Chapter 1
“Grim?” said the man who stood in front of me. He was small, thin in the shoulders and much older than me, probably midsixties. He wore a dark cape over his suit, and when he quirked one of his peppered brows, waiting for an answer to his question, a sparkle twinkled in his eyes.
Or something like that.
Description isn’t my thing.
But even if I hadn’t immediately recognized the man from the countless television episodes that he’d hosted, the camera crew standing behind him would’ve instantly tipped me off to his identity.
“Horatio Crooks?” I asked.
He beamed, and that twinkle in his eyes became a shining star. “Horatio Crooks at your service.” He gave a half bow. “You wouldn’t happen to be Grim, would you?”
“I would be.”
“Perfect.” He glanced behind him at his crew, and the man holding the camera straightened, ready for action. Horatio turned back to me. “Your uncle says you’ve been infected by a withering. I’m here to help.”
Uncle Geezer clapped a hand on my shoulder. “See? I told you that I knew the old bird. How’ve you been, Horatio? Gallivanting around the world, searching for monsters, no doubt?”
Horatio turned those sparkling eyes toward my uncle and shook his hand. “Great to see you, Geezer. I didn’t think you were still alive after that whatsiblastit destroyed your house twenty years ago. Those creatures can truly be devils.”
Geezer smiled bashfully. “Oh, you know. When you’ve seen one whatsiblastit, you’ve seen them all.”
My sister, Holly, shot me a look that said, What’s a whatsiblastit?
I shrugged as Horatio and his crew of merry cameramen trickled into the house. “Is it okay if we set up here?” The television star twirled around. “This room has great light.”
“Of course,” Geezer replied with a lopsided grin. “Set up wherever you like. My home is your home.”
“Except it’s my home,” my sister said.
“Oh, so it is,” my uncle replied with a baffled expression.
Horatio took in my sister’s dark shroud of a personality. Perhaps it was the stony look in her eyes. Or maybe it was the fact that her arms were folded. Either way, he turned his full attention to her and said with the utmost humility, “My dear woman. I’m Horatio Crooks, television star of the hit show Expedition: Monster.”
“I know who you are.”
“So do I.” Matt approached, hand out. “I’m a huge fan. I’ve been watching your show forever. The one episode where you tracked the werewolf to his den and then only had a flaming torch to defend yourself with, was my favorite.”
Horatio rocked back on his heels as if he were in a pub about to relay the tale to a roomful of voracious listeners. “Ah, yes, episode 325, ‘Inside the Lair of the Beast.’ Do you know that none of that was rehearsed? We’d been on the trail of the creature for days, and honestly I was just about to give up. But when we found the cave, I knew we had our man—or beast, as it was. So we went in”—he placed a finger to his mouth and dropped his voice to a whisper—“and I knew this could be the end of me. I said to my crew, ‘If you don’t want to go, I understand. Men, this is the deadliest challenge we’ve faced yet.’ But they insisted, and so we forged ahead. We’d been at the search for days. Our food was gone, and I was spent magically because I was so tired and hungry. Night was on us, and all we had were the torches. There was a chance that I wouldn’t make it out alive. But we went in anyway.”
Matt was leaning forward, hinged on every word that came out of Horatio’s mouth. “And the way that you defeated the werewolf was classic—with a binding spell!”
Horatio rubbed his chin. “It came to me at the last minute. I said to myself, how can I defeat this creature? What can I possibly cast that will save me and my crew?”
“And you did it,” Matt said triumphantly.
“Well, I don’t like to take all the credit. It takes a village, you know.”
“Horatio, you must be tired from traveling,” Geezer interrupted. “Holly’ll make you some tea or coffee for all of you. Whichever you’d like.”
“I will?” she said.
Matt shot her a quick look. “I’ll help.”
“Me too.” Paige appeared beside me and grinned up at me. “Let me take your bag, Grim.”
The bag that I had packed because I was on my way out of the house—or had been until Horatio arrived. Before I could protest, she snatched the duffel from my hand. “Why don’t you sit down and get to know your sister’s guests?”
“I was leaving,” I grumbled.
“Don’t talk nonsense.” Geezer steered me toward an empty chair. “Horatio’s come all this way to see you. You can’t leave now.” He deposited me in a chair and scratched his head. “Where’d you say that you were at before this?”
Horatio unbuttoned his cloak and let it slip from his shoulders. With a snap of his fingers, the cloth lifted into the air and hitched itself on a coatrack.
“I was in Fiji tracking a particularly elusive water spirit. But as soon as I heard about the withering, I had to come. Like I told your uncle, Grim, I may be able to help.”
I glanced around the room, and my gaze landed on Paige, who was walking off to help with the coffee. She glanced over her shoulder at me and waved her hand toward Horatio, silently telling me to pay attention and not to be so, well, grim.
As the crew began taking seats, Geezer mumbled, “We need more chairs.”
Next thing I knew, he’d magicked up several more recliners for the men, filling the living room with so many chairs that it resembled a minefield more than a room to relax in.
As soon as he was seated, Horatio fixed his attention on me. “Tell me what happened.”
All I wanted to do was leave and find a cure on my own, by myself, away from all this attention. The last thing I wanted to do was spill my guts to a television star.
But Geezer had called Horatio here, so the least I could do was hear him out.
“It started—”
“Hold on.” He snapped. “We need to be rolling.”
Two cameramen jumped to attention. Lights flared to life, and people were up, working.
“There, that’s better. Now, Grim, tell me everything.”
“Not on camera.”
Horatio’s eyes flared in surprise. “But, my good man, the world needs to know your story. They need to know what happened to you so that the past won’t repeat itself.”
“Not. On. Camera,” I growled.
He glanced back at the cameramen and gestured for them to lower their instruments. “However you’d like it. But tell me what happened.”
When the camera was put away and was no longer a threat, I began. “I made the mistake of taking a withering on. The creature touched me, and I became infected. So here we are.”
“Fascinating.” He nodded as if I’d told him a ten-minute epic instead of a five-second tale. “Truly fascinating. And what happened to that creature?”
“He was sucked into a book. Where he’s to stay,” I replied, eyes flashing in warning.
If Horatio thought for one second that I was going to release the creature that had infected me, he was sorely mistaken.
“I understand. Keep the creature where he is. It’s best for the world. What an amazing story. Truly fascinating. Tell me”—he leaned in—“I’ve heard that when one’s infected, they begin to feel the call of the withering, for lack of a better word. Is that true?”
How did he know that? My face must’ve betrayed what I was thinking, because a self-satisfied smile ghosted across his face. “Yes, that’s what I thought. So it’s true then, you begin to associate yourself with the creatures. Have they appeared to you yet?”
Now he knew way too much.
When I didn’t answer, he sat back and smirked. “So they are.”
“Grim likes to keep his secrets,” Geezer said.
“Here we are, back with coffee,” Paige announced, placing a steaming cup in front of Horatio.
But he didn’t look at the coffee. He stared at me, and I stared back at him. When I was a child, I’d looked up to Horatio as one of my heroes. He was a real monster hunter, someone who helped people. My father had also been a monster hunter, and that was what I’d wanted to be, too. I wanted to help people.
But as I grew older, I started to question his television show, even question Horatio. His series was full of theatrics, but there was very little substance anymore. So I doubted that he’d be able to help me.
But as our gazes locked, his eyes sparking with what I could only assume was hidden knowledge, it hit me that Horatio Crooks might just be the one person on the entire planet who could offer help.
After all, he’d spent an entire lifetime traveling the world, studying just about every monster that existed. He knew more than me about beasts, I’d give him that.
So maybe, just maybe, he knew of a way for me to beat this infection.
Even now, my stomach ached. The transition was beyond painful. Waves of pain overtook me every few moments, waves that I could bite back now. But soon my body would succumb to the agony as it became more excruciating.
Horatio Crooks might just be the one shot I had at salvation.
“How do you know so much about witherings?”
He lifted a hand that was bejeweled with a large ruby ring on the pinky. His crew immediately stopped talking, and my family, along with Paige and Matt, watched the television star in awe.
“May Grim and I have a few minutes of privacy?”
The crew rose, as did Geezer, who stretched his long limbs. “Come on, everyone. I’ll take you to the library. We can have coffee in there. But be sure not to ruffle any feathers. The books can be a bit persnickety.”
“You can say that again,” Holly said with an eye roll, referencing the last time that we’d been in the library and had narrowly escaped being attacked by the books.
Matt’s gaze darted from me to Horatio and back. “Shout if you need anything,” he said before falling into the line of folks leaving the room.
Even Savage, my dog, tucked his tail between his legs as he padded out. Paige shot me a smile and brushed her hand over my shoulders before disappearing into the hallway.
Horatio watched as Paige left. As soon as she was gone, he waved his hand, and pressure filled the room. He’d put a silence spell on us.
“Must be a good story, whatever it is you’re going to say.”
He settled back into his chair and crossed one leg over the other. “Grim, I’ve spent a lifetime scouring this world for monsters. I’ve destroyed many, saving the lives of hundreds of thousands of people. If many of the creatures I’ve encountered had been left to live, they would have wreaked chaos and destruction. The shock wave of hurt left in their wake would have affected more than merely those who were killed at their hand. I’ve done a service to this world and will leave a legacy that I’m proud of. Few can claim to have done more for humankind.”
Truly his ego needed no help in this conversation. “What does that have to do with me?”
“How do I know so much about witherings? The one creature that’s the most elusive and yet the most destructive when encountered?”
“It’s a question that crossed my mind.”
He inhaled sharply. “First swear your secrecy.”
Oh, so we were going there, were we? “Why should I?”
“Because what I’m going to tell you will not only change your perception about me, it will change your perception about the very creature that you’re becoming.”
Well, when he put it that way… “What you say here won’t be repeated by me.”
“Good.” He gave a hard nod. “I know so much about witherings because I was once in your exact same situation.” ...
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