Elliot and the Pixie Plot (15 page)

Dear Reader, we all have a voice inside our head. It keeps us safe and helps us remember things we have to do. Usually when Elliot listens to the voice, he’s very glad he did. You should listen to the voice inside your head too, unless the voice tells you to cut your sister’s hair while she’s asleep. If that happens, it might not be your own voice inside your head. Instead, it’s probably an evil spell that a wizard put on you as his idea of a joke.

If you have an evil spell on you, dump all of your mother’s salt on your bedroom floor, then stand on your head and kick your feet in the air. Your mother might be mad at first, but if you explain that you’re just getting rid of an evil spell, she’ll probably understand.

So Elliot walked deeper into Demon Territory, but after only a short distance, something changed. He heard a whisper in the air, a breath, a hiss.

Elliot looked at the tree beside him, with claw-like branches and long, spiny, gray leaves. The leaves were perfectly still. There was no wind here.

Then something moved on his right. Elliot’s heart pounded. Cold sweat licked his palms. He had an itch in the middle of his back too, but that wasn’t from fear. It just itched sometimes.

Elliot swung to his left at another sound. The trees beside him shivered as if something terrible was hiding there.

The Shadow Men had come.

With trembling fingers, Elliot grabbed the bottle of invisibility potion. That voice inside him said to test it on his finger first, but Elliot told the voice to be quiet. It was one thing for the voice to be sitting safely inside Elliot’s head giving him orders, and a whole other thing for Elliot to be alone in Demon Territory with Shadow Men coming toward him.

Elliot pulled out the cork stopper and dumped the potion all over him. It tingled on his skin, like extra-fizzy soda pop. As quickly as he could, he rubbed it in, on his clothes, his skin, in his hair, everywhere but his eyes. For a brief moment he wondered if the potion would make his eyes go invisible, or if the Shadow Men would see nothing but a pair of eyes floating in midair. Maybe that would scare
them
for a change.

The tingling slowly faded, but the potion left his skin feeling greasy, even slippery. He didn’t care. If Harold was right, he’d soon see himself start to become invisible, then he could slip right past the Shadow Men and get to Kovol.

Elliot raised a hand in front of his face. It was so dark, it was hard to tell whether he actually was fading, but he thought he could still see himself. Maybe that was how invisibility potions worked. Maybe he could always see himself, but nobody else could.

He decided to continue walking, conducting a little science experiment of his own. If the Shadow Men reached out and grabbed him in a few minutes, then, no, he was not invisible at all.

Experiments like this were why Elliot didn’t like science projects.

There was more shuffling in the trees ahead. Something was definitely in there, watching, waiting for him to come closer.

Elliot walked a little farther, but he must have been moving away from Kovol now, because the area around Elliot seemed to be getting lighter, almost like he was carrying a soft yellow lamp.

Elliot was not carrying a soft yellow lamp. In fact, he wasn’t carrying anything either soft or yellow. He had Agatha’s flashlight strapped to his side like a sword, but it was turned off.

So what was causing the glow?

Elliot raised his hand in front of his face and gasped in horror. The invisibility potion was supposed to make him invisible, supposed to make it possible for him to slip past the Shadow Men without them being able to see him.

But somehow it had done just the opposite. The soft yellow glow was coming from him. Every part of his body that was covered in the potion was glowing. Elliot was the lantern!

And instead of being invisible to the Shadow Men, he was a beacon of light in the darkness. They could all find him now.

He was homesick, tired, and so scared that he could barely move a muscle. But mostly Elliot felt stupid. Harold probably did believe the potion would turn Elliot invisible. So even though Harold was trying to help, maybe that annoying voice inside Elliot’s head was right. Elliot should have tested the potion on his finger before pouring the entire bottle all over himself.

Dumb voice, being right all the time.

There was nothing for Elliot to do now but run. He ran the way he used to when Tubs would chase him across Sprite’s Hollow. No, he ran faster, the way he did that time he’d run from Cami when a game of kissing tag broke out during recess.

He was lightning. He was a cheetah. He was—Elliot groaned as his foot landed in something familiar—he was stuck in gripping mud again.

Elliot struggled to pull his feet out, which only got him stuck deeper. Patches had told him before that he couldn’t get out of gripping mud on his own. She was right all the time too.

Around him, Elliot saw the dark outlines of dozens of Shadow Men swarm in a circle around the gripping mud. He could feel the heat of their anger that he’d invaded their territory. Or maybe it really was heat. It was a warm night, after all, and he was beginning to sweat. They hissed at him and held out shadowy hands to pull him free. Yeah, they’d love to help him get out. Help him get out so they could finish him off.

These Shadow Men were far more frightening than the one Harold had turned into back at Sprite’s Hollow. He could see into their eyes, or the empty holes that served as their eyes. They were without souls, just smoke and fire without light, whose only order was to serve Kovol. And serving Kovol meant killing any human who dared enter Kovol’s territory.

Elliot braced himself for the worst. There was nothing he could do to fight them from here, and obviously his attempt at running away from them had failed. Would they get stuck in the gripping mud too? They didn’t seem to touch the ground, so probably not.

They were trying to reach him, but Elliot noticed it didn’t seem to be working. A Shadow Man would almost touch Elliot, but about the time he reached the glow on Elliot’s skin, he’d stop and back off, then hiss in anger.

Elliot didn’t like the hissing. It was different than a snake’s hiss—which he didn’t like too much either—but instead was a whispered screech. It made the hairs stand up on his arms and neck. Even in the warm night, goose bumps crawled down his spine.

They were angry. But they weren’t coming any closer.

Another Shadow Man tried. He pushed just inside Elliot’s glow with a shadowy hand, then Elliot noticed the hand disappeared. The Shadow Man yanked his hand back into the darkness with a different sort of hiss. This one was of panic, of pain.

Elliot raised his hand to his face again. He was putting off light. Light makes shadows disappear. Which means light makes Shadow Men disappear.

The glow from the invisibility potion may have called all the Shadow Men in Demon Territory to him, but as long as he glowed, they couldn’t touch him. In a really strange way, he was safe.

Except, of course, that he was still sinking in gripping mud.

Someone needed to poof here to help him. Not Mr. Willimaker, who was currently locked in a Fairy prison. Not Patches. She’d come if he called her, but Elliot refused to put her in danger.

The only one he could think of was Fudd.

But was Fudd working with the Fairies? Mr. Willimaker had thought there was a chance that Fudd was helping the Fairies stop Elliot. Then the Fairies had taken Mr. Willimaker away, leaving Elliot alone against Kovol. If Kovol succeeded in getting rid of him, Elliot had already asked Fudd to be the Brownie king.

Elliot didn’t want to believe that Fudd was betraying him again. And lately everything about Fudd told him that the Brownie could be trusted. But if he was wrong, asking Fudd to help him get free of the gripping mud might be the very worst plan possible.

Elliot sank a little deeper into the gripping mud. Whether it was a good plan or not, it was his only choice.

Elliot cupped his hands around his mouth and yelled, “Fudd, I need you!”

The Shadow Men didn’t like that. They began spinning in a circle around the mud. The air around Elliot thinned as the Shadow Men sucked it away from him. He wanted to call Fudd a second time but couldn’t get a deep enough breath. He had to hope Fudd heard him the first time.

Elliot wanted to push his hand into the mud and find Agatha’s flashlight. He could turn it on and chase all the Shadow Men away. But he knew that once he put his hand in the mud, it would be stuck in there too.

“Fudd!” he called, more softly.

Although the Shadow Men were removing the air, if anything, the heat around Elliot was building. He wiped a bead of sweat off his forehead and then groaned as drips of light fell from his hand. Elliot was alone, surrounded by Shadow Men, stuck in gripping mud, and the one thing keeping the Shadow Men from reaching him was slowly sweating away.

Elliot was about to move to plan B in his hope of escaping the Shadow Men. Plan B was to cry like a baby and hope the Shadow Men became so embarrassed at being around him that they would decide he wasn’t worth it. It wasn’t a perfect plan, because Elliot knew that if he did it, he’d never be able to show his face in the Underworld again, but he was out of options.

And there was no plan C.

“Fudd,” he breathed one last time.

“Your High—” Fudd said as he poofed in front of Elliot. His feet were at the very edge of the gripping mud, and he teetered forward as if he was about to fall in.

The Shadow Men advanced on Fudd, so Elliot stuck his arm as close to Fudd as he could reach, spreading barely enough light to protect him.