Chapter 6:

Chapter Six

Henry Rider and the First Hunter's Hammer

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Chapter Six

“I’ll kill him!” I yelled, pacing back and forth through the living room. I’d been doing that a lot today, hadn’t I? “That piece of casu marzu! If he even thinks about touching them, I will hunt him down and kill him like the pile of maiam crap he is!”

By the way, don’t look up what casu marzu is. Trust me on this.

About forty five minutes had passed since Blurry had disappeared. I’d tried to follow him through the Corner, but those things are really hard to find if you don’t know exactly where they are and where they lead. Now it was past eleven o’clock, and I had school in the morning, but the idea of going to bed hadn’t even crossed my mind. I was as charged as an energy drink that had been struck by lightning.

“Henry, stop,” Jade begged me.

I had Splatsy in my hands, but I didn’t dare swing her. I already had a giant hole in my floor to worry about. I didn’t feel like explaining how the living room furniture had gotten all smashed up too when Mom and Dad…

Mom and Dad.

“I’LL KILL HIM!” I screamed again.

“Henry, please sit down,” Jade said again, reaching out toward me. I slapped her hand away and kept pacing.

“A lot of help you were, all nice and cozy in your core!” I spat. “I hope you were having a good time in there while I was bargaining to keep my parents alive!”

She ignored the jab. “You need to calm down.”

I spun to glare at her. “How am I supposed to calm down knowing Ichabod has my whole family captive?”

“We can—”

“And that the only way I can save them is by helping him do the one thing I’ve spent the last year trying to freaking stop?”

“We’re not saying you shouldn’t be upset,” Ethan piped up. He was still sitting on the minicouch. “But you’ll never be able to come up with a plan while you’re raging like this.”

Right. He was right. I hated that he was right, but he was right. Shrinking Splatsy back to ping pong paddle form, I hung her from my belt and went to sit down on the…I paused, looking at the indent that Ichabod had left on the couch cushion, then went and sat in the recliner instead. I didn’t even want my butt to touch what his butt had touched.

As soon as I sat down, I started rocking back and forth like I was trying to catapult myself to the moon. I tried to unclench my fists, but couldn’t.

Jade sighed. “I think that’s the best we can hope for right now.”

“So,” said Ethan, spreading his hands, “what are our options?”

“We could go to the council,” Jade suggested. “Teddy is a representative, so they’re bound to notice that he’s missing.”

“Yeah, great idea!” I snapped. “If they put as much effort into finding him as they are for the laughter farm problem, I’ll have my family back in twenty years!”

I got up and started pacing again, my temper flaring too high to just sit there.

“And in case you’ve forgotten, Ichabod is on the council too!” I ranted. “Do you really think he’d go to all the effort to kidnap my family just to agree to help un-kidnap them? And don’t forget that Legion is possessing Victoria. Oh yeah, wouldn’t that be a fun teamup?”

“Maybe we can do it without involving Ichabod or Victoria,” Jade said.

“That just leaves us with Patricia, and she’s going to insist on doing things by the book. That means getting Ichabod and Victoria involved—and, oh hey, look at that! We’re right back where we freaking started!”

“Jade is only trying to help,” Ethan snapped.

“Yeah, well, Ichabod isn’t going to let my family go just because we made such a gosh darn good effort,” I shot back, “so if Jade wouldn’t mind trying just a little bit harder, that would be great!”

Ethan was on his feet a moment later, stepping between me and Jade. “Henry, that’s enough!”

Without thinking, I grabbed him by his shirt. “No, it isn’t enough! It will never be enough until my family is safe and sound!”

“We know you’re upset,” he said infuriatingly calmly, “but abusing your friends isn’t going to help anything.”

“My parents—”

“Some of us already know what it’s like to lose our families!” A spark of anger appeared in Ethan’s eyes. “And they aren’t coming back.”

His words hit me like a whale-sized baseball bat. Letting go of his shirt, I stumbled backwards, putting a hand to my head. The room felt like it was spinning. I could feel Ethan and Jade’s eyes on me, piercing straight through the layer of white-hot anger and seeing the scared little girl beneath.

“I- I’m sorry,” I stammered. “I didn’t mean…”

Before I knew what was happening, Ethan had me wrapped up in a hug. Normally, that would have had me blushing harder than a simile I’m in no mood to make, but today it just hammered home how good of a friend he was to put up with my outbursts the way he did, and how lucky I was to have him. Jade joined him a moment later, their combined hug power proving to be stronger than a security blanket, and it was all I could do to keep from breaking down into tears.

“It’s okay, Henry,” Ethan said. “We’re going to get them back. I promise!”

A tear rolled down my cheek. Just one, I swear.

“We’re here with you until the end, Henry,” said Jade. “We’ve always been able to count on you, so now you can count on us.”

Okay, fine. Two tears. One for each friend.

“But you can’t let Ichabod get to you.” Jade said, letting me go. Ethan followed and sat down beside her on the minicouch. For once, I didn’t have it in me to be jealous. “He wants you to panic and lash out. Staying calm and thinking critically are how you’re going to beat him, and he knows that.”

“That’s when you’ve always been at your best,” Ethan added.

I looked at him. “My best?”

He nodded. “When you’re thinking. Remember how you beat Alicia?”

“I…took a pill that turned me into a ghul, then I turned into her worst fear,” I said. “Which also happened to be me. Then I turned her into a goldfish.”

“Exactly! You didn’t win because you were stronger than her, you won because you were smarter! That’s what you’re best at, Henry. You think outside the box and come up with solutions that nobody else could ever predict or counter!”

“And nothing could possibly be worse for Ichabod than you putting that imagination to work against him,” Jade agreed. “That means you need to stay strong, Henry. I know it’s hard, but you can do it.”

I shook my head. “I don’t know what—”

“Do it for your family’s sake!

I paused, then clenched my fist and nodded.

“I think this is a good place to start,” Ethan said, reaching out and picking up the envelope Ichabod had left us. “Have you looked inside it?”

I perked up. “There’s something inside?”

Ethan nodded and pulled out a sheet of paper, handing it to me. I unfolded it and held it up to the lamp to see. There were only seven words written on it, in the same handwriting as on the envelope.

I am ready to take the Trials.

“Any idea what that means?” Ethan asked.

I shook my head and handed it back to him. “It must be a message for whoever this sender is that Ichabod wants us to return the envelope to.”

“Then our first order of business is to figure out who that is,” Jade concluded.

“Henry, you’ve been getting these letters for years,” Ethan said, slipping the note back into the envelope. “Do you have any idea where they’re coming from?”

I shrugged. “The mail slot just spits them out whenever there’s a maiam for me to kill.”

“They have to come from somewhere.”

“Not really,” I argued. “It’s magic. Someone enchanted it to poof me up a letter whenever a klaon becomes a maiam, so that’s what it does.”

“Maybe.” Ethan didn’t sound convinced. For a minute, he just stared at the letter. “Have you ever tried looking through the mail slot, though?”

I paused. Had I ever tried looking through the mail slot? It sounded like the kind of thing I would do, but now that I thought about it, I didn’t think I ever had. With nothing better to go on, I went to the entryway, Ethan and Jade half a step behind me, and knelt down in front of the door. With one hand, I raised the mail slot’s metal flap, and pressed my face up against it to peer through.

“Do you see anything?” Jade asked.

“I…I’m not sure,” I admitted. “I think I see a light, but it’s too thin to make anything out.”

“Should we slide the letter through and see what happens?” asked Ethan.

I raised the letter, but hesitated. “What if we’re wrong and this isn’t what we’re supposed to do?”

“Then we’ll try something else.”

“But how are we going to get the letter back?”

Ethan paused and shared a look with Jade.

“Maybe we should wait,” he said a moment later. “Think about this for a while longer, and—”

I shook my head. “No, we don’t have that kind of time. Whatever it is Ichabod wants us to get for him, he’s only going to give us three days to do it. If we have to stop and think every step of this through, we’ll never be able to do this in time.”

“So what are you going to do?” Jade asked.

I took a slow, deep breath. “I’m going to follow our only lead and hope for the best.”

Then I slid the letter through the mail slot.

“Come on,” I whispered, pressing my face against the door again. “Come on!”

At first nothing happened. With every second that passed, my heart felt a little heavier. Had we been wrong after all? Had I just thrown away my only key to getting my—

Suddenly, a sound came from the other side of the door. It sounded like…trumpets?

I glanced back at Ethan and Jade. “You guys heard that too, right?”

They nodded mutely, eyes wide.

Slowly, I stood up and reached for the doorknob.

“Are you sure that’s a good idea, Henry?”

“Not in the slightest,” I answered.

I turned the knob and opened the door just a crack.

“YOU HAVE ACCEPTED THE—”

I slammed the door closed again.

“Nope!”

Ethan was by my side in an instant. “What did you see?”

“Nuh uh!” I turned around and walked away. “It’s too much!”