Monster High - Electrified

by Perdita Finn

  Copyright

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  MONSTER HIGH and associated trademarks are owned by and used under license from Mattel. © 2017 Mattel. All Rights Reserved.

  Cover design by Elaine Lopez-Levine.

  Hachette Book Group supports the right to free expression and the value of copyright. The purpose of copyright is to encourage writers and artists to produce the creative works that enrich our culture.

  The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book without permission is a theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like permission to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), please contact permissions@hbgusa.com. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.

  Little, Brown and Company

  Hachette Book Group

  1290 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10104

  lb-kids.com

  monsterhigh.com

  Little, Brown and Company is a division of Hachette Book Group, Inc. The Little, Brown name and logo are trademarks of Hachette Book Group, Inc.

  The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher.

  First ebook edition: February 2017

  ISBN 978-0-316-54833-5

  E3-20170106-JV-PC

  CONTENTS

  COVER

  TITLE PAGE

  COPYRIGHT

  CHAPTER 1: GHOULS OFF THE GRID

  CHAPTER 2: SPARKS FLY

  CHAPTER 3: MAKING CONNECTIONS

  CHAPTER 4: A LIVE WIRE

  CHAPTER 5: WATT’S UP?

  CHAPTER 6: LIGHTNING BOLT!

  CHAPTER 7: LIGHTBULB MOMENTS

  CHAPTER 8: ZAPPED!

  CHAPTER 9: GOING WITH THE FLOW

  CHAPTER 10: ALTERNATING CURRENTS

  CHAPTER 11: UNPLUGGED!

  CHAPTER 12: SHOCKED AND AWED!

  CHAPTER 13: SHORT-CIRCUITED

  CHAPTER 14: STATIC

  CHAPTER 15: A SIZZLING SUCCESS!

  CHAPTER 16: POWER FAILURE

  CHAPTER 17: TOTAL BLACKOUT!

  CHAPTER 18: SCARED OF THE DARK

  CHAPTER 19: JUICED

  CHAPTER 20: CHARGE!

  CHAPTER 21: POWER SAVERS

  PHOTOS

  Chapter 1

  GHOULS OFF THE GRID

  The moon was full in the sky. Bugs whirred. A cricket chirped. A wolf howled. “Awoo! Awoo!” But it was not a happy sound. It was a cry of distress. The wolf was in terrible trouble.

  The wolf bounded down the empty street of the town. She looked over her shoulder. She was exhausted from running, but the mob of Normies was still after her. The moon was so bright; there was nowhere for the wolf to hide. She ran along the sidewalk close to a building, trying to stay in the shadows. How much longer could she run?

  She could hear the angry voices of the mob. They were hunting her because she was different. Because she was a monster.

  She turned a corner, hoping to catch her breath, but someone was right in front of her, ready to trap her! The wolf bounded forward as fast as she could, dodging past legs and hands that reached out to grab her fur. She took off like lightning down the street.

  “It went that way!”

  “Did you see it?”

  “Don’t lose it!”

  She couldn’t stop. She had to keep going. She dashed into a dark alley, but it dead-ended in a chain-link fence. In a single bound, she leaped over the fence, turning a somersault in midair—and in an instant she began to transform. Her claws turned into fingernails, her paws into hands, her snout into the nose of a teenage ghoul. When she landed on the other side of the fence, she wasn’t a wolf anymore; she was a weregirl.

  The ghoul’s long mane of blue hair was streaked with purple and lighter blue and was held back in a thick ponytail. She wore a purple tank top and a stylish skirt with black heels. She was exhausted from running, but that didn’t matter; she couldn’t stop. She had to get away from the mob!

  The glare of their flashlights brightened the alley. She tried not to breathe too loudly as she peeked around the corner to see what they were up to.

  “It’s here somewhere…” she heard someone saying.

  She was trying to stay absolutely still, but her foot slipped and landed on an empty can.

  “Did you hear that?” asked a boy’s voice.

  All the flashlights focused on a pile of boxes in the alley.

  “There!” shouted someone in the mob. A beam of light shone in her eyes for an instant before she was off again.

  She ran as fast as she could.

  She checked behind her. No one had caught up with her yet.

  The angry shouts of the mob were coming closer. She clambered up a wall and ran along the roof of a high building, but it was another dead end. There was an even bigger wall in front of her. There was nowhere else to go.

  “Have you seen it?”

  “Where could it have gone?”

  The mob was just below her.

  “Maybe it climbed the fence,” someone wondered.

  “Nah, wolves can’t climb. Let’s check the other side.”

  The weregirl had been holding her breath, hugging the shadows. But before she could relax, a giant orb of light flashed before her. It had come out of nowhere!

  She rubbed her eyes. She blinked. Standing in front of her was a group of five ghouls. Bright, welcoming smiles flashed across their faces, but the weregirl didn’t wait to find out if they were friendly. She leaped back down into the alley.

  She didn’t hear their warm words of greeting. She didn’t notice their fangtastic fashions. She didn’t realize that one of the ghouls had sharp canine teeth and furry ears poking out from among the brown curls of her thick hair…just like she had when she wasn’t a wolf.

  “Hi, we’re your welcoming committee, and we would just like to say…” began Draculaura, the ghoul with jet-black hair streaked with pink. She was a vampire but a devoted vegetarian. “Uh, where is she?”

  “Down here!” The weregirl blinked up at them. Who were they? Could they help her? Maybe they could! “Help me, please! They’ve got the place surrounded!” She spoke with a thick Scottish accent.

  “Did you hear that?”

  “Over there!”

  The mob was circling back toward the alley!

  Clawdeen Wolf, who was also a werewolf, noticed the crowd and shook her head. “So rude!”

  “I think we’d better do something,” Frankie Stein suggested. The daughter of Frankenstein, she had two gleaming bolts poking out from either side of her neck.

  “Of course,” agreed Cleo de Nile, the mummy princess. “But will we still have time for a bite…”

  “I see something!” shouted a man in the mob.

  “Ghouls! Let’s move!” Clawdeen urged.

  The ghouls sprang into action. There was no time to lose. Frankie spotted an electrical box on the side of the building and zapped it with a sizzling bolt from her fingertips. All the floodlights in the neighborhood blinked and blitzed. Everything became dark.

  “Whoa!” shouted someone down below. “Is there a blackout?”

  “What’s going on?”

  Meanwhile, Draculaura turned herself into a bat and dove toward the crowd in the dark. People covered their heads, shrieking.

  “Ahhh!”

  “What was that?”

  Cleo whistled sharply, getting the weregirl’s attention. She dropped down a long mummy bandage for her to climb to safety.

&
nbsp; “There!” shouted someone, spotting her as she scampered upward.

  “Don’t let it get away!”

  Together, the ghouls hoisted the weregirl onto the top of the building.

  “Oh, thank you,” the weregirl said once she was finally safe.

  “No worries.” Lagoona Blue smiled. The daughter of a sea monster, Lagoona was very friendly.

  “No problem,” added Cleo.

  Frankie grinned. “Our pleasure.”

  “Happy to help,” said Draculaura.

  “It’s what we do!” Clawdeen was thrilled to meet another monster just like her.

  The weregirl looked at all the friendly ghouls in front of her. She’d never seen anyone like them. She’d never seen anyone like her. “Who are you?”

  Draculaura took this as her cue to finally deliver the speech she gave to all prospective Monster High students. “Hi, we’re your official welcoming committee, and we would just like to say—”

  But shouting from below interrupted Draculaura’s introduction. The mob was angrier than ever.

  “It circled back! Bust down the gate!”

  “I’ll get the truck! Someone get the lights back on!”

  “Where’s the ladder?”

  “Boost me up, guys!”

  Clawdeen was worried. “Uh, ghouls? I think the Normies figured out that they’ve been tricked. Time to go!”

  Frankie pulled out the small glowing Skullette. The ghouls used it for transport when they were recruiting new students. It let them travel all over the world to find monsters in hiding everywhere. They all placed their hands on it—except for the new ghoul.

  “Don’t worry,” Frankie reassured her. “We’re monsters too, obviously. Come on!”

  The weregirl added her hand to the Skullette…and with a blast…and a flash…and a whoosh, they all disappeared in an instant from the roof.

  Suddenly, they were standing in front of an ancient castle. Huge steps led up to the front door of the building, which was surrounded protectively by high mountains. Monsters of all kinds were going in and out of the castle, books in their hands. At last Draculaura could finish her speech!

  All her friends crowded around the new ghoul.

  “Okay!” Draculaura sighed with relief. “So, as your official welcoming committee, we would just like to say…”

  “Welcome to Monster High!” everyone chimed in all together.

  Chapter 2

  SPARKS FLY

  Monster High was a top secret school for monsters of all kinds. Before Frankie Stein and Draculaura met, they hadn’t known that there were other monsters in the world—other monsters who were lonely, just like they had been. They decided that they would create a special school for all the beasties, boogeys, and not-so-mythical banshees they could find. They were the first students, but soon they were finding mummy princesses like Cleo. They traveled to Greece to recruit the snake-haired son of a gorgon, and to Australia to find a surfing sea monster. The first weregirl they found was Clawdeen, who came to Monster High with all her werepup brothers and even her mom, who was now the art teacher.

  At Monster High, the students accepted one another’s differences and learned about the monster world together. They even learned about the Normies, the people who weren’t monsters, so that maybe one day they would all know how to get along and monsters could come out of hiding. That was Draculaura’s and Frankie’s biggest dream.

  The day after the new weregirl, Silvi Timberwolf, arrived, they were all sitting in science class together. Frankie had on goggles. She was watching very carefully as a frizzling zap of pure electricity arced between her fingers. She was using it to weld together two pieces of metal. Zap! Sparks flew into the air.

  All around the room, monsters were working on experiments.

  Rayth, a musician, carefully poured a test tube of bubbling liquid into a beaker. Gob, his purple blob monster of a partner, watched cheerfully. But then Gob got hungry and ate their experiment.

  Lagoona was reading directions while Cleo added another ingredient to the plant they were cultivating. Uh-oh. Its leaves withered. Lagoona looked across the room.

  Frankie was carefully adjusting a fixture on her project. Clawdeen handed her tools without looking up from her sketchpad. She was working on some new fashions that were experimental in their own way, if not exactly scientific!

  “Frankie is really amped up about this project,” Lagoona noted.

  Draculaura looked over at her friend, impressed. “Have you seen it? It’s a… It’s…amazing! Isn’t it?”

  Clawdeen, continuing with her sketching, smiled. “You have no idea what it is, do you?”

  “Nope,” admitted Draculaura.

  “Glad I’m not the only one!” Lagoona added.

  “No idea,” agreed Clawdeen.

  “What is that thing anyway?” Cleo wondered out loud.

  Frankie stopped working and raised her goggles. Wires spewed messily from the small metal object. It looked like some kind of battery. “It’s an ultra-high-density direct-current capacitor for storing high levels of electrical energy.”

  The ghouls glanced at one another, baffled.

  Cleo smiled politely. “Neat.”

  “It’s like a super battery.” Frankie laughed. “I’m trying to put all that electricity”—she pointed overhead at huge coils—“into this! Imagine having to charge your phone only once a year! Oh, and for the Normies, electricity is everything. This device is really going to change their world for the better.”

  Frankie hoped that if a monster invented something that helped the Normies, they might come to accept the monsters.

  “Amazing!” exclaimed Draculaura, who finally understood.

  “Fascinating,” Cleo added, genuinely curious.

  Lagoona grinned. “Ace!”

  But not everyone was impressed.

  “Why would you want to help Normies? They’ve never tried to help us.” Moanica D’Kay sneered. The zombie was slouched against the back wall of the lab, one of her Zomboy minions standing on either side of her. They were dressed in khakis and button-downs. They kind of looked like prep-school students, but they gazed up at the ceiling, their mouths open, drooling a little bit.

  Moanica sauntered over to Frankie’s table to get a good look at her project. She shoved Gob out of her way. Moanica began fiddling with the experiment. She pulled on wires and tipped it upside down. “How do you work this thing anyway?”

  The Zomboyz laughed obediently.

  “Moanica, don’t touch that,” begged Frankie. “It’s not—”

  But Moanica never listened to anybody. She flicked a switch, and electricity sizzled from the giant coils into Frankie’s device. A flash exploded in the lab!

  “Whoa!”

  “Yikes!”

  “No!”

  The room was completely dark. Moanica was shocked—literally! Her mane of silvery hair was standing completely on end. With a shiver, she pulled herself together.

  “It’s not done yet.” Frankie sighed.

  Moanica didn’t care. She sauntered out of the room with her frazzled Zomboyz. Those ghouls annoyed her, but they had given her an idea. A terrible idea. A wicked smile turned up the corners of her mouth. She slammed the door behind her as she left.

  The room crackled with energy; bolts shot from the sizzling coils.

  Chapter 3

  MAKING CONNECTIONS

  Outside, the wind was blowing, and lightning flashed across the sky. Swirls of leaves careened through the air. An adult werewolf with a jaunty scarf around her neck was looking at one of the high-up castle windows. It was Clawdeen’s mother, who worked at Monster High. She was holding a large armful of wooden boards. She glanced up again at the window with concern.

  Dracula was perched on a narrow window ledge. He was holding nails in his mouth and hammering boards over the windows in preparation for the coming storm.

  “Will you get down from there?” Clawdeen’s mom scolded him. “You’re making m
e incredibly nervous.” The stormy winds were picking up.

  “I appreciate your concern,” answered Dracula in his thick accent, continuing to hammer. “But the weather-human says that this is going to be the storm of the century!”

  He gestured with his hands and nearly fell backward.

  Clawdeen’s mom did not look reassured. “Well, watch your step up there! You’re going to fall!”

  “Ha!” He laughed. “I’ve been taking care of myself for hundreds of years. I am not going to—”

  His foot slipped. The other foot slipped. For a moment, he was bicycling both his feet in the air. The board he was holding spun out of his arms. Crash! Down, down, down he plummeted—right into Mrs. Wolf’s arms. She caught him effortlessly.

  She raised an eyebrow and he was a little bit embarrassed—but only for an instant.

  Dracula brushed a dark lock of hair from his eyes. “I did that on purpose,” he said coolly. “Thank you.”

  Clawdeen’s mom laughed. She wasn’t fooled.

  “Sure you did.”

  In an instant, Dracula transformed himself into a bat. He grabbed a hammer in his claws and, struggling with the weight of it, slowly fluttered back up toward the window. Mrs. Wolf watched him, shaking her head. Thunder rumbled in the distance.

  The end-of-class bell rang, and students filled the hallways of Monster High. They were headed to their coffin-shaped lockers and then to the Creepeteria for lunch and Mummy Mochas.

  “How was Humanology?”

  “I have fearleading today!”

  “Wanna play Casketball later?”

  From the top of the stairs, Frankie looked down at the happy, chattering students. “Isn’t this great?” she said to Draculaura. “Just look at all these monsters. Together under one roof, making friends with one another.”

  Lagoona sped by on her skateboard. Bonesy was trying to imitate her, but he fell off his board, and his skull rolled across the floor. He chased after it and stuck it back on his skeleton. Deuce Gorgon, the boy whose hair was made of hissing snakes, fist-bumped his buddy Gob.

  “Looking good, Gob,” he said. But his fist went right through Gob’s rolls of goo and got stuck. He tried to pull out his hand, but he couldn’t. Gob wiggled back and forth along the hall until his goo could pop free.