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ISBN 978-1-368-00181-6
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Contents
Title Page
Copyright
A Very Curious Souvenir
Once Upon a Time
Hold On a Minute
Just a Sec
Dial It Back
A Momentary Surprise
In a Split Second
Desserts for Days
Stop. Everything.
Not a Minute to Waste
Full Speed Ahead
Time to Investigate
A Waiting Game
Ticktock
In an Auradon Minute
Second Chances, Anyone?
Even a Broken Clock Is Right Twice a Day
Today Is a Gift
The Clock Is Ticking
Slowly but Surely
Not So Fast
Clock In
Cuckoo Time
With a Quickness
Keeps On Tickin’
Watch Out
More New Books Coming Soon in the School of Secrets Series…
The object looked old. Older than anything the girl had ever seen before. Nothing rusted in Auradon. Nothing squeaked or cracked or weathered with age. Everything in the magical kingdom was always shiny and bright and sparkling.
But not this.
This was tarnished and worn. The gold metal surface seemed to have lost its sheen many years before.
As the young girl watched her mother carefully remove the object from her desk, drawing it out by its long golden chain, her eyes grew wide with wonder.
“What is it, Mummy?” she asked.
It was obvious her mother hadn’t realized the girl was watching her from the doorway, because she startled slightly at the sound of her daughter’s voice and then turned to give her a warm smile.
“This is a souvenir from a very curious time in my life. I’m trying to find a safe place to keep it. Would you like to see it?”
The girl’s face brightened with unbridled excitement. She nodded and ran eagerly toward her mother, her arms swinging with delight, but her mother extended a hand to stop her, putting a safe distance between the girl and the mysterious object.
“Slow down, my darling,” she warned the girl. “You are always in much too much of a hurry. You must be gentle with this. It’s very old and quite fragile.”
The girl leaned over her mother’s arm to get a better look at the round gold object dangling from the chain.
“You see,” her mother explained, daintily cradling the trinket in her palm and turning it over so the girl could see the front, “it’s a pocket watch.”
The girl tilted her head and studied the watch, gazing at the faded black numbers—one through twelve—arranged in a circle beneath a thin sheet of glass. She listened to the faint tick, tick, tick it made against her mother’s palm.
“It has a peculiar-sounding heartbeat,” the girl noted, and her mother let out a jubilant laugh.
“That’s not its heart, my dear. That’s the second hand, keeping time. Making sure you’re never late. If that ticking were to ever stop, it would mean the watch was broken.”
The girl looked confused for a moment. “Isn’t that the same as a heartbeat?”
Her mother chuckled. “I suppose you’re right.” She reached out and brushed a strand of her daughter’s golden-blond hair from her face. “You have such a unique way of looking at things. It is your hidden strength. Never forget that.”
“Can I touch it?” the girl asked, her heart galloping wildly at the thought of feeling the aged gold surface beneath her fingertips.
But her mother shook her head. “Not yet, my dear. You’re still too young. One day this heirloom will belong to you. But until then, I think it’s best if you don’t touch it. I wouldn’t want you to accidentally break it.”
“When?” the girl insisted, bouncing on her toes. “When will it be mine?”
Her mother smiled at her again. “When you’re ready for the responsibility. When you’re old enough to protect it, just as I have done all of these years.”
Hi, I’m Ally! You may know my mother, Alice. She was known for falling down rabbit holes, talking to caterpillars, and having tea with mad hatters.
Yup, I guess you could say she had a pretty curious childhood. Me, on the other hand, I grew up in Auradon. Nothing really exciting or curious usually happens around here…which is too bad, because all my life I’ve wanted to be a detective. I feel like I was born to solve mysteries. I’m just so curious about everything. And being a detective is the best way to satisfy your curiosity, except it’s pretty hard to be a detective in a place where there’s no crime.
Although, recently, there have been some exciting changes around here. King Ben started letting villain kids (VKs) from the Isle of the Lost attend Auradon Prep! And let’s just say, since then, interesting things have finally started to happen. First there was the mystery of the stolen wand at King Ben’s coronation. Unfortunately, I wasn’t there to solve it, but I totally would have solved it if I had been there. Then CJ, Captain Hook’s daughter, snuck into Auradon Prep and started pulling all sorts of pranks around the school. And believe me, I was this close to unveiling her as the culprit before she…well, she kind of unveiled herself, so that was quite a bummer. And then there was the whole mess with Freddie’s Shadow Cards, and…okay, so I didn’t figure that one out, either, but I did help Freddie find Mama Odie’s house, which was a pretty big deal. The point is, now that suspicious things are starting to happen around Auradon Prep, I am ready. Special Detective Ally is reporting for duty.
That’s not a real title, by the way. I just made it up. But maybe someday it will be, if I can prove myself worthy of it.
I just have to find a good mystery to solve….
I think I might be onto something….
Fairy Godmother’s office was quite a mess. Every drawer and cabinet had been opened and emptied, and the large wooden desk was covered in a fine layer of white cake flour. Ally stood in the center of it all with a roll of clear plastic tape in one hand and a bag of flour in the other.
She was dusting for fingerprints.
And, as of yet, she’d been unsuccessful in lifting any.
But how was that even possible? How could the criminals have broken into Fairy Godmother’s office, vandalized an entire wall with spray paint, and not left a single shred of evidence behind?
Ally had heard their mischievous laughter and the rattling of the spray paint cans as they turned a corner in the Auradon Prep hallway, but by the time she had peeked into Fairy Godmother’s office and noticed the wall had been defaced, the vandals were nowhere to be seen.
Ally stared at the spray-painted wall. It was the one facing Fairy Godmother’s desk. On it the vandals had painted Auradon Prep! in giant colorful letters, and the rest of the wall had been decorated with all sorts of different figures and animals.
And they’d done it all, in the middle of the day, without getting caught.
It was shocking.
And it meant she’d have to rely on her detective instincts, plus whatever evidence she could gather from the crime scene, to solve the mystery—which was why she was here instead of at lunch in the banquet hall with
the rest of the school, including Fairy Godmother herself.
Ally harrumphed. Think, she commanded herself. Think harder. She tapped her finger against her forehead. This always helped Ally do her best thinking. It was as though she could physically knock the thoughts into place.
What would the criminals have touched while they were here?
Her eyes scanned the spray-painted wall from top to bottom, taking in every inch of the graffiti. It covered the entire wall, all the way up to the ceiling….
The ceiling! Ally thought with sudden realization. Perhaps they touched the ceiling while they were painting the top half of the wall.
Ally glanced around the office, locating a chair in the corner. She set down the tape and her bag of flour and dragged the chair over, positioning it just under the P in Auradon Prep!
Picking up her supplies once again, she stepped precariously onto the chair. She reached her hand into the bag and scooped out a handful of flour, tossing it up toward the ceiling. Unfortunately, only some of the flour made it onto the actual ceiling; the rest ended up falling in her face and making her cough.
After she’d finished expelling flour from her lungs, Ally tore off a piece of clear tape and reached up to affix it to the ceiling, right over the thin layer of white powder. She smoothed out the bubbles with her fingertip. Then she carefully peeled back the tape and stared at the sticky surface.
“Aha!” she said triumphantly. “Gotcha!”
On the back side of the tape was a fully formed, perfectly shaped, swirling fingerprint.
Now she just had to figure out whose fingerprint it was and she’d have solved the case. The only problem was there wasn’t exactly a fingerprint database at Auradon Prep, or in all the United States of Auradon, as far as she knew. There wasn’t even a police force. What was the point in a land with no villains?
But Ally would find a way. Even if she had to secretly fingerprint every single person in the school, she would figure out how to match the print with one of the culprits responsible for this outrageous act of school vandalism.
“Special Detective Ally cracks yet another Auradon mystery,” she announced proudly, trying to make her posh English accent sound more like that of an American newscaster.
Proud of her newfound evidence, Ally carefully affixed the piece of tape to a sheet of notepaper from Fairy Godmother’s desk, put it in the pocket of her dress, and started to step down from the chair. But just then, a bit of flour fell from the ceiling and got into her eye, momentarily blinding her. As she rubbed at her eye, she felt the chair beneath her wobble.
“Oh, crumbs,” Ally swore as she tried to right herself. But it was a lost cause. Ally was the first to admit her coordination wasn’t the greatest. She was constantly falling. It was a genetic trait that ran in the family. Once your mother falls down a rabbit hole, perhaps your balance is forever doomed.
Ally flailed. The chair tipped and down she fell, the bag slipping from her hands. Flour rained down all over Fairy Godmother’s office like powdery snow.
Ally landed on her bottom with a thump. She was about to stand up, dust herself off, and quickly try to clean up the mess, but she suddenly realized she wasn’t alone.
The door to the office had opened and Fairy Godmother herself was now standing in the doorway, looking gobsmacked.
I thought Fairy Godmother would appreciate my efforts. But she seemed a little…displeased.
The headmistress of the school let out an enormous gasp at the sight of what had become of her office.
“Ally!” she cried out, her hand covering her mouth. “What happened here? Are you all right?”
Ally stood and dusted off her blue-and-white dress, which had gotten a bit rumpled (not to mention powdery) in the fall. “You’ll be happy to know I have everything under control, Fairy Godmother,” Ally said confidently. “The vandals will be caught and brought to justice.”
“Vandals?” Fairy Godmother repeated. She sounded confused. Ally reckoned she simply hadn’t yet noticed the graffitied wall in front of her. She was probably still too hung up on the chaotic state of her office. It did quite resemble an explosion in a scone factory.
“Yes,” Ally said, gesturing dramatically toward the wall. “What we have here is an obvious case of student vandalism, but I now have, in my possession, the evidence we need to track down the persons responsible.”
Fairy Godmother followed Ally’s pointed fingertip toward the spray-painted wall. She seemed to be thinking long and hard about something before comprehension finally settled on her face. Ally expected her to be outraged, just as Ally had been when she first stepped into the office and saw the ghastly sight. But the only expression Ally could read on Fairy Godmother’s face was disappointment.
The headmistress let out a weary sigh and walked behind her desk. She brushed the flour off her chair with a dainty flick and took a seat. “Ally,” she said in a stern voice that Ally didn’t like one bit. “Sit down, please.”
Ally did as she was told, but she was confused. Why wasn’t Fairy Godmother more upset about this? Why wasn’t she eager to hear about Ally’s evidence? They were wasting precious time! They should be narrowing down a list of suspects, questioning potential witnesses. They needed to search every student’s dorm room for empty spray cans! They needed to—
“That is not vandalism,” Fairy Godmother spoke very clearly. “That was Mal, Lonnie, and Jay.”
Ally’s eyes grew wide as crumpets. “You know who did it?”
“I do,” Fairy Godmother said, “because I asked them to.”
Now Ally was just befuddled. Her eyes narrowed into tiny slits. “I don’t understand. Why would you ask someone to vandalize your office?”
“I asked them to decorate my office,” Fairy Godmother explained with a sigh, “with this lovely mural. The walls in here are far too boring. I wanted a pop of color. So I told them to come before lunch and paint the wall.”
Ally’s mouth fell open. She tried to speak but it was as though her lips had forgotten how to form words.
“So, you see,” the headmistress went on, “there was no crime committed here. Apart from the possible crime of your covering my office with what seems to be”—Fairy Godmother dipped her fingertip in the white powder that covered her desk and touched it to her tongue—“flour?”
“It’s cake flour,” Ally corrected her, grumbling.
“Mmm hmmm,” mused Fairy Godmother, and Ally was convinced she was about to scold her. Students weren’t allowed to enter Fairy Godmother’s office when she wasn’t there. Ally had very clearly broken the rules. But she’d thought these were extenuating circumstances. She’d thought it was warranted. Plus, even though she was an Auradon kid (AK), Ally had never been a big fan of rules. Unlike her best friend, Jane, who, ever since she’d stolen Fairy Godmother’s wand and gotten in trouble, seemed to be following the rules a little too much. Ally always felt as though rules were too stringent; they usually didn’t allow for special circumstances, which Ally could almost always find.
But to Ally’s surprise, Fairy Godmother didn’t scold or reprimand her. She simply folded her hands in her lap and asked in a kind voice, “Ally, did you ever stop to think that maybe the ‘vandals,’ as you called them, were actually supposed to be here? Instead of immediately jumping to the worst-case scenario?”
“No,” Ally replied tightly. “I relied on my instincts. Just like all good detectives do. And my instincts were telling me a crime had been committed.”
Fairy Godmother offered her an unexpected smile. “It’s true, good detectives do rely on their instincts. But they also know when to slow down, read the clues, and think things through logically.”
Logically?
Ally didn’t like that word. It was a boring word for boring people. Who needed logic and reason when you had smarts and hunches like she had?
“Detectives are methodical about their investigations,” Fairy Godmother went on. “They analyze the evidence before coming to conclusions.
”
Ally had stopped listening. She was too busy trying to come up with an anagram for the word logically. That’s what she did when she was bored, or nervous, or scared. She took words she didn’t like and rearranged the letters to make the words more interesting.
Hmmm. Logically, Ally thought.
Gilly coal?
Lilac logy?
Cagily LOL?
“Do you agree?” Fairy Godmother was saying. “Ally?”
Ally blinked and focused back on the headmistress. “What?”
Fairy Godmother sighed. “I said, you seem to be jumping to a lot of incorrect conclusions recently. Perhaps the next time you believe a crime has been committed, you should come to me first, instead of taking matters into your own hands. How does that sound?”
Ally sighed in surrender and then nodded. “Fine.”
Fairy Godmother beamed. “Excellent. I’m glad we understand each other. So, how are the preparations going for the Spirit Weekend Reception? Do you have everything ready for the food table?”
But Ally didn’t answer. She was off in her own thoughts again, letters swimming through her mind like fish in a tank.
“Ally?” Fairy Godmother prompted. Then a second later, “Ally?”
“That’s it!” Ally jumped from her chair.
Fairy Godmother startled. “What’s it?”
“Ally logic!” she said, feeling mighty proud of herself. It was a ridiculously simple rearrangement of the letters, but it was without a doubt the best possible anagram for the word logically.
Well done, she silently commended herself.
“What is Ally logic?” Fairy Godmother asked, clearly not following.
Ally grinned. “It means logic with a twist!”
And with that, she skipped out of the headmistress’s office, leaving Fairy Godmother too bewildered to say anything else.
So maybe I jumped to a conclusion back there. It happens. Next time, I’ll wait for the mystery to come to me.
After she left Fairy Godmother’s office, Ally headed to the banquet hall to grab something quick to eat. Since she’d missed lunch, she was starving. All of Ally’s friends were already rushing off to prepare for Spirit Weekend, which officially started that afternoon at the big reception in the royal hall. Spirit Weekend was a yearly tradition at Auradon Prep, held to rally excitement for the first big tourney game of the season. This year, Auradon Prep was facing off against its biggest rival, the Never Land Crocs, and Spirit Weekend was shaping up to be a major event.
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