Rogue (3 page)

“Um, strangled her.”

Pandora turned around in her seat, making the car swerve sharply to the right. “You what?” she squawked, her voice rising above her passengers’ screeches of panic. “Zara’s dead?”

Lex’s knuckles were white against the door handle. “Yeah. But she was Culling Driggs’s soul at the time, so—”

“So he was ghosted?”

“Half ghosted,” Driggs threw in. “Or something. Grotton said he knows, but—”

Pandora blew a raspberry. “I doubt Grotton knows his ugly face from a splotch of roadkill.”

“Wait a sec,” Lex said, raising an eyebrow at the familiar way Pandora spoke about Grotton. “You knew about him too?” When Pandora dropped into an uncharacteristic silence, Lex threw up her arms. “Was I the only one in the dark about the fact that the evilest Grim of all time, thought to be dead for several centuries, was in fact alive and well and having a grand old time stalking me across th? Ame acroe country?”

Uncle Mort turned around in his seat to look at Lex and Driggs. “Dora and I and only a couple other Grims knew about him. He’s . . . part of the plan.”

“Yeah, about that.” Lex looked warily at Grotton, who was smiling back at her in a devilish manner. “You said the only way to fix things was to destroy the one who started it all in the first place. And that I’m the one who has to dispatch him, for some reason. What
is
that reason?”

“Because you’re the only one who can,” Grotton said. “Doesn’t that make you feel special?”

Lex ignored him. “But that can’t be true,” she said to Uncle Mort. “I tried Damning Zara and it didn’t work. It had zero effect on her. So why would I be able to kill Grotton?”

“It’s a bit more complicated than killing. Or Damning,” Uncle Mort told her. Then, doing that infuriating thing that he always did so well, he neglected to finish his thought and instead turned back to Dora. “Just pull up in front.”

Pandora nodded. “Gotcha.”

Uncle Mort was already unbuckling his seat belt. Lex had assumed that they were headed for the outskirts of town, but she’d gotten so disoriented in the escape that she only just began to realize where Dora was parking.

“I don’t mean to nitpick,” Lex said, looking at the metallic gadgets sticking out of the windows of a house that would have fit in a lot better on a moon colony than in the heart of the Adirondacks, “but don’t you think that the first place Norwood will look for you might be . . . oh, I don’t know . . . your
house?
”

“Good point, Lex,” Uncle Mort said with a roll of his eyes as Pandora jolted the Stiff to a stop. “Don’t know where we’d be without that brilliant strategic mind of yours.”

“I’m just saying. After all that running and escaping and flame-broiling our fellow citizens, we’re going to just hole up in here and wait? I want to smite the bad guys!”

“Oh, there’ll be smiting, don’t you worry about that. Out of the car.” He picked up the Wrong Book and strolled toward the front door as though he’d simply run out to pick up a carton of eggs, not been dashing about on the lam for several months. “You too, Prince of Darkness,” he called back, waving the Wrong Book.

Grotton clucked his ephemeral tongue. “So we’ve resorted to childish name-calling. How—”

“Childish?” Lex deadpanned.

He gave her a rude look, then reluctantly disappeared through the windshield. What Uncle Mort had said back at the cabin must have been true: Grotton was bound to the Wrong Book and had to go wherever it went.

Lex looked at Driggs, who shrugged. “Maybe there are some pizzas left in the freezer,” he said.

Lex, who hadn’t eaten a substantial meal in weeks, clutched her gurgling stomach and scrambled out of the car after him. Pandora turned the car around so that its grill was facing outward, readied her finger over the red button should any townspeople try to overtake the house, and waited with a wily grin on her face.

“Hurry up, or I won’t hesitate to get my roast on,” she told them. “You know how much I love a good barbecue.”

They rushed into the house, but Uncle Mort had already disappeared downstairs. Lex scowled. He’d dragged them all the way over here only to make them wait while he ran down to do some work in his top-secret, no-trespassers-allowed basement?

Maybe they had time to eat after all.

Driggs’s ravenous teenage-boy brain had already reached this conclusion, and it had even propelled him into solid mode, as he was rummaging around the cabinets and pulling out every item he could get his hands on. He tossed half of the food to tothe fooLex, and the other half didn’t make it any farther than his own mouth. Dorito bags exploded into a fine orange mist, cookies were emptied out on the table, and all other food packages were destroyed on impact, their contents immediately consumed in as messily a manner as possible.

“Animals.” Grotton floated into the doorway from the basement and watched them with disgust. “Swine.”

“You’re just jealous because you can’t eat,” Lex said around the approximately seventeen cheese balls in her mouth.

Grotton picked up a cheese ball and threw it at her face.

That certainly got their attention. They both stared at him open-mouthed, a perfect orange circle now situated on Lex’s cheek.

Ghosts can’t become solid
, Lex thought.
Ghosts can’t throw cheese balls!

And then:
That might be the weirdest sentence I’ve ever thought
.

“Oh, I can eat,” Grotton said. “I just choose not to sully my innards with the manufactured slop of this day and age.”

“Hang on,” said Driggs, holding a glob of peanut butter in his bare hand. “I thought you were a ghost.”

“Afraid not. I’m a Hybrid, same as you.” His smile widened. “Though I don’t go solid very much anymore. Too risky. But that”—he pointed at Lex’s orange cheek with a snicker—“was worth it.”

Lex scowled back at him. “Risky?”

He raised his eyebrows. “Why, someone might try to stab me. Or Damn me. Or
strangle
me.”

Lex looked away, disquieted, even though she knew that he was pushing her buttons on purpose.

Driggs, meanwhile, seemed to have gotten some of that peanut butter stuck in his throat. “So this is it, huh?” he said quietly. “Back and forth between solid and transparent, for the rest of my—” He swallowed. “Forever?”

Grotton studied him. “If memory serves me, the transitions will be erratic at first; then, after a day or so, you may be able to control them. But before long the solidifications will be fewer and farther between, and then . . .”

When he trailed off, Driggs nodded curtly. “Mostly ghost. Got it.”

Lex saw the melancholy passing over his face and reached out to him, but he waved her away, still intent on Grotton. “You said I’m a Damning Effect Reverser, too, whatever that means. And that you know why I can unDamn.”

“Oh, my boy,” Grotton said with a grin, “you can do so much more than that.” With that, he disappeared into the basement.

Driggs scoffed. “That was helpful.”

“Seriously,” said Lex. “The guy’s a first-rate douchecrate.”

“Agreed. Shall we move on to the fridge?”

They were well on their way to eating a full spray can of whipped cream between them—one spurt for Lex, two spurts for Driggs, shake well, repeat—when Uncle Mort appeared at the basement doorway and, given the fact that neither of them had ever been allowed to set a single toe on the basement staircase, said the most surprising thing he could have uttered:

“Downstairs, kids.”

Out came the whipped cream. In a perfect spit-take, too—through both mouths and all four nostrils.

Uncle Mort grinned. “If we’re going to smite th
e bad guys, we’re going to need a few toys first.”

“Oh, so
this
is what’s down here,” Driggs said as he and Lex descended into the basement. “Only everything in the known universe.”

It also seemed to be a testing ground for the limits of how much weight a bunch of two-by-eight wooden shelves could supporrtlLt, as all four walls of the basement were lined with them, floor to ceiling. Each held an impossible amount of weird, foreign-looking things that Uncle Mort had cobbled together, none of which Lex could identify and all of which she’d label with the highly scientific term of “doohickeys.”

It made her think of her room back home. Not for the first time, she was reminded that she truly was her uncle’s niece.

Uncle Mort rested his bag on the large table in the middle of the room and glanced at a laptop, which displayed a green night-vision video feed of what looked like some long white poles. At the corner of the table sat a stack of papers with a big rock holding them down—made of a material, Lex noted, that she was pretty sure didn’t exist anywhere on the periodic table. Uncle Mort set the rock aside and started to sift through the papers, staring at them intently.

“Should we point out that there’s nothing on them?” Lex whispered to Driggs.

“And spoil the fun of watching an honest-to-God crazy person do what he does best?”

“It’s written in Elixir ink,” Grotton said behind them. When Lex looked at him with the sort of expression that such a statement might elicit, he pursed his lips. “Invisible to everyone but the person who wrote it. Amateurs.”

But Driggs wasn’t listening. “Lex, look at this thing.” He pulled her over to a purple screen that resembled a radar display, with an arm sweeping out from a point in the center, and a few triangular blips scattered around a crude map of the United States. Some of the triangles were brighter than others.

“Chicago.” Lex pointed to one, then scanned all the rest. “Seattle, Boston, New York City—wait.” She tapped a button, hoping that the image would zoom in, and it did. “Not just New York City—Queens! That’s my neighborhood!”

Driggs frowned. “Bang and Pip came from Chicago. And I think Ferbus once said he used to live near Seattle.”

Lex’s eyes widened. “You think this is how Uncle Mort tracks down potential Grims?” she whispered.

“Why, yes it is!” Uncle Mort boomed in a game-show-host voice. “Grotton, tell them what they’ve won!”

Grotton narrowed his eyes. “Don’t drag me into this.”

“This is how you track down rookies?” Lex asked Uncle Mort, incredulous.

“Yep.” Uncle Mort had broken away from the table, moved on to the shelves, and was now grabbing things left and right. “As soon as kids turn delinquent, they start to emit a sort of signal through the ether. The stronger the signal, the more potential they have as a Grim. All I have to do is pick out the brightest.”

Driggs frowned. “Why aren’t I on here?”

“You weren’t the brightest. Heads up!”

He tossed something at Driggs. It looked like a little football. It was shaped like a little football. It was, for all intents and purposes, a little football—except that it was made of gold. Driggs’s eyes went wide at the prospect of dropping a priceless invention to the floor and thereby blowing up the universe or doing something equally undesirable, but he managed to catch it with only the smallest of fumbles.

“Woo!” he hooted in celebration, hoisting it above his head. “Sports!”

“I wouldn’t do that,” Uncle Mort said, stuffing a large compass into his pocket. “Unless you want to kick-start a new bubonic plague. If you want to kick-start a new bubonic plague, then by all means, continue with the excessive celebration.”

Lex just stared at him. “You tossed a potentially plague-starting device at someone who is, at best, intermittently tangible?”

“You need to lighten up a little bit, Lex,” Uncle Mort replied. “If you can’t have fun at rachave futhe end of the damn world, when can you?”

Lex and Driggs exchanged glances. “I hope you’re kidding.”

“So do I. Hand me that map, would you?”

Lex limply passed him a rolled-up world map. She was beyond trying to understand what was going on. She’d just go where she was pointed. She’d do whatever she was instructed to do. She’d stop asking questions.

“What are we doing?” burst out of her mouth milliseconds later. “What about the other Juniors? What is the plan, exactly?” She looked to Driggs for backup, but he had placed the plague-ridden football on the floor and was staring at it warily. “Why are we down here?”

“To stock up on weapons.” Uncle Mort crossed to the far wall. “We need lots of ’em. Driggs, pick that up, it’s not going to kill you—” Driggs gave him a look. “Okay, it won’t
further
kill you. Take a couple of these, too.” He handed Lex and Driggs a few thin vials of Amnesia each.

“What are these for?”

“Weapons. Aren’t you paying attention?” He walked to yet another wall and began to load up on items that were, at long last, recognizable as instruments of death.

“Guns?” she asked, surprised for some reason. “Not, like, Amnesia blow darts?”

“Oh, which reminds me.” He took something else off the shelf.

“What’s that?”

“Amnesia blow darts.”

Lex shook her head. “But why guns, if we have all of this other cool stuff?”

“Because despite our best efforts to use Amnesia as much as we can instead of lethal force, we’ll probably need to kill some people, and guns kill people.” He moved on to the next wall and began rifling through more gadgets. “Or people kill people. I forget how the hippies say it. Now, this one’s for you, Lex. I’m going to need you to guard this with every meager iota of attention span you have left. Okay? I’m trusting you with this. Don’t lose it.”

Lex got all her hopes up—even though she’d gotten to know Uncle Mort pretty well by now and should have known better than to get even a small percentage of her hopes up. And sure enough, the item he gave her caused the smile to evaporate right off her face.

“Don’t lose it,” he repeated.

Her eye twitched. “What
is
it?”

“What does it look like?”

“An oversize hole punch.”

“Exactly.”

“What?” she boomed as he went back to his papers. “You get guns, and Driggs gets the deadly Heisman, and all I get is an
office supply?
”

“Yes. Don’t lose it.”

It took every ounce of Lex’s strength to not kick the bubonic football into his face. Noticing this, Driggs swooped in and wrapped her in a calming, solid embrace. “Relax, spaz,” he said.