All he had to do is look at the trail leading deeper into Demon Territory. Even from where he stood, the air was so dark he couldn't see the colors of things anymore. Everything around him was in shades of gray and brown. Or maybe everything in
Demon Territory really was gray and brown. It would be silly to call it Demon Territory if it were all happy pastels.
But the trail narrowed ahead and looked like the kind of darkness where he could put his hand in front of his face and, if he was lucky, maybe see his fingers. But Elliot didn't care too much about seeing his fingers. His fingers weren't going to try to kill him.
The Shadow Men might. And they were somewhere ahead of him on the trail.
Elliot felt for the bottle of invisibility potion Harold had given him. It was still in his back pocket. How dumb, he thought, snorting in the air. Invisibility potion. What a stupid idea for a science project. If there was a potion that could turn people invisible, some company would already be selling it for fifty dollars a bottle.
Or maybe nobody knew about the potion yet. Harold said he had tried it and that it had worked on him. Maybe Elliot could sell it and make fifty dollars a bottle. Or more likely, Harold had accidentally turned himself invisible just because he wanted Cami's project to work.
Either way, Elliot wasn't going to use it on himself yet. Not until he had to.
He wondered again what his family was doing right now. Uncle Rufus hadn't stolen anything since he'd met Agatha. But had anything shiny caught his eye since Elliot had been gone? Had Reed gotten any more pickle relish from the Quack Shack? Whatever Wendy was burning for dinner tonight, Harold got to eat it, not him.
Sometimes when Kyle and Cole were flooding things, Wendy was burning things, and Uncle Rufus was stealing things, Elliot had wondered what it'd be like to live with another, more normal family.
He'd only been gone a few days, and yet he missed them--flooded, burned, stolen things, and all. Odd or not, they were his family.
It was time to finish this job and go home.
Elliot took several long steps forward, then stopped. The sky had darkened. He felt for the flashlight at his side. Not yet, a voice inside him said.
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.