Chapter One

  The wind carried the alluring st of dahe night I appeared above 1157 Westwillow Drive, holding the mystical Escher Cube in both hands. My heart raced with the power of five Blue Donkey energy drinks. I was ready to…

  Wait. Above the house?

  I yelped, plummeting to the roof below with a magnifit bellyflop. Not my most professiorance, I’ll admit, but at least I’d only ed myself a few feet too…aaaand I was sliding down the roof. I shot over the side like a screaming toboggan before boung off the pstic trash below and crash nding on the driveway.

  Ow.

  A momehe trash tipped over to spill a very fused ra out on the driveway in front of me. It saw me lying face down on the pavement and hissed, warning me away from its precious garbage…until it saw what I had in my hand. Made of polished gray stohe Escher Cube reflected the moonlight in a way that made the ra’s eyes widen greedily.

  “What are you looking at?” I demanded, my head still spinning from the fall. Then it dawned on me. “No, no, don’t even think about it, you little—”

  Too slow. It snatched the Cube out of my hand and took off into the woods across the street.

  “Chi biscuits!” I cursed, giving chase. McGus was going to skin me alive if I didn’t get it back. The rabered up a nearby tree, but the weight of the Cube slowed it down. I dove for it…

  And missed, doing my best impression of a woodpecker instead.

  Feeling like I’d just cracked my skull to make a particurly painful omelet, I stumbled to my feet to see the stupid ra looking smugly down at me. Then it raised the Escher Cube, admiring its prize in the moonlight — and vanished in a fsh of light.

  “Ohhh, Kentucky fried egg rolls,” I whispered. I was going to be lucky if McGus stopped at skinning me now.

  Thoughts of my impending doom were interrupted by a scream of terror from the house behind me. I spun, cursing, and sprinted back the way I’d e. With one hand, I drew my ping pong paddle from where it hung on my belt. A fliy wrist elohe hail it was as tall as I was, and the paddle poomph-ed outwards to bee a great big wooden hammer.

  Her name is Sptsy.

  I swung her, smashing the front door to splinters, and charged inside — where I immediately tripped on something. I hit the floor, rolled, and sprang bay feet with Sptsy raised, ready to smash anything that thought it could take me out while I was on the ground. Nothing happened.

  It itch b here, the dim moonlight shining through the doorway all I had to see by. With it, I could faintly make out whatever I’d tripped on. Cautiously, I reached for the switd turhe lights on.

  It was a corpse.

  “Crème brulee,” I hissed.

  The owner of the house y on his back, staring sightlessly up at the ceiling with a horrified expression on his face. What I’d tripped on turned out to be his leg. My guess is that he’d been running for the door when he’d been caught…and the teeth marks around his mouth, like he’d been french kissing a piranha, told me exactly what he’d been caught by.

  Maiams.

  I gritted my teeth, pushing back the wave of emotion that made me want to scream. I’d been too slow. An i human had died. If the cil found out about this — and they always did — they would take my head.

  Or worse, my job.

  It’s not over yet, I reminded myself. The thing that had dohis was still here somewhere. The evil it radiated was foul enough to make my blood curdle. Gripping Sptsy with both hands, I turned in a slow circle. I was in the living room, where a big ft s tv stood surrounded by shelves of football crap. A set of stairs by the front door led to the sed floor, and behihe kit was swathed in darkness. So many pces for it to hide. It knew I was here too, or else it would have made its escape already. One wrong step, one gn the wrong dire, was all it would take for it to—

  The squeak of a floorboard up above caught my attention, and I spun just in time to see a shadow dash away from the top of the stairs. I sprinted after it. As soon as I reached the top of the stairs, the door at the far end of the hallway smmed shut, followed by a click as the creature locked itself inside. If I’d been thinking clearly — or at all, McGus would probably say — the fact that a maiam had just locked a dht have made me pause. Instead, I charged down the hall, rammed my shoulder into the door to break the lock, and barged in with Sptsy raised to find…

  A teenage boy.

  I froze, eyes wide and blinking with surprise. The boy, who looked to be around my age, sat huddled against the wall, clearly thinking I was some kind of hammer wielding psychopath.

  “Uh, hey,” I said, reag up to make sure I was wearing my N.O.S.E. “You, uh, seen any monsters around here?”

  He didn’t say anything, but his eyes met mine…and then looked behind me.

  “Oh, gonzo,” I whispered.

  I spun around, and found myself face to face with a living nightmare. Nearly teall, it looked like someone had pulled a very cheesed off goril out of a bd white tv, shaved it, and then applied KISS makeup with a shotgun. Its skin was a mixture of bd sickly gray. The only color to be found was the blood oozing down its long pencil-like fangs — leftovers from its first victim.

  Then it decked me with a hand the size of my torso.

  Flying across the room, I crashed through the closet door and colpsed like a pile of spaghetti. Outside, the maiam growled, and I looked up with eyes that wouldn’t focus to see it grinning as it reached for the boy.

  NO!

  I shoved the pain to the bay mind and forced myself to my feet. Gripping Sptsy in both hands, I charged bato the room and swung her as hard as I could. She hit the brute in its big ugly face, and it staggered backwards into the hallway.

  I sagged against the doorframe, gasping for breath while it recovered. I retty sure none of my bones were broken, but there was no point in taking ces. Digging my inhaler out of my pocket and holding it to my mouth, I gave it a squeeze and sighed in relief as life flowed into my lungs. Human ughter, bottled with my grandpa’s secret teique. As bright as the sun and shimmering with every color of the rainbow, it made my teeth light up inside my mouth like Christmas lights. The pain receded a little with every beat of my heart.

  Anrowl came from the hallway. I wasn’t the only one here who fed on ughter. The maiam could smell it inside my inhaler, and it was hungry!

  “Stay here,” I said to the boy. “This’ll only take a minute.”

  I raced toward the maiam, dug as it shed out at me with wickedly sharp cws. As I came back up, I swung Sptsy, delivering another solid hit to its face. It lumbered backwards, shaking the floor with each step, dazed. Seeing my ce, I began to el magito Sptsy, making her burst intht blue light. I stepped forward, winding up for the killing blow, swung…

  And missed

  “Mothercrumpet!” I yelled as it ducked, my attack s right above its head. The magic I’d filled Sptsy with exploded out of her, blowing a hole in the roof big enough to drive a car through. While I tried to recover from my epic whiff, the maiam lunged forward and ed its meaty hand around my neck. I tried to curse again as it raised me off the floor, but it came out as a weak, “Hurghhk!”

  Naoothies! I thought, dangling helplessly while trying not to panic. I still had Sptsy, which meant this wasn’t over. If I could nd a hit hard enough to…

  What in the world was that?

  As the maiam drew me closer, baring its teeth, I spotted something that shouldn’t have been there: a stoalisman, stuck to its forehead as if it’d been glued there. It was about as big as a silver dolr, and a rune I’d never seen beflowed with a blood-red light from its ter.

  But before I could study it more, the maiam threw me dowairs. I hit the hardwood floor below hard enough to crack it, and I gasped in agony. Sptsy went flying out of my grip to nd somewhere in the living room. My vision started to go dark, but I pushed through the pain just like McGus had taught me.

  The ground shook as the maiam leaped downstairs to finish me off. I tried to crawl away, defenseless without Sptsy, but its cold and cmmy hand came down to press my head into the floor.

  No, no, no! I screamed inside my head. It couldn’t end like this! I still had so many things I wao do, with surviving until my sixteenth birthday being on top of the list. I struggled to break free, but it was no good. I may as well have had a bus parked on my head. The maiam shick strings of drool oozing from its jaws as it came in to deliver the fatal bite, and—

  “U…Uncle Doug?”

  Both me and the maiam froze. Opening my eyes, I saw the boy from before standing at the top of the stairs, looking down at the homeowner’s corpse in horror.

  Uh oh.

  The maiam immediately lost i in me. Letting go of my head, it turo lumber back up the stairs toward the boy — a tasty dessert after his uncle had been the main course.

  Struggling to my feet, my head pounding so hard I could hardly think, I spotted Sptsy lying in front of the tv a few feet away. Above me, the boy had backed up against the wall, feet rooted to the ground by fear. I picked Sptsy up, but the wave of dizzihat hit me nearly put me ba the ground. I couldn’t keep fighting like this. Digging the inhaler out again, I looked upstairs. The maiam towered over the c young man, growling eagerly. I didn’t have enough time to heal myself and save him. Not unless…

  I mashed the button on the inhaler five times, nearly emptying it. Power roared through my veins. I let the inhaler fall to the floor, eling magito my shoes the same way I had doo Sptsy before, and I jumped! The magic exploded out of my shoes, shattering the floorboards beh me and rocketing me up the stairs in a split sed. The maiam’s teeth were only inches away from the boy’s face, ready to drain his ughter just like it had doo his uncle. I raised Sptsy as I flew, praying to the whoopie cushion in the sky that I wouldn’t be too te.

  And then the boy screamed.

  That didn’t surprise me. Anybody with a shred of sanity would have dohe same. What did surprise me was the shockwave of pure power that his scream carried with it. It was s that it bsted the maiam right off of him — and into me. Together, we went tumbling dowairs until we y in a heap otom floor.

  What…the frozen microwave burritos…had that been?

  The answer came to me immediately: it was ughter. The same stuff that my inhaler was full of. But there was so freaking much of it! Enough to make my inhaler look like a dle o a lighthouse. My head spun. That shouldn’t have been possible. So much ughter in one human, it…

  The maiam growled and began to get back up.

  Pushing those thoughts aside for now, I got to my feet, smming Sptsy into its arm and putting it ba the floor with a howl of pain. Then I put one foot went on its o keep it down.

  “William Halbert,” I said, “I end your suffering.”

  It gred up at me, its bck eyes utterly devoid of humanity.

  “May you find joy in the life.”

  I brought Sptsy down, crushing its head like a water balloon. Bck goo spttered everywhere, and its body writhed and thrashed as if it was still alive. I took a step bad leaned against the wall, Sptsy falling from my hand. The maiam seemed to defte, crumbling in on itself until only a bck, oily stain on the floor remained. Soon, even that began to evaporate.

  I sighed, closing my eyes. Poor William. He had no o himself to bme for this, but still…poor William.

  Something caught my attention as the tarry bck puddle disappeared. The small stone amulet that I’d seen on its head before. It was in pieow, shattered from when I’d crushed its head, but the glowing red symbol still hovered in its exact ter as if it’d been imprinted on the air itself. Slowly, it began to fade. I reached to pick it up, but stopped when I heard a faint whimper from the top of the stairs. Right. First things first.

  Suddenly feeling exhausted, I trudged back up the stairs to where the boy was still sitting with his back against the wall. His skin was as white as paper, his eyes as big as lightbulbs, and he was shaking like he’d bee out in a snowstorm.

  “Hello?” I asked, waving a hand in front of his face. “Yoohoo, anybody home?”

  Slowly, he blinked and turo look at me. “You…You…”

  “Easy there, I’m on your side!” I raised my hands. “Are you okay?”

  He shook his head. “N- No, it’s…you’re bleeding.”

  I blinked in surprise, then looked down at myself. A thin trickle of blood was running down my arm, leaving a drip-drop trail on the floor behind me.

  Blood that was a deep navy blue.

  “Don’t worry about that,” I said, hiding it behind my back. “What about you? What’s your name?”

  “Ethan,” he said hesitantly. “Ethan Griggs.”

  It was still there, I realized. All that ughter. I could smell it on his voice. It was less noticeable now that he wasn’t screaming, but its st hung in the air like his mouth ortal to Willy Wonka’s factory. It was no wohe maiam had e here!

  And it wouldn’t be the st. Other maiams would smell that ughter, and by m this pce would be swarming with them like sharks around a hunk of bloody meat. I realized what I would have to do before I evehere was a choice to be made.

  I groahe cil of Shnoob was going to kill me for this.

  “What?” he asked.

  I shook my head. “Nothing. e on, we o get out of here.”

  I extended a hand to him, but he shied away from it.

  “My name’s Henry Rider,” I said, giving him my most disarming smile. “I’m here to help you.”

  “H…Henry?”

  “Yes, that’s what I said. Now—”

  “But you’re a girl!”