“Your own lives,” said Hill. “Yours and your kind. I didn’t recognize it at first—but after that display of yours, you can’t pretend you aren’t one of them.”
Fable scowled, her jaw set. She was getting very tired of other people telling her which side she was on.
“And you.” Hill turned to Cole. “I should have seen it earlier. You’re the changeling, I presume? It had to be one of you. Tinn, is it? Where is your so-called brother, now? Or have you finally shown your true colors and done away with him?”
“I’m not—” Cole scowled. “Wait. How do you know about me and my brother?”
Hill straightened. “I’ve learned a lot of things in the past few days. Oh, yes, I know all about Endsborough’s goblin boys. And a lot more than that. Ogres. Trolls. Spriggans.”
Fable narrowed her eyes. “If you know about spriggans, then you should know that what you took belongs to them. You know you need to give it back. Please. Do the right thing.”
“I am doing the right thing! Don’t try to make me the villain. I’m the good guy, here.” Hill opened his jacket and the kids could see eight shiny glass tubes poking out of the inner pocket, each stoppered with a cork. Hill plucked one out and held it in the light. It glistened blindingly, the same iridescent powder as they had seen on the drill, but without any dust or clay to dull its sheen. “Do you have any idea how many people could benefit from this powder? How many lives it could save?”
“If you give those to us, it could save a whole lot of them right now,” said Fable.
“This? This is hardly a fraction of what I’ve collected,” Hill said. “I’m not dumb enough to bring my entire stock into battle.” He turned the tube in his hand, his eyes glittering with bright reflections as it spun. “I was drilling for crude oil, but what I found was so much more valuable. There are people around the world who would pay anything to get their hands on my discovery.”
“People are trying to kill each other, and you’re thinking about the price?” demanded Cole.
“It isn’t about the money.” Hill shook his head, pulling his eyes back to the children. “I spent years peddling vitamins and elixirs—but it took giving up on so-called miracle cures for me to stumble on a real one: the most powerful cure-all known to man.”
“You don’t know that,” Fable said. “You can’t know how it will affect people.”
“I didn’t know,” Hill admitted. “Not at first. I didn’t understand what I had found, but then I cut my hand on a broken jar, and the next thing I knew I was smashing my desk through the side of that inn like it was made of tissue paper. It only took the faintest tap.”
“You smashed the inn?”
“I thought I must have imagined it. But I began to put the pieces together. The giant who destroyed my drill—the little devils who kept getting in my way when I went to rebuild it . . . Monsters don’t protect treasure that isn’t worth protecting. That powder had done something to me—it was powerful, and if this horrible forest was protecting it, then I needed to understand why. I needed more. I needed to conduct further tests.”
“No,” said Fable. “What you needed to do was give it back.”
“You used Mr. Warner as a guinea pig!” said Cole. “That’s why you kept hanging around them. You were testing your secret formula on Evie’s dad!”
“It’s not like that.” Hill scowled and shook his head. “I didn’t give him anything I hadn’t already tested on myself. I like Oliver. I helped him. And what I learned from helping him will help so many more. Even with just a diluted suspension, Oliver has made an astounding recovery in record time. His leg was shattered. Shattered! Days later, and it’s nearly healed! You can’t begin to comprehend what that means! If only I could resume my work, obtain enough of the substance to produce—”
“But you couldn’t,” said Fable. “You couldn’t get any more. Not with my forest getting in your way.”
Hill’s expression darkened. “No,” he said. “That’s true. I couldn’t.”
“You wanted this war,” Fable said. “You wanted the town to be afraid of monsters so you could have an excuse to push them away from your drill site, didn’t you? You let them think the forest started this, but it was you all along.”
“Evie’s journals,” Cole breathed. “She told us you liked her pictures—Evie showed you her journals, didn’t she? She showed you everything you needed to know to scare the town senseless and blame the forest. Sketches of gremlin tracks, Old Jim’s tricks for catching pixies—all of it. You staged it, didn’t you?”
Hill did not deny the accusation. He took a deep breath. “Turn their strengths into your strength, that’s what my old man said.” With a flick of his thumb, he popped the cork out of the slender vial.
“Don’t—” Fable began, but her words were too late.
Hill tossed the contents of the vial down his throat and smashed the glass behind him on the stump. His whole body shuddered almost at once. His eyes closed tightly and he gritted his teeth. He was breathing heavily, and the vein on the side of his neck throbbed.
Fable stared as a vaporous double image hovered over the man, fading to wisps as it grew. Hill drew in a long, deep breath and opened his eyes. His pupils were enormous, nearly all the color of his eyes lost to their blackness. “That’s better. Just the extra kick I might need to dispose of a pair of wild creatures before you ruin everything.”
TWENTY-NINE
Tinn leaned heavily on a slim scrap of lumber Evie had pulled from the wreckage for him. Pain shot through his ankle as he moved, but he had to know what was happening. The clamor of battle had been frightening, but the sudden and absolute silence was worse.
“Careful,” said
