Elliot and the Last Underworld War (15 page)

“Just come with me, please,” Elliot said, and then quickly added, “And before you tell me no again, it’s something with Cami.”

Harold’s eyebrows lifted. “Cami?”

Elliot smiled. “Cami with Warts—I mean, Cami Wortson, the love of your life.”

“I’d do anything for the love of my life,” Harold said. “You know I would. But I can’t risk making any more mistakes.”

“Are you kidding?” Elliot said. “Do you know how many mistakes I’ve made since becoming king? Maybe you made a mistake by bringing Kovol back to Demon Territory, but it was really my mistake for having us go in there unprepared. Everyone makes mistakes. But my dad says that’s always okay,
if
you’re willing to fix them.”

Harold sighed. “How do I fix this?”

“Let’s go back to my house,” Elliot said. “We’ll poof straight to my room.”

“Okay,” Harold said glumly. “I just hope you know what you’re doing letting me make mistakes around your family.”

“Uh—” Elliot began. But it was already too late. Harold had poofed away.

When Elliot and Harold poofed into Elliot’s bedroom, they found Cami on the floor reading a book. She jumped to her feet, startled. “Oh, you scared me!” Once her heartbeat started up again, she said, “I’ll never get used to you doing that.”

“I’ll never get used to doing it either,” Elliot said, although he had already begun to think that magic might be the perfect solution to his problem of getting to school on time. He added, “How’s Reed?”

“He still thinks it was all a dream,” Cami said. “After he rested for a while he felt better, but he’s definitely not going back to the Quack Shack today.”

Elliot hoped the Quack Shack would still exist after today. Not only because it would mean Kovol had failed in destroying the world, but also because he really liked duck burgers.

“Are there any new sinkholes?” Elliot asked.

Cami shrugged. “The reporter who was covering the story fell into one and broke his leg. They can’t do any more news on the sinkholes until they find another reporter who’ll agree to go out there.” Then she noticed Harold, who had done nothing but stare lovingly at her since he poofed in. “Who’s this? Another king?”

Harold fell to his knees in front of her. “Do you know how wonderful it is to look at you through my own eyes? How do I describe the joy of looking at you looking at me as I look back at you?”

Cami made a face and turned to Elliot. “What’s he talking about?”

“Get up, Harold.” With his foot, Elliot nudged the Shapeshifter in the back.

Harold started to stand up, but Cami put a hand on his shoulder and pushed him down again. “Wait a minute.” She fingered the patch of white hair on Harold’s head. “I’ve seen this before.”

Harold froze, looking as guilty as if he had just been caught robbing a bank. Elliot shook his head, mad at himself for forgetting that Cami was actually a pretty smart girl.

Her eyes narrowed as she first stared at Elliot. “About four months ago, I saw this exact patch of white hair on your head for a few days. And for those days, you were acting so strangely. Sort of like—” Now she turned to Harold. “Sort of like
you
were acting just now!”

Elliot tried to look innocent. “Hmm, that’s weird.”

But Harold cried out, “I can’t lie to the love of my life!” Now he stood, but he clasped his hands as he faced Cami. “Elliot was trapped in the Underworld, and he begged me to come up to the surface and pretend to be him.”

Elliot’s nose wrinkled. That wasn’t the way he remembered it, although he was certain that was exactly the way Harold did.

“But how could you do all that?” Cami asked. “You don’t look anything like Elliot.”

Harold blew out a deep breath, and as he did, the bones and coloring of his face shifted to match Elliot’s. Other than the white patch, his hair lightened to dark blond, and even his clothes changed to a simple T-shirt and jeans, exactly the same as Elliot’s.

Cami let out a scream. Not a big scream or a long scream, but a very girly scream that made Elliot’s toes curl.

“Change back!” he said to Harold. “Hurry!”

“Yes,” Cami agreed. “This is so creepy!”

With another deep breath, Harold returned to his usual form. He said nothing more, but his eyes pled with Cami to accept him for who he was, in whatever form he might happen to be.

“You can change shapes?” she asked.

“He’s a Shapeshifter,” Elliot said.

“And what does he really look like?”

Elliot shrugged. “Whatever he wants.”

Cami looked from Elliot to Harold and back to Elliot, and with each turn of her head, her face got redder and redder.

“Are you mad?” Elliot asked. Was it really such a big deal if a Shapeshifter had pretended to be him for a few days? So what if the only reason he and Cami were sort of friends was because Harold had been so nice to her during that time? He really didn’t see what the problem was.

Cami poked Elliot in the chest. “I decided to be friends with you because you were so nice when we did the science experiment together. But that wasn’t you being nice. It was him. Which means you never wanted to be my friend in the first place!”

Elliot wanted to tell her she was wrong about all of that, but she wasn’t. It had never been his idea to be Cami’s friend. However, now that she was, he didn’t mind it so much. In fact, sometimes her friendship wasn’t awful at all.

Then she turned to Harold. “Why do you keep saying I’m the love of your life?”

He smiled shyly. “Because you are the most wonderful human I’ve ever known. The most beautiful, the kindest, and with a voice that melts my heart.”

Elliot couldn’t stop himself. He gagged.

Cami’s face scrunched up. “Get out!” she said to Elliot.

Elliot backed up a step. “It’s my room!”

“I don’t care. Get out!” Turning to Harold, she added, “If you really liked me, then you wouldn’t have lied about who you are! You get out too!”

She backed both Elliot and Harold out of his room, then slammed the door on them. The door even flattened Harold’s nose for a second before it popped back into place.

“Quiet up there!” Wendy hissed from downstairs. “Reed’s asleep.”

Harold turned to Elliot, his eyes wide. “The love of my life yelled at me.”

“I guess we probably deserved it,” Elliot said. “I never thought of how she’d feel about you pretending to be me.”

Then Harold smiled. “Hey, I just realized that was our first fight. One day she and I will look back on this moment and laugh about it all.”

Elliot rolled his eyes, then cracked open the door to his room. Cami still stood in the doorway with her arms crossed and eyebrows pressed low. Before she could speak, he said, “We’re both sorry about what we did. And it’s okay if you don’t want to forgive us yet, but we really need your help.”

“How?”

“Do you still have the paper-mache doll of me from when we played Capture the Flag this morning?”

“You made fun of it.”

“I know. I’m sorry about that too. But I need it now.”

“I already took the doll home.”

“Can you go get it? And then maybe bring it to the same place in the woods where you had it this morning?” She hesitated, and he added, “You don’t have to do this for me, or for Harold, but would you do it for the human race?”

Slowly, Cami nodded. “I’ll do it for the human race, minus you two.”

Harold smiled. “Actually, I’m not part of the human race. I’m just in that form right now.”

Cami’s face reddened again, but Elliot took another step forward and said, “No, that’s good. Stop talking, Harold.” Then he called, “Patches! I need some turnip juice.” While he waited for her to come, he asked, “Are the twins home now?”

“They got home about ten minutes ago,” Cami said. “Wendy’s feeding them some dinner. She offered me some too, but I’m not sure it was food.”

Whatever it was, as long as it could be eaten, it sounded good to Elliot. But he didn’t have time to eat now.

Patches poofed in with a large bottle of turnip juice in her hands. “Here it is. Are you thirsty?”

“Not exactly.” Elliot looked at Harold. “Now can you turn into a goat?”

Harold winked at Cami. “Goats are one of my better animals. I know you’ll be impressed.”

From the little that Elliot knew about girls, he guessed Cami wasn’t likely to be impressed with Harold’s changing into any farm animal. Except maybe a horse. He knew most girls liked horses.

Harold let out a deep breath, and his body immediately curved so that he stood on four hooves rather than hands and feet. White hair spread all over his body, and his face molded into that of a goat’s.

“Ho-oww do you like me no-oww?” he asked Cami.

“Eww,” Cami said.

Then he bleated to Elliot, “Wh-y do you ne-eed a goat?”

Elliot took the bottle from Patches and held it out to Harold. “Spit in this,” he said. He wasn’t sure whether Minthred’s sleep recipe would work, but it was worth a try.

Harold the Goat gathered a big wad of spit in his mouth, then shot it into the bottle.

“Disgusting!” Patches cried. “No Brownie will drink that now.”

“I don’t want a Brownie to drink it,” Elliot said, putting the lid on it again. “I have much bigger plans for this. There’s just one more ingredient I need. Anyone know where I can get some earwax?”

Everyone in the room stared at one another, but no one seemed to have any earwax available at that moment.

“Can you get some here by magic?” Cami asked.

“Magic can’t just create something from nowhere,” Patches explained. “It has to exist somewhere first.”

“We need to think of someone who would have a lot of earwax,” Harold said, tapping his hoof on the floor.

“The Trolls?” Elliot suggested. “I’ve seen their ears, and there’s got to be pounds of it in their heads.”

“But Agatha told me they’re all turned to stone,” Patches said. “If we got any, it would be stone earwax.”

They all froze when a roar boomed from the woods behind Elliot’s house, rattling the windows and even shaking a few books from Elliot’s bookshelf.

“What was that?” Cami whispered.

“Kovol,” Elliot breathed. Kovol was looking for him.

“You’ve got to poof somewhere far away,” Patches said. “Where Kovol won’t think of looking for you.”

“I can’t,” Elliot said. “When he couldn’t find me before, he went after Reed. I have to go back and face him now, or he’ll look for my family. Harold, will you stay here as me to protect them, just in case?”

“What if I mess up?” Harold asked.

“You won’t,” Elliot said. “I know this time you won’t.”

“What can I do?” Cami asked. “I promised you I’d help.”

“This is my fight,” Elliot said. “Just get that paper-mache doll into the woods.” He pointed to the jar of turnip juice and goat spit. “Keep track of this too. It’s really important now.”

“It’s also really gross now,” Patches said. Then she added, “Be safe, Elliot.”

Before Kovol had finished his second roar, Elliot closed his eyes, pictured Kovol so clearly it made his knees turn to rubber, and then poofed himself there, ready for the final battle.