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  Chapter Twenty Four

  “Okay, ready?” I whispered. “Left, righ-aaaAAAAH!”

  Ethan’s foot didn’t move in sync with mine, and dowairs we went. Stars fshed in front of my eyes as what felt like every step in the neighborhood was suddenly magically attracted to my skull. And spine. And butt. We nded in a heap at the bottom, and I ged, waiting for my parents to e rushing in to see us apparently having areme cuddling session. But when my ears stopped ringing, I realized they were still in the living room, ughing so hard at their movie that they hadn’t even heard us tumbling dowairs. Ethan groaned beh me, and I spped a hand over his mouth.

  “e on,” I hissed into his ear. “Get to the door before they see us! Now!”

  Together, we slid and rolled painfully across the entryway.

  “Why don’t we just tell them?” Ethan asked while I used the doorknob to hoist us to our feet. “They give us a ride to the station!”

  “Sure, great idea. And when they ask how this happened, we’ll tell them you were illegally practig magic with a stolen spellhammer!”

  “I live with…” He paused. “Wait, illegally?”

  “Right. So unless you want to find out what prison is like, I suggest we keep this little shenanigaween us.”

  Ethan’s face went as pale as mine. “C- prison?”

  I nodded. “ prison.”

  I put my hand on the knob aured for Ethan to get ready to move. Taking a deep breath, I gave the knob a twist, threw myself forward — and ran face first into the door. It was locked!

  “Ow!” Ethan yelped when our heads knocked against each other.

  “Shh!” I frantically hissed, but it was too te.

  “Ethan?” my mom called from the living room. “Is that you?”

  I ched my fist, fighting the urge to sm Ethan’s head into the door a few more times, and called back, “It’s us, Mom. We’re, uh, heading out for a little bit.”

  “You absolutely are not!” Dad argued. “It’s past nine, and you both have school in the m!”

  “It’s, uh, cil stuff. They o see me. Like, right now.”

  While I talked, my hand was fumbling blindly for the lock.

  “At this time of night?” Mom asked. “They do know you’re a teenage girl, right?”

  “Oh, trust me,” Ethan whispered, “I am more than aware of that right now.”

  My mouth fell open, and I gave him my best I’m-going-tle-you-ter gre.

  “Yeah, yeah,” I finally said. “But you know how it is.”

  Mom still sounded hesitant. “I know, but…”

  “Mom,” I said firmly, “we all knew what I was getting into when McGus offered to take me as his apprehis isn’t just about me. This is for all of konkind.”

  “Well, try to be back at a reasoime,” Dad finally gave in. “The st thing you need is for yrades to start dropping.”

  “I will,” I promised, just as I mao get the door unlocked. “Love you both! Bye!”

  I heard Mom get up. “Do you need a ride to the station?”

  “No!” Ethan and I yelled at the same time, followed by a mad dash…well, a mad waddle out the door. We were halfway down the driveway before I remembered to honk my N.O.S.E. and activate my disguise.

  “Wait a sed,” Ethan said whe to the end of my neighborhood. “This isn’t the way to—”

  “I am not,” I told him, “getting on a crowded IW like this. We’re taking the crappy one.”

  “But that station’s twice as far away!”

  I grabbed him by his shirt colr as best I could. “Ethan, you got us into this. That means your fort doesn’t mean squat to me pared to my ability to show my fa public. It’s already going to be embarrassing enough walking through Mauldibamm like this. I’m not promising my dignity any more than that! Uand?”

  Eyes wide, he nodded.

  He wasn’t wrong, though. The good station was less than a mile from my neighborhood, and you could get there from a er beside ay stretch of road. The crappy station was over three miles away, and in the middle of a road in town, which meant you had to be absolutely sure that nobody was looking before you cut the er. It was the middle of the night, though, so I doubted that’d be a problem. We just had to get there.

  “Is it really that bad?” Ethan asked a few mier.

  I sighed. “It’s not you. I wouldn’t want to spend my Sunday being glued to anybody.”

  “Thanks,” he said dryly, “but I meant being the Hunter.”

  I stopped in my tracks. “What?”

  “Back at home, when you started talking about how being the Hunter was more important than anything else in your life, you sounded sad.”

  I didn’t answer. After a few seds, I started walking again. We were about a quarter of the way there at this point, and we’d finally found a sort of rhythm to our movements that kept us from fating on the pavement with every step.

  “It is,” I said half a mile ter, “and it isn’t.”

  “Yoing to have to expin that one,” he said.

  “Yes, being at the cil’s bed call all the time sucks ptypus eggs. Ichabod’s an egomaniad Victoria’s so jealous of him I’m surprised she hasn’t ged her o Ichabette. They’re both petty and more ied in arguing thaing any work dohe only sensible people are Patricia and my grandpa, but nobody listens to them because they never raise their voices.”

  “So quit.”

  “I ’t. Being their Hunter is the only thing that…” I bit my tongue and looked away.

  “The only thing that gives your life meaning?”

  I went rigid and gred at him. He looked back — ing life threateningly close to kissing me again — and I swear I could see actual sympathy in his eyes.

  “Yeah,” I admitted slowly. “Before I was made the Hunter, I was just…me.”

  “And what’s so bad about that?”

  I snorted. “If you’re a Red, a Purple, or even a Green? Nothing. But I’m a Blue.”

  “Maybe you could try dyeing—”

  “It doesn’t have anything to do the color, you idiot!” I shouted without meaning to. Calming myself, I said, “Sorry. This is kind of a sensitive subjee, you know?”

  “So, if it’s not the color that matters,” Ethan asked, “then what is it?”

  “It’s plicated. It’s not the color of our hair, it’s what the color represents. Kind of like a css system, except…not really?” I groaned and shook my head. “Oh, fet it! You’re a human, so you wouldn’t uand anyway!”

  “Then try to help me uand.”

  I looked at him, a little surprised. Just a couple weeks ago, the only i he had in my culture was whether or not we could keep maiams from sug on his face. Asking me something like that, in a time like this, told me a lot more about him than I think he realized.

  We’d been living together for less than a month, but in that time he had learo care.

  “Okay,” I said slowly. “You know that kons need ughter to survive. But what you don’t know is that we have a special power that helps us do it.”

  I paused.

  “You didn’t know that, did you?”

  “No.”

  “Good.”

  Right then, a car drove past, its headlights shining bright in the darkness, and I quickly spun to hide behihan. I k wasn’t likely that anyone I knew would see me, but I kept having visions of going to school tomorrow to find everyoalking about how Ethan and I had been making out on the side of the road.

  “We’re…well, we’re not quite psychic, but we’re pretty dang close,” I said ohe car was gone. “We ’t read people’s minds, but we read their sense of humor.”

  “And what does your hair color have to do with that?”

  “I’m getting to that!” I snapped. “Our hair color is tied to how strong that power is. Reds are s that some people think they actually make you think something is funny. Purples are a little less powerful, but they still don’t have trouble making most people ugh. Greens have to work for it, but they mostly get by. Then there’s the Blues, like me.”

  Self-sciously, I ran a hand through my hair.

  “Blues are the weakest color,” I whispered. “They struggle to get even a hint of what the other colors see clear as day. That makes it hard for them to feed. Most of them have to rely on their own senses of humor to make people ugh. If they’re not naturally funny, they’ll starve. That’s why so many of them end up being…”

  I didn’t finish, and I knew by the way Ethan looked away that I didn’t o. We walked in silence for a couple minutes before he spoke up again.

  “You said them. Why not us?”

  I opened my mouth to tell him it was none of his business. If talking about my hair color was a sensitive subject, then that was dht personal! I didn’t, though. This whole versation was a good thing. It meant he was finally opening up a little. I didn’t like talking about my…problem…but if it helped pull Ethan a little further out of his shell then maybe it’d be worth it.

  “That’s how it is for most Blues,” I admitted relutly. “But I’m not like them. If being born a Blue puts you at the bottom of the kon barrel, then I’m the little bit that leaked out of the crad got eaten by a cockroach.”

  Ethan turo me sharply. “You shouldn’t say things like—”

  “You asked me a couple weeks ago if I was dropped on my head as a baby,” I interrupted him. “The answer is yes. Yes, I was.”

  Ethan’s mouth snapped shut.

  “I was less than a year old,” I tinued. “Grandpa Teddy was holding me. I squirmed a little too hard, and rolled right out of his arms. Landed on my head. Got taken to the hospital. Doctor said I had brain damage. Didn’t think I would live. Obviously, I did.”

  For a few seds, Ethan just gaped at me. “Henry, I didn’t…I’m sorry.”

  “I recovered and grew into the stunning young dy you just glued yourself to,” I said, voice hollow. “But there was still some sting damage. It wasn’t until I was five that my parents realized that…that…”

  My voice trailed off, and I absently reached up to feel the sy forehead. It started in the exact ter and then spiderwebbed outwards, like my head was a hardboiled egg that hadn’t been cracked all the en. I couldn’t remember the day I’d gotten it, but if I trated enough I swore I could still feel it. The sudden drop, followed by the impact that had ruined my life almost before it had begun.

  “Henry?”

  “That I couldn’t sense humor like everyone else could,” I finished. “No pictures, no words, nothing. Just silence. Do you uand what that’s like, Ethan? To a kon, that’s like being born without eyes s. It cripples us! Even another Blue make people ugh easier than I !”

  We weren’t moving, I realized. Telling that story had taken so much out of me that I’d fotten to keep walking. I got us started again, my feet stamping on the ground and my arms swinging angrily by my sides, as if I could outrun those memories if Ethan and I just waddled fast enough.

  “I’m sorry,” Ethan said a mier. “I shouldn’t have asked.”

  “It’s fine,” I sighed. “But now you know why being the Hunter is so important to me.”

  “I…I do?”

  I ched my fists. “Because it’s my ce to do something right! Something important! To prove to the cil, and the rest of Mauldibamm, that I !”

  And to myself.

  I saw another car ing down the road and turo hide my face again. Its headlights came close, and…

  The car stopped.

  “Great,” I whispered. Someone had reized me after all.

  “Uh, Henry?” Ethan said, suddenly sounding nervous.

  “If they ask if we need a ride, just tell them no,” I said. “We’re almost there anyway.”

  “I…I don’t think he’s us a ride.”

  Something in his voice made the hair on my neck stand up. Looking around him, I saw the car parked directly across from us. They had the windows rolled up, so I couldn’t make out who was inside. Was it someone I knew, w if they o call my parents ahem…

  They opehe door, and out stepped the masked man.

  “Oh crap,” Ethan whimpered, trying to back away. His legs were still glued to mihough, and the ued moveme us both tumbling to the ground. “Henry, do something!”

  Rolling over so that I was on my back with Ethan on top of me, I grabbed Sptsy from my belt, but froze when a sound like faraway thunder came out of the woods. BOOM…BOOM…BOOM…A shadow slowly emerged from betweerees oher side of the road — a massive shadow. My heart started to pound with dread. When a tree blocked its way, it reached out and uprooted it with a casual shove. Aire freaking tree!

  It stepped into the beam of the car’s headlights, standing more than four feet taller than the masked man. It was a maiam. The biggest one I’d ever seen, with arms as thick as my torso ah the size of butcher knives. For half a sed, I dared to hope that it would attack the man in the mask. Instead, it came to stand beside him, waiting like an obedient dog. A small but pierg red light glowed on its forehead, and a pit formed in my stomach when the car’s high beams illumi.

  It was aone amulet.