Chapter Thirty One

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Chapter Thirty One

A thick cloud of smoke churned in the sky above southeastern Mauldibamm as New You was reduced to ashes. Truth be told, I felt a little bad. Yeah, most of the trouble I’d faced over the past few days had been Jack and Heidi’s fault, but they didn’t deserve to have their whole business destroyed.

Even so, the fire worked to our advantage. With everyone in town staring at the smoke, nobody noticed the giant noodle swimming through the sky like the world’s biggest eel. I sat on Ethan’s back, just below his head, holding onto his horns to keep the winds from throwing me off. Jade sat just behind me, her arms wrapped around my waist even though I’m pretty sure she could have surfed on Ethan’s back without falling off. We had left Paura in an alley not far from New You, telling her to hide until we came and got her. Convincing her to stay behind while we went to rescue Con hadn’t been easy, but once I’d reminded her that Cousin Gumdrop would be at the Grand Lark, she’d agreed a little too eagerly.

I had left Splatsy with her too, and I felt weirdly naked without a ping pong paddle hanging from my belt. Going unarmed into a fight with Cousin Gumdrop might sound like suicide to you…and yeah, it probably was. But whipping Splatsy out right in front of the council would be too big of a giveaway. I would just have to hope that the pill Heidi had given me would be enough to even the odds a little.

The Grand Lark looked like a red and white striped button below us, and Ethan flew in lazy figure eights above it while I mentally prepared myself for what would happen next.

“I hope I’m not too late,” I said. “McGus is supposed to be down there distracting him, but I have no idea how long he’ll be able to keep that up. What if they’ve already made a decision?”

Ethan growled, the sound sending vibrations all the way down his body.

“He says McGus is still going,” Jade translated.

I looked over my shoulder at her in surprise. “How the coffee flavored pasta sauce does he know that?”

“Dragons have some of the best hearing on Earth,” she answered. “You could whisper something on the other end of Mauldibamm, and he’d probably be able to hear you.”

“Well, how do things sound?” I asked.

Ethan growled again, and Jade answered in a creepily accurate impression of McGus, “I thought you were going to make it illegal to hold any more parades outside my house!”

“For the last time, Wallace,” she said, switching to Patricia’s voice, “morning traffic is not a parade.”

“And another thing!” McGus again. “Alicia hasn’t been seeing to her duties as the Acting Hunter!”

“I have killed more maiams in the past week than that idiotic Blue has killed in her life!” Now it was Cousin Gumdrop’s voice, absolutely dripping with indignation.

“But have you been giving me my daily foot massages?” McGus challenged her. “Henry came to my house to massage my feet five times a day, but you haven’t shown up even once!”

“That was never my—” Cousin Gumdrop stopped short and took a deep breath. “Why are you doing this now, Master? If you hadn’t noticed, we’re in the middle of sentencing a murderer!”

Welp, that was my cue. “Remember what you have to do, Ethan?”

He growled a confirmation.

“All right.” I raised the pill Heidi had given me, staring at it. “Okay…”

Once I took that pill, there was no going back. If I was being honest, even with it, Cousin Gumdrop would still probably paint the Grand Lark with my insides. There was still time to back out. Go home and accept that Cousin Gumdrop had won. My life would be ten different kinds of miserable, but at least I’d be alive to experience those miseries.

But then Con would be the one to die.

I swallowed the pill, and immediately felt its magic go to work on me. “Okay, Ethan—let’s go!”

Jade vanished back into her core with a flash, and Ethan arched his long, noodly form downwards. I gripped his horns as tight as I could, and together we plummeted down towards Mauldibamm at a blinding speed. The skin on my hands changed from the color of freshly fallen snow to a more corpse-like white. My hair, which was whipping all around my face, darkened from blue to black. Even though I couldn’t see them, I could feel my teeth sharpening and my ears lengthening.

When Ethan crashed through the roof of the Grand Lark, and I leaped from his back to land in the center of the council chamber, Henry the klaon was gone.

A ghul had taken her place.

I surveyed the scene. Ichabod, Patricia, and Grandpa Teddy were all sitting at their desks. Victoria’s spot remained empty. Con was on his knees at the front of the room, his arms bound behind his back. Cousin Gumdrop stood just beside him, with a look on her face that I would treasure in my memory for the rest of my very, very short life.

“That ghul,” I declared in my most dramatic voice, thrusting an accusing finger at Con, “did not kill those people!”

Ichabod was on his feet in an instant, his face turning as red as his hair. “What is the meaning of this? Who are you?”

“My name is…”

Oh crap, what was my name? I couldn’t very well tell them I was Henry Rider, could I?

“…Scary Mary! And I am responsible for all the killings in Burning Creek!”

Taking advantage of the precious seconds I had before they regained their composure, I swept across the council chamber and grabbed Con by his shirt, hauling him to his feet.

“I am an artist!” I screamed into his face. “Every corpse I leave is a work of art! And I refuse to let some talentless peasant take credit for my masterpieces!”

“Wha- Wha- Wha-” he stammered.

Whirling around, I shoved him away from the council podiums and into Ethan’s reach.

“Etha- I mean, Kranklestonchbaurr the Destroyer! Help me dispose of this plagiarist!”

Ethan knew what he had to do. Letting out a rumbling growl, he arched downwards and grabbed Con in one of his massive claws, plucking him from the ground like a discarded, pasty french fry.

“You!” Cousin Gumdrop screeched. She stepped forward, her paintmarks lighting up again. “Give him back, you overgrown—”

Ethan replied with a roar that shook the walls of the Grand Lark, and opened his mouth to breathe fire at her. Cousin Gumdrop leaped out of the way, and Ethan quickly swung his head to the left and right. The Grand Lark’s floors were made of solid marble, but that didn’t matter when dragonfire was involved. A wall of flame sprang up, separating Cousin Gumdrop from Con. Then, looping over himself, he snaked his way back out through the hole he’d just made in the ceiling. His tail passed overhead, and I jumped up to grab it.

“Don’t worry!“ I yelled, trying not to laugh at the stunned looks on the council’s faces. “I’ll give this pretender what he…”

My gaze met Grandpa Teddy’s, and I didn’t see shock or surprise in his eyes. I saw disappointment.

He recognizes me! I thought, a chill running down my spine. Even though I was wearing a different face, he knew his granddaughter well enough to see straight through my disguise.

Ethan’s tail passed through the hole, bringing me with it, and Mauldibamm stretched out below me once again. I shook off the surprise. I couldn’t afford to be distracted right now. Ethan and I needed to go pick up Paura, and then find a place to hide for the next twenty four—

“Look out!” Con yelled.

Cousin Gumdrop’s chainhammer came streaking out of the Grand Lark. Ethan swerved in midair, but he wasn’t fast enough. The chainhammer caught up to us in seconds, the chain somehow reaching more than fifty feet in the air. But it didn’t go for Ethan. It didn’t even go for Con.

It came for me.

With a flash of red magic, the chainhammer suddenly changed direction. The chain spun around my ankles, binding my legs so tightly that the cold metal links cut into my skin.

“Ethan!” I yelled. Maybe he could melt the chain with his fire breath, or bite through—

There was a mighty pull at the end of the chain, strong enough to halt Ethan in midair. I gripped his tail with all my strength, but it wasn’t nearly enough. My fingers slipped from his smooth scales, and then I was plummeting back toward the Grand Lark. Above me, Ethan twisted around to give chase.

“Get Con out of here!” I yelled.

I braced myself, instinctively summoning my magic the same way I did when I fought maiams. It never even occurred to me that klaon magic and ghul magic might work differently, but luckily for me it responded anyway. A black glow surrounded me, absorbing most of the impact when I crashed through the roof, and then onto the marble floor.

Cousin Gumdrop towered over me, her paintmarks glowing with an almost blinding red light.

“Now, Miss Mary,” said Ichabod, “I think you owe us some answers.”

“We’ve already got the only answer we need!” sneered Cousin Gumdrop. She gave the chain a wicked jerk, unraveling it from my legs and flinging me, spinning, into the air. “She just admitted that she’s the real murderer!”

I managed to land on my feet, and I looked around wildly for an escape route. The gaping hole I had made in the wall during my fight with Legion was still there, but I’d have to get past Cousin Gumdrop to reach it. She stood between me and the doors, too. And even if I did manage to give her the slip, how far did I think I could run before she caught up?

“That’s not possible,” declared Grandpa Teddy. I tried to look at him, but guilt twisted my intestines until I averted my eyes. “All the evidence points toward Conrad Rider being the rogue ghul!”

“But why would she confess to the murders if that were true?” argued Patricia.

“Why would she confess at all?” Ichabod countered. “If she’d kept her mouth shut, she never would have even been a suspect.”

“Obviously, because she doesn’t want Conrad taking credit for her murders,” Patricia said. “And she assumed that she could confess and then make a clean getaway on her…” She made a weird sound in her throat, “…dragon.”

“That’s only if we decide to trust her,” Grandpa Teddy broke in. “And I see no reason why we should!”

“It does not benefit her in any way to confess to a crime she didn’t commit,” Patricia insisted. “If she’s innocent, why take the blame? To clear Conrad’s name? To what end? We would hunt her down just like we did Conrad. If we pronounced her guilty, she would be executed. But the moment another corpse was found in Burning Creek, we would know she was lying and the hunt for Conrad would start all over again.”

The Grand Lark was silent.

“So,” Patricia concluded with her usual stoicism, “the only logical conclusion is that Mary is the murderer.”

“Nothin’ logical about ghuls,” Ichabod grunted. “Filthy fearmongers are all insane.”

“Do you have a better theory, Ichabod?” asked Patricia. He didn’t answer. Turning to my grandpa, she asked, “What about you, Theodore? Do you have any objections?”

I spun to look at him. The old Blue’s lips were pinched, and he was staring down at me with all the coldness of a snow cone stand at the north pole. I could see the conflict behind his eyes. He knew it was me. He knew what the council would do if they passed judgment on me. All he had to do to save my life was spill the beans. But if he did, I’d be branded a traitor. They might even execute me anyway for what I’d done. There was no way out of this that didn’t either ruin my life, or end it. He just had to decide if his sense of duty meant he had to personally deliver that judgment, or stand back and let the others do it for him.

“I believe…” he said slowly.

“One less ghul in the world can only be a good thing,” McGus interrupted him.

I looked at the old cabbage butt, who had stayed quiet this entire time. That glare he was giving me…to the untrained eye, McGus glared at everybody. But I, having spent hundreds of unpleasant hours with him, knew that he had different kinds of glares. A glare for every occasion. And the glare he was giving right then spoke to me like an open book.

This is the stupidest thing you’ve ever done.

“That’s my vote, for what it’s worth,” he grumbled. “If she came here just to get her head smashed, then let her get her head smashed. I’m going home.”

Muttering under his breath, he wheeled his chair out of the room. As soon as the doors closed behind him, I turned back to Patricia.

“As the former Hunter,” she said slowly, “Wallace does get a vote in things like this. That’s a vote for execution from Ichabod, and one from Wallace. For the record, I vote for execution as well. So whatever you were going to say, Theodore, we already have a majority vote for executing the rogue ghul here and now.”

“No!” Grandpa Teddy exclaimed. “Wait, you can’t—”

“And I,” Cousin Gumdrop snarled, grabbing me by my shirt collar, “humbly accept the honor of killing this evil creature!”

She flung me face down onto the ground, and then kicked me over so that I was lying on my back. The links of her chainhammer clinked as she let it swing back and forth like a pendulum, each pass nearly brushing my nose.

“I know it’s you,” I could faintly hear her whisper. “Don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone. I’ll even leave Con alone now. But before I kill you, I want you to know that I’m really, really going to enjoy it.”

She got down on one knee, and raised the iron hammer above her head.

“Every day you spent as the Hunter was an insult,” she said, her paintmarks beginning to glow again. “And I never let an insult go unanswered.”

This was it. This was how I died. My head crushed like I was a common maiam, my grandpa watching but unable to do anything to stop it. At least Con was safe. Hopefully he and Paura could build a nice, scary life together somewhere far away from Mauldibamm. Ethan and Jade would be happy together too. The only thing I wished I could change was the person killing me. Anyone, anybody in the world, would have been better than Cousin Freaking Gumdrop.

Or at least, that’s what I would have been thinking if I hadn’t planned for this.

Before Cousin Gumdrop could bring the chainhammer down on my skull, I locked eyes with her. Immediately, I felt the powers of a ghul course through me.

“Let’s see what you’re afraid of!” I exclaimed.

Cousin Gumdrop’s eyes widened when she realized what I was doing. My entire body turned to smoke, just like I had seen Con and Paura’s do. A split second later, the chainhammer slammed down into the Grand Lark’s marble floor, passing straight through me and sending cracks spiderwebbing outwards through the stone.

It was working. I had no idea what was happening to me, but my new body responded on an instinctual level. I wafted my smoky form out from under Cousin Gumdrop, and then I began to…coalesce, I guess is the best word. The dark, churning cloud that I had become was gathering in on itself, losing its gaseousness, becoming solid, and…

I froze in surprise.

I was me again.

Next Chapter: 9/14/24