For a moment, there was silence.

And then the growling started again.

“That’s funny,” Shawn said. “My father always said that was the magic word.”

Gus stared out into the darkness. “Shazam! Open Sesame! Alakazam!”

The growling got closer. Gus tried not to let the images of feral hounds feasting on human flesh completely shut down the logic centers of his brain.

“Anyway, we should look on the bright side,” Shawn said.

“We’re about to be mauled to death and possibly eaten unless we come up with a magic word, and you think there’s a bright side?”

“There’s always a bright side,” Shawn said.

“And in this case it would be…?”

“That I was right and you were wrong,” Shawn said.

“Wrong about what?”

“You said that growling was a dog.”

Gus could hear long nails clicking on the pathway below them. “And I was wrong?”

“Without a doubt,” Shawn said. “That’s at least four dogs.”

Furious, Gus turned to look at Shawn’s face one last time before he bashed it into butter. But as he tried to catch one last glimpse of that insufferably smug grin, Shawn’s face winked out into darkness.

“Shawn? Are you there?”

“I’m here.” Gus could feel Shawn’s breath in his ear.

“Are you… invisible?” Gus said hopefully.

“I don’t think so,” Shawn said. “But it’s kind of hard to tell, because all the lights just went out.”

Gus looked up and down the path. At least he assumed that’s where he was looking. The night was so black, he could have been staring at Jessica Alba modeling Victoria’s Secret and he wouldn’t have known.

All around them, the dogs started to howl.

Chapter Two

There are some mornings when you get out of bed and you know you’re going to end up being eaten by dogs. For Gus, this hadn’t been one of them. In fact, just hours before, he’d thought this was going to turn out to be one of his best days in ages.