Chapter Thirty Four

Chapter Thirty Four

We appeared at the Grand Lark in a flash of light. The council chamber was noticeably brighter now that two new holes had been added to the roof and walls, and a pleasant breeze blew through the normally stuffy room.

There was something else different about it, too, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it…

“Ah, Henry, good. We were waiting for you,” said Grandpa Teddy.

I looked at him in surprise, and then I looked around the chamber. Sure enough, it was empty. I had expected there to be someone in here, petitioning the council for this or that. That’s how it always went, after all. I would barge in, interrupt somebody’s oh-so-important appeal for a better selection of instant mashed potatoes at the grocery store or something, and the council would shush me like a toddler. The fact that I was at the front of the line should have been a relief.

Instead, it made me wonder just how important this news was.

“We called you here because there are two things we thought you should know about as soon as possible,” Patricia said.

“Yeah,” I said, putting on the happiest face I could manage, “I heard about it from Master McGus! He says another ghul owned up for the murders, and Con is—”

“That’s not why we called you.”

I looked at Grandpa Teddy again, and couldn’t help but take a step backwards when I saw the look in his eye. If there was any doubt left in my mind, that look chased them away. He knew exactly what had happened yesterday. I couldn’t meet his gaze for more than a couple seconds.

“Well, if you won’t just spit it out, then I will!” snapped Ichabod. “Henrietta, the laughter farm has been destroyed.”

I spun to look at him in shock. “What did you do?”

He raised his eyebrows. “Excuse me?”

“Uh, I mean, what did you say?”

He sneered at me, that fat, ugly, condescending, smug, malicious, conniving, lying, wicked, selfish, heartless—

“Someone detonated a bomb there, and quite a powerful one too,” Patricia cut in. “As best we can figure it, it happened sometime yesterday. Likely, while Alicia Wolfe was fighting Scary Mary.”

“It’s gone, Henry,” Grandpa Teddy said firmly. “There’s nothing left but rubble and scrap metal. So I hope I don’t have to tell you, there’s no reason for you to go back there. Ever.”

My mind reeled. What did this mean? Why would Ichabod destroy the farm? We hadn’t found any incriminating evidence, so why would he bother…

“He said that I was going to be a distraction,” Con’s voice echoed in my head. “And that you were the one I was going to be distracting.”

Legion! He had threatened Paura to get Con to come home and distract me with the killings! But that made even less sense. Legion wanted everyone to know about the farms. He wanted the tortures and abuses he and all his brethren faced to become public knowledge so that nobody would try to stop him from taking his revenge. Why in the name of the whoopie cushion in the sky would he destroy the only evidence of that?

And I still couldn’t figure out what was different about the Grand Lark. It was starting to bug me.

“And as for the second thing we needed to discuss with you,” Grandpa Teddy said, jolting me out of my thoughts, “is that someone has finally managed to find her way home.”

I looked at him, blinking in confusion, and he gestured to his left. I turned, and…

Flaming corndogs! I thought in shock as it suddenly occurred to me what was different—and how big an idiot I was for not figuring it out sooner.

Victoria Verde, representative for the Greens on the Council of Shnoob, was sitting in her customary place between Grandpa Teddy and Patricia. She was tall and thin, and had a face that always reminded me of a librarian who had caught you using gum as a bookmark.

She leaned forward and smiled at me for what I’m pretty sure was the first time in her life.

“Hello, Henry Rider,” she said, her eyes gleaming. “We are very happy to see you again.”

Wait a second.

We?

Oooh, salted slugs on a stick.

END OF BOOK 2