Henry Rider: Clown Hunter

Chapter Fifteen

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Chapter Fifteen

"Does it have a color?"

"No," I said.

"Is it a type of food?"

"Nope!"

Ethan and I were walking home from the Burning Creek IW, the sky above us almost an exact copy of the one we'd just left in the Dusk Dimension. Jade had volunteered to take Aesop — who was still mumbling to his hallucinations — home to make sure he didn't wander into traffic.

"Can you...bring it to school?" Ethan asked.

I shrugged. "I mean, you can, but that's not really how it works."

He raised an eyebrow. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"Yes or no questions only!"

I was acting nonchalant for Ethan's sake, but he didn't see the way I kept my right hand held over Splatsy, or how my eyes shifted to look at every shadow and dark corner.

"Fine," he said. "Is it something you can buy?"

"No." I paused. "Wait, yes. Sometimes, I guess?"

He rolled his eyes. "Remind me never to play this with you again."

"What's the matter? Am I too smart for you?"

"You're something, all right."

"Come on, keep guessing!"

Just then, one of the neighborhood cats streaked out in front of us, and I reacted like the totally awesome warrior goddess that I am — and definitely not by jumping a mile in the air and yanking Ethan back by the collar of his shirt. While he coughed and massaged his neck, I watched the cat run across the street and jump over somebody's fence. Threat neutralized.

"What was that for?" Ethan demanded.

"Your, uh, allergies," I said, carefully scanning the neighborhood. "You're allergic to cats, right?"

"No!"

"Sure you are. Listen to you cough!" I kept walking, giving him a playful slug on the arm. "Come on, guess again!"

In truth, I was pretty freaked out. The man in the mask had been at Feverdream Field. I remembered him walking beside me, but I'd assumed he was just another hallucination. That was enough to tie my guts into knots. If he'd wanted to kill either of us, I wouldn't have even tried to stop him. The fact that we were both here, alive, was pure dumb luck. I'd failed.

Again.

But I wasn't going to let that happen a...how many times had it been now? Well, from now on I was Ethan's personal guardian angel. Nobody was going to so much as blow a dandelion at him without getting a big facefull of Splatsy.

"I give up," he said. "What is it?"

I looked at him. "Huh? What?"

"The game," he reminded me. "I don't know what it is, so just go ahead and tell me."

"Oh, right. It was the letter O."

He squinted at me. "The letter...O?"

I grinned. "Yep! Pretty clever, huh?"

"No, I'm pretty sure that's against the rules!"

"How is it against the rules?" I asked.

"You said you could buy it! You lied!"