Chapter Twenty Six

Chapter Twenty Six

Squeezing past Jade, Ethan sprinted to the door and rammed his shoulder into it—and bounced right off. The poor guy was a featherweight to begin with, but going up against a ghul at the height of its power? He never stood a chance. If Con wanted to keep us in his little house of horrors, we weren’t going anywhere.

“Open up!” Ethan yelled, pounding his fists against the door. “Let us out!”

“It’s too late for that.”

Ethan spun to look at a picture frame that was hanging just beside the door. The painting it held was of an old English dude in a black coat and top hat. Even as we watched, it turned its head to glare right at Ethan.

“You belong to us now!” it said. The skin began to melt from its face. Ethan recoiled with a cry of fear, but the painting’s eyes never left him. Not even when the rest of its face was gone, and its skull was giving him a manic smile.

“Con, knock it off!” Paura snapped.

The painting ignored her. The skeleton, with its bloodshot eyes still trained on Ethan, reared back in its frame and then lunged forward. Its forehead slammed into the glass, cracking it. It lunged again, and the cracks grew bigger. Ethan had his back against the wall, too terrified to move.

That meant it was up to me to save him. Big surprise.

Drawing Splatsy and extending her to warhammer form, I galloped down the hall as fast as I could.

“Ethan, duck!” I yelled. Luckily, he managed to tear his eyes from the possessed painting long enough to see me coming, and dropped to his knees.

I swung Splatsy, which wasn’t easy in such a cramped corridor. I ended up taking out a huge chunk of wood from the opposite wall in the process, but I still managed to slam her directly into the painting. That entire section of wall imploded from the force, shattering the painting into a million tiny pieces. A dust cloud was kicked up, and I raised Splatsy again in case Con tried something else.

And what are you going to do if he does? asked the annoyingly logical voice in my head. Kill him? Do Cousin Gumdrop’s job for her?

I gritted my teeth. Did I want to hurt Con? Absolutely mustard bageling not. But I would do it if that meant protecting the boy I lo—

“If you want to see me that badly,” came Con’s taunting voice, “then come and find me!”

The dust cleared, and I lowered Splatsy when I saw there was nothing there except an impromptu door to another room.

“Now what?” I asked.

“Now we do things my way,” Paura snapped, shoving me aside so she could climb through the hole I’d made. “I know this place from top to bottom. We’ll find him, just stick close to me.”

“Unless he finds us first,” I heard Jade mutter behind me.

Ducking down to follow her, I passed through the wall and into the next room. This one, from what little I could see, looked like a library. Another skeleton sat in a moldy armchair by the fireplace with an old book in its lap, and even in the dark I could see the lightbulbs in its eyes and the machinery at the back of its skull. It didn’t take a genius to know that if when I took a step closer to it—

The eyes lit up and the jaw fell open to let out a bone chilling scream. Other than that, it didn’t move.

“You’ll have to do better than that, Con,” I shouted.

“Henry!” Jade scolded. “Don’t provoke—”

The skeleton burst into flames and leaped to its feet, coming straight toward me.

“IT BURNS!” it wailed in a voice that was horrifyingly realistic. “OH MY GOD, HELP ME! IT BUUURRRRRNS!”

Now, you know me. You know that I face horrors a thousand times worse than this on a daily basis. But before you judge me, let me just point out that even a certified, forged-in-fire badmuffin like me can jump and scream when they’re startled.

Okay? Okay.

So I screamed and scrambled to back away from the flaming corpse, but as soon as my horsebutt touched the bookshelf behind me, the entire floor began to move. It and the bookshelf were rotating, and I had just enough time to realize what was happening before it swept me away.

Or at least it would have swept me away if my bottom half hadn’t gotten wedged in between the bookshelf and the wall.

Having done its job, the flaming skeleton stopped screaming and crumbled to ashes, leaving the way clear for my friends to run to me. They dashed forward, shoving on the other end of the bookshelf. It resisted at first, but then with a groan it began to give way. I put both hands on the wall behind me, trying to squeeze through, but I was still wedged in there like a hippo trying to go through an airport x-ray machine.

“If anyone could turn a literal haunted house into a slapstick routine,” Ethan muttered as he pushed, “it would be Henry.”

Finally, the bookshelf relented, and I was able to get out.

“About time you did something useful,” I said, dusting my hands off.

Ethan gave me an offended look. “What’s that supposed—”

“Not you,” I snapped, and pointed at my horsebutt. “That!”

“We have to keep moving,” Paura said, heading for the door. “If we can get to the house’s control room, we can shut everything off. Con will still have his ghul powers, but at least he won’t have the entire house to use against us.”

I rubbed at a scrape I’d gotten when the bookcase slammed against me. “How far is it?”

“For you? You’d never find it,” Paura answered a little more smugly than I liked. “This place has secret doors and passages everywhere. It’s how the actors get from place to place without the guests seeing them. But I know the layout just as good…no, better…than Con. If you do what I say, we’ll be there in less than five minutes.”

I sighed in relief. Five minutes, and this whole nightmare would be—

The lights flickered. When they came back on, Ethan was missing.

“Ethan!” I screamed, shoving past Paura to get back into the hallway.

“Henry, don’t go off on your own!” Jade yelled after me.

I skidded to a stop in the corridor. “Ethan, where are you?”

“Henry!”

I spun around just in time to see Ethan be dragged around a corner. His eyes were wide with fear, and he clawed desperately at the floor, but it was no good. I charged after him, Splatsy held at the ready, and rounded the corner.

There was nobody there.

“Ethan? Ethan!” I screamed at the top of my lungs. “Answer me!”

There was no reply except for the organ music and the sound effects. I raised Splatsy, ready to tunnel straight through the walls until I found him—and someone grabbed my wrist.

“He’s that way!” Jade said, pointing.

I paused. “How do you know?”

“He still has my core. I can feel where it is.”

“Then can’t you do anything to help him?” I yelled.

Jade shook her head, teeth clenched. “Not unless he wishes for it.”

“Armpit casserole!” I cursed. Freaking genies!

“We can still get to him if you run,” Jade said, hopping onto my back and pointing further into the house. “That way. Go!”

I decided to ignore how rude it was for her to decide to ride me without my permission, and charged in the indicated direction. When we reached a wall, Splatsy made a door. We passed through a bloody kitchen, a dungeon, and a break room. I could see things moving in the corner of my eye, could hear them screaming and howling at me, but I didn’t pay them any attention. This place was way bigger than I’d expected, and I didn’t have time to take in the sights. Not when Con could have been draining Ethan’s fear right now. I didn’t even pause to wonder where Paura had gone.

But then another sound reached my ears, and I dug in my hooves and slid to a stop. It was a familiar sound, but not one that matched the other noises.

HONK HOOONNNNK!

“Ethan!” Jade and I screamed in unison, and I took off again. I didn’t need her directions anymore. The blaring semi-truck horn was enough to guide me. I smashed through yet another wall, and…

Ethan was on the floor, his eyes squeezed shut. Con was kneeling over him, his mouth stretched freakishly wide, looking like a vampire who was about to sink its fangs into his latest victim.

“Con, don’t—” I yelled, but before I could finish, he had leaped to his feet and vanished into the darkness.

Jade climbed off my back and was at Ethan’s side in an instant. With quick and sure hands, she checked for his pulse, felt his forehead, and touched his cheek in a way that made me—very briefly—consider introducing her to Splatsy.

“He’s alive, just unconscious,” she said a few seconds later. “But look!”

She pointed, and I bent down to see what was wrong. It took longer than you might think. Do you have any idea how hard it is to get down on your knees when you have four legs, and they all bend in different ways? But as soon as I’d managed that, I immediately saw what she’d been pointing at.

Right in the middle of Ethan’s brown hair was a streak of white.

“Jade,” I said softly, “get Ethan out of here.”

She looked at me with helpless eyes. “Henry, you know I can’t—”

“You don’t need magic to drag someone out of a building!” I snapped.

Jade froze, as if the thought had never occurred to her, and then nodded.

“And here.” I selected a board that had broken free when I’d smashed the wall and handed it to her. “You don’t need magic to whack someone over the head either. Keep him safe.”

She took the board hesitantly, but didn’t argue. “What are you going to do?”

I turned to glare into the darkness, knowing that Con was out there somewhere.

Watching.

Waiting.

“I’m gonna go beat some sense into my brother.”