Excerpt:
The four kids were best friends.  It had been that way since kindergarten, when they had found themselves united to protect Ernie from the school bully.  Now, just a few years later, they were inseparable, with their very own secret society called the Order of the Grey Griffins.  It had been Max’s idea, and his father had encouraged it, even building them a vast clubhouse in the woods where they could meet.  There were secret passwords (which Ernie never remembered), secret handshakes (which seemed to change on a daily basis), and even secret songs (which no one sang except Natalia).

“Where were you today?” Ernie asked Harley as they stepped through the door and into the fresh air.

“Me and my mom had to rush Roscoe to the vet,” Harley said gravely.  Roscoe was an enormous hunting dog that Harley had received for his sixth birthday.  The dog was as big as a tank, ferocious as a lion, and had developed an unfortunate taste for postal workers and truck tires.  But Harley loved him.

“What happened?” Natalia gasped, finally noticing several small cuts on Harley’s forehead.  “There’s blood underneath your fingernails.  What’s going on?

“Roscoe got in a fight with something out back behind our place,” Harley explained.  “I was outside working on my go-cart and Roscoe was chasing squirrels, when all of a sudden that stupid dog started growling and barking.  The next thing I knew he was running out toward the trees.”

“What was it?” asked Max.

“I’m not sure.  By the time I got there, Roscoe was fighting with it in the bushes.  But whatever it was, it was strong.  And mean.  It had Roscoe pinned to the ground.”

“Roscoe?” Erin gasped, thinking anything less than an elephant wouldn’t stand a chance against Harley’s giant canine.

“Yeah,” answered Harley.  “If I hadn’t got there, I don’t know what would’ve happened to him.”

“What did it look like?”  Natalia asked as they walked down the street, though no before stopping to pull out her Book of Clues – a pink-spiraled tablet liberally decorated with unicorn stickers.  She always took notes when trying to solve a mystery.

“It happened so fast I didn’t get a very good look.  But I know it was black.  That’s all I could see.”  Then Harley frowned.  “Except…”

“Well?” prompted Natalia, pen in hand.

“I didn’t see any eyes,” Harley explained.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, you know how a raccoon or deer reflects light in their eyes, and you can see ‘em from a mile away?  Whatever I saw, its eyes didn’t reflect anything when I put my flashlight on it.”

“Hey, that sounds like that card in Iver’s deck today,” Ernie said, biting into a chocolate bar.

“Yeah,” Natalia agreed.  “The Slayer goblin.”

“I actually have one of those cards,” Harley recalled, pulling it out of his front pocket.  “Here it is.  Iver gave it to me before we took off.”

“Slayers are the worst kind of goblins,” Natalia read from the card as Max and Ernie moved in for a better look.  “It says here that they’re blind.”

“Where’s its eyes?” asked Ernie, studying the picture intently.  “They don’t have any,” she said, as she studied the description at the bottom of the card.  “That’s the thing.  But they have a powerful sense of smell, which is almost as good as being able to see.  Maybe even better.”  She paused dramatically as she looked into each of their eyes.

“Go on,” Max said impatiently, still a little shaken from his dream about the Slayer.

“It also says they can move between the faerie world and our world.  I guess they are the only kind of faerie that can do that.”

“Whadda you mean?” Ernie asked.  “I thought we were talking about goblins.  Not faeries.”

“A goblin is a faerie,” Natalie sighed, as she picked up her bike and walked back to the sidewalk.  “Don’t you know anything?  Just like a wolf is a type of dog.  At any rate, according to legend, faeries live in a world of shadow that is connected to the earth by magical bridges called portals.  These Slayers are one of the few creatures that can use the portals.”

Harley paused a moment as he looked at the picture on the card.  “That thing does kind of look like what I saw today,” he concluded after giving it some thought.  “But like I said, I didn’t get a very good look.”

“Not to mention faeries aren’t real,” added Max, more for his own comfort than anything else.

“Hey, what if it was a baboon that attacked Roscoe?  Ernie suggested on a wild tangent.  “I bet there’s a whole tribe of baboons living in the woods.  Wouldn’t that be cool?”

Everyone looked at Ernie as if he had worms crawling out his ears.

“Ernest,” cried Natalia in exasperation.  “Baboons come from Africa, not Avalon, Minnesota.”

“Maybe they migrated,” continued Ernie, the idea of baboons loose in his hometown being too interesting to let go.

“The only thing that migrated is your common sense,” Natalie replied.

“How do you know so much about baboons, anyway?” complained Ernie.

“Because I read books, you nincompoop,” she replied.  “In fact, my dad just bought me an encyclopedia set…”

“I wouldn’t talk about ‘dads’ in front of you who,” whispered Ernie, rather too loudly, as he pointed over at Max.

Max set his jaw.  Ernie was right.  He didn’t like anyone mentioning his dad.  The memory of the divorce was too fresh, and it didn’t help that Max had only heard from him a couple times in the three months since he had left.

“I’m sorry,” Natalie offered, realizing she had brought up a sore subject.

“It isn’t your fault,” Max sighed, pushing his bike ahead of the others.

“Maybe we can all hang out at your place tonight,” Ernie called after him.  “We could stay up and watch TV all night.”

Can’t,” Max called back.  “I’m sleeping at my grandma’s tonight.”  With that he hopped on his bike and tore off down the road, leaving his friends far behind.