Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty

We appeared in New You with a flash of green light, making a nearby klaon who was browsing the wildlife section scream and run for the door. I ignored him, immediately making for the front counter. This was my one and only chance to save Con. If I didn’t get this trainwreck rolling soon, that chance would—

Ethan’s hand caught my arm.

“Henry?” he said expectantly, a twinge of nervousness in his voice.

I turned back to him. “What is it? We’re kind of in a hurry here, if you hadn’t noticed!”

“Aren’t you forgetting something?”

“What are you…” I looked down at the necklace that was still dangling from my hand. “Oh, right.”

I had promised to give it right back, hadn’t I? But now that he was standing there, asking me to hand it over, it occurred to me for the first time all the things I would be capable of with Jade’s help. Suddenly, the wild plan I’d thought up sounded ridiculous when I could have just wished Con to safety. And why stop there? Wherever Legion was hiding, whatever he was plotting, I could simply wish him out of existence. And the laughter farms? Gone. I could wish for a lifetime supply of laughter for every klaon in every dimension. I could even turn Cousin Gumdrop into a decent person!

“Henry, you promised,” Jade whispered, hiding behind Ethan like a human shield.

I paused, seeing the fear in her eyes, and shame washed over me. Over all the years we’d been friends, there was only one thing she’d ever been afraid of: being seen as an object, as a tool, rather than a person. And here I was, her best friend, doing exactly that.

I hesitated for a second, and then held out the necklace—and Ethan snatched it back with a speed that shocked even me.

“Thank you,” Jade said, sighing with relief. She tenderly put a hand on Ethan’s shoulder as he slipped the chain over his neck again.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I shouldn’t have…”

“It isn’t your fault that you were tempted,” Jade said with a quiet smile. “What matters is that you resisted the temptation.”

I forced myself to look at Paura, who was standing off to the side, watching us silently. Seeing her, with her ugly batlike face, reminded me of Con. Right. I had a job to do. Turning on my heel, I marched up to the front counter. Dr. Jack was there with his usual smile and oversized lab coat.

“Ah, Henry!” he greeted me, as if I had only just walked in. “So good to see you again! How can I help you today? If I’m not mistaken, Conrad shouldn’t need a refill on his prescription for a good while yet.”

“I need your help, Doc,” I said, putting my hands on the counter and leaning toward him. “Listen carefu—”

“Might you be here for the, ah, lovely young lady you brought with you?” Jack ducked to look at Paura in the gap between my arm and my torso. “Another ghul looking for a happy life of laughter?”

“What? No! Listen!” I grabbed the front of his shirt and yanked him so that he was looking at me again. “I need your help.”

Something in my expression must have bothered him, because he gave me a worried look. “W- Well, yes, of course I’d be happy to help you with anything I can…assuming it’s legal, that is.”

“Here’s what I need,” I said, and leaned forward to whisper into his ear. The others looked at me in confusion, but I needed to keep this part to myself for now. If they had any idea what I was planning to do, they would have dragged me back to Saint Bobo’s kicking and screaming to deal with the brain damage I had obviously suffered.

“Ah, I…I see,” Jack said once I’d finished, his snow-white face somehow turning pale.

“Can you do it?” I asked.

Jack swallowed. “I don’t know, Henry. What you’re asking me to do is…”

“Please,” I begged him. “Con will die if you don’t help me!”

“Ooh, I hate these kinds of things,” he moaned, and reached into his lab coat to produce a pill bottle. “Heidi handles them so much better!”

“Wait!” I exclaimed. “Don’t—”

Too late. The timid little doctor was already stretching and expanding into his scatterbrained alter ego.

“All right, sweetie,” Heidi practically purred, grinning indulgently, “let’s talk medicine.”

I groaned, clenching my teeth. You always ran the risk of having to deal with Heidi when you shopped here, and it was the last thing I needed right now! Getting her to cooperate could be…challenging, to say the least.

“I don’t have time to play games,” I said quickly. “You know what I asked Jack for. Can you get it for me?”

She smiled. “Is your handsome friend—”

“NOW, HEIDI!” I yelled.

Heidi scowled at me, but went into the back to get me what I’d asked for anyway. I waited, drumming my fingers anxiously on the counter. How long would a trial like Con’s take? And how long would McGus be able to stall the council? I itched to dash out of the store and take my chances with Cousin Gumdrop, but I forced myself to be patient. Rushing into a fight with that psycho wouldn’t turn out any better now than it had back at Midnight Mansion, and I’d only get one chance at this. If I failed, then Con—

“There,” Heidi declared, slamming a paper bag onto the counter in front of me. “How else may I serve you today, you’re majesty?”

With shaking hands, I opened the bag. Inside was a bottle just like Ethan’s, filled to the top with tiny round pills. And down at the bottom, all by itself…

“This is it?” I asked quietly, picking the lone pill up between two fingers and raising it to eye level.

“What is it?” Ethan asked, coming to stand beside me.

I held up the bottle and the single pill. “This is how I’m going to beat Cousin Gumdrop.”

“Okay, but how—”

“There you are, hot stuff!” Heidi interrupted, batting her eyelashes at him. “Have you been taking your medicine every day like a good boy?”

Ethan’s face turned red. “Um, I…y- yes, I have.”

“Ohh, don’t lie to me!” Heidi stuck out her lip in a mock pout. “If you were, you wouldn’t be the handsome young man I’m looking at right now!”

“Oh, right, I…” Hesitantly, Ethan reached into his pocket and pulled out his own bottle. I sucked in a sharp breath when I saw the last two pills sitting in there. I’d known it was a long shot, hoping he would realize how dangerous those were after they’d saddled me—no pun intended—with a horsebutt for twenty four hours and throw the bottle away, but the gleam in his eyes when he looked at those two remaining pills told me he hadn’t given up this insane mission just yet. “I just haven’t had a chance to take one today.”

“Really?” I snapped. “You don’t think I have more important things to do today than chase you around Mauldibamm in whatever stupid body you wind up with this time?”

“You don’t have to chase me,” Ethan snapped back. “I’m not a baby. I can take care of myself.”

“Because you did such a good job of that the last couple times, right?”

“Do you two have to do this now?” Paura demanded, looking at the two of us in disbelief.

Ethan popped the lid off the bottle.

“What’s wrong with you?” I demanded. “Don’t you see how badly you could mess things up?”

“Looks like I’m not the only one she won’t let have any fun,” Heidi said from behind me. “Ethan, why should she be able to tell you what body you have to wear?”

I spun to look at her, my face turning blue with anger. “You stay out of this! What kind of doctor are you, just handing out dangerous medicine like this to whoever walks in and asks for it?”

She grinned smugly at me. “You seem a little confused, Henry. Didn’t you just walk in here one day and ask me to turn your brother into a klaon?”

“That’s different!” I said, pointing a finger at her face.

“I don’t think it’s different at all. Con’s life wasn’t working out as a ghul, so you decided he needed to be something else. Now poor Ethan’s made the same decision, and you want to take the choice away from him!”

“Con was fine as a ghul,” Paura butted in. “He never asked to get turned into a klaon!”

I turned to her. “He needed—”

“Oh, so people only need to be what Henry wants them to be,” Heidi said thoughtfully. “What a wise and mature woman she must be to know people so much better than they know themselves!”

“That’s not what I said!” I yelled.

“Then what are you saying?” Heidi flashed me another grin. “Con wants to stay a ghul, but you won’t let him. Ethan doesn’t want to stay a human, but you won’t let him do that either. It sounds to me like you—”

I raised both fists and slammed them down on the counter, making Heidi take a step backwards in surprise.

“Con needs his medicine because people are going to kill him if he doesn’t take it!” I screamed into her face. ”Ethan is just trying to…it’s because…”

I paused. Why was Ethan doing this?

“Because I’m only human,” he said.

I spun to look just as he swallowed the pill.

“Bacon cheeseburgers,” I whispered.

Silence swept through the store as we waited for whatever was coming next. Seconds crept by with agonizing slowness—and then Ethan’s torso suddenly shot upwards, becoming so long that he hit his head on the ceiling.

“WHAT?” I exclaimed.

The rest of his body was unchanged. He still had two human legs, two human arms, and a single human head. It was just that everything between his shoulders and his hips had more than quintupled in length.

And it wasn’t done yet.

Clutching his head, Ethan fell to the ground as his spine grew even longer. And then, just when I thought things couldn’t get any more horrifying, his gigantic torso (gigantorso?) began to bend and twist in ways that should have snapped every bone in his back. It was almost like he was turning into a snake.

That might not have been too far from the truth, I realized as he began to sprout bright red scales. Starting at the midpoint of his freakishly long middle section and working their way up and down the rest of his body, covering his skin with shimmering scarlet armor. That’s when the rest of him began to change to match the new form he was being given too. His hands and feet grew talons big enough to shishkabob an ostrich, and his pants exploded as a tail just as long as flexible as the rest of him emerged from his butt. His shirt soon followed suit, reduced to scraps of cloth on New You’s floor—but to my surprise, Jade’s necklace seemed to be growing right along with him.

Ethan’s face—still human for the moment—contorted in discomfort, and he belched a pillar of flame across New You, sending Heidi running for cover and setting the front counter alight.

“My store!” she screamed in horror as the fire spread, eagerly devouring everything it touched. She ran into the back and came back out with a glass of water, which she threw on the growing flames. “Get out! All of you! You’re banned forever!”

We were all paying too much attention to Ethan to hear her, though. Two long, thick hairs had just sprouted beneath his nose, as if puberty had finally granted him the mustache every teenage boy so desperately wanted, and within seconds they were so long that they nearly reached his ridiculous new midsection.

“JAAAA…JAAAAADE!” he roared in a voice that could barely be described as human. Even as he spoke, his face began to push forward into a beastial snout. “IIIIII DOOONNNN’T…LIIIIIIIIKE…THIIIRRRGGHHHHH!”

His words devolved into a deep, rumbling growl, and Ethan arched his inhumanly flexible neck to give the genie staring at him from across the room a pleading look.

With that, the changes were done. Ethan stood before us, somehow looking both imposing and helpless at the same time, as a Chinese dragon—the kind that doesn’t have wings and is really long and noodle shaped.

“Oh boy,” I breathed, still not quite able to believe what I was looking at. “Ooooh, boy.”

Ethan swung his head around to look at me, and he growled.

“Hey now, let’s not get crazy here,” I said, my hand going to Splatsy. “Dragon or not, you know I can still kick your butt six ways to Sunday!”

“Henry, wait!” Jade yelled from across the store. “He’s not threatening you! He’s asking if you’re okay!”

I gave her an incredulous look. “And you know that how, exactly?”

She shrugged. “There aren’t many languages out there that I can’t speak, Henry.”

She walked toward Ethan without the slightest hint of fear, and I prepared to draw Splatsy the moment he even looked like he was going to bite her in half. Or incinerate her. Or however these kinds of dragons killed people.

To my surprise, though, Ethan just lowered his head so that Jade could hug his neck, which was so thick that she almost couldn’t reach all the way around it.

“Ethan,” I said, letting myself relax a little, “why? Look at yourself! Why would you do this?”

Ethan looked at me with those big, sad, puppy dragon eyes, and growled again.

Jade paused, frowning at him. “He…says that this is the only way he’ll ever be able to fit in.”

My mouth fell open. “What? Excuse me? You think being a thirty foot long lizard will help you fit in better?”

Ethan made a quick, sharp noise, almost like a bark.

“He says that obviously he never wanted to be a dragon,” Jade translated. “But what else was he supposed to do? You’re a klaon, Aesop is a leprechaun, and I’m a genie. But like you keep telling him, he’s only human.”

I looked at Ethan, and the last piece clicked into place. Finally, everything made sense.

“I don’t think he really said all that,” I replied slowly. “In fact, I think all he said was GRAUWGFFF.”

Jade shrugged again. “Draconic is a weird language. But Henry…”

I stepped forward and slapped Ethan on his big scaly nose. He reared back in shock, his horned head gouging two holes in the ceiling.

“You meatloafing idiot!” I yelled. “What the habanero salsa smoothies made you think you had to change to fit in with us?”

“GRAU—”

“No, shut your stupid mouth!” I snapped. “You’re right! I’m a klaon. Jade is a genie. Aesop is a leprechaun. None of us are the same race, or even species, and we all fit in with each other just fine! Why would you be any different just because you’re a human?”

Ethan’s eyes widened, as if the big dummy had actually never thought of it like that. He looked at me, then at Jade, and growled something else.

“He says if he weren’t a human,” said Jade, “that he could help more when you go on hunts.”

“You have your magic for that!” I yelled.

He growled, and Jade translated, “But that’ll take years.”

“Do you think I learned how to fight in a day?” I retorted. “You’ve been training for two months. Give yourself time to learn, you idiot!”

He looked at Jade again and growled, and until I heard that I wouldn’t have thought it was possible for dragons to stutter.

“He says…” Jade paused and shook her head, eyes wide. “He says that if he were something better than a human, then maybe…”

“Maybe what?” I prompted her, even though I had a horrible feeling I already knew what she was going to say.

“Then maybe he could become the kind of person that Jade…that I…would want to be with.”

And just like that, an invisible sword was rammed through my heart.

“You really are an idiot,” Jade said.

“RRRGH?” Ethan growled quizzically. Jade took his snout in both hands and pulled him to face her.

“Did you ever think,” she asked, “that maybe Jade already likes you just the way you are?”

She leaned in and gave him a kiss right on his big dragon nose—and hey, look at that, someone was giving the invisible sword a nice, big twist.

“Ever since I was freed, staying free was my one and only concern,” Jade whispered to him. “Do you think I would have given my core to just anybody? I do like you, Ethan. I like you in a way that I’ve never liked any of my masters before—that I’ve never liked anyone before.”

Ethan’s jaw fell open.

“And I want to explore those feelings with you,” she continued. “But only if you’re you.”

“Excuse me!” Paura interjected. “Not that this isn’t all heartwarming and crap, but are we going to save my boyfriend or not?”

My stomach did a somersault, and I glanced down at the medicine in my hands. A whole bottle in my left, a single pill in my right.

“Are you ready?” Jade asked me.

I hesitated, then nodded. “Y- Yeah. If I’m right…and I pray to the whoopie cushion in the sky that I am…then these are all I should need to give Cousin Gumdrop a beatdown she’ll never forget.”

“Also, I don’t know if you’ve noticed,” Paura said, “but this place is on fire! Can we hurry up, please?”

I began to raise the pill to my mouth, but then stopped. Giving Ethan another look, from his snout to the tip of his tail, a new idea began to take form in my head.

“Actually,” I said slowly, a grin rising to my face, “I think your latest screw up might just come in handy, Ethan.”

NEXT CHAPTER: 9/7/24