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  Chapter Thirteen

  My stomach was ing, like I had eaten a whole bag of gummy snakes, which had turned out to be real snakes, and now they were slithering around and having a big ol' snake party in my tum tum. I hated this pce. All I wao do was whip out Sptsy and not stop swinging until there was nothi but rubble. Just thinking about what had happened here still turned my blood to ice.

  The ughter extractor hung from the ceiling in front of me. Bck, e shaped, ahly silent. A stark trast to the first time I had seen it, when it had been r hard enough to make the crete floor shake beh my feet.

  The tip of the e hung just a few inches above the ground, and spyed out around it, like a giant squid waiting to be chopped into camari, were a dozen rubber tubes. I looked down at one…and then quickly looked away when a nightmarish image fshed before my eyes.

  A man, rendered skeletal from starvation, strapped to a chair and forced to ugh by the glowing medallion on his head, a tube shoved down his throat to collect the ughter.

  I closed my eyes, fighting the urge to throw up.

  "You okay?" Ethan asked, fluttering up beside my face.

  "Fine," I lied.

  e on, Henry, I thought, giving myself a couple mental sps to the mental face. It's time to get to work.

  Swallowing my emotions as best I could, I walked in a slow circle around the mae. It had been two months since I'd discovered it…or, rather, since Legion had lured me here. I'd reported it to the cil of Shnoob like a good girl, and they'd had teams of iigators in and out of here ever sihat had been two months ago, and they still hadn't found a single clue as to who had built this evil mae.

  And the most frustrating thing was, I already knew who it was. Ichabod Hench, representative for the Reds on the cil of Shnoob, and the biggest creep I had ever met. Yes, an even bigger creep than Cousin Gumdrop. When Grandpa Teddy had started making ughter io help the…less edically talented kons…Ichabod had tried to beat him to the punch. But whatever method Grandpa Teddy was using to collect ughter, Ichabod couldn't replicate it. In the end, he'd started kidnapping i humans and using this traption, and a particurly wicked type of mind trol, to harvest their ughter like they were nothing but cows on a dairy farm. And when their sanity iably broke, corrupting the ughter, they were disposed of.

  This was where Legion had been born. This was where he'd learo hate all of konkind with such a fiery passion that only our plete extin would satisfy him.

  And the worst part was, I couldn't bme him o for it.

  But none of that mattered right now. It wasn't like I could just marto the Grand Lark and accuse the most powerful kon in Mauldibamm of all this. I needed proof.

  So where the chi giblets was it?

  "If I were incriminating evidence," I said to myself, "where would I be hiding?"

  "Does that mae have a butt?" Ethan asked, flying circles around my head. "Maybe you could crawl up it and look there!"

  He flew away, weaving in and out of the exposed wires. I watched him for a minute. Something about this was bugging me—and for o didn't have anything to do with the literal torture chamber we were in. It was the way he was ag. All these pranks and jokes…

  He's not ughing, I realized with a jolt. Not that that was unusual for Ethan. He was…damaged. The car crash that killed his parents had left more scars than the naked eye could see. In all the time I'd known him, he had only ever ughed one siime.

  That’s the only reason I was alive right now to wonder about this.

  But this also wasn't normal behavior for Ethan. Making rude jokes? Dropping things on people's heads? This was obviously the NuYu’s influence. But the fact that he was doing all of this without even a giggle…I don't know, it was a little creepy.

  I guess even magic has its limits, I thought.

  I shook my head, chasing away those thoughts. I was easily sidetracked at the best of times, but here…my brain was tg onto anything that would distract me from the dark, evil pce I was standing in.

  I did another p around the mae, searg for anything the cil's iigators had missed. That shouldn't have been hard to find, I thought. Ichabod had his filthy hands all over this iigation. Whoever was searg this pce probably had orders straight from him to ignore anything that even vaguely resembled a clue.

  Assuming he hadn't told them to ft out destroy it, that is…

  I could feel despair g at the far reaches of my mind, like frost gathering at the edges of a window. Slowly creeping inwards, held at bay only by breathing really hard on the gss to heat it up, occasionally using your fio doodle something funny in the fog, and I fot where I was going with this analogy.

  The point is, the more I thought about it, the more hopeless it all felt. I may have been the Hunter, but when put up against the cil I ractically powerless. If Ichabod didn't wao catch him, he could stop me without even batting an eye.

  And that just made me hate him even more.

  "Okay, scary death mae!" I said, thrusting a defiant fi the giant bck e, "if you won't reveal your secrets to me willingly, then I'll just have to dig them out of you myself. sy, prepare for surgery!”

  Drawing Sptsy, I extended her to warhammer form, brought her back for a powerful swing, and…

  "What oh do you think you're doing?"

  Adrenali me like a bolt of lightning. It was Legion! Or Ichabod! I didn't know which was worse, but I spun on my heel anyway, ready to mash their ugly face—

  It was Grandpa Teddy.

  Terror filled his eyes as I struggled to divert my swing. Sptsy zoomed downwards, half an inch to his left, and smashed into the floor hard enough to send jagged bits of crete flying everywhere. The boom echoed deafeningly in the small room for almost half a minute, and the two of us just stared at each other until the sound faded.

  "Um…hi," I finally said, giving him my best i granddaughter smile. "Funny seeing you here, Grandpa Teddy!"

  Teddy let out a long breath and wiped sweat from his forehead. "I wish I could say the same to you, Henry," he said, his voice still shaking, "but I'm afraid this joke was never funny to begin with."

  Leaning against Sptsy, I looked over my shoulder at the mae. "Yeah, I know. I still hardly believe someone—"

  "I meant you ing down here!" Grandpa Teddy cut me off. "How many times do I have to tell you to let the cil hahis iigation?"

  "But the cil isn't handling it!" I argued. "It's been two months, and nobody has found a single french frying clue!"

  Grandpa Teddy's expression softened, a a f hand on my arm. "Henry, I know you're trying to help. That big, passionate heart of yours is one of the things I'm most proud of about you! But this isn't your ."

  "How is it not my ?" I asked, brushing his hand away and turning to look at the mae again. "I got possessed by something this…this nightmare created! It used me to try ao Ethan. It's targeting me and my friends, Grandpa Teddy. I'm involved in this whether you wao be or not."

  "You were involved." He came to stand beside me, looking up at the mae with a heartbroken expression. "And the fact that my granddaughter was entangled in something so terrible, while I could do nothing to help her, haunts me every night. But it's over now, Henry. You did your part to expose all of this. Now let us hahe rest."

  I hesitated, looking from him to the mae, and sighed. "Fine. I'll try."

  Grandpa Teddy smiled and reached out to hug me. I hugged him back, his warmth a surprisingly solid anchor in the midst of all this misery. I was almost ashamed of how easily I’d given up. My brain had been scrambling for anything to take my focus off of all the death and suffering around me since I'd first gotten here. The fact that Grandpa Teddy was me su easy way out…

  He stepped back, a puzzled look on his face. "By the way, where is Ethan?"

  My breath caught in my throat. "He's, um…"

  "You didn't leave him alone, did you?" Teddy raised a disapproving eyebrow. "You know what the rest of the cil will do if—"

  Before he could finish, and way before I could figure out a halfway det alibi, a bright blue speck of light came zipping out of nowhere, flying circles around me and Grandpa Teddy.

  "Henry and Teddy, sitting in a tree!" it sang. "K-I-S-S-I—"

  Moving faster than I'd ever seen him move in my life, Grandpa Teddy snatched Ethan out of the air, ping his wings between his thumb and finger.

  "What is this?" he asked, looking in plete bewilderment at Ethan's tiny form. "Henry? Expin yourself!"

  I cursed silently inside my head and took a deep breath. "Grandpa Teddy, Ethan has been going through some…ges…tely."

  "What? How?"

  I ged. "Would you believe…puberty?"

  "I took a magic pill aerday I was soooo big!" Ethan squeaked. "But today I'm small! Tomorrow I might be a…"

  He kept rambling, but Grandpa Teddy was looking at me.

  "It's just a phase," I promised him. "Please, please, pleeease don't tell the rest of the cil!"

  Teddy gave me a hard look, the blue in his eyes suddenly looking as cold as ice, and then looked at Ethan. The iy of that stare was enough to put the fear of the whoopie cushion in the sky into even a hyperactive fairy, ahan shut his mouth.

  "I didn't just e here to talk," he said solemnly, lettihan go. Ethan fluttered up to sit on my shoulder. "There's something you o see, Henry. Give me the Escher Cube."

  fused, I reached into my backpad hahe Cube to him. "Okay, but how—"

  "How did I know where you were? I always know where yranddaughter." He gave me a sharp look. "And if yoing to skip school, then you may as well spend the day doing something useful."

  "Oooh, busted!" Ethan said, and I resisted the urge to flick him off my shoulder.

  Grandpa Teddy began to work the Cube, twisting its rows of smaller cubes with a surprising amount of skill. Reality slid to and fro, up and down, the enviro around us breaking up into smaller and smaller pieces as it mimicked the movements of the Escher Cube. I opened my mouth to ask where he'd learo do that, but they snapped bato pce.

  I looked around and blinked in surprise. I knew where we were. This was a street in Burning Creek, my hometown! I turned around to see that I was standing in front of an old, abandoned building. I think it used to be an apartment building or something, and it was four stories tall.

  "What are we doing here?" I asked.

  "You'll see," said Grandpa Teddy. Without a moment's hesitation, he walked straight into the decrepit building.

  Ethan and I shared an uneasy look, and I followed him inside.

  Without a word, he went to the staircase and began to climb. He was breathing heavily before we'd even reached the sed floor, and he had to lean against the wall for support.

  I held out a hand. "Are you sure you—"

  "Third floor," he interrupted me. "Room 307. I'll catch up in a minute."

  Now my stomach felt like the snakes had iheir friends the butterflies over, and they were all having a full on rave. Still, I did as Grandpa Teddy said and tinued up the stairs. If there was anyone in any dimension I could trust, it was Grandpa Teddy. So I climbed to the third floor, Ethan sitting silently on my shoulder, and sought out the room he'd given me.

  The door stood ajar, and a faint ray of sunlight spilled through it into the dark hallway. I pushed the door open the rest of the way and, after taking a moment to steel my nerves, went inside.

  Dust motes swirled around me in the weak light as I walked through the old apartment. The fixtures were still there—ets, sink, cupboards—but the way they sagged on their supports, not to mention the inch-thick yer of grime and mold, made it clear nobody had lived here in a very, very long time. It had probably been a nice pce to live, I thought as I stepped across the living room and into the bedroom. But why would Grandpa Teddy bring me…

  No.

  No, no, no!

  I stumbled backwards like I'd been struck, my eyes glued to the horrible sight in front of me.

  "Do you know what that is?"

  I gasped and spun around, but it was just Grandpa Teddy.

  "It wasn't him!" I said.

  Teddy looked at me sadly and stepped into the room, going to stand by the opposite wall so that…it…was directly between us.

  The corpse of a young man y on the moldy carpet. Fresh too, not even a day old. I know it's morbid, but after being the Hunter for three years, I was able those kinds of things. But one particur thing about the corpse immediately jumped out at me: its hair.

  Its bright, snow white hair.

  "You know what this is, right?" Grandpa Teddy asked again in a low voice.

  "Yes, but it wasn't him!"

  He raised an eyebrow. "Are you saying that there's a sed ghul running around Burning Creek?"

  "There must be," I insisted. "He doesn't do that anymore!"

  I looked down at the corpse again. Far too young to have hair like that. And his face…it was torted even ih, an expression of pure terror permaly frozen onto his cold, unmoving form.

  "A ghoul?" Ethan asked curiously.

  "Ghul," I corrected him absentmindedly. "You spelled it wrong."

  "You realize that yambling with i lives, don't you?" Grandpa Teddy asked. "If you're wrong, and it is him—"

  "It's not!"

  "—then more people are going to die. People you could have saved if you'd acted sooner."

  I ched my fist. "It! Isn't! Him!"

  Grandpa Teddy studied me for a long mihen nodded.

  "Very well. For your sake, I hope you're right, Henry, because I'm pg you in charge of trag down this ghul and killing it."

  I took a step ba surprise. "M- Me? But that's not my job!"

  "I'm making it your job," Teddy said sternly. "This town is your home, which means that you are its first line of defense. Your duties may begin with sying maiams, but they most certainly do here."

  I hesitated, then nodded. What did I have to be scared of? It wasn't him.

  It wasn't!

  "I'm trusting you with this, Henry," Grandpa Teddy warned me. "You do what's necessary, 't you?"

  "You know I ."

  "No matter who it is?"

  I paused, then turned a. Grandpa Teddy didn't believe me. Fine! I would prove it. I'd catch this ghul and kill it, and nobody would ever say anything like this about him again!

  "Who were you two talking about?" Ethan asked as we desded the stairs. "Who does Teddy think did this?"

  I stopped just in front of the exit.

  "He's talking," I said slowly, "about ."