“Are you all right?” I said, my voice cracking with emotion.
“I’m fine,” he said, burying his face into my shoulder. “I’m sorry. Dungan said he was going to kill you if I didn’t help.” He pulled away. “You killed him, didn’t you?”
“I did.”
“And Uncle Laine?”
“I let him go. But if he ever goes near you again, I’ll crush him too.”
Tom smiled. “Can we go home now?”
“Yeah,” I said, turning to the Swords. “I think it’s about that time.”
I walked over with Tom, ready to speak to Eldon, when Allison suddenly wrapped me in a hug.
“I’m sorry I doubted you,” she said in a rush. “You are definitely the Monster Crusher. It’s going to be different at school from now on. I promise.”
I tried not to gasp as my ribs throbbed in pain in Allison’s strong grip, and turned it into a laugh instead. “Don’t worry about it. Suddenly fat jokes don’t seem that important.”
She just smiled as Eldon limped over and laid his bloodied hand on my arm.
“I thought you might have what it takes to be a Monster Crusher,” he said quietly. “Now I know you have what it takes to be a great one.” He smiled. “Take Tom and go home. Come to Derwin when you’re ready.”
“What are you going to do?” I asked.
He looked at Dungan’s massive body and sighed.
“We’ve got some cleaning up to do.”
—
Tom and I stepped through the front door, and my mom looked over the couch and screamed. She bolted out of the living room and snatched Tom up in her arms, already crying. Stache came running out of the kitchen and wrapped them both in a hug, and I even saw tears in his big green eyes for the first time in my life.
He turned to me. “What happened?”
Eldon had wrapped my ribs with some bandages and cleaned the blood off my face, so I was at least semi-presentable. But I was still covered in dirt and leaves.
I hesitated. “Uncle Laine and I went looking for Tom, and we found him walking through the woods. He said he got away from his abductors. We brought him straight home.”
Stache looked outside. “Where’s your uncle?”
“He wanted to give us some time,” I said. “He went back home.”
Stache hugged me, running his hands through my hair.
“I’ll have to thank him,” he said gruffly.
“Yeah,” I muttered. “You do that.”
We all stood there for a few minutes, hugging and crying. I was in a whole lot of pain, but I tried to keep it from showing. Thankfully they were both pretty distracted. Eldon said there was nothing to do for my broken ribs except give them time to heal. Stache finally went to call the police and tell them Tom was home, and my mom went to get him some food, though she was reluctant to let go of his hand. When we were alone, Tom looked at me.
“I thought I was going to die,” he said softly. “When they came and took me.”
I nodded and laid a hand on his shoulder. “I’m sorry, Bat Boy. I should have been honest with you. But I wanted to protect you. I guessed a few weeks ago that you were a Shadow Sight. I thought I was the only one who knew. I was obviously wrong.”
“It’s not your fault,” he replied. “How are we going to explain Uncle Laine?”
“I don’t know. I have a feeling he won’t be coming around here anymore anyway. Eldon is going to pay him a visit and make sure he doesn’t bother us ever again.”
Tom shook his head. “How are we going to just go back to school and pretend everything is normal?”
I laughed and messed up his hair. “I don’t know. But I can’t wait to try.”
“So when can I come to Derwin?” he asked casually.
I scowled. “Never.”
“I’m a Shadow Sight,” he replied. “They need me down there.”
I lowered my voice. “You were almost killed by a troll, remember?”
He smiled. “I know. But that’s why I have a Monster Crusher to protect me.”
“Maybe in a few years.”
“I could make your job a whole lot easier,” he pointed out.
“Tom…”
He looked right at me, as he sometimes did, with those big blue eyes. “I could be important down there, Laura. I have the Sight. Can you imagine? Being wanted for the one thing I always thought was my biggest weakness? Don’t you know what that’s like?”
I sighed. “Yeah. I guess I do. But you’re my Bat Boy, and I want to keep you safe. That’s all. I’ll tell you what: just let me make sure everything is under control down there, and then we can talk, okay?”
“Okay.”
I wrapped him in a hug, being very careful not to put any pressure on my aching ribs, and he eventually had to pry himself away from me.
After we had a family meal, my mom crying all the way through it, the police came by to confirm Tom was home and ask him some questions. Of course it wasn’t hard for him to say he hadn’t seen the abductors, so they just left a squad car in front of the house and left us alone. When I finally said good night around three in the morning, I went up to my room and looked out the window. There were no yellow eyes, and no Swords. Things were finally going to go back to normal.
I lay down in bed, thinking that there was no way I was going to be able to sleep after everything that had happened that night. But the second my head hit the pillow, I slipped into the most restful sleep I’d had since I’d moved there.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
I went back to school on Tuesday. My family spent the Monday together, just watching movies and eating ice cream and relaxing. Even Stache just hung out and did nothing, which was pretty much the first time ever.
