spell book all along with the gray spell in it," Marnie said. "And the only reason he took it out of our house—"

"Was to stop you from undoing the spell," Luke finished.

They groaned, because it was a frustrating position to be in.

"I can't believe it," Marnie said and kicked some junk aside. "We came all this way for nothing." She dropped to her knees on the pile of junk.

Maisie kept looking for something that might be useful. She found this giant teddy bear that she gave to Marnie to cheer her up with. It might have worked.

"You know," Luke started. "You did undo Kal's spell once."

"What do you mean?" asked Marnie.

"With me – the gray spell," explained Luke.

Marnie said, "No. It just wore off."

Maisie thought about it, "If it wore off, everything else would've worn off. Grandma wouldn't have turned gray. Gort would've gone back to normal."

Luke nodded and pointed at Maisie. "It didn't wear off Benny. It had to have been something you did or said."

"Like what?" asked Marnie.

Maisie thought about it, "We were searching Grandma's house."

"Right and Luke was picking his nose," Marnie added.

Luke made a face, "And you both couldn't find the second spell book."

"Right, so Mai and I were trying to get Grandma to think of something else," Marnie said. "Some other way to break the spell."

"No," Luke said. "You didn't say spell. You said something else."

"So?" replied Marnie.

"It must've been something you said," Maisie told Marnie.

"I would've have been talking backwards to undo the spell," Marnie stated. "You know that."

"Maybe it was there backwards somehow," Luke pointed out.

"I think I called it a trap. Uh...something to get us out of this trap," Marnie said.

"It was 'a trap, a spell' something else, I think," Maisie pointed out.

Luke grabbed a pencil and paper from the table. "Why don't you just say it all again?"

"Okay," Marnie said. "It was something like, something to get us out of this trap, a spell or a charm."

"This trap. A spell," Luke said as he wrote it down, "You didn't say charm. I know that."

"Something backwards," Marnie said. "Uh, trap, no. A spell, no. Spell or a, no."

Maisie looked at the paper.

"Wait, wait, here," Luke said, tapping his pencil against the paper, "Here. Trapa."

"Trapa?" asked Marnie.

"Trapa," Maisie said. "It's 'apart' backwards."

"So?" replied Marnie.

"So, does every spell have to be long?" asked Luke.

"No," Maisie replied.

"Some spells are short," Marnie said.

"Then say this like a spell," Luke said.

"But it's one word," Marnie countered.

Maisie took the paper and looked at it, "It's all that we have, Marnie. What's the harm?" She went to Gort, who was messing with something on the table. She held up her hands and said, "Apart."

Gort turned gray, like his counterpart from the future. He looked around, "Oh my. Oh my." He tsked at the sight of his cottage. "Oh, this place is very, very messy."

Marnie and Luke made some amazed sounds.

"All right, say it backwards," Luke urged.

"Uh, trapa," Marnie said, and Gort turned back into his creature self, stumbling around a little.

Gort grunted, "That was awful." He grunted again, "I wanted to...clean."

"Try it again," Luke said.

"Okay," Marnie said. "Apart." 

Gort turned gray once again, "Oh my." The teens chuckled, "Does anyone have a uh, a dustpan perhaps?"

"Trapa," Maisie said and Gort turned back to his creature self.

Gort started coughing, "Would you two stop doing that?"

"Sorry, Gort," Maisie replied, feeling bad for the creature. 

Marnie said, "You were right. We figured out a way to break the gray spell and now we can get our full powers back."

"How much time do we have left before the portal closes?" asked Luke.

Marnie looked at her watch, "Fifteen minutes."

"And Mom doesn't know about the creature spell," Maisie said.

"What if she still is wearing that mask?" asked Marnie.

"And we're still back in time," Maisie pointed out as Luke went to put his jacket on.

"We have to get back to the present before we can warn her," Luke said.

"Right," Marnie said. "Uh, do you know the time travel spell Mai?"

"Only the first two words," Maisie replied. "Don't you have the paper?"

"I put in on the table over there when I had to dig through the garbage," Marnie said.

Gort groaned before he walked by that, "You shouldn't have done that."

"Why not? What happened to it?" asked Marnie.

"It's lost," Gort replied.

"Well, that's okay, right?" Marnie said, "Because things that get lost end up here."

"Everything that's lost other places ends up here," Gort replied. "But things that are lost here go poof."

"Poof?" asked Luke.

"Poof," Gort replied. "Gone...forever."

"That's unfair," Maisie replied. She considered smashing her head against the step of the cottage because both worlds were doomed.

"Poof," replied Marnie.

"Please tell me any of you remember the spell," asked Luke.

"It was Welsh, I could barely read it," Marnie said.

"So we're stuck here?" asked Luke. "We can't be stuck here."

"Okay, okay, all right," Marnie said. "Let me think." She seemed to think it over and tried to say the spell, but the result ended up with Gort getting a full head of white curly hair.

Gort clearly didn't appreciate it because he growled.

"Uh, that's clearly not the spell," Maisie said.