Grumbones by Jenn Bennett

Author:Jenn Bennett
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: S&S Books for Young Readers
Published: 2023-08-02T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 13 Dark Alley

As I stared down the barrels of Grumbones’s raised shotgun, all I could think about were the times I’d doubted him. Like when we first saw him at the noodle house, and he looked like an evil Santa. And how he made the underworld sound like a theme park, but it was really just an actual death trap with freaky dead peasants who wanted to drown you. And how he didn’t help us solve the gargoyle’s riddle. And how he hid evidence we found in the abandoned house and kicked the husk of poor, harrowed Sir Krak.

For all I knew, Grumbones was the one who had stolen the mementos from Babi’s grave.

But what I did know—what I knew at that moment—was that I trusted Ike.

And I did not trust the man pointing a shotgun at me.

The old man’s white eyebrows knitted together. He dropped his gun to his side and said, “Put your hands down, you scaredies, for the love of… Wasn’t aimin’ at you. Was aimin’ at the door behind ya.”

Was that… true? I didn’t know anymore. But I put my hands down.

“You shot at an innocent hound,” I accused, furious.

“I shot at a dang underworld monster,” he corrected. “If I’d wanted to hit it, I would have. I merely skeered it off.” He pointed at the ground. “This here is called a rescue. Or maybe you haven’t noticed the Saturday-night massacre going on right now in the pub?”

“We just escaped it, no thanks to you!” Ben snapped, his voice quivering with anger.

“Is there something you want to tell me about my Babi?” I demanded.

Our guide squinted at me. “Like what?”

“Who she is?”

I gave him a chance to come clean and confirm what Ike had just said, that Babi was this Rime Queen. Or maybe even that all the Grim Hounds had drunk the well water and were hallucinating that my grandmother was queen. Anything at all to explain the avalanche of information that had fallen onto me.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Is that so?” I challenged. “There’s nothing you haven’t told us?”

His white beard was a little wild and flyaway, and he appeared startled, as if he’d miscalculated about me. For a moment, just a moment, the look on his face was unguarded and… weak. Maybe he wasn’t used to being challenged. Either way, his moment of weakness didn’t last long.

“Nope,” he said.

I found myself staring into the deep-set, hard eyes of a man I no longer trusted.

“Come on,” he instructed. “We need to hustle out of here before the Nightmare comes.”

I didn’t want to follow him. At all. But he tossed me a small brown jar with a corked top. “That’s for what’s-his-face. Ben. He don’t look so good, and this district is no longer safe. We need to get him through the ward to somewhere quiet where he can rest and get that bite cleaned and bandaged up properly.”

I glanced at Ben, and as much as I hated to admit it, Grumbones was right.

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