Croak (26 page)

As Driggs ran off to grab some Yoricks, Lex wandered over to one of the open-air booths and marveled at the impressive array of meats sizzling on the grill before her. “Um—” She pointed. “That one, I guess?”

“You got it, little lady,” said the butcher, stabbing what appeared to be a T-bone steak with legs.

“I wouldn’t eat that,” Zara told Lex as she lugged over a large cooler, sweat plastering a clump of silver hair to her forehead. “It’s one of his own concoctions.”

“Ew.” Lex glanced at the butcher, a short, piggish man with beady eyes. She could see why he might not be the most enjoyable employer.

“You’re better off planting yourself at Corpp’s tent,” Zara said. “That’s where everyone else is.”

Lex scrutinized Zara. Ever since the fire incident their relationship had been fairly strained. Zara had even stopped pestering her about the shocks—not a good thing, in Lex’s mind. It probably meant she was planning on tattling about Lex’s subversive leanings any minute now in order to reclaim the Junior throne of awesomeness for herself.

“Will you be joining us?” Lex asked in the friendliest voice she could muster.

“Maybe later. I have to work until all the food is gone. Save me a Yorick or two. Or ten.”

Lex honked out a nervous laugh. She slumped back to the Juniors, whose inebriation levels had begun to surge at an impressive rate.

“No, YOU’RE a platypus!” Ferbus screamed at Elysia.

“That doesn’t make any sense!” she yelled back.

“YOU’RE a sense!”

Driggs sidled up to Lex and handed her a Yorick. “Having fun?”

“I’m trying not to nod off.”

Driggs laughed. “That’s the spirit.”

“You just missed it, you just mizzit,” Elysia told her. “Ferbus swallowed a button.”

“It fell off my shirt!” he yelled, as if this explained something.

Lex looked around. “Kloo and Ayjay still aren’t here?”

“Guess not,” Driggs said. “They might have traded with some of the graveyard shifters.” He pointed at an eccentric-looking gaggle of Senior Grims who were paler than everyone else. “It’s traditional to split up shifts on the Luminous Twelfth so that everyone’s able to come for at least some of it. Juniors aren’t required to work, but maybe they volunteered.”

“So this shindig is really going to rage all night long?”

“Yep. Or until everyone passes out, whichever comes first.”

She looked up just in time to catch a brilliant flash of white arcing across the sky.

“This is so cool,” she whispered, mostly to herself.

Uncle Mort, Yorick in hand, tottered to the fountain in the center of the square. “Hey everybody, listen up!”

“Hang on!” Pandora knocked him out of the way and scuttled onto the ledge of the fountain. “Smush in, smush in,” she barked. Everyone instinctively crowded together, as if they had done this many times before. Dora held up a large camera and took their photo, a bright flash briefly illuminating the street.

“Thanks, Dora,” Uncle Mort said.

“Bite me!”

As the photo subjects disbanded, he climbed onto the fountain and cleared his throat. “Happy Luminous Twelfth, Croak! A hearty welcome to you all, and an even heartier welcome to the Skorski family, who can’t remember where they parked their car!” A cluster of travelers, huddled under the watchful gaze of Kilda, gave a small, terrified wave.

“So, you all know what comes next,” he continued. “The annual snoozefest known as the State of Croak Address.” A polite round of applause swept through the crowd. “I’ve gotten a number of requests to take up as little drinking time as possible this year, so here’s the abridged version: numbers are up, expenditures are down, and our educational efforts continue to provide troubled youth with the moral integrity they so desperately crave.” The Juniors let out a whoop and clashed their skull mugs together, spraying the crowd. “Long story short, Croakers are the best damn Grims this side of the Afterlife!”

The throng erupted into raucous cheers, taking this as a cue to continue the festivities.

Uncle Mort, however, remained atop the fountain. “And as such,” he shouted above their merriment, a note of apprehension creeping into his voice, “you deserve the truth.”

The noise and cheers abruptly died down, until the only sound left was that of Ferbus belching.

“As many of you have read by now,” he continued in a stern voice, “troubling incidents are being reported out of Necropolis. The powers that be have publicly declared these to be isolated occurrences, and nothing more.” He took a deep breath. “But the powers that be are lying.”

The Juniors shot worried glances at one another.

“The truth is, the same abnormal deaths have been witnessed by Grim teams right here in Croak. In fact, they originated here.” Several panicked cries rang out, but Uncle Mort raised his hands to quiet them. “Hysteria will only make things worse. You guys know better than that. I expect nothing but the utmost levelheadedness and composure from every inhabitant of this town. And in return, I will report to you what little I know about the situation.”

Absolute silence settled over the streets, with the exception of the Skorski family, anxiously peeling out of town in their hurriedly found car.

“We don’t know who is doing this,” he continued, “or why. But it seems that a Grim has gained the ability to—”

A bloodcurdling scream cut the crisp night air. All eyes flew to the end of the street, where Kloo staggered out of the Crypt’s tunnel dragging something heavy. As she came into the light, her burden was revealed to be Ayjay, blood-soaked and seemingly unconscious—or worse.

Uncle Mort jumped down from the fountain. “Bring him up here!” A pair of Senior Grims took Ayjay from Kloo’s arms and laid out his lifeless body across the fountain’s edge, careful not to touch the gaping wound across his forehead. Yet they jumped back within seconds.

“What’s wrong with his eye?” Kilda screeched.

Uncle Mort took one look at Ayjay’s vacant, milky eye and immediately felt for a pulse.

His face fell. No one spoke.

Uncle Mort grabbed Kloo by the shoulders. “What happened?”

“I don’t remember!”

“Try!”

A loud, wet cough tore through the silence. Ayjay sputtered and thrashed about wildly, then sat up with a tremendous jolt, as if wrestling himself awake from a nightmare. He rubbed at his chest, blinked several times, and looked around, confused.

“Ayjay!”
Kloo wrapped him in her arms. The crowd breathed a collective sigh of relief, but the peace didn’t keep for long.

“How did this happen?” someone yelled.

“Mort! What’s going on?”

“His eye!”

“Who did this?”

Uncle Mort ignored their questions and grasped Kloo’s and Ayjay’s arms. “I need to know what happened.”

Kloo’s face was colorless, but true to form, her tone remained composed. “I don’t know. We were—” She cut herself off and looked embarrassed. “Alone. It was still light out at that point. And then—it happened so fast—someone appeared in my room. Out of nowhere!”

The concern of the crowd slowly ebbed. Glances of skepticism were exchanged.

Ferbus snorted. “Come on, Kloo.”

“It’s true! At least—” She looked at Uncle Mort. “At least I think it is. I can’t remember anything after that.”

“What about you, Ayjay?” Uncle Mort asked.

Ayjay, clearly still in a great deal of pain, shook his head.

Lex grunted in frustration. “How could they just
forget?
” she whispered to Driggs.

“And then I woke up a few minutes ago and he was just lying there,” Kloo continued. “No breathing, no pulse, scalp laceration, small injection site on his chest, and . . .”

Ayjay was still blinking heavily. He rubbed at his bad eye until it was red and teary. He looked up at her. “I can’t see out of it,” he said quietly.

Kloo squeezed his hand. “You’ll be okay. I’ll stitch up your head, and the eye—” She swallowed, unsure. “I can fix it.”

“I don’t know about that, Kloo,” said Uncle Mort, deep in thought. He gestured to a pair of Senior Grims. “He’s not out of the woods yet. Take them to the doc.”

As Kloo and Ayjay were escorted away, Uncle Mort climbed the fountain once more. “Don’t panic,” he said evenly, his face morose, “but this is almost identical to the murderer’s typical plan of attack. They Crash to a certain location, then inject the victim with a few drops of pure Elixir while time is frozen, causing instant death and leaving no trace.”

“Crash?” Heloise yelled. “You mean someone found a Loophole? And can Crash with
direction?
”

“It looks that way. But—”

“Wait just a damn minute, Mort,” yelled an irate Norwood. “You can’t just pick up Elixir from the grocery store!”

“That’s true,” Uncle Mort said. “I’m not sure how the Elixir is being accessed. But—”

“Who has been seeing these deaths?” Heloise interrupted. “And why hasn’t anyone else witnessed anything unusual? Don’t we have a right to know?”

“These particular individuals told me about the abnormalities in confidence,” Uncle Mort answered sharply. “As long as they wish to remain anonymous, they will. As for the question of why they’re the only ones who have seen them—well, they enlisted the help of an Etcetera, so maybe I should be asking
you
that question, codirector.”

Heloise bristled and shot him a hateful look, but said nothing.

“But how did Ayjay survive?” Corpp asked.

Uncle Mort scratched his head. “He was assaulted in real time, rather than during a time freeze. Probably another type of experimentation with the process, just like when victims were chosen from Necropolis’s jurisdiction instead of ours. My best guess is that Kloo instinctively batted the needle away, preventing him from getting the full dosage. The Crasher panicked, knocked them out, and ran.”

Silence filled the air. “What are we going to do?” Elysia asked in a small voice.

“Right now, my advice is to be on constant alert. If you see anything unusual, let me know as soon as possible. But—” Uncle Mort exhaled and looked out sadly over the crowd. “But in all honesty, we’re pretty defenseless here. There’s no way I can think of to prevent a Crasher who can come at any time, anywhere, after anyone. Up until now, all of the victims have been out in the real world—but realistically speaking, it was only a matter of time before Grims were targeted as well. We aren’t exempt. If anything, we’re even more vulnerable. What we do here . . . well, someone has a problem with it, and they’re willing to take lives in order to make that clear.”

No one spoke.

“Which means that we need to carry on as normally as possible,” he finished. “If we can’t drunkenly dance the macarena until the sun comes up, the terrorists have already won. Or something.” He hopped off the fountain. “I’m going home to report all this to Necropolis, and I’ll get back to you as soon as I have more information. Try to have some fun, all right? Look, it’s not even midnight yet and Ferbus is already wearing a lampshade.”

With one last glimpse at his town’s troubled faces, Uncle Mort turned around and began walking down the street. Lex started after him, but Driggs briefly caught the mayor’s eye and pulled her back.

“He doesn’t want us to come,” he whispered to her.

“But we can help!”

“I don’t think Mort wants the rest of the town to know that his most trusted advisors are in fact the troublemaking teenagers currently residing under his roof.”

“Why?” She shook him off. “Just because we’re Juniors doesn’t mean we’re not—”

“It’s not because we’re Juniors.”

“What is it, then? Me?”

She took his silence as a resounding yes.

The party—if it could still be called that—persisted through the night, though the mood had shifted considerably; most of the revelers just ended up lying down in the street and watching the falling stars in silence. Around sunrise, they shuffled like zombies into the Morgue, where a seemingly indefatigable Pandora grabbed a pan and began tossing batch after batch of flapjacks high into the air.

“We don’t even get a nap?” Lex yawned as the Juniors collapsed into their booth, exhausted more by worry than lack of sleep.

“Not really,” a bleary-eyed Elysia said. “I might try later, but only if Alexander Graham Bell makes good on his promise to stop experimenting with ringtones.”

“I
hate
that guy,” Ferbus said. “I don’t wanna go to work.”

“Oh, please,” Lex said crankily. “You just get to sit around and jerk off all day. We actually have stuff to do.”

“Shut your hole,” he countered weakly.

Lex looked around the table. Sofi was nodding off into her English muffin. Zara had bitten her nails to nubs. And Driggs had a Lucky Charm stuck to his forehead.

“You’ve got a—” Lex gestured.

“Bwa?” he answered sleepily.

“Purple horseshoe,” she said, flicking it off.

“Oh,” he said, his mind elsewhere. “I was saving it for later.”

None of them knew where Kloo and Ayjay had been taken, or if Ayjay had even survived the night. So on they plodded through the meal, robotically shoving the utensils into their mouths and flinching at every random noise that dared to pervade the restaurant. By the time they left for their shifts, anxiety was at an all-time high—so much so that Lex practically tackled Uncle Mort as she caught sight of him on the way to the Bank.

“Where are Kloo and Ayjay?” she demanded.

“Recuperating,” he said, walking briskly.

“What did you tell Necropolis? What did they say?”

“Words. Hey, pick up some sausages on your way home today, will you? I have to feed the jellyfish.”

Lex frowned. “Jellyfish don’t eat sausage.”

“Look, I don’t tell you how to do your job.”

“Yes, you do, every day.”

“Gotta go. We’ll talk later, okay?”

And so Lex was left with nothing but more questions and now a shopping errand. Making matters worse was Kilda, who chanted, as they slumped past her desk, “A splendid night’s sleep, and success you will reap!”

“She’s gonna reap a beating if she doesn’t shut the hell up,” Lex said under her breath.