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  “In other words,” Uncle Mort spoke up, “a Grim who can Damn.”

  Lex blinked. “Me.”

  She stared at the pelts on the floor for a moment, then glanced up at Uncle Mort. “So that’s what I have to do, then,” she said. “In order to trigger a reset, I have to Annihilate someone. Grotton.”

  Uncle Mort nodded slowly. “Looks that way.”

  Lex glanced at Driggs, sure that he’d be aghast—but he was looking out the window, seemingly not even listening.

  The rest of the Juniors, on the other hand, were floored. “That’s—” Elysia let out a long puff of air. “That’s unbelievable. I mean, Damning is bad, but at least it leaves you with your soul, even though it’s in pain. But erasing a soul completely?” She gulped. “Horrifying.”

  “Beyond horrifying,” Ferbus agreed.

  “Well, if anyone deserves it, it’s Grotton,” said Pandora.

  Lex shuddered. She wasn’t sure anyone deserved that.

  The car went quiet again. Pandora turned on the radio, but all she could find was static. No one said anything for a while, until—

  “He said dozens.”

  Lex turned to Driggs, not even sure that he’d spoken. But quite sure that he was frowning. “What?”

  “Norwood said you’ve Damned dozens of people. But by my count there was only Corpp and Heloise—then Norwood, unsuccessfully—and then those few Seniors back there. At most, that’s half a dozen. So why would he say something like that?”

  The Juniors were all staring at her, waiting for her to explain it away, to come up with a perfectly reasonable explanation. And part of Lex’s brain did instinctively start to formulate lies: Norwood had lost his mind, Norwood didn’t know what he was saying, Norwood must have hit his head and forgotten how to count—

  But she told that part to shut up. She’d avoided this for too long as it was. Her friends deserved the truth.

  “Um,” she started slowly, “over the past few months, when Zara was Damning all those criminals—”

  She took a deep breath and closed her eyes. She couldn’t look at them—especially not Driggs, who was always hardest on her for taking vengeful matters into her own hands.

  “Well . . . it wasn’t just her. I Damned some of them too. In secret. So whenever I told you I was just Damning inanimate objects or dirt or whatever, in order to discharge all that power building up inside of me—I was lying. I was actually Damning people.”

  Lex opened her eyes, but at the last second chickened out and looked down before she could see anyone’s reaction. No one spoke, though, so she kept going.

  “But I swear, I only ever Damned criminals. I never touched a single innocent, not like Zara did, going around zapping people for fun. I couldn’t help it. The urge to Damn was a force I couldn’t contain—I mean, you saw how it was back there. It’s just too strong, and I couldn’t—” She felt herself slipping, losing her conviction, starting to ramble. “But I thought carefully about who deserved it, you know? I know that doesn’t make it any better, but . . . if I had to be Damning people, I thought it would at least be better to eliminate the really bad ones . . .”

  She trailed off. They all seemed like logical arguments in her head, but out loud they just sounded deranged. “But I know I messed up,” she finished, “and I’m sorry I lied to you.”

  The silence was too much to bear. Lex looked up.

  The Juniors were gaping at her, their eyes huge. All except Driggs, who was still staring out the window, at anything but Lex.

  Lex’s insides fluttered at this, but she decided to first deal with those who could bear to look her in the eye. “Guys? Say something. Please.”

  After a moment Elysia spoke. “That’s awful.”

  “Yes,” Lex said. “Awful. I know.”

  Elysia’s eyes were getting wet again. “Why didn’t you tell us?”

  “How could I?” Lex asked. “We Juniors were under enough scrutiny as it was, and the less you knew, the better, and also, um, it’s awful.” She slumped, defeated. “But I couldn’t help it,” she finished in a small voice.

  Lex was sure they’d reached the point where everyone would begin reaching for their scythes to slaughter the fiendish hellion, but to her surprise, that didn’t happen. Even more to her surprise was what happened next—Elysia wrapped her in a hug, followed quickly by Pip and Bang.

  “What’s happening?” Lex asked, her voice muffled by their suffocating love.

  “Don’t talk. You’ll ruin the moment,” Elysia said. “Maybe before we’d seen it with our own eyes we’d be appalled, but after what happened back there in Grave, I think it’s pretty clear that this is something beyond your control. So we’re still your friends, and we still love you. Now please don’t make me say anything mushier, because my face already looks like a half-eaten omelet and I really don’t need to make things worse right now. Okay?”

  Lex’s heart was soaring. Why hadn’t she told them right from the start? Of course they’d have her back—they always had her back.

  Her relief, however, was short-lived.

  “Pull over.”

  Driggs was still looking out the window, but Lex could see that his face was strained. In fact, he was pulsing back and forth between solid and not, just as he had when he’d first changed. “Dora, stop,” he said. “I need to get out.”

  Pandora looked at Uncle Mort, who nodded. She steered the car into a ditch, and before it came to a stop Driggs was out the door, slamming it as he left.

  Lex watched him stalk toward the wall of trees that lined the highway and disappear into them. Several minutes passed, but he didn’t come out.

  Ferbus, who had neither said anything after Lex’s confession nor joined in with the group hug, eyed her. “Well?” he said. “You want to go get him, Killer, or should I?”

  Lex wanted to smack that judgmental look right off his face, but she opted to grab the door handle instead. “I’ll go.”

  The woods were thick. She picked her way down the path that Driggs’s intermittent footsteps had created in the snow until she began to make out a clearing in the trees, then a shoreline. She looked out across a frozen expanse of water—

  Where Driggs was standing atop the ice in the middle of the lake.

  Lex screeched, then stopped, thinking that maybe ice could be broken by loud noises, like snow in an avalanche. And she couldn’t tell if he was solid at the moment—he certainly had been when he slammed the door, but with the fog coming off the lake, she couldn’t tell anymore. “Driggs!” she yell-whispered, sliding onto the ice but staying close to the shore. “Come back! It might break!”

  “So what?” he yelled back in an oddly detached tone. “I already died of hypothermia two nights ago, right? It was such a rush, maybe I should do it again!”

  “Driggs!” Lex’s voice got more desperate the more she focused on his face. She’d never seen him like this. He looked furious, tortured, and hopeless at the same time, all wrapped up with a neat little ribbon of insanity. “Come here,” she said. “Let’s talk.”

  Abruptly, Driggs started sprinting toward her. His feet slipped along on the ice—Which means he’s solid, Lex thought with a lurch. Was it possible for a person to die twice?

  She grabbed his hoodie when he got close. “What are you—”

  “Did you feel anything?” he asked. His frenzied eyes were scanning her face, his blue eye looking lighter in the bright white reflections all around them.

  Lex drew back. “What do you mean?”

  “When you Damned those people,” he said evenly, “did you feel anything?”

  “I—I felt the burning—I mean, the Damning power—”

  He gave her a disappointed look, then headed for the shore. “That’s not what I mean.”

  “What do you mean?” Lex followed him onto the muddied grass. “Driggs. Look at me.”

  When he did, she wished he hadn’t. He looked destroyed, so different from the lighthearted boy she normally knew. “Did you
feel—” he started. “I don’t know. Like part of your soul had died? Like your crimes were beyond forgiveness? Like you were doing something so utterly, inconceivably wrong that you weren’t fully human anymore?”

  Lex swallowed. In the beginning, she had, but the more her conviction grew—the more she convinced herself that she was doing the right thing—that twinge of remorse had started to fade. But it had to be in there still, somewhere—she was sure of it. “Kind of,” she said. “Yes.”

  The faintest hint of relief passed over his face. “Good.” He started walking back toward the car, but not before adding, “Otherwise I don’t know how you could live with yourself.”

  For the first time, as Lex watched him walk away and fade back into his ghostish form, she got the feeling that they weren’t just talking about her own crimes anymore.

  ***

  The next twelve hours in the Stiff were decidedly less than pleasant. After several heated rounds of the License Plate Game, Pip decided to invent the Flick Ferbus in the Ear Game, which soon became the Ferbus Yells So Loud He Bursts Eardrums Game. Elysia yelled at him for yelling at Pip, causing Pandora to yell at everyone. “Shut the hell up or I’ll wrap this car right around a tree, and don’t you think for a second that I won’t!”

  “But he’s flicking me!” said Ferbus.

  Uncle Mort turned around in his seat. “Are we in preschool, Ferb? Is he breathing on you, too?”

  “Actually, he is. And he still won’t give me credit for spotting the Alaska plate first.”

  “Because you didn’t spot the Alaska plate first,” said Pip.

  “PIP, I SWEAR ON ALL THAT IS HOLY I WILL POP YOUR EYEBALLS OUT OF YOUR HEAD AND EAT THEM WITH A SIDE OF YOUR LEFT—”

  “Enough!” Uncle Mort yelled.

  But Lex could deal with the chaos. What she couldn’t deal with was the silent treatment Driggs was giving her. This had never happened before. He’d never been so mad that he couldn’t speak. Hell, she couldn’t remember the last time he’d been mad at all.

  In fact, he’d decided to switch places with Grotton and ride on top of the roof. Grotton now sat among them in the cabin of the car, stroking the place where his thumb used to be and grinning at the Juniors in a most unsettling manner.

  Elysia was trying not to let it get to her, but after avoiding his gaze for minutes at time, then looking back to find that he was only staring at her harder, she snapped. “What?” she hissed at him. “What are you doing?”

  He cocked his head to the side. “Estimating how high the blood would rise if it were drained out of all of you.” He held his hand up, level with the bottom of the window. “It’d come up to about here, I suspect.”

  Elysia looked at him as if he’d said . . . exactly what he’d just said. “Driggs!” she said in a fervent whisper, pounding on the roof. “Please come back!”

  Her pleas were met with silence.

  Elysia cupped a hand next to her face to block the view of the leering Grotton. “What’s wrong with Driggs?” she asked Lex.

  “I don’t know,” Lex said. “He flipped out over my whole Damning thing.”

  “Psff, yeah, what’s his problem?” Ferbus said sarcastically. “Getting upset over the discovery that his girlfriend is a mass murderer? What an asshole.” He gave her a Look.

  She ignored him and turned back to Elysia. “It just seems so unlike him, you know? I mean, he’s always gotten a little pissed when I’ve wanted to . . . bend the rules a little. But in the end he’s always been on my side.”

  Elysia smiled and grabbed Lex’s hand. “He’ll come around. Besides—”

  “Ugh, the children are emoting again,” Grotton said. “No wonder the boy wants to be left in peace.” He coyly raised an eyebrow at Lex and took a long, deep breath. “Though I do so love the stench of fear. It’s rather . . . intoxicating.”

  Either Driggs couldn’t hear what Grotton was saying or he didn’t care, because he didn’t budge from his spot on the roof. Lex nodded a thanks at Elysia, pulled her hood up over her face, and turned to the window, while Grotton just kept on staring, running the tip of his tongue over his lips.

  Some time after they crossed into Kansas, Pandora got off the highway.

  “How close are we?” asked Pip as he and the rest of the Juniors woke up. It was around noon.

  “Pretty close,” said Uncle Mort, craning his head to look at the sparse surroundings—nothing but endless fields under an endless sky. “Another few minutes.”

  Lex frowned. Croak was in the middle of the Adirondack mountains, hidden from view. DeMyse was in the middle of a desert, miles away from anyone and disguised as a mirage. How could Necropolis be in the middle of a sea of cornfields, all out in the open like that?

  The rest of the Juniors must have been thinking the same thing, because the questions started to bubble over. “Are we going to an airport?” Ferbus asked as Dora turned onto an even narrower road. “Are we taking a private jet to a secret remote location or something?”

  “Absolutely, Mr. Bond,” Uncle Mort said. “A hoverbike will be waiting for each of you as well.” When Ferbus started to look even more hopeful, Uncle Mort rolled his eyes. “No airport. No hoverbikes.”

  “So . . . is it underground?” Elysia asked. “A whole Grimsphere city secretly thriving right beneath these farms?”

  “No.”

  “Then what?”

  “Then that.”

  He pointed to a small park up ahead that contained nothing more than a few picnic benches, a little chapel, and a boxy stone marker with an aluminum pole sticking straight up out of it. The American flag at the top hung limply in the breezeless air. See- ing as how there was nothing but grass and corn in every other direction, the whole thing seemed a bit out of place.

  “Park over there, Dora,” Uncle Mort said as she pulled onto the grass. “Find a nice place for the Stiff to . . . you know.”

  “Rest in peace,” she said mournfully.

  Lex and the Juniors exchanged worried glances. They weren’t coming back to the car?

  Once Dora found a suitable spot, they piled out. Driggs floated off the roof, his still-wet hair looking as if it had been eaten by a vacuum cleaner.

  “Hey,” Lex said.

  He glanced at her, then looked away.

  “Awesome,” Lex said to herself as they started walking. “Good talk.”

  Uncle Mort led them to the stone marker. “‘The Geographic Center of the United States,’ ” Pip read off a metal plaque. “Really?”

  Uncle Mort pulled out his compass and scanned the horizon. “The Grimsphere capital needed to be in a centralized location. Doesn’t get more centralized than this.”

  “Um, Uncle Mort?”

  “Yes, Lex?”

  “This is not the Grimsphere capital. This is a crappy tourist attraction, one that doesn’t seem to have attracted even a single tourist.”

  “Yet again, Lex, I humbly bow to your powers of observation.” Spotting something in the distance, he started walking away from the marker, still looking at the compass and counting his steps as he went. Shrugging, the Juniors followed.

  After a moment he stopped and grinned. “There. Look straight ahead.”

  The Juniors looked straight ahead. The Juniors saw nothing.

  “It takes a few seconds,” he said. “You know, like one of those Magic Eye things. You have to let your eyes adjust and find it on their own.”

  Lex stared at the area he was pointing at. All she saw were the spiky green ends of cornstalks;the giant blue sky.

  And a solid wall of glass.

  Gasping, Lex finally saw it. She saw the whole thing; the glass had reflected the blue of the sky so well that the structure had been completely camouflaged. Even its edges were softened, shrouded in some kind of mist, causing it to blend in seamlessly with the Kansan sky. But there it was, right in front of them.

  A massive, massive tower.

  The circular base of the building was huge—probably the size of a city
block. But it was also mind-blowingly tall, narrowing as it reached the top and forming a gigantic cone-shaped spire with an apex so high it was lost in the clouds.

  If the earth were a unicorn, they’d just found its horn.

  “Nicknamed the Emerald City,” Uncle Mort told them, and as soon as he said it, Lex noticed that the glass did have a bit of a green tint.

  “And in Kansas, too,” Grotton snorted. “Grims think they’re so terribly clever, don’t they?”

  The Juniors took a few careful steps forward, still staring in disbelief. They waved at the structure, trying to make the glass register their reflections, but all it displayed was more grass, more sky—as if the Croakers were invisible. Or vampires.

  “This is . . . impossible,” Ferbus said.

  “Tip of the impossibility iceberg, my friend.” Uncle Mort waved them closer, stopping at some invisible boundary. “Now line up and stay still until I tell you to walk forward, all at the same time. You may hold hands if you like.”

  “What’s going to happen when we walk forward?” Lex asked.

  “We’ll be in Necropolis.” He grinned at her, counted to make sure everyone was there, then added, “And then we’ll get arrested. Go!”

  8

  “We’ll what?” the Juniors yelled. Not that they expected an answer. Uncle Mort strode forward and they followed regardless, because that’s just how things worked with Uncle Mort.

  But three steps in, they were no longer capable of coherent thought. Before Lex could get one syllable out of her mouth, a door opened in the cone—which was very odd, seeing a hole materialize out of the illusion of solid earth and sky—and vomited forth a veritable SWAT team of masked, black-uniformed guards, all running at the intruders and pointing some very serious-looking weapons in their faces.

  “YOU’RE UNDER ARREST!” a slight guard blared at them from behind the mask. The voice sounded amplified and staticky, as if it were coming through a megaphone.