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  Nicholas V. Landrew lived in Yelm, Washington with his family. Though, at the moment, he was home alone. Nicholas’s father, who bore a strong resemblance to a bearded John Lennon, and his mother, who bore a startling resemblance to a young and beardless Paul McCartney, formed two fourths of a Beatles Tribute/Parody group called The Beegles. They wore beagle masks and sang songs with titles like “I Wanna Shake Your Paw,” “While My Guitar Gently Barks,” and “Yellow Snow Submarine.” (If you find yourself wondering why look-alikes would wear masks, you are not alone. Mr. and Mrs. Landrew, while highly creative, fun loving, and musically talented, were not deep thinkers. They could have used a good manager.) Despite their hopes of capturing the lucrative teen market, their core base of fans were mostly not even pre-teens but pre-pre-teens in the four-to-six age range. The Beegles were currently on tour in Australia, but kept in touch with Nicholas through lengthy voicemails, to which he responded with brief texts. They rarely communicated directly, unless they were in the same room. And not always, even then. Mr. and Mrs. Landrew do not play a major role in what is to come. Beagle faces, on the other hand, do. As do managers. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

  As for Nicholas’s face, he shared his parents’ dark hair, which he liked to keep cut fairly short. He had his father’s narrow nose and his mother’s soulful eyes, making him more attractive than he realized. He was one minor growth spurt away from his adult height, which would put him slightly above average. He weighed no more than ten pounds above average weight for his age, according to the height-weight chart in his doctor’s office, which seemed to be designed for assessing the health of skeletons and scarecrows.

  It is just as well the elder Landrews were absent. Nicholas had been slapped with a two-week suspension for bringing a light saber to school. It wasn’t a real weapon. It was made of the sort of soft plastic that could do about as much harm to a living creature as a Whiffle bat. He’d only brought it because he thought the battery-operated whoosh it made would sound awesome in the empty gym. But the rules against bringing weapons to school were rigid. Given that the suspension ended the day before the start of spring break, Nicholas was basically facing three weeks free of the classroom. That was fine with him. He was a bit of a loner. And he was struggling a little with algebra, despite it being his favorite class of all time. Worst of all, he was flunking French, which was definitely his least favorite class of all time, past, present, and probably future. (The past, present, and future of French verbs being a huge part of his problem with that language.) While we have little interest in Nicholas’s family, or his education, Nicholas’s gerbil was another matter. Nicholas loved Henrietta. He could talk to her without being judged, and look her in the eye without feeling uncomfortable or awkward. This made her unique among his acquaintances.

  Then, Henrietta vanished.

  Poof! (A sound that never, in the entire history of vanishings, has ever actually been made. An authentic vanishing sound, created as air rushed in to fill the void, would be more along the lines of schwupf or fwomph.)

  Had Nicholas not been there to see the laser-bright flash of purple light that accompanied Henrietta’s disappearance, he naturally would have assumed she’d flattened her body enough to escape beneath the door of her cage and then scrambled off in search of greener pastures. Or, at least, greener nuggets of gerbil chow. Nicholas might have searched and mourned. He might even have created a “lost gerbil” poster and papered the neighborhood with copies, enhancing the local suspicion among some of the more elderly residents that there was something just a little bit odd about that Landrew boy. But he never would have known Henrietta had been abducted by alien scientists.

  After staring at the empty cage for a period, as if an unexplained disappearance might magically become balanced by an unexplained appearance (along with a resounding foop), Nicholas slid the door of the cage up, reached through the opening, and explored the bedding. He noticed a warmth to the cedar shavings right at the spot where he’d last seen Henrietta. Fortunately, it was a dry warmth. Though far from omniscient, Nicholas was highly intuitive. On a hunch, he went to his kitchen, extracted a four-pound family-size package of vacuum-sealed fresh-ground hamburger meat from the refrigerator, and placed it in the cage, directly on top of the warm spot.

  Nicholas waited. He didn’t have to wait long. That’s fortunate, given Nicholas’s short-to-moderate-length attention span. In another moment or two, had nothing happened, he would have begun to question his intuition, and returned the meat to the refrigerator. But before doubt could lead to action, the meat disappeared in an identical laser-bright flash of purple light.

  “Roach brains!” Nicholas exclaimed, blinking against the yellow after-image that had painted his field of view. The origin of this phrase as his favorite expression of surprise and/or dismay is tied to a catastrophically disastrous science-fair project he attempted in 5th grade, and is best left undescribed beyond that, for now.

  “I’m coming, Henrietta,” Nicholas said. He pictured himself bravely leaping into a raging river to rescue his gerbil, or commandeering a passing motorcycle to give chase to the unmarked white van that had abducted her. (Abduction vans in Nicholas’s heroic rescue fantasies were virtually always white, and passing motorcyclists were inevitably generous about allowing unlicensed youths to borrow their wheels for reckless ventures.) Having no such river from which to pluck Henrietta, or van to pursue, Nicholas contemplated placing his hand where the gerbil and the hamburger meat had been. But the image of his hand disappearing in a flash of laser-bright purple light while the rest of him remained in his room sickened him as much as his 5th grade science-fair project had sickened numerous classmates, three teachers, two administrators, and one custodian who was definitely working in the wrong field.

  Nicholas unlatched the top of the cage, lifted it up on its hinges, and stepped inside. His feet barely fit. Maybe this is a bad idea, he thought, as the handless image was replaced with a footless one. He stared down at his shoes just in time to catch the laser-bright purple flash of light enveloping his body.

  STARSCAPE BOOKS BY DAVID LUBAR

  Novels

  Flip

  Hidden Talents

  True Talents

  Monsterrific Tales

  Hyde and Shriek

  The Vanishing Vampire

  The Unwilling Witch

  The Wavering Werewolf

  The Gloomy Ghost

  The Bully Bug

  Nathan Abercrombie, Accidental Zombie Series

  My Rotten Life

  Dead Guy Spy

  Goop Soup

  The Big Stink

  Enter the Zombie

  Story Collections

  Attack of the Vampire Weenies and Other Warped and Creepy Tales

  The Battle of the Red Hot Pepper Weenies and Other Warped and Creepy Tales

  Beware the Ninja Weenies and Other Warped and Creepy Tales

  Check Out the Library Weenies and Other Warped and Creepy Tales

  The Curse of the Campfire Weenies and Other Warped and Creepy Tales

  In the Land of the Lawn Weenies and Other Warped and Creepy Tales

  Invasion of the Road Weenies and Other Warped and Creepy Tales

  Strikeout of the Bleacher Weenies and Other Warped and Creepy Tales

  Wipeout of the Wireless Weenies and Other Warped and Creepy Tales

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  David Lubar grew up in Morristown, New Jersey. His books include the acclaimed novels Hidden Talents, True Talents, and Flip; the popular Nathan Abercrombie, Accidental Zombie series; and the bestselling Weenies short-story collections. He lives in Nazareth, Pennsylvania. You can visit him on the web at www.davidlubar.com, or sign up for email updates here.

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  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Dedication

  How to Slay Vampires for Fun and Profit

  Come Back Soon

  All That Glitters

  Bald Truths

  Tough Crowd

  Gordie’s Gonna Git Ya

  Fairyland

  Off the Beaten Track

  The Sword in the Stew

  The Doll Collector

  Physics for Toons

  The Heart of a Dragon

  Searching for a Fart of Gold

  On One Condition

  Ghost Dancer

  Check Out the Library Weenies

  Call Me

  The Running of the Hounds

  A Boy and His Frog

  Black Friday

  Romeo, Romeo, Wherefloor Argle Roblio?

  My Family History

  When Death Comes Calling

  2D or Not 2D

  Mummy Misses You

  Seeing Red

  Watch Your Grammar

  At Stake

  Rumplecodespin

  I Can’t Quite Put a Finger on It

  A Word or Two about These Stories

  Reading and Activity Guide

  Teaser

  Starscape Books by David Lubar

  About the Author

  Copyright

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in these stories are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  CHECK OUT THE LIBRARY WEENIES: AND OTHER WARPED AND CREEPY TALES

  Copyright © 2018 by David Lubar

  Reader’s Guide copyright © 2018 by Tor Books

  Emperor of the Universe excerpt copyright © 2018 by David Lubar

  “A Boy and His Frog” originally appeared in Ribbiting Tales, edited by Nancy Springer. Story copyright © 2000 by David Lubar

  All rights reserved.

  Cover art by Bill Mayer

  A Starscape Book

  Published by Tom Doherty Associates

  175 Fifth Avenue

  New York, NY 10010

  www.tor-forge.com

  The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.

  ISBN 978-0-7653-9706-5 (hardcover)

  ISBN 978-0-7653-9708-9 (ebook)

  eISBN 9780765397089

  Our ebooks may be purchased in bulk for promotional, educational, or business use. Please contact the Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department at 1-800-221-7945, extension 5442, or by email at [email protected].

  First Edition: September 2018