AUTHOR'S NOTE: If you get tired of waiting for chapters, the entire book is avaible on Amazon in print and on Kindle!

  Chapter Five

  The bell above the door jingled as I led the way into New You. It was a small pce, but every inch of it was being put to use. Shelves stacked on shelves stacked on shelves, with pstic medie bottles crammed into every nook and y they could fit in. I noticed Ethan looking at them with i as we passed, but the only description they had was a series of tiny bels beh each row.

  "Banshee, taur, goblin, slime" he read them under his breath. "Lepre? Henry, what kind of pharmacy is this?"

  "Henry? Did I hear you say Henry?" a high pitched voice squeaked, and a tiny bald head poked up from behind the ter. "Ah, Henry Rider! Wele, wele! It has been three months, hasn't it?"

  I smiled as he scuttled out to shake my hand. He was a kon, like me, but his thinning hair was a bright green. The fluorest lights reflected off the two and a half inch thick gsses that covered his eyes, and his white b coat dragged on the floor behind him. In fact, all of his clothes seemed to be about four sizes too big for him.

  "Hi, Doc," I said, then poi my friends. "These are Ethan and Jade. Guys, this is Dr. Elle."

  His eyes lit up. "Oh please, call me Jack. These two, are they…new ers, perhaps?"

  "Nope, no, no," I hat line of thought it. "I'm just here for the usual."

  "Ah, young Mr. rad, yes." He studied me for a sed, his gsses making his eyes look five times bigger than they were. "How is he? Has he been adjusting well?"

  "Yeah. Ever since he…" I paused and looked at Ethan from the er of my eye. "…started taking his medie, he's been a lot happier. How's Heidi, by the way?"

  "As wild and free spirited as ever" Jack said wistfully. "I'm lucky if I get her to keep the store open instead of running off to…well, anyway, shall we go to the back? You know the procedure."

  I nodded a him lead me behind the ter. Just as we were about to gh the door that led to the ba, though, I gnced bad saw Ethan stepping behind the ter too.

  "Why don't you wait out here?" I asked. "I'll just be a few minutes."

  He frowned. "But you're not supposed to—"

  "Ethan, nothing is going to happen!" I snapped, more angrily than I meant to. "Just hang tight for a minute, and then we go home."

  "Okay, I guess…" He went to stand beside Jade, who was iing the bottles on the shelves.

  I turo find Jack looking at me with an eyebrow raised.

  "He doesn't o know," I said softly.

  Jack shrugged and led me to the back, where a cushioned dentist's office-style chair waited for us. He waved toward it, and I sat down.

  "How has business been?" he asked absentmindedly while fiddling with a shiny mae nearby that was as tall as I was.

  "Fine," I lied. If I'd been ho, I'd have had to tell him about Cousin Gumdrop's little visit today, and I didn't feel like crushing him with all that emotional baggage. I needed him alive to make 's medie.

  "Hold out your arm, please." I did, and he quickly jammed a needle into it. Being a big girl and not a little baby, I didn't even flinch. "Perfect! You rex now."

  A thin pstic tube ran from the needle to the mae Jack had been screwing with before. The mae rattled a bit, and my blood—as blue as the purest sapphire—began to fill the tube.

  Fear crawled up my spine, and I shuddered. Images of people began to fsh before my eyes. People with clear pstic hoses tied to their faces as they ughed untrolbly, uo stop, until they eventually died of sheer exhaustion. It had been two months since I'd discovered the ughter farm, but I don't think I'll ever be able tet it.

  More pictures. Memories that I’d done my best tet over the past few weeks.

  ask!

  Glowing talismans!

  The terror ihan’s eyes when I attacked him!

  Each image struck me like a bolt of lightning, and the tremors they sent c through my body were the thunder. I took a deep breath, f myself to calm down before I worked myself into a panic. It was over. I had survived, I had saved Ethan—and probably all of Mauldibamm too—and killed the masked man. It. Was. Finished.

  You know that's not true, the annoyingly sensible voi my head whispered. You still have no idea who built the farms, or how many more are out there. And you know Legion isn't dead! This is far from—

  "Finished!" Jack squeaked, jolti of my gloomy thoughts. I blinked in surprise, and saw the st drop of my blood get sucked into the mae. "You looked like you were deep in thought, Henry. Are you all right?"

  No. No, I'm not all right.

  "What, me?" I asked with a smirk. "Deep in thought? I just fell asleep with my eyes open.”

  He didn't look vinced, but luckily he didn't push me. He harmacist, after all. Not a therapist. Instead, he held up a handful of bandaids. "Flowers, sharks, or puppy dogs, Henry?"

  "Sharks, definitely!"

  While he removed the needle and patched the hole in my arm, the mae began to hum, a thin n of smoke ing from the top. Pipes whistled, gears ked, and with a wheeze like an asthmatic elephant, it coughed a handful of pills into a little e pstic bottle that was set in front of it. Each pill was as blue as the blood that had beeo make them.

  “And here we have it!” Jack decred, grabbing the bottle and screwing the lid on top before holding it out to me with a satisfied smile on his face. “That should be enough for the y days.”

  “Thanks, doc,” I said, taking the bottle. “I appreciate it, and so does .”

  “All in a day’s work!” He cpped his hands. “Now, shall I ring you up?”

  I sighed as I followed him back to the front of the store. Every time I came here, I hoped he would fet that part. Of course, I would feel bad if I left without paying, so I’d probably have reminded him anyway.

  Ethan was right where I’d left him, so either he’d fought a small army of bad guys in plete silend then disposed of their bodies, or absolutely nothing had happened in the five mihat I’d been back there. He only gave me the quickest of gnces when I emerged, and the straight back to studying the shelves. I bit my lip nervously, but pushed the worry aside. He couldn’t get into any trouble just by looking at them, I suppose.

  “That es out to seven hundred ay five dolrs,” Jack said, tapping numbers into an old fashioned cash register, “and fifty two ts!”

  My gut ched, but I pulled out my wallet and handed him my card anyway. I could afford it—being the cil’s Hunter came with a det sary—but I could still never shake the feeling that he’d hooked a sed IV to my back pocket and was sug my life savings up through it.

  “So, what exactly is all this?”

  I jumped and spun around, but it was just Ethan. Apparently, I’d been so heartbroken over my bank at’s sudden case of bulimia that I hadn’t heard him e up behind me. I opened my mouth to tell him not to sneak up on me, but before I could—

  “Oh, ied, are you?” Jack asked. I looked at him, and frowned when I saw the way his eyes were twinkling.

  “Uh, no,” I stammered. “No he’s just—”

  “I’d be happy to expin what we do here at New You to you, young man! I, ah, unfortunately, though, I’m not very good at making sales. I just make the medication, you see.”

  “That’s all right!” I tried to move so I was standing iweewo of them, but Ethan shoved me out of the way with a weird look. “We don’t want to bother you or anything.”

  “Heidi is the oh all the, ah, social skills.”

  “pletely uandable. Have a great day!”

  “Henry, what are you doing?” Ethan demanded as I started pushing him toward the door. “Cut it out!”

  This was bad, bad, bad. The absolute st thing I needed was for Ethan to get involved in all this. I could still remember the look in his eyes when he’d first discovered magic—a look that was disturbingly simir to the one he had now. I o get him out of here before Jack could…

  “Hold on just a minute,” said the miniscule doctor. “I’ll get her for you.”

  Too te.

  I looked back just as Jack pulled a bottle out of his coat pocket, identical to the one he’d just given me. He unscrewed the lid and pulled out a single pill. It wasn’t blue like mine were, but he still popped it into his mouth and swallowed it. At first nothing happened, but suddenly he shivered.

  And began to grow.

  “Oh, sushi donuts,” I whispered.

  It took less than three seds for the tiny little man to bee taller than both me ahan. But it didn’t stop there. His skin darkened, going from konishly white to humanishly pink. The thinning hair on his head grew back right before my eyes, and soon reached below his shoulders, golden blond now rather than green. His chest swelled, his hips widehe clothes that had been several sizes too big mere seds ago now fit perfectly. He reached up and took the gsses from his fad opened his eyes, which were now as blue as o water.

  “Hey guys,” he—or should I say, she—said. “I’m Heidi.”

  Ethan’s jaw hit the floor.