When McGus first made me the Hunter, there wasn't a night that went by when I didn't dream of being carried through Mauldibamm on the cheering townspeople's shoulders after killing a maiam the size of King Kong. I would be a hero, selflessly throwing myself into harm's way to protect those who couldn't protect themselves, and of course they would all recognize me as such.

 

That was one bubble that life had gone out of its way to burst the first chance it got.

 

It didn't take me long to figure out that, no, people weren't in any hurry to drop to their knees and worship my awesomeness. As it turned out, being the Hunter was a sadder job than I ever could have realized. Maiams didn't just pop out of holes in the ground. They had been people once, and people had families. So, between that and my natural Henry-ish tendency to violently screw things up, I actually ended up making more enemies than admirers, and my fan club consisted of me and my increasing number of self-esteem issues.

 

Why am I wasting your time telling you this? Because as I was being carried out of Jah Beryge on the shoulders of a swarm of cheering monks, it occurred to me how ironic it was that the only thing I could think about were my parents.

 

Soon, the monks deposited me outside my front door—which was just kind of floating on the edge of the platform we’d entered from—and as they dispersed I turned to glance at Ethan and Jade.

 

“That looked like fun,” Jade said, giving me an encouraging smile.

 

I shrugged and opened the door, stepping back into my house without a word. My quiet, empty, gloomy house.

 

“I can make some dinner,” Jade said, tentatively stepping toward the kitchen. “Are you hungry, Henry?”

 

I shook my head.

 

“You barely had anything for breakfast, and now it’s almost dinnertime,” she pressed me. “Come on, you cuss with food! Just name something and I’ll make it…as long as I don’t have to use magic.”

 

“No thanks,” I mumbled. “I’m just gonna go to bed.”

 

I started toward the stairs just as Ethan shut the door behind himself, and all the noises from Jah Beryge suddenly disappeared. I glanced at him, then at Jade, and…

 

Wait a second. I paused, one foot on the stairs. Something was missing here.

 

Ethan and Jade.

 

Ethan and Jade…

 

Ethan…

 

And…

 

Ja—

 

“Holy habaneros on a hoagie!” I yelled, spinning around with a look of horror on my face. “We forgot Aesop!”

 

But before I could lunge for the door and pray that my leprechaun buddy had managed to stay out of sight, the front door opened, and Aesop sauntered in as nonchalantly as if he’d just been out for a walk around the block.

 

“Sup?” he said with an impish grin.

 

I sat down on the stairs, suddenly feeling about a hundred times more tired than I had a minute ago.

 

“Ohhhh, gorgonzola apple pie,” I moaned, massaging my temples. “Don’t do that to me!”

 

“Do what?” he asked. “You’re acting like any of those stupid clowns—no offense—had any chance of catching me!”

 

“You’re sure nobody saw you?” Ethan asked, locking the door before we had any more unexpected walk-ins. “The last thing Henry needs right now is for the Brotherhood to get suspicious of her.”

 

The smile fell from Aesop’s face, and he sneered as he looked down his freckled nose at Ethan. “Yes, I’m sure. Do you want to check my diaper too, since you’re so worried about me, Nana?”

 

Ethan paused. “You’re…wearing a diaper?”

 

Aesop’s face turned as red as his hair, and he pointedly turned away from Ethan to look at me. “Well? Are you gonna ask me how I did?”

 

“Did you find a way to get past the Brotherhood’s security?” I asked, standing up.

 

“Ach, lassie! It surely would’a baen harder to sneak past a pack o’ langered gobdaws!”

 

I blinked. “I have no idea what you just said.”

 

“I said,” he grinned and winked at me, “that I know exactly how we’re going to snatch that hammer right out from under that puppet’s cottony nose!”

 

“Well?” Jade asked. “Don't keep us in suspense here!”

 

Clearly enjoying the attention, Aesop meandered into the living room and sat down on the couch. I followed, hands stuffed into my pockets to keep from shaking him until he spilled the beans.

 

“All right,” he said, eyes gleaming, “listen and be amazed by what I've decided to call Aesop O’Gale The Master Burglar’s Flawless Plan To Get Inside The Vault of Vulgar Humor And Steal The First Hunter's Hammer!”

 

He turned toward Ethan. “Or, AOGTMBFPTGITVOVHASTFHH for short!”

 

Giving him a dirty look, Ethan wiped the Leprechaun spit off his face.

 

“Getting inside that vault isn't going to be easy,” Aesop said, his eyes gleaming at the prospect of a challenge. “Papa Puppetman knew what he was doing when he put it together. But he overlooked one very important thing while he was doing it.”

 

Ethan rolled his eyes. “Let me guess…”

 

“I'm Aesop O'Gale the Master Burglar! Now, what we're going to need to do is come in through the ceiling. These idiots are still living in medieval times, so we don't have to worry about cameras. The walls, though, are all five feet thick and made of solid granite. The roof is made of granite too, but since it's only three feet thick, that’ll be the easiest point of entry. So, the first thing we need to do…”

 

He paused just long enough to pull a big, rolled up sheet of paper out of his pants and spread it across my coffee table.

 

“Wha—” Ethan began, but stopped when Jade shook her head at him.

 

“…Is get our hands on one of these bad boys!” Aesop declared.

 

Feeling a spike of excitement despite myself, I leaned in to get a better look at the paper. On it was a surprisingly well-drawn picture of a gigantic drill. A red headed figure who I took to be Aesop was standing beside it, his head not even reaching halfway up the enormous cone-shaped bit. The words “Faultmaker 9000” were scribbled along the top, and at the bottom, squashed beneath the drill as it bored into the vault’s ceiling, was Ethan.

 

“The Faultmaker is the ultimate mining drill,” Aesop explained. “It’ll put a hole in that ceiling faster than you can say Ethan’s as ugly as half-chewed haggis, or my name isn’t Aesop the Master Burglar!

 

Ethan opened his mouth to retort, but stopped when Jade put a hand on his arm.

 

“Haggis is a Scottish food,” she said, giving Aesop a sharp look, “not Irish.”

 

Aesop paused, his face turning red again. “Says you.”

 

“More importantly,” I cut in, “a drill like that is going to make a buttload of noise. How are we going to pull this off without alerting the entire Brotherhood of Zanni?”

 

“An excellent question!” Aesop’s face lit up again, and he reached back into his pants to produce a second rolled up sheet of paper.

 

“Seriously, did he just have those in there this whole time?” I heard Ethan mutter.

 

“We’re going to need a distraction to keep the Brotherhood busy while I work my magic.” Aesop pointed at the next picture, which had me and Ethan standing on some kind of stage together. I was holding a baseball bat, and Ethan had a catcher’s mitt on both his hands…and in his mouth…and I’m also pretty sure he’d wet his pants. “That’s where you and Haggis Face come in. You’re going to put on a show, entrancing and enthralling them so thoroughly that they wouldn’t notice the Faultmaker if it was drilling straight into their frontal lobe! Their buildings are pretty old fashioned, so I’m gonna go out on a limb and say that their sense of humor probably is too. That’s why you’re going to put on the most emotionally stirring rendition of Who’s On First the world has ever seen!”

 

“That’s a good idea,” I said, nodding. “I have all the lines memorized already.”

 

“Meanwhile, Jade will be feeding me intel via a remote control camera drone while staying safe and secure here in the house,” Aesop went on. “Those things usually don’t work across dimensional barriers, by the way, so you’ll have to splurge on the extradimensional signal receiver.”

 

“Naturally,” I said with another nod.

 

“And then, once the hole has been drilled, I’ll repel down from the roof and sneak my way up to the gate. Then, with a little help from…”

 

He pulled out a third sheet of paper, which had a picture of Aesop driving what looked like a tank with a giant, white-gloved hand on the end of its cannon. In the background, Ethan was being trampled by an elephant.

 

“…the Grand Larcenator, I’ll be able to get past that padlock, steal the hammer, and vanish mysteriously into thin air like the Master Burglar I am!” Aesop put his fists on his hips, looking extremely proud of himself. “You and Ethan will get picked up in the getaway copter, and your family will be back home just in time to see you turn eighteen!”

 

“Okay, okay, I’m liking this!” I said, excitement rising up inside me. Then the last thing he’d said finally wormed its way through my thick skull. “Wait, how long did you say this was going to take?”

 

“And more importantly, how much is this going to cost?” Ethan demanded. “Unless you’re about to tell me you have all that fancy gear stuffed down your pants too, we’re going to have to buy it.”

 

“About two and a half years, and…” Aesop took a minute to count on his fingers. “About seventy million dollars.”

 

And just like that, all my enthusiasm melted away, and I sat down on Grandpa Teddy’s armchair with a sigh.

 

“What?” Aesop asked.

 

“Henry only has three days to get the hammer,” Jade answered softly.

 

I shook my head. “Thanks anyway, Aesop. But I think my best bet is to just keep doing the Trials like Opisthia wants.”

 

“Are you sure that’s any better?” Ethan asked, frowning. “You barely made it through today’s Trial—”

 

“Excuse you, I did amazing!” I snapped.

 

Ethan ignored me. “And Opisthia says they’re only going to get harder. What if they’re more than you can handle, Henry?”

 

I paused, looking down at my hands in my lap.

 

Then I clenched them into fists.

 

“They won’t be,” I said, a surge of pure determination coursing through me.

 

“But…”

 

“Dragging my family into this was the biggest mistake that pukeburger supreme ever made,” I growled, anger making the veins in my forehead pulse. “So he wants me to take some tests for him? Fine! Tests didn’t stop me from making it to the tenth grade, and they won’t stop me here either. Then when I get my family back, I’m going to use that hammer to make Ichabod regret every single minute of his miserable, stupid existence!”

 

The room fell silent except for the awkward shuffling of feet. Finally, Aesop coughed.

 

“So,” he said hesitantly, “you're telling me I used up all of Ethan's colored pencils for nothing?”

 

“You WHAT?” Ethan rounded on him. “Why would you—”

 

“Thanks for your help,” I said before another fight could break out. “It means a lot that you at least tried. Sorry it ended up being for nothing.”

 

Aesop shrugged and crumpled up his plans. “Whatever. I didn't really want to play with a big, sexy drill like that anyway. So, what are we going to do, then?”

 

I nodded toward the window. “You need to go home.”

 

Aesop froze, then spun to look at me. “Come again?”

 

“Aesop, this is extremely dangerous!” I said. “I thought you understood that after Legion nearly made me kill you, and now things have gotten even worse! I already might lose my parents and Grandpa Teddy over this. I don't want to put my friends in harm's way too!”

 

I could tell the moment those words left my mouth that that had been the wrong thing to say.

 

“Oh, so it's too dangerous for Aesop O'Gale?” he demanded, leaping out of his seat and pointing at Ethan and Jade. “But those two are the freaking A-Team or something?”

 

“It's not like that!” I shot back.

 

“Then what is it like?”

 

“Ethan has to be near me so I can protect him from the maiams he draws, and Jade has to be near him because he has her core.” I spread my hands. “If there was a way for me to keep them out of this too, I would!”

 

“Oh, get off your high horse!” Aesop yelled. “Do you think I'm stupid, Henry?”

 

I gritted my teeth, standing up as well. “Aesop, no! I just don't want—”

 

“Do you think I don't see what's going on here? What's been going on for the past year?” He glared at me, then started counting on his fingers again. “You didn't want me around when Ethan started turning into all kinds of crazy crap! You didn't want me around when you were hunting ghuls! And now you've discovered some kind of ancient clown cult, and guess what? You don't want me around for that, either!”

 

“It isn't like that, and you know it!” I shouted. I clenched my fists, feeling my temper rising. This was the last thing in the world I needed right now.

 

“Stop lying to me!” Aesop ranted. “You've been trying to get rid of me ever since you met Ethan!”

 

“No!” I protested.

 

“Yes!” He stormed up to me and jabbed his finger an inch away from my face. “Did you think you were being sneaky? You're as subtle as a blind rhino in a bubble wrap factory! We've all seen it! Every time you even glance at Ethan you look like you're about to—”

 

That was all I could take. All the stress that had been building up over the past day and night finally boiled over. My family was in danger, and as much as I tried to pretend otherwise, I didn't know if I was going to be able to save them. I was more scared than I had ever been in my life and Aesop's temper tantrum was the last straw. I felt the anger rise up inside me, and—

 

“Henry, stop!”

 

I blinked, and realized that I was being held against the wall by Ethan and Jade. What had just…

 

Aesop lay on the floor, tears streaming out of one eye, and his hand pressed against the other.

 

My heart fell into my stomach.

 

“Aesop, I…” I stammered.

 

He scrambled to his feet, his face redder than I had ever seen it.

 

“Go to hell, Henry!” he screamed, his voice raw.

 

He made for the window, and I pushed Ethan and Jade away to chase after him.

 

“Aesop, wait!” I yelled, but he didn't even look at me as he vaulted over the windowsill and disappeared into the night. “I…I didn't mean to!”

 

I watched him go, but couldn't bring myself to chase after him. My whole body started to shake, and I fell to my knees and buried my face in my hands.

 

“I didn't mean to!” I sobbed.

 

I felt Jade and Ethan put their hands on my shoulders, but nobody said anything. First, Mom, Dad, and Grandpa Teddy—and now Aesop.

 

How many people was I going to lose before this was over?