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Chapter Thirty Five



“Henry, wait!”

I ignored Ethan, sprinting across Jah Beryge on my freshly healed leg, my exhaustion forgotten. Mom’s voice echoed in my ears even after I’d hung up the phone.

“Henry, where are you? Your father and I must have fallen asleep in the middle of our talk last night. What is this all over the entryway? And did you break the living room window?”

Just hearing her voice had made me want to burst into tears and laugh like a lunatic at the same time. I had compromised by making the weirdest noise that had ever come out of my mouth, like a llama imitating a foghorn—”HHHHYUUUUAAARGH!”—and now I was racing toward the entrance platform like a dog toward the world’s biggest fire hydrant. The monks were forced to jump out of my way or else get knocked off the narrow walkways. Call me inconsiderate if you want. I’m not the one who ignored every single OSHA regulation ever when building this place.

But why?

The thought kept running through my mind, cutting through happier thoughts like a shark’s fin in an otherwise calm ocean. It didn’t make sense. I had failed. By not figuring out that Blurry wanted the Key of Mentis instead of the First Hunter’s Hammer, I had forced him to come to Jah Beryge to get the job done himself. I didn’t have a ton of experience in the matter, but if I were going to hold somebody’s family for ransom, this was the kind of outcome that would force me to…I tried not to think about it.

Who the brussel sprout burrito cares? I argued. Your family is alive! That’s all that matters!

Reaching what had until recently been the entrance platform, I fixed my eyes on the door floating in midair, charged my shoes with every ounce of magic I could spare without killing myself, and jumped!

A few shouts of alarm rang out around me as I blasted off the end of the broken marble bridge, a blue and white skydiver who had forgotten to pack a parachute. For a couple terrifying seconds, I wasn’t sure if I was going to make it…but then I slammed face first into the door.

I stuck to it for a couple of seconds like a cartoon character, and then quickly began to slide down. I frantically grabbed hold of the top of the door with my right hand while my left clawed for the doorknob. I could feel my hand slipping. After that last bit of magic, I barely had enough energy left in me to keep from passing out. If I didn’t get inside quick…

The knob turned and the door swung open, dumping me into my entryway.

I scrambled back to my feet, nearly slipping and falling right back through the door. The floor, walls, and ceiling were still absolutely coated in black maiam goo. Once I had my balance, I swung the door closed behind me, and half-ran, half-skated into the living room as quickly as I could.

“Mom!” I yelled. “Dad! Grandpa…”

There was nobody there.

For a few seconds, I just stared at the empty room. The slime didn’t reach this far, but the broken glass from the window still covered the floor, glinting in the early evening sunlight. Bugs buzzed through the air, having happily taken the opportunity to claim squatter’s rights while I was away.

Fear began to grip my heart, and I kicked myself for being so stupid. Something about this had smelled bad from the start, but I’d forced myself to ignore it. Had I just charged headfirst into a trap? I didn’t know what was worse. The thought that I might be about to die, alone and exhausted, or that my family was still…

A footstep came from behind me, and I froze. My hand instinctively went to draw Splatsy before remembering she wasn’t there anymore. And of course I had left George in Jah Beryge. No Prinkle and Prunkle, no Globber. That just left me with Spazzy Basil, and he was useless without magic to power him with.

I heard another footstep…no, multiple footsteps…and clenched my fist. I might have been unarmed, but if Blurry thought that made me helpless, then he had no idea what Hunters were capable of.

A shadow crept into the living room, its owner right behind me. I braced myself, and then spun around.

“Henry!” Dad exclaimed, coming into the living room with a broom and dustpan in his hands. “There you are!”

“We were worried,” Mom said, stepping out of the kitchen, with Grandpa Teddy half a step behind her. “Where were you?”

I just stood there and looked at them.

“Henry?” Grandpa Teddy asked. “Are you crying? What’s—”

I dashed forward, grabbing all three of them in a gigantic hug.

“Henry!” Dad exclaimed. “What’s gotten into you?”

“I’m just so…so happy that you’re…all okay!” I sobbed. I was crying like a baby, but I didn’t care. I buried my face in my dad’s chest in a way I hadn’t done since I was five years old, soaking the fabric with my tears. “I was so scared!”

“Scared of what?” Mom asked, stunned.

I reluctantly let them go, taking a step back. “You…You really don’t remember anything?”

“I remember that your grandpa said he needed to talk to us,” Mom answered. “And then the next thing we knew, it was daytime. We must have fallen asleep.”

“And what is all this?” Dad asked, gesturing toward the tar-like muck before brushing past me to start sweeping up the broken glass. “Did you make this mess Henry?”

I couldn’t help but snort a little. I’d had my family back for less than a minute, and I was already in trouble. I already knew there was nothing I could say to convince them that this wasn’t my fault. Well, there was one thing, but I decided without even having to think about it that I wasn’t going to tell them about that. I didn’t know what they had gone through over the past three days, but if they really didn’t remember, then that was for the best.

I would probably have to pay to replace the window with my own allowance—they were keeping all the money I earned from being the Hunter in a bank account until I turned eighteen—and I’d definitely have to spend the rest of the day scrubbing the entryway, but I didn’t care. All that mattered was that they were here…and I was here…we were all here, together, just like how things should have always been.

A fresh wave of tears poured down my face. “I love you guys!”

Mom raised her eyebrows. “What’s gotten into you, Henry? Is something wrong?”

I shook my head violently. “No! Everything’s perfect! But even so…can you please say you love me too?”

“Oh, honey!” Mom exclaimed, pulling me into another hug. “We do love you!”

“We all do,” Grandpa Teddy agreed, putting his hand comfortingly on my back.

I turned to look into the living room. “Dad?”

Dad’s eyes glinted like he was going to crack one of his lame jokes, but then apparently thought better of it. “Of course I love you, Henry.”

I let go of Mom and went to lean against the wall, letting myself just be…happy. I was still trying not to sob like a baby who’d just had her binky stolen, but I was happy. A warmth was growing in my chest, like the sun was rising inside me, filling an empty spot that hadn’t stopped aching once over the past three days. I felt safe. Safe enough that I could curl up and go to sleep right here, and feel as secure as a newly hatched chick in its nest. A chick with a kill count in the triple digits, but still.

At the same time, though, I didn’t want to close my eyes for even a second. Part of me was terrified that if I did, my family would disappear again before I opened them. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but happy endings aren’t really something I’m used to dealing with. Even now, something was whispering in the back of my mind that this wasn’t right. Any second now, the other shoe was going to drop, and things would be worse than ever. Water grows, grass is wet, and the universe is always looking for ways to kick Henry Rider when she’s down.

“Honey, can you help me clean this up?” Dad asked, and Mom went into the living room to help him sweep up the glass, leaving me alone in the entryway with Grandpa Teddy. For a few seconds, we just watched them work.

“I take it,” Grandpa Teddy finally said, his voice soft, “that there’s something you aren’t telling us?”

I hesitated, then nodded. Grandpa Teddy didn’t look very impressive. Even as his granddaughter, I could admit that. But if you looked close enough, there was always a sharpness in his eyes that told you he was watching everything, always thinking, and that he understood more than he let on.

“You’ve changed, Henry.”

I looked at him. “What do you mean?”

“I’m not sure myself, exactly,” he admitted. “But you’re holding yourself differently. Whatever happened, it left a mark—and not an entirely good one, I don’t think.”

Slowly, I raised a hand and pressed it against my chest, then nodded.

“Do you want to talk about it?” he asked.

“I don’t think so,” I said. “Not right now.”

He nodded as well. “I understand. A lot can happen in three days. Just know that your family will always be here for you, Henry.”

Another tear ran down my cheek, and I stepped into the living room.

“You guys need any help?” I asked.

Mom and Dad looked at me, surprised.

“You?” Dad asked. “Offering to help clean?”

“I think aliens must have come and abducted our daughter last night,” Mom said, cracking a smile.

“And then replaced her with a clone while we were asleep,” Dad agreed.

“I’m not a clone, I’m a brain parasite,” I said, turning my nose up proudly. “And for your information, I’m going to wait until you go to sleep tonight and then infect you with…”

My voice trailed off as a thought occurred to me. I frowned, my forehead scrunching up with thought.

And then a chill ran down my spine.

Last night.

“Henry?” Dad asked.

Slowly, I turned around to look at Grandpa Teddy.

“How did you know that it’s been three days?” I asked.

For a fraction of a second, Grandpa Teddy’s eyes widened. Then he closed them, shaking his head with a sigh.

“Hold her for me, would you?”

“Sure, Dad.”

Before I knew what was going on, two pairs of hands grabbed my arms and forced them against my back, like I was about to be handcuffed.

Panic surged through my veins, and I struggled to break free. The grip they had on me wasn’t particularly strong, but I was also exhausted. I immediately knew that I could get away, but it would take me a few seconds, and that might be…

I craned my neck around, and my blood ran cold when I saw who it was holding me.

“M- Mom?” I asked. “Dad?”

“Sorry, honey,” Dad said, his face strangely blank.

“This will only take a minute,” Mom agreed, her face equally expressionless.

Horror washed over me, and I completely forgot about fighting as I turned to face Grandpa Teddy again. He pulled something out of his pocket. It was small and metallic, like a bronze rod that was only a couple of inches long, with a pair of metal rings clenched between his fingers.

The Key of Mentis.

“It was you all along,” I whispered.

“I had so desperately hoped that it wouldn’t come to this,” Teddy said, looking down at the key regretfully. “But I suppose I knew from the very beginning that it would.”

“You’re the one who’s been building the laughter farms!” I exclaimed, hardly able to believe the words coming out of my mouth. “I thought it was Ichabod. He said it wasn’t, and I thought he was lying. But all this time, he was telling the truth, and you…”

He raised his eyes to look at me, and again I was struck by the sheer coldness in them.

“Yes, it’s true,” he admitted. “The laughter farms were my creation. And so, regrettably, is Legion.”

I stared at my grandpa in a nauseating mixture of disbelief and revulsion. This couldn’t be true. I was dreaming. Or maybe I’d died when Jah Beryge had collapsed after all, and this was the hell I was going to be spending the next few eternities in. That made sense, I thought, my brain frantically trying to claw any sort of sense out of this insanity. Between Opisthia letting me off the hook for my crimes and my parents being okay, things had been going suspiciously well for me, hadn’t they? Everything was all right. This was nothing but my eternal punishment for…

I looked into Grandpa Teddy’s eyes again, and the freezing shock they sent through my veins jolted me back into reality. No, I realized. I was still alive, and this was all too real.

“But…But why?” I demanded.

“Why?” Teddy echoed, his eyes widening. “Is that a serious question?”

“I saw what was going on in those farms!” I insisted. “All that pain and death! My grandpa would never allow something like that to happen, much less cause it!”

“Your grandfather,” he said, looking away, “has seen far too much suffering in his life to be phased by it anymore.”

I stared at him, uncomprehending, and the only word I could get to come out of my mouth was, “Why?”

“Because our people are dying, Henry!” he snapped. “Don’t tell me you haven’t noticed! There are thousands…no, tens of thousands of Blues like you and me out there who can barely scrape up enough laughter to stay alive. Do you know how many of the maiams you fight used to be Blues? Eighty eight percent! Who cares about them, Henry? The Reds see us as doormats. The Purples and Greens see us as lazy beggars. When nobody is willing to offer a helping hand, drastic measures have to be taken!”

“Drastic measures?” I shot back in disbelief. “You’re torturing innocent people! Murdering them! That’s what you call drastic measures?”

“I am torturing and murdering humans,” he corrected me, his expression growing even darker, even colder. “And why not? We are not humans, and humans are not klaons. Why should they be treated any differently than we treat cows, chickens, and pigs?”

My mouth fell open. It couldn’t really be my grandpa saying these horrible things. It just couldn’t!

“They were put here in this world to feed us, Henry, and they haven’t been doing their job,” he said. “I’m not proud of the steps I’ve had to take to ensure their cooperation, but somebody had to step in. Somebody had to say that enough was enough. No more starving klaons. No more maiams born from the agonizing depths of hunger that nobody should ever have to experience. Nobody else was willing to take this step, Henry, so I did it.”

“Nobody else did it because nobody should do it!” I argued. “This is evil, Grandpa Teddy, and you know it!”

“Evil?” he shouted, his eyes lighting up with anger. “Is it evil to want to help the disadvantaged? The ones who lack the ability to survive on their own? If that is evil, granddaughter, then it’s an evil in which you have gleefully been partaking of over the past couple of years!”

I opened my mouth, then blinked in confusion.

“What did you say?” I asked.

“Where do you think those inhalers came from?” he asked, his voice growing deathly calm. “All that laughter that you’ve been greedily pumping down your throat, day after day, canister after canister.”

My whole body went numb, and I shook my head.

“No,” I whispered. “No, you’re lying! They weren’t!”

“They were!” he yelled, pulling one of those very inhalers out of his other pocket and giving it a spray. Rainbow mist filled the air. It smelled delicious—no, no, no! My stomach turned over inside me, and I had to fight not to throw up. “If I’m evil for what I’ve done, Henry, then so are you! Do you have any idea how many of your precious humans have had to die just to keep your tummy nice and full?”

I slumped in my parents’ arms, the strength vanishing from my legs. I could only stare at that inhaler…that little piece of pure evil.

How had I never put the pieces together? All this time, the answer to the puzzle had been staring me right in the face. Farms designed to drain humans of their laughter. Inhalers full of human laughter, delivered conveniently to my doorstep. Had I really been that blind? Or had I been turning away, deliberately overlooking what should have been obvious?

My mind flashed back to what I had seen in that first farm. People with plastic tubes jammed down their throats, laughing uncontrollably while their bodies wasted away. And they had been doing that…

For me.

“NO!” I roared, my strength rushing back into my body. Without thinking, I shoved against my parents, knocking them both to the floor. Then, blinded with rage, I lunged for my grandpa.

POW!

Smoke and the smell of gunpowder billowed through the living room. I froze midstep, one of my feet suspended in the air, my hands outstretched to grab Grandpa Teddy around the neck. Teddy stood there in front of me, his face cold. In his hands was my Barnaby McBoomboom’s Time Stopper Party Popper.

“Don’t worry, Henry,” he said, dropping the spent popper and pulling out the Key of Mentis again. “In just a few minutes, you won’t remember any of this.”

My eyes tried to widen in terror, but I couldn’t move a muscle. Time had been frozen for everyone in the room except Grandpa Teddy. That party popper was the strongest that Barnaby McBoomboom offered, guaranteed to stop time for at least thirty minutes. I was, at that moment, more helpless than I had ever been in my life.

“You will be the perfect granddaughter,” he said, taking a step toward me and raising the key. “You will never disobey me again. You will never stick your nose where it doesn’t belong. You will go to school, you will come home, you will spend time with your friends on the weekends, and occasionally you will fight maiams. You won’t remember Legion or the laughter farms, and even if you heard about them, you wouldn’t care.”

He extended his hand until the key was only an inch away from my forehead.

“It’s better this way, Henry,” he promised me, and I was horrified to see genuine sincerity in his eyes. “You’ll be happier. Everyone will be happier. Even—”

The front burst open, and suddenly Ethan and Jade were there. Ethan held out his spellhammer, and Jade drew the pirate sword she’d taken from the Jiggly Trombone.

“I wouldn’t be happy,” said Ethan.

“Neither would I!” Jade agreed.

Teddy’s eyes flashed angrily again, and his left hand tightened around his cane. My heart leaped into my throat, remembering what that thing had done to Splatsy. Opisthia had said it was imbued with a spell of some kind. That meant that the spell was programmed, for lack of a better word, into the cane itself, and all Teddy had to do was feed some magic into it to cast it. I didn’t know exactly what spell it was, but I guessed it was a shattering spell, meant to spread veins of magic through whatever it touched and then violently expand, forcing them apart. Whatever it was, it had to be powerful, considering how easily it had broken through the Vault’s defenses. The last thing I wanted to see was what it did to human flesh.

But Grandpa Teddy hesitated. He knew how powerful Ethan was, even untrained, and right now Ethan was the one who held the advantage. Teddy needed to touch something with his cane to cast his spell, and Ethan was nearly ten feet away. All Ethan had to do was spout his mantra, and he could unleash a burst of unsculpted magic at him no matter how far away they were from each other. Grandpa Teddy didn’t carry that cane around just for show. Age had left him with a limp, and he grew a little slower with every passing year.

Hope began to blossom in my chest. This was a standoff Teddy couldn’t win.

And how do you think this is going to end? the ever-present, ever irritating voice of logic whispered into my ear. If Teddy tries to fight, Ethan will turn him into a smoldering crater. But if he just gives up…

That would be even worse, I realized. I imagined dragging Teddy in front of the Council of Shnoob and explaining that my own grandfather was the one behind the laughter farms. Getting them to shut up and listen to me was always hard, and the fact that Teddy was, himself, a member of the council would only make things worse. Maybe now that I knew Ichabod was a member of the Brotherhood of Zanni, he would actually try to be useful for once in his life by taking my side.

If I had been able to move, I would have rolled my eyes at the thought. Maybe afterwards I could hire an aardvark to babysit my ant farm.

But it wasn’t the thought of fighting the council that filled my heart with dread. It was what would happen if I won. What would happen to my grandpa then? Imagining him being locked in a dark, cold jail cell for the rest of his life made it feel like my heart was being ripped in half.

I knew he deserved it. He deserved that and so much more for what he had done. But he was still my grandfather, and the thought of him spending his final years—as few as they were—behind bars made me want to cry.

And that was assuming that they did lock him up, and not…something even worse.

But those were thoughts for another time. The tension in the room right now was thick enough to scoop out of the air and serve with chocolate syrup and a split banana. I was still frozen, and that wasn’t going to change for at least twenty five more minutes, which meant all I could do was silently watch as my best friend and the boy I loved faced off against my own grandfather.

Please, I begged the whoopee cushion in the sky. Whatever you want, I’ll do it. Just please don’t let either of them hurt each other!

Finally, Teddy’s eyes slid off of Ethan and back onto me.

“Henry,” he said, “I want you to remember something.”

If I could have blinked in surprise, I would have.

“If you’re wondering whether or not I used the Key of Mentis on your parents, the answer is yes. I didn’t change much. Their memories and personalities are all the same. Once this little altercation is over, they will forget about it just like they forgot the past three days. But I did make one very important change: if something happens to me, or if certain secrets become public knowledge, they have both been instructed to have a little accident.”

My whole body went cold.

Ethan’s face turned red. “You son of a—”

“I am not lying,” he went on, reading my mind. “And yes, I will sacrifice my own daughter to ensure that my plans reach fruition. It will feel like tearing out my own heart, but I will do it.”

You don’t have a heart, you insane monster! I screamed inside my head.

“You may not be capable of seeing the bigger picture, Henry, but the fate of an entire people hangs in the balance. That is more important than any one klaon, no matter how much I care for them. I will save these people Henry, and I will not let anyone stop me. Not you. Not Ichabod. Not that damned puppet! Stay where you belong, keep your nose out of my business, and everything will remain exactly how it should be. But if you continue to fight me…”

He looked at my parents, lying motionless on the floor, and icy terror wrapped around my heart.

“You’ve been warned,” he said, his voice dark. “So whatever happens now, you will have nobody but yourself to blame.”

“I don’t know if you’ve noticed,” Ethan said, taking a step toward him, “but we’ve got you cornered! Even if you somehow got past me and Jade, the entire Brotherhood of Zanni is waiting for you right on the other side of that—”

Grandpa Teddy tapped his cane on the ground, and the floorboards beneath us exploded! Smoke filled the air, and a wave of force threw Ethan and Jade onto their backs. The only reason I wasn’t knocked over as well was because I was still frozen in time. Dirt and grit stung my eyes, but I was powerless to do anything about it. All I could do was stand there, one leg in the air, and wait for the breeze coming in through the broken window to clear the air, even though I already knew exactly what I would see when it did.

Sure enough, once the dust settled, Grandpa Teddy was gone.


NEXT CHAPTER 3/11/26