Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chocolate dipped hornet nests!

Anxiety was gnawing at my stomach as I crept through Burning Creek. The streets were empty apart from the occasional car, and the less occasional hobo sleeping on the side of the road. The night was cool, but the weather was practically a hot summer day compared to the chills that were racing up and down my spine.

About fifty feet in front of me, I could just make out Con.

Marmalade and moldy toenail clippings!

He was almost invisible, wearing that stupid black trench coat in the middle of the night. I thought he’d lost me more than once, only to spot him passing beneath a streetlight at the last second. But I didn’t dare get any closer than this. If he caught me following him…

The next white-haired corpse would be mine!

…it would lead to awkward questions that I didn’t feel like answering. He wasn’t the one killing people around town. I knew that. But the fact that I was stalking him like this would make it look like I didn’t trust him. If there was one thing on earth I didn’t want, it was…

To go another round with Zombiesauruscorn Rex!

…to ruin my relationship with Con. Adopted or not, ghul or not, he was my big brother! I just needed to prove to Grandpa Teddy that he was innocent. Then everything could go back to normal.

We were close to the center of town by now, and in the distance I could see the old blocky architecture of downtown Burning Creek giving way to the trees of Arden’s Park. Con paused, then looked around. Panic made my heart do a backflip, and I dove clumsily into a nearby alley.

“Careful!” Ethan, who was still riding on my shoulder, griped as I rolled and sprang back to my feet. “You trying to squish me or something?”

Ignoring him, I poked my head back out into the street, then breathed a sigh of relief. Con hadn’t moved. He stood outside the entrance to the park, looking at it as if he were debating whether to go in or not.

What’s going on, bro? I thought, watching him. Give me a hint here!

He stood like that for a long time before apparently making up his mind and heading into Arden’s Park. The park was even darker than the streets. There were lights along the path, but they were spaced further apart, and the trees blocked out the moonlight. My stomach squirmed a little at the sight. This would be the perfect place for a hungry ghul to find his next victim. A late night jogger, or maybe a homeless person sleeping on a bench. Unconsciously, I reached down and touched Splatsy. I needed to hurry before Con—

Stop it! I yelled at myself inside my head. He is not the killer!

Before those thoughts could return, I hurried into the park after him. I still kept my hand on Splatsy, though.

“I wanna ask you something!” Ethan blurted out, making me jump.

“Quiet!” I hissed at him. “Are you trying to give us away?”

“I wanna ask you something,” he said again, more quietly. “Why are you so against killing ghuls?”

His question hit me like a flaming brick, and before I knew what I was doing I had stopped in my tracks to glare at the microscopic menace.

“What the grilled bananas is that supposed to mean?” I demanded.

Ethan shrugged, blissfully oblivious. “You kill maiams all the time, don’t you? Killing a ghul wouldn’t be any different.”

“It is very different!” I snapped.

“How?”

“There’s…” I hesitated, then looked up at Con, who had gotten so far away that he’d nearly vanished into the darkness. I started jogging after him again.

“Welllll?” Ethan needled me. I ignored him for now.

A few minutes later, we reached the center of the park. There, a fountain with a statue of Samuel Arden—the settler who had given Burning Creek its name by pouring five hundred barrels of oil into Caterwaul Creek and then lighting it on fire—stood in silent watch over his empty memorial. Con stopped again, and I barely had time to duck behind a row of bushes before he spotted me.

This was it. I could feel it. Whatever was going down tonight, it would happen here. With butterflies doing the Macarena in my stomach, I peered between the leaves to watch.

Then I waited.

“There’s a big difference between maiams and ghuls,” I whispered a minute later. Ethan perked up again, his earlier question probably already lost in the hurricane of his hyperactive little brain. “A klaon has to do something terrible to become a maiam. Ghuls are just…born that way.”

“But they both hurt people,” Ethan pointed out.

Ahead of us, Con had sat down on the edge of the fountain and was staring blankly into the shadowy woods. What was he waiting for? The suspense was freaking killing me!

“Yeah, they do,” I reluctantly agreed. “But that doesn’t make them the same. Maiams are monsters. They want to hurt people. Ghuls…they act like monsters, but they’re really not. They might feed on fear, but it’s not because they want to. They have to, just like klaons have to feed on laughter. They’re just trying to survive.”

“But if they kill people—”

“They don’t have to kill people,” I interrupted him. “Just like I don’t have to make someone laugh themselves to death to feed on their laughter. Even for a ghul, killing somebody is a choice.”

A faint beeping rang through the park, and I realized Con’s watch was going off again. He shut it off, stood up, and removed his N.O.S.E. I tensed up a little as his skin shimmered, turning him back to his true klaon form, but this was an empty park in the middle of the night. He should be fine.

“They’re born that way,” I said again. “Nobody deserves to die for how they were born.”

Con’s body shimmered again, and I rubbed my eyes to make sure I wasn’t seeing things. Was he somehow wearing two N.O.S.E.s? Even if that were possible, why would he…

His skin became sickly pale, and his ears grew long and pointed. His teeth sharpened visibly, and his eyes became as silver as freshly minted coins. In the space of a few seconds, the brother I knew had disappeared, and was replaced with a face I hadn’t seen in so long that I’d almost forgotten it.

“What?” I asked, too stunned to say anything else. “What the what?”

For some reason, Con had let his NuYu pill wear off and become a ghul once again.

While my brain was still stumbling over itself, trying to make sense of what I was seeing, a sound caught my attention. My head whipped to the side, as did Con’s, just in time to see a second figure emerge from the darkness.

It was another ghul. A female this time.

“Paura?” Con called out to her, his voice raspier than it had been before. “What are you doing here?”

“I should be asking you that!” she replied.

I held my breath as they approached each other, until they were standing face to face on opposite sides of the fountain. Suddenly, I understood everything. This was the ghul who was killing people around town! Somehow, Con knew who she was and had come here to confront her about it. That was why he’d let himself change back into a ghul, I realized. So that this girl, whoever she was, would recognize him too.

They began to talk.

“Pastrami!” I cursed. They were close enough to each other now that they didn’t need to yell.

“What is it?” Ethan asked.

“I can’t hear them!”

The two of them were glaring at each other now. I had the feeling there was about to be a fight.

“I can help with that!” Ethan said, and before I could stop him, he’d leaped from my shoulder and flown away. I could only watch in horror as he zipped through the air, out into the open.

They were going to see him! It didn’t matter if Con or the girl saw him first, either way our cover would be blown and this would be all over. But the two ghuls were so focused on each other that the glowing blue doofus flitting back and forth just above their heads didn’t even catch their attention. Ethan hovered there for a second, and then zipped upwards into a nearby tree.

“Pickle fish finger raspberry jello soup!” I whispered. His glow was still plainly visible up there. All it would take was one glance in the wrong direction, and…

I had to do something before that happened. Quietly cursing up a buffet, I snuck out from behind my bush, creeping as stealthily as I could around the fountain’s perimeter. With every step, I expected to hear one of them yell, “Hey, someone’s eavesdropping on us!” and get dogpiled on by two angry ghuls. But whatever it was they were arguing about, I may as well have been on a different—

“That isn’t you!” the girl yelled.

I froze, kneeling out there in the open, my blood frozen with terror.

“That’s not your decision to make!” Con yelled back.

They hadn’t seen me! Pushing through the panic, I crawled as quickly as I could over to the tree where Ethan was hiding. Lobster thermidor, I’d almost wet my pants! I looked up and saw that Ethan was still hiding in the tree, glowing like a single Christmas light. I shook my head to work out the rest of my jitters, and then reached up and grabbed the lowest branch. It wasn’t a huge tree, but it felt strong enough to hold my weight. Hauling myself up, I gave the two ghuls a nervous look, and then continued upwards.

Soon I had reached the limb Ethan was hiding on. With sweaty palms, I straddled the branch and eased my way out onto it. Ohh, this was bad. This was very, very bad! If either of them looked up, there would be nowhere for me to hide! That meant my only choice was to get out there as quickly as I could, grab Ethan, and then get back to cover.

I was close enough to see him now. Sitting in the crook between two smaller branches, Ethan was watching the arguing ghuls and kicking his feet as if this were nothing more dangerous than movie night at Aesop’s place.

“Ethan!” I whispered.

He looked up, finally noticing me. “What are you doing up here?”

“What am I doing?” I hissed. “What are you doing? You’re going to get yourself killed!”

He scoffed. “Yeah, right. It’s your gigantic white butt that’s breaking the branch.”

“What are you talking about?” I asked.

He pointed behind me, and I craned my neck around to see…

Oh, salami and earwax salad.

The branch snapped with a deafening CRACK! Ethan took to the air. I wasn’t so lucky. Down I went, my legs still wrapped around the branch, until I crash landed on the hard pavement below.

Right in between Con and the other ghul.