CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Elliot and Uchenna approached a small park. A man was making balloon animals for a group of young children. He had a number of larger balloons bobbing behind his head.

“I want a unicorn!” one of the kids shouted.

The balloon-maker rubbed his unshaven chin. “Yeah, I can’t make a unicorn. How about a snake? I can make snakes pretty good.”

“A unicorn!”

“How about two snakes twisted together? I can do that.”

“A unicorn!” the child shouted.

“A unicorn . . . a unicorn . . . ,” the man muttered. Then his eyes brightened. “What about a unicorn horn? I can make a unicorn horn!”

The child clapped happily. The balloon man looked very relieved.

Elliot and Uchenna stopped to watch. In hushed tones, Elliot asked, “So, what are we going to do with Jersey?”

“Bonechewer? I say we take him to the forest. Let him go,” Uchenna suggested.

“But he doesn’t live anywhere near here! You can’t just let him go in some random forest!”

“Why not?”

“That’d be like taking you to some small town in Mongolia, dropping you off, and saying, ‘This looks like where you come from.’ That’s not called letting him go, that’s called kidnapping.”

“Fine,” Uchenna said. “Let’s check on him again.”

“We just checked on him thirty seconds ago.”

“Yeah, but I . . . I kind of like him.”

Elliot gave Uchenna a disapproving look. “We are not keeping him. That would be unethical and dangerous. Not to mention a logistical nightmare.”

“What’s logistical?” Uchenna asked absently as she unzipped her pack.

The little Jersey Devil stuck his head up out of the bag. He looked at them with one eye, and then turned his head and looked at them with the other. Then, his body tensed.

“What’s wrong with him?” Elliot whispered.

“I don’t know. Does he see something?”

“Is he afraid?”

The Jersey Devil started to growl.

“Oh no,” Elliot murmured.

Suddenly, Uchenna stumbled back because the Jersey Devil had leaped out of the pack, down onto the sidewalk, and bounded toward the man with the balloons. The sunlight was dappled by the trees of the small park, and the Jersey Devil appeared and disappeared with every patch of shade and sunlight. Elliot and Uchenna stared in horror. No one had noticed the little blue creature with red wings. Yet.

And then, the Jersey Devil leaped—directly for a large pink balloon that hovered behind the balloon man’s head. The creature passed through shade, and then sunlight. When the sunlight hit him, he was right next to the balloon man’s face. The man screamed. The Jersey Devil crashed into the large pink balloon. It popped. The Devil hit the ground and scampered away, into the park.

“I am developing a theory that Jersey Devils are obsessed with balloons,” Elliot stated as the balloon man continued screaming and the little children laughed and clapped and demanded he make another disappearing deer-dragon balloon and their parents continued to check their phones.

“That’s an interesting theory,” Uchenna replied. “I have another one: We need to catch him. Now.”