“I see you, Kelly. Your messy hair. Your dirty jeans. Your untied shoelaces. You could be a rose, but instead you choose to be a bud.”
She tilted her head, her gaze digging into my soul.
“I see that look in your eyes. I’ve seen it in so many other frightened children as they stare upon the future and see the abyss of adulthood rolling toward them, swallowing them in its misery. Well, you’re not ready for it. You’re not good enough. You’re not strong enough. You are just a weak little child.”
My throat clenched up. She saw my hurt expression, and it filled her with glee.
“I can change that. I can make you stronger than you could possibly imagine.”
My eyes widened with horrified curiosity.
My mother poured Serena a glass of red wine. “We were given this wine by my great-uncle Rick on our wedding night. It’s a Châteauneuf-du-Pape. We’ve been saving it for a special occasion. Our retirement party, perhaps?”
“So why not today?” my dad cheered.
Serena sipped the wine, made a sour face, and hurled the glass across the room. It shattered our family portrait, which dripped with burgundy. My parents just stood there like scolded dogs.
I quickly checked the baby monitor. Theo was turning in his sleep, grimacing. He was going to sense Serena’s presence and start crying any second now.
This witch is crazy. Grab Theo and go. Get her to follow you. Get her to chase you, like the night crawler chased you. Get her as far away from this house and Mom and Dad as possible.
Serena dabbed the wine from the corners of her mouth.
“Humans were born to serve us. This world needs to be set on fire from time to time, and I’m just the gal to light the match.”
Serena held me in her lurid gaze. “The babysitters have brainwashed you to think that we are the villains. But you’ll see things differently once you’ve lived as one of us. Maybe I’ll even enter you into our Annual Gala of Darkness, where I’m sure you’ll win first prize.”
She smoothed her Tom Ford–looking dress. “I have been alive long enough to learn one thing.” She examined her exquisite rings and removed a diamond-encrusted beetle. “You can buy and sell anything in this world.”
The bug-jewelry’s sterling legs scuttled over plates, navigating around the salt and pepper. The sparkling insect looked up at me. It was stunning. And I don’t like fancy stuff like that. The head of the beetle was an enormous, real-deal diamond. The biggest one I had ever seen. Not in real life. But on commercials for Zales.
There was suddenly a draw—an ancient power, greed, vanity—pulling at me.
“Keep it,” Serena’s voice said enticingly. “It’s yours.”
Candlelight flickered in the beetle’s diamond head, rainbows shot from it, blurring my eyes. For a moment I felt dizzy and thought I heard a disco song echoing in my mind. I saw myself wearing the same white dress Serena was wearing. Victor was there too, and we danced and danced and danced.
“I have enchanted five-star generals into battle with the curl of my lips. I have toppled monarchies with the flick of my hair. And believe me, it’s fun. Not a care in the world. I’m happy, Kelly. Light and free. And here you are, burdened with humanity. Give it up, sister. Choose beauty, and I can make you to die for.”
It was the most gorgeous piece of jewelry I had ever seen, but I knew that if I put out my finger, I would be cursed to want jewelry and rich stuff more than life itself.
But still, if I sold this, I could give my family so many things. I could help my mom and dad pay their bills. Get my dad better health insurance. Get someone to help my mom out around the house, someone (besides me) to help her clean up, just for a little while. I could pay for those things and get us a new house.
“Now tell me, where is that beautiful, succulent baby?” Serena breathed heavily.
“With Dawn.”
“And where is that? With Bullgarth? At that secret, silly cottage of yours? Tell me where the babysitters hide so I can rain fire upon them and sweep their ashes into the sea!”
“Isn’t she lovely?” my father said.
Something pulled up my mother’s smile, as if by invisible strings. “She sure is, Pete.”
Serena shooed them away and leaned forward with an evil grin.
“Kelly, you are going to bring me that baby. Because as of right now, you are mine.”
Something tickled my neck. A fist-sized spider had been crawling up my shoulder and was now leaning its hairy fangs down toward my jugular.
25
I grabbed a fork and jabbed it over my shoulder, pinning the spider to a wall.
“Nice try,” I said. But it just came out as “AAAAHHHHHH!!!”
I picked up my knife, slicing three more spiders that had lunged down from the ceiling.
“My babies!” Serena shrieked.
I flicked her diamond beetle ring across the table. She hissed and scrambled desperately for it.
A spider landed in the salad bowl. Snap! I slapped a plate over the salad bowl, trapping the spider inside.
“Catch her, my darlings!” Serena bellowed.
She stamped her foot, and her leather boots exploded into a fury of enormous spider legs. The bottom of her gown flared up, revealing an armored abdominal plate. Her eight black limbs smashed into the walls and the floor.
“Spuh-spuh-spuh . . . ,” I mumbled in total shock.
“Spider!” Serena squealed with glee.
Clutching the salad bowl, I ran into the hallway.
“Kelly, don’t be rude!” my mother said, charging after me.
“Little girl, come back here!” my father howled.
A horrible rumble shook the house. My parents’ bedroom door burst open, and a wave of spiders spilled out, blanketing the hallway.
Spiders. Why did it have to be spiders?
The walls darkened with the hideous swarm. My feet were frozen. I was so overcome with fear I couldn’t move.
Get off your tuffet and move it, Miss Muffet—that kid needs you!
I dove into my bedroom and slammed the door. WHAM! WHAM! The wave of beasties crashed against it.
In his little sleeper, Theo screamed.
I snatched a roll of duct tape and wound it around the salad bowl and plate to keep the spider trapped inside.
“Maybe Berna can use its venom to make an antidote to help your mommy and my mommy,” I said to Theo as I shoved it into my backpack.
Crack! Wood splintered behind me. Hundreds of spider legs scratched below the doorframe.
There was only one way out: the window above my desk. Luckily, my room was on the first floor. I buckled Theo into the Lone Wolf, flipped up the hidden panel on the stroller’s handlebar, and pressed a button. The entire buggy went flat with all four wheels splayed out to the sides. I hoisted Theo and the compact L-Five outside.
The stroller came down hard on the grass, and then sprang up, locking back into position. Theo bounced in his seat. Stunned for a moment, he stopped crying.
I jumped out my window, rolling beside the Lone Wolf. Yanking on the handlebar, I snapped the hidden sword out of place—SHINK! The katana blade flashed in the moonlight.
“Surrender, Kelly,” moaned my mother as she stumbled from the front door after me.
“Mom. Dad. I love you. But I gotta go.”
My parents shrieked and chased after me.
“Hang on, T-Dog,” I said, pressing the remote key.
The L-Five buzzed to life. I leaped onto the running boards and throttled the engine. With a high-pitched whine, the stroller took off more fast-and-furious than I expected.
The headlights of a black Rolls-Royce blinded me. Two small, squashy trolls wearing weird medieval carnival masks were pointing out of the windshield. They were next to the ghost-faced chauffeur who was driving toward me.
I swung the stroller to the right and held tight, surfing the humming L-Five down a hill.
The street rushed under us. The Rolls-Royce rumbled inches behin
d me.
“Stop them!” screamed Serena as she scrambled from my house.
While I steered the L-Five, I chopped erratic swings, hitting the car’s gleaming hood ornament. CLANG! CLANG!
“Back off! Baby on board!” I screamed.
The heavy roar of the engine gained. The driver’s white, bloodless face was expressionless and cold, as if it was saying I was going to be roadkill.
Behind the car Serena’s eight legs galloped after us. She sprang on top of the car’s roof. Her thin legs clung to it as she shrieked at her chauffeur to run me over. She stabbed her enormous spider legs at me.
I sheathed the blade into the stroller’s handle and pressed the button on the buggy marked OIL. The L-Five shot streams of slimy liquid onto the street.
The Rolls-Royce hit the shimmering puddle and spun out of control. The carnival-masked trolls growled and yelled as the pale driver fought with the steering wheel. Serena vaulted off the sideways-sliding car as it slammed into a tree with a shuddering blast.
“Don’t text and drive!” I yelled.
I took a sharp turn up Old Doctor’s Road. Theo was bobbing along in his seat like E.T. as the sidewalk raced beneath us. I leaned on the left running board, steering us under the weeping willow near my bus stop. Theo’s blanket was fluttering around him, and he kept looking up at me like “What the heck is going on?”
I swerved the L-Five onto Hollyhock Avenue, hoping I was going to the right spot.
A stream of milky thread shot overhead like an arrow and splattered against a nearby telephone pole.
With growing panic I watched the spiderweb stretch.
WHOOSH! Serena’s white gown rippled as she flew through the air, tethered to her soaring silk slingshot. She landed on top of a church steeple and balanced precariously on her talons.
I jammed my thumb down on SMOKE. Fog billowed in the air after us into massive black clouds that smelled like burning matches. I looked behind me, and Serena was on her perch, choking, the mist filling the street as she became a haze of dark limbs.
Serena’s spider thread flew from the fog and snapped into another nearby telephone pole. She yanked back, pulling the pole down. Power lines fell around me in a swarm of sparks and fire.
The Lone Wolf rocketed Theo and me through the sizzle and snapping wires.
The charge-battery light flashed on the handlebar.
“Not much juice left,” I said. “Gotta make it count.”
I veered the stroller toward a vast, snow-covered clearing, past a sign for Milton’s Pond.
The wheels slushed across the frosted, icy pond.
“Please don’t crack,” I said.
Thwip! A tree shook as Serena swung down behind us. She landed on the ice, her sharp claws skating across the surface.
An unsettling crick-crack raced under us.
The ice was breaking.
One of Serena’s legs rose, about to skewer me, when she vanished with a splash into the icy water! Her limbs thrashed, churning the slushy pond.
Theo and I were almost to the shore. The stroller’s back tires were sliding under the breaking ice that was collapsing right behind us.
The battery light blinked red.
“On Prancer, on Dancer, on Donner and Blizten!” I screamed, hoping for a Christmas miracle.
“Aaaadaaa!” screamed Theo.
We bumped onto the shoreline just as the ice collapsed into the pond and the engine died. We rolled to a stop. I looked back, breathless. In the middle of the pond, Serena struggled to hold her head above the water. Her fine braids had come undone and had fallen into wet strips. Her skin was bluish, and her eyes looked desperate as she doggy-paddled with her thin, trembling limbs.
“Come, child, help a poor damsel in distress, won’t you?”
“Hm, let me think about that,” I said, stroking my chin. “Nah.”
She seemed genuinely helpless and hurt. Like a normal person in need.
I must have taken a step toward her, because she said, “That’s it, help me, child. It’s so very, very cold. You’re very brave and good. That’s right, child. Keep coming. That’s a dear. Take my hand.” Serena offered her hand to me.
I hesitated. “Give me the antidote to change back my parents and Dawn,” I demanded.
“Of course. Whatever you want,” she said.
“For real? No tricks?”
“Darling, in case you haven’t noticed, I’m about to drown. What tricks could I possibly have?”
“Just because I’m a kid doesn’t mean I’m an idiot!”
Serena’s legs slashed out of the water.
“I’ll never give you the antidote! I will exterminate you—My earrings!” she shrieked, and grabbed her ears. “Where are my earrings?”
She looked possessed, as if she could not live without her jewels.
“Later, alligator,” I said.
“Adooooo,” said Theo.
Serena scowled at me as I shot off, leaving her to become a spider-sicle.
“We will exterminate the lot of you!” she cried out with a gurgle. “Just like I took out your leader.”
Wait, what? I choked. “Vee? What have you done with her?”
Serena gave me a final sneer. “The babysitters will fall. Just as she did.”
I turned away so she couldn’t see the tears in my eyes. I ran the L-Five up the snowy bluffs of Hangman’s Hill and dialed Mama Vee’s number. It went straight to voice mail.
I felt the trapped spider jostling around the inside of my backpack. I shivered at the sound of it clinking against the salad bowl.
If Mama Vee’s gone too, we’re in serious trouble.
The sparse lights of the suburbs sparkled below. I pushed the buggy down the hillside and rode the running boards as Theo and I skied the stroller over the snow.
A sinking loneliness swallowed me up. First Cassie and Curtis and now Vee? What would we do without Mama Vee?
I kept to the shadows, out of the streetlights. As I ran with Theo down the dark suburbs, not looking back, I flicked open my favorites on my phone and dialed Liz.
“Liz!” I shouted, excited to get someone on the phone who could help. “We just . . . ran—drove—away from Serena; she’s here. I’m with Theo. She’s in a pond. My parents—Oh my God, Liz—You have to come get us.”
Over the phone I could hear CRASH! SMASH! CLANG!
“KEVIN, I TOLD YOU NOT TO TOUCH THAT!” Liz screamed. “I’ve got my hands full here, Ferguson. Might be a while before I can get to you. Down, Kevin! Don’t punch that wall; you’re going to—”
A loud crunch smashed over the phone. “Keeeeevin!” Liz whined.
I glanced back over my shoulder. Snow flurries curled between houses. “Vee’s not picking up her phone, Liz,” I said, pulling Theo’s fuzzy blanket up to his red nose. He was twisting and turning in his seat. I gently put my hand on his chest. It felt warm and fragile. I had to get him out of the cold.
“AW, YOU’RE MAKING A MESS! Look, find shelter and hide. Not you; I was talking to Kelly! Don’t hide in the closet, Kevin. Send me your location, and I’ll get to you soon as I get Kevin to sleep. Hey, Kev, I’ll play you some music—WUGNOT! YOU GOTTA PICK UP KELLY!”
The sound of the rec room’s grand piano being banged on pierced my eardrums. “Kevin, don’t play with that!” was the last thing I heard from Liz before she clicked off.
The heaviness of my soggy, frosty jacket and the aching cold of my blue fingers demanded I get help. I needed to get the little turtle somewhere safe and warm.
I knew one person who lived nearby: Tammy. And I knew the way there by heart. I’d been going there since I was five, after all. I pushed Theo up to the curb in front of Tammy’s house and stood there. Candy canes lined the path to her door. I swallowed. Why was I so nervous, even though I had been here a thousand times?
26
Tammy swung open the door. “Is that a baby?” she said, pointing at Theo.
“Well, yeah. I’m babysitting. Can we com
e in?”
“Uh. Sure.”
I looked over my shoulder, praying the Spider Queen was at the bottom of the pond. “I went for a walk with the baby, and this, um, person is following me. I just ran and . . .”
“Oh my gosh! Are you okay?” Tammy gasped, and pulled Theo and me inside, locking the door.
I choked. I couldn’t bring myself to say anything. I was too shaken and cold and afraid, and I didn’t want to involve her any more than I had to. I just wanted to get Theo warm and fed and have Wugnot come pick us up.
As I sent my location to Liz, wicked laughter squawked from Tammy’s bedroom. I snapped to attention. Creatures were in her bedroom. I moved to protect Tammy.
“Sounds like a flock of witches,” I whispered.
Tammy laughed. “It’s Deanna and the Princess Pack.”
They were huddled on Tammy’s bed, all staring at their phones, giggling. Their eyes were like dull, blue diamonds in the screen’s glow.
“Ladies and gentlemen, it’s time for everyone’s fabulous freak show, Kelly Ferguson!” Deanna said when she noticed me. Her head jerked back when she saw Theo. “I didn’t know you had a baby.”
“I’m babysitting, Deanna,” I said.
“Fun for you!” she groaned.
“Is your mom here?” I asked Tammy.
“She’ll be home in a little. They just came over to study,” Tammy said.
“Gadoooo,” Theo said.
I plugged the stroller into the wall, charging the battery.
“You should totally audition for Teen Mom,” Deanna said into her screen.
The Pack laughed. Tammy frowned. “Someone was chasing Kelly,” she said.
They looked up from their phones, wide-eyed. I wasn’t intimidated by Deanna like I used to be, but I was not in the mood to lock horns with her, either. I had to focus on my mission: protect Theo.
“I’m gonna go wash up,” I said, picking Theo up.
“You can leave him with us while you go to the bathroom,” Deanna said, patting the empty space between them. “Babies love me. I’m going to adopt like a million of them one day from all over the world.”
I checked her neck. No spider bite. But still . . . No way was I leaving Theo with them.
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