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Chapter Thirteen

W hy does every place that’s bad and scary have to be so ding-dang dark? It could be light and scary, too, right? Why does the big showdown always happen in the dark? Why not a lovely cottage by the sea?

My eyes popped open at that thought as I tried to adjust my sight to the darkness. My nostrils flared at the smell of the damp dankness of, well…of a basement.

Convinced that’s where I was—in the school’s basement, though how or why, I didn’t know—I felt around the floor, my hands encountering patches of wetness. Feeling behind me, I found a wall. Shimmying upward, I stood, once more cursing my heels.

Straightening my spine, I inched along the wall, stopping every few seconds to listen—to absolutely nothing. There was no child calling me today.

As I crept, I forced myself to remain calm, trying to remember what happened before I ended up here—and then I froze.

Heath had called me. Sam! Someone had taken my sweet, gentle boy.

But why? Why would someone kidnap Sam?

And then, maybe because I was tired or maybe because I hadn’t processed the information properly before I was swept here, I remembered.

Sam is a genius…

And when I found who had, I’d kill them. I’d pull a Nina and rip their intestines out through their belly buttons.

But first, I had to get out of here.

All right, Wanda, pull it together and get to thinking. How did you get to the basement in the first place? What was happening in the basement?

Tucking my purse over my shoulder, I pressed my brain to put the pieces together.

Obviously, this had something to do with Neerie, and maybe even the missing children. Three children were missing, and now my Sam.

I fought sobbing out loud at the idea my boy was out there somewhere, afraid. I refused to let that get in my head. Stay the course, Wanda. Think. Put this together.

The facts: Neerie is missing. Neerie talked about a basement in her text to Earl. She thought something was going on here at the school. She had a possibly genuine picture of an alien, taken here at the school.

School. School. School. Everything led to the school.

She’d searched online for the stories of the three children who were missing, along with some school supplies—each of them taken from a school for the gifted. Neerie found out what happened to the children and she was investigating.

Neerie also thinks the school is run by the Illuminati, Wanda.

Again, I remind you, Bigfoot is real.

Fair point. Score one for you.

The three children taken were a werewolf, a vampire and a witch—all geniuses.

One of the things the parents mentioned was the school supplies taken were things that interested the children. Like the anime coloring books Chester liked and the drawing paper.

And my Sam is a zombie …and recently dubbed a genius . And one of the things missing from Sam’s school were chemistry books…

I stopped inching along the wall and fought not to gasp, in case anyone was around. Fought to keep from punching my fist through the wall.

My child was here. I knew it.

But hold the phone and think. All three children were of a different species, Sam being the fourth. What did that mean in terms of the kidnappings?

Different species of geniuses…

Was this some kind of superfecta of genius paranormals?

My brain raced to figure out how to fit together aliens and kidnapped paranormal geniuses. What was I missing?

And how did I get here, anyway? It was obviously due to someone who was paranormal? Could an alien transport people from place to place?

I dug around in my bag for my phone but came up empty. I must have dropped it when I was brought here. As if the Internet was going to tell me what abilities aliens had, anyway. It was all speculation. I mean, the Internet thinks vampires can’t enter a house without being invited.

Tell that to Nina…

How could I possibly drum up a suspect who might be an alien? I hadn’t seen any aliens as of late. Have you? Could aliens cloak themselves? Disguise themselves? Would we have been able to smell them, had we encountered any?

Was an alien responsible for this?

Stop. Stop speculating and get the heck out of here, Wanda Schwartz-Jefferson. Sam is missing. Nothing else matters. Find Sam.

I kept crawling along the wall, using my hands as an anchor to keep me grounded.

And then I heard it—a child’s cry.

“Help me! Please hurry! Help me! Help us!”

Us? Help us . The missing children were here. I knew it.

“Where are you?” I called out, my mouth dry, my legs shaking. “Keep calling for me! I’m coming!”

“She’s coming! I can hear her! She’s coming!”

This couldn’t be an illusion, could it? I didn’t recognize the voice, couldn’t parse whether it was a female or male voice, but I kept going, moving closer, inching agonizingly slowly along the wall.

Why couldn’t I see anything? I was a werewolf, for pizza’s sake! No manner of squinting helped my eyes to adjust. There was nothing but pitch black greeting them.

“Are you still there? My name is Wanda, who are you?”

“Help! Help! Help! It’s coming!”

It? “What was it ? What’s your name?”

I began to rush along the wall, my fingers digging into what felt like concrete, aching from trying to keep myself from panicking by clawing my way toward the voices.

That was when I smacked into something hard, cracking the side of my forehead, preventing me from moving forward.

If only I could see! That’s when I remembered, I had a lighter in my purse. Nina calls it my Mary Poppins purse because I have everything but the kitchen sink inside.

I dug around and found it, yanking it out as though I’d just found the location of Noah’s Ark. I keep one in my purse for various reasons—one being quite foolish.

I’d once seen a movie where a car crashed and the woman was stuck in her seat belt while a fire raged in the backseat. She managed to burn the seat belt and escape the car.

I don’t remember the movie, nor do I even believe you could actually burn your way out of a seat belt, but some things stick with you, you know? So I always kept a lighter in my purse.

Okay?

I used my thumb, rolling it over the starter until it lit up like a Christmas tree.

Yahoo! Success!

I held it up, trying to figure out where I was and where to go next, when a tiny figure appeared out of nowhere.

Holding up the lighter, noting the wide space in front of me and all around, I cocked my head. I’d know those pointy ears anywhere.

“Mrs. Goodfellow?”

She smiled, sweet and warm. “Yes, dear. Of course, it’s me.” She held out her hand. “Come with me, and I’ll show you the way out of here. It’s so dark and dusty, eh?”

Aw, no...

C’mon! It was Mrs. Goodfellow snatching children? What a cruel twist of fate. I don’t know why I asked something so silly, but ask I did. “What are you doing down here?”

She grinned, but there was something so cruel, almost evil about it, I hesitated taking her hand. “I’m here to help you, of course.”

I continued to refuse her hand. “Help me what?”

I sniffed a change in her emotion. She was growing impatient, and I could smell it. Also, the lighter was getting hot and burning my finger.

“I don’t need your help. I need you to explain yourself. What’s going on?”

Her eyes narrowed the tiniest bit, but then she adjusted her gaze. “Come with me, and I’ll tell you everything, dear.”

As she spoke, I kept moving forward, and Mrs. Goodfellow kept moving back, giving me a much bigger picture of the landscape I was up against.

That’s when I saw them—far off in the distance of what I believed was the basement of the school.

Children. Four in a row. All on hospital beds in this cold, dank place. Nothing but concrete as far as the eye could see.

Then there was Neerie, tied to a chair…

And Mrs. Goodfellow, also tied to a chair.

I didn’t know exactly what was going on. I didn’t understand how Mrs. Goodfellow could be standing in front of me and at the same time tied to a chair. Obviously, it had to do with shapeshifting, but who was doing it, I had no clue.

And all I knew was, I had to get to those children.

Because one of those children was my son Sam.