The Gray Hunter's Revenge Read online

  “Let me talk to her, okay, Romeo?” he said. “I can give her the facts just as well as you can.”

  “What?” I asked. “You think I’ll put my foot in my mouth?”

  “I’m surprised it isn’t already in there,” he replied, and left to greet Aisha before I could hit him with a witty comeback.

  Ugh, my brother could be such a party pooper. I walked over to a table of refreshments to grab a bottled water. Two people stood nearby, hovering over a tray of cubed cheese and crackers. One was a tall, bony man in a black shirt and jeans, his back bowed over the table like a crescent moon as he savagely speared one piece of cheddar after another. Next to him, a rotund woman with a bird’s nest of ash-brown hair stood, gripping a cup of punch and watching the crowd with darting eyes. She wore heavy makeup and a somewhat garish brown-and-yellow-striped coat with a fur-lined collar. The two of them reminded me of a crow and a partridge perched side by side on a power line, watching the world pass by below. There was something else about them that seemed familiar, but I couldn’t put my finger on what. I sidled up next to them, loading up a plate with fruit and crudités so I could eavesdrop on their conversation.

  “A strange party for a strange man—God rest his soul—wouldn’t you say, Edwin?” the woman said.

  “God’s got nothing to do with that man’s soul, as far as I’m concerned,” the man grumbled, adjusting his circular silver glasses.

  The woman put a hand on her chest and opened her mouth in shock. “Edwin! What a thing to say! And at Nathan’s memorial, no less!” I noticed that despite her disapproving tone, the corner of her lipsticked mouth turned up in a smirk. “Nathan may have had a big mouth and been one of the most arrogant men I’ve ever met—but he had talent!”

  The man called Edwin stabbed an unsuspecting chunk of Monterey Jack before answering. “Pah! Talent. More like a good publicist. His debut was good. Fresh. Everything after that was just the same old thing being served up on a different plate.”

  Just then a nervous young woman stepped up to the table, a couple of ratty old paperbacks gripped in her hand. “Mr. Queen, Miss Oakentree? I’m so sorry to bother you like this, but do you think I could have your autographs?”

  Queen? Oakentree? Now I understood why these two people seemed oddly familiar. I’d seen their faces on the backs of my dad’s books! Back in the day, Minerva Oakentree wrote what people called “cozy thrillers,” which were like regular thrillers, except with more cats. Edwin Queen was one of Nathan Foxwood’s predecessors, an old-school horror writer whose books always got critical acclaim, but never really sold very well. Dad kept some of his books in the house for appearances, but those pages were not nearly as well-worn as the Foxwood novels I used to read.

  “Why, I’d be delighted!” the woman—Miss Oakentree—replied, grabbing the pen and one of the books from the young woman’s hand. Edwin Queen then signed the other one with barely a glance at the fan.

  After the young woman dashed off, a huge smile plastered on her face, the two writers turned back to each other. “Well,” said Mr. Queen, “at least there are still some people out there with good taste. All is not lost.”

  “Oh!” Miss Oakentree piped up. “That reminds me. Did you ever get that watch back from Nathan? The one you two had been fighting over all those years?”

  Mr. Queen looked uncomfortable at the question. “No,” he finally said. “But the watch isn’t all that man took from me. Anyway, I’ll get it back in time. I’ll get it all back.” Suddenly, as if he felt my eyes on him, Mr. Queen swiveled around and speared me with a glance so sharp that I felt like a cube of cheese.

  “Um,” I said, pulling a small pad of paper and a pen out of my pocket. “Autograph?”

  A smile curled up his narrow face and he took my pen. Mr. Queen certainly had a motive. But he was here when the prank in the house happened . . . so could it be that there was more than one disgruntled writer looking to spit on Nathan Foxwood’s grave?

  I had just thanked Mr. Queen and taken back my paper and pen when, out of the corner of my eye, I saw a flash of light from the woods. I turned to look, and I could just make out a dim yellow orb of light, moving swiftly through the trees.

  Aha!

  If someone had been playing a prank inside the house, maybe they were trying to make their getaway! Lucky for Adam that Joe Hardy and his eagle eyes stayed behind to keep watch, am I right?

  Normally, I would have told Frank where I was going, but he was too far away for me to call out, and I was certain that I’d lose my quarry if I wasted a single second. “Guess I’m flying solo on this one,” I muttered to myself, and took off at full speed into the dark, dark woods.

  I tried to run silently, quieting my breath and stepping lightly across the mossy ground, hoping that the guy wouldn’t hear my approach. It was all going really well—until I stepped right onto a dry branch.

  Crack!

  The branch snapped with a sound like a thunderclap, and I froze. For an instant, the orb of light went still—and then it went out. And the silence was replaced by the sound of rapid footfalls tearing across the ground and away from me. “Oh no, you don’t!” I growled under my breath, and took off after them. I was running full tilt when the woods, well, ended. Abruptly.

  “Whoa!” I gasped, stumbling to a halt and windmilling my arms to regain my balance. Mere feet in front of me was the cliff’s edge. Beyond it lay the valley, deep and darker than the night. That was a close one, I thought. But where did he go? The sound of running feet had stopped completely. I peeked over the edge, trying to make out if there was a ledge or some kind of path leading down the cliff side where my prey might be hiding.

  And then there were two hands grabbing my shoulders from behind. My martial arts training kicked in immediately and I swiveled to trap the attacker’s wrist and execute a takedown. But whoever it was had momentum—and I never got the chance to show off my judo skills. Within seconds my sneakers had lost purchase on the weedy ground, and I was slipping over the edge—down, down into the abyss.

  4

  ON THE SCENT

  FRANK

  CONTRARY TO POPULAR BELIEF, JOE wasn’t the only Hardy who could talk to women. At least, that’s what I was telling myself as I made my way over to Aisha Best.

  She smiled as I approached and extended a hand for me to shake. “Don’t trust your brother to talk to the press, hmm? I have heard that he’s a bit of a wild card.” She chuckled. “You’re Frank, right?”

  I quickly wiped the sweat off my palm and took her hand. “I’m Frank,” I blurted, waggling her arm up and down. Relax, Hardy! I scolded myself. You sound like a robot! I cleared my throat and soldiered on. “So, what do you want to know?”

  “Can you tell me—Oh! Mrs. Foxwood! Mrs. Foxwood! A moment of your time, please!” Halfway through her question to me, Aisha caught sight of Heather Foxwood coming our way, trying to escape the attentions of yet another reporter. One look at Aisha’s notebook and cameraman and she had the expression of a cornered animal. Then she saw me.

  “Oh, Frank, there you are! I’ve been looking for you.” She turned to Aisha and said, “I’m so sorry, miss, but your interview will have to wait. I have a matter to discuss with Mr. Hardy here.” Then she steered me away from the crowd. I craned my head back to look at Aisha and shrugged helplessly. The reporter mouthed back, “Later,” and I gave her a thumbs-up.

  Mrs. Foxwood stopped at the edge of the crowd and breathed a sigh of relief. “Sorry about that, Frank. But I needed to get some air—the vultures are circling.” She looked around at the assembled people—a mixture of fellow horror writers, fans, and assorted business associates, from the looks of them. “Normally I’d get Adam to bail me out of these situations, but he and Peter are still in the manor.” She looked up at the place and shivered. “I know it’s irrational, but sometimes I wonder if that house did kill my husband. You stay in there long enough, you start to feel like it has a life of its own.”

  I nodded, unsure o
f how to respond. “So, I read that you’re a research scientist,” I ventured, trying to lighten the mood. “I love the study of science—what exactly do you do?”

  Mrs. Foxwood brightened. “That’s right. I work in a lab in downtown Bayport. Human anatomy.”

  My eyebrows went up. “You mean dissecting cadavers and things?”

  “That’s part of it, yes,” Mrs. Foxwood said.

  “Oh,” I replied, feeling a little queasy.

  She gave a small grin. “Nathan and I were very different people, but we both had strong stomachs for things that other people might find . . . distasteful.”

  “Distasteful?” I said, shaking my head. “Oh, no. No, no, no . . . no . . .”

  Mrs. Foxwood laughed. “I think you doth protest too much.”

  I shrugged, smiling. “I might be a little squeamish. Just a little. Anyway, it sounds like a great job.”

  Mrs. Foxwood crossed her arms and sighed. “Well, I needed a great job. You’d be amazed how much it costs to keep up an old place like this.” She shook her head. “When we moved in, the plumbing leaked, the electricity was spotty at best, there was mold in the basement—” At that moment, a familiar sound reached my ear from the depths of the forest. It was a long whistle, starting high, then going low, then ending on another high note. It was the SOS signal that my brother and I used from time to time, in case we ever got separated.

  Joe was in trouble.

  “I’m sorry, Mrs. Foxwood,” I stammered. “Gotta run!” And I took off into the woods toward the sound.

  Branches snagged my clothes as I ran through the darkness, my feet slipping and sliding on the carpet of damp, fallen leaves. Joe’s whistle got louder as I went—I must be going the right way. “Joe!” I shouted. “I’m coming! Where are you?”

  “This way, Frank!” Joe’s voice was close. I turned toward it and saw a clearing ahead. I was about to burst out of the trees at full speed when Joe’s voice rang out again, this time from immediately in front of me. “Frank, stop! Stop!”

  I skidded to a halt just in time to realize that I’d reached the edge of the cliff, and Joe was hanging off it, his hands gripping a cluster of weeds. The weeds were snapping one by one—within seconds, the weeds would give way and Joe would be gone.

  “Hold on!” I shouted, and dove to the ground with my arms outstretched, like a baseball runner diving for home base. Just as the last bunch of weeds gave way, I grabbed Joe by the wrists and held on tight. My arm and shoulder muscles screamed with the sudden weight of Joe’s entire body, but I didn’t let go. Joe swung in midair, scrabbling for purchase on the cliff side with his feet. At last he managed to find a foothold in the rocks, and with that added momentum, I was able to loop my hands under his arms and haul him back to solid ground. We both lay there in the dirt for a minute, just panting and staring up at the moon.

  “What took you so long?” Joe finally asked.

  I sat up and looked at him in disbelief. “Are you kidding me? I just saved your butt!”

  “It’s a good thing I told you to slow down, or else you would have sailed over the edge too and we’d both be out of luck.”

  I crossed my arms and glared, hoping he could see my expression in the moonlight. Joe looked at me and laughed. “I just can’t help myself sometimes.” He slapped me on the back. “Thanks, bro. My butt owes you one.”

  I snorted. “So, what happened, anyway? Why are you in the woods hanging off the side of a cliff?”

  Joe filled me in on the light he’d seen in the woods, and how someone had shoved him over the edge. “Whoever it was,” he finished, “I bet it’s the same person playing these pranks and stealing stuff from the manor.”

  I was about to reply when there was a rustling in the woods behind us. I whirled around to see the outline of a dark shape turn and retreat through the trees. “Did you see that?” I asked Joe. “Whoever it was might still be here!”

  Without another word, Joe and I leaped to our feet and took off after the figure—but by the time we reached the area where we’d spotted him, there was no trace of him anywhere. The woods had gone silent once again. I swung the beam of my phone’s flashlight all around us, but it revealed nothing but trees. “This is definitely where he was standing,” I said, noting the broken branches and footprints in the dirt. “But we lost him.”

  “Darn!” Joe said, kicking at the ground. “So close! I wonder why he stuck around after pushing me off the cliff. Seems like a weird thing to do, don’t you think?”

  “Hey, what’s that?” I said as my flashlight’s beam caught something bright red on the ground in front of us. I bent to pick it up—it was a pin in the shape of a skull, with the words FOXWOOD FAN CLUB written on it in black lettering. “He must have dropped it when he took off.”

  Joe plucked it from my fingers and smiled. “It looks like a clue to me.”

  I grinned back. “Right. Let’s get back to the others. Maybe Adam can tell us more.”

  We trekked back through the woods to where the memorial had been held. On the way, Joe told me about the conversation he’d overheard between the two horror writers, Minerva Oakentree and Edwin Queen, and how Mr. Queen had referenced a watch that he’d never gotten back from Mr. Foxwood, as well as something else that Mr. Foxwood had supposedly taken from him.

  “What do you think he could have meant?” I asked. “Fame? Money?”

  “Could be either of those,” Joe replied. “Or maybe a lady.” He waggled his eyebrows meaningfully.

  “But Mr. and Mrs. Foxwood have been married for a million years, haven’t they?” I asked.

  “Roughly a million,” Joe agreed. “But maybe it happened a long time ago, before that. Edwin Queen looks like the kind of guy who could hold a grudge.”

  “Fair enough,” I said. “But we know he couldn’t have done the prank in the house, because he was at the memorial with us. So even if he’s a suspect, he’d have to be working with someone else.”

  Joe nodded. We finally cleared the tree line and were back in civilization. Almost everyone had left the memorial by now, but Adam Parker was still there, stacking folding chairs and picking up some stray trash left behind by the guests. He ran over as soon as he caught sight of us.

  “Where have you guys been?” Adam asked. “Peter and I found exactly nothing at the manor, and when we got back here, there was no sign of you two. Mrs. Foxwood said she saw you running off into the woods, Frank.”

  Joe and I caught Adam up on what had happened, and his eyes got wide when we told him about Joe’s close call on the cliff side. “So I was right!” Adam said. “Someone is behind all this trouble. Someone much more real than the Gray Hunter.”

  “Well,” Joe broke in, “we can’t totally rule out supernatural interference. I mean, the figure in the woods did seem to disappear into thin air.”

  “You can’t be serious,” I told him.

  “I’m a little serious . . . ,” Joe replied.

  I rolled my eyes. “Anyway, we found this pin on the ground, and we think it might help lead us to the culprit. Do you know anything about the Foxwood Fan Club?”

  Adam took the pin from my hand and inspected it closely. “It’s a small group,” he said, “but it’s been going on for many years, so there are plenty of people this could have belonged to. If you want to know more about it, you’d have to ask either Peter Huang or Mrs. Foxwood. One of them should have access to the fan club records.”

  I nodded. “Okay then, we’ll split up. Tomorrow morning, I’ll go see Heather Foxwood at her lab, and Joe, you can visit Peter Huang at his office. Don’t worry, Adam, we’ll get to the bottom of this.”

  “I hope you do,” Adam replied. “Because let me tell you—this whole heart-attack-a-day thing isn’t doing me much good. I’d rather be reading a ghost story than living one.”

  It was close to two a.m. by the time Joe and I got back to the car. I should have been exhausted, but my mind was spinning with questions, making me feel wide awake. Who was doing t
he haunting at Cliffside Manor—and why?

  5

  SPYING EYES

  JOE

  WHEN I IMAGINED THE KIND of place that a hotshot agent would work at, it looked nothing like this. I expected a sleek, modern kind of building—all steel and glass and fancy elevators and marble floors. But driving up to Mr. Foxwood’s agent’s office the next morning, what I actually found was a squat brown building with tiny, circular windows that looked like some sort of aging undersea vessel. I parked in the weed-infested lot and made my way to the entrance, scanning the yellowed directory for the name Peter Huang.

  “Third floor,” I muttered to myself. I headed to the elevator but changed my mind when I got a look at it. The up button was cracked through, and the lights at the top of the elevator kept blinking on and off in an unsettling way. I mean, danger is fun and all, but I don’t have a death wish. I took the stairs.

  Up on the third floor, I walked to the end of the hall until I found a door with a sign reading PETER HUANG LITERARY AGENCY. I knocked on the door—and something unexpected happened. The door just swung right open.

  “Um . . . hello?” I called out. No answer. I took a step inside the office and poked my head around the door. It wasn’t very large at all, just a single room with a tiny bathroom off to the side and a coat closet. The place looked like a hurricane had blown through it—folders and papers and books piled helter-skelter on every surface, sticky notes covered in chicken scratch pasted along the walls, chipped mugs perched here and there on shelves and desktops, filled with coffee of indeterminate age. There was a lot to look at—but no Peter Huang.

  I sighed. Probably should have called first, I thought. But hey, hindsight is 20/20. Figuring that the agent was probably just out to lunch, I decided to wait around a while until he came back. I went to close the door again—but not before I spied something sitting on the top of a heaping pile on Huang’s desk.