by Perdita Finn
Frankie’s mouth was moving. Her voice was faint. “To save my friends.” She was fading. “I told you it was possible to create life. Just like my grandfather did so many years ago. Just like Victor Frankenstein.”
Sparky’s eyes widened. “My name is Victor Frankenstein.”
The ghouls were shocked. This normie boy who’d caused so much trouble was the great inventor?
Sparky gulped. He hardly knew what to say. “I’m your grandfather,” he whispered to Frankie.
A faint smile turned up the corners of her lips. “Sparky’s your nickname.”
He nodded.
“So I got to meet my grandfather… after… all…” Her eyes closed. A last gentle breath disappeared from her mouth. Frankie was gone.
The ghouls and the Fusions were devastated. They held one another and cried. They barely spoke. No one knew what to say. Their beloved Frankie was gone. How could it be?
“Without her, we’d all still be part of that… Creature,” said Clawdeen at last.
“It doesn’t seem real.” Even Cleo was weeping, although carefully so as not to smudge her eye makeup.
Neighthan wiped away a tear.
Ghoulia was sad too, but she was also thinking. Something had occurred to her. She pulled Sparky aside.
“No!” he said. “You don’t mean…”
Ghoulia nodded and groaned some more.
“You’re right,” said Sparky, brightening. “That just might work. But we have to get the polarity just right.”
Ghoulia offered some more suggestions.
“Okay, I understand zombie,” whispered Toralei. “But I have no idea what any of this means.”
“It means,” said Sparky, jumping up, “that we’re going to save Frankie!”
“What?”
“You can’t be serious!”
“You really think you can bring her back?” Robecca was stunned.
Cleo looked uncertain. “Tell us you’re not trying to be funny.”
“The only funny thing happening right now,” said Sparky, “is that that mermaid-ghost is paying zero attention to this conversation.”
Sirena had drifted across the laboratory and was staring at an arc of electricity that was still sparking. “Pretty!” she said, reaching out to touch it.
Sparky shook his head. “We can do this. But not in here. This place is a mess.”
“Gee,” said Clawdeen with her usual tough-girl honesty. “I wonder what could have caused that.”
Sparky grimaced, embarrassed. “Just help me gather supplies and we’ll bring Frankie back to Professor Steam’s workshop.”
The ghouls and Fusions were energized by Sparky’s optimism, but Ghoulia was studying the Recharge Chamber. It was dented and blackened. Would it still work?
Sparky shared her concern. “This Recharge Chamber is going to need a little love…”
Ghoulia groaned in agreement.
Working together, the ghouls and the Fusions managed to move everything back to Hexiciah’s workshop. They polished instruments, hammered out dents, and repaired wires. The time portal lens was back in place between the magnets. Cleo and Toralei even gave the Recharge Chamber a fresh coat of paint. The only question that remained was—would it work?
“All right,” said Sparky. “It’s time to save Frankie.”
Carefully, the ghouls lifted their friend into the Recharge Chamber. Ghoulia swapped Frankie’s bolts and set them right. Sparky connected two cables from the Recharger to the bolts. Everything was in place.
Sparky made a few final adjustments, and a single spark discharged from the lens and hit the control panel of the time portal. It hummed. It was on! The lens was beginning to spin. The blue vortex was appearing… and a shadowy figure was emerging…
But nobody noticed any of this. They were concentrating on the Recharge Chamber—and Frankie.
“This has to work,” whispered Draculaura.
“Let’s create life!” exclaimed Sparky, throwing the switch. Electricity flowed from the Recharge Chamber into Frankie’s bolts. Every part of her was glowing.
“C’mon, Frankie,” said Clawdeen. “Come back to us.”
Sparky increased the electricity. Frankie glowed a little brighter, but nothing else happened. She wasn’t coming back to life. It wasn’t working. Defeated, Sparky shut down the machine.
No one knew what to say.
“Maybe you’re still missing something,” said an authoritative voice.
Everyone whirled around. Standing in front of the time portal was Hexiciah Steam!
Sparky gulped nervously. “Professor?”
“Dad!” exclaimed Robecca, running over to hug him. “Oh, Dad, I missed you!”
The professor hugged her back and then held her at arm’s length to get a good look at her. “Nice to meet you, my daughter. You’re just perfect. It looks as though I did an amazing job on you. Or rather… I will do an amazing job… at some point.”
Robecca hugged him again happily. Her dad was the best.
Hexiciah raised his mechanical hand and pointed at Sparky. “And you, Victor Frankenstein, are late for our conversation after class. By about two hundred years, if I’m not mistaken. I’m here to bring you back to our time, where you belong. But first it looks like we have a ghoul to save.”
The professor began examining the Recharge Chamber. Sparky nervously explained everything. “I don’t understand, Professor. I was sure this would work.”
Professor Steam shook his head. “Didn’t you listen to anything I said before? Creating life takes more than just what’s up here.”
“I know.” Sparky sighed. “It takes the spark. But it’s all gone. Frankie used it all up.”
Hexiciah smiled indulgently. Sparky could be so smart—and still miss the most important things. “How can something be gone that’s inside of every living thing?”
Sparky considered this, but it was Draculaura who understood it first. She shut her eyes and began rubbing her hands together, back and forth, until a little spark shot out.
“How’d you do that?” asked Clawdeen.
“I don’t know! I just closed my eyes and thought about Frankie.”
“So, we all have the spark?” asked Cleo.
“C’mon, everybody!” exclaimed Lagoona. “Think, together, of your best memory of Frankie.”
All the ghouls and Fusions gathered around the Recharge Chamber, their eyes shut, concentrating.
“I remember when Frankie helped bring me back to life,” said Robecca. Sparks flew from her fingers.
“She planned a surprise party for my sweet 1,600,” remembered Draculaura, creating even more electricity.
Avia Trotter stepped forward. “She made us feel like we belong.” All of the Fusions lit up at the thought of what Frankie had done for them.
Ghoulia was texting something on her iCoffin. She pressed send. All over Monster High, students’ phones started binging with the message. Everyone began summoning up happy memories of Frankie. And it was so easy to do—she was one of the sweetest, friendliest monsters at Monster High.
“She freed me from the lantern,” said Gigi the genie.
“She kept me from doing that dumb thing!” said Gil.
“She helped me find my lost love! Please! Save Frankie,” pleaded Rochelle the gargoyle.
Sparky closed his eyes and concentrated.
Everyone and everything in the workshop was beginning to glow—not just with electricity but with love. A powerful current was flowing into Frankie. Suddenly, there was a brilliant flash of light that filled the entire room. It touched each and every one of their hearts.
When they opened their eyes, it had faded. Had anything happened to Frankie? Had she felt it?
“Did it work?” whispered Venus.
“Frankie?” called Cleo.
Bonita was chewing her sleeve nervously.
“Come back to us, Frankie,” Robecca begged.
Clawdeen sighed. “Ghoulfriend, if you’re taking you
r sweet time for dramatic effect, you’re killin’ us over here.”
They waited. Nothing was happening. Hope seemed to be lost.
But then, Frankie sat up, just like that, smiling. “Did I miss anything?”
“Frankie!”
“She’s back!”
“It worked!”
The ghouls pounced on Frankie, all trying to hug her at once.
“I did it! I created life!” shouted Sparky. Everyone glared at him. “We did it,” he corrected himself.
Hexiciah was opening the time portal again. “All right, Victor Frankenstein. It’s time to go.”
Sparky looked at Frankie for a long time. “Thank you,” he said at last.
She smiled. “I told you it was possible to create life.”
“No, not for that,” said Sparky, shaking his head. “Thank you for showing me that I am not alone. That I do have a family.”
Shyly, Sparky reached out to hug Frankie.
“Take care of yourself… Grandpa.” Frankie laughed.
Sparky smirked and headed to the time vortex. Just before stepping into it, he reached down and grabbed a bolt from the floor. Frankie had a feeling he wasn’t done with getting into trouble.
Robecca waved to her father. “Miss you already!”
He grinned and let out a steam whistle. The light in the vortex swirled and brightened. They were gone!
The screen behind Frankie Stein was filled with light. Her story was over. She had told the whole school about her adventures with her grandpa Sparky. The entire auditorium had been hushed as she told them about how her friends had brought her back to life.
“Which brings us to the end of our bite-centennial celebration,” she announced from the stage. “But our story doesn’t end there…”
The curtain opened, the spotlight widened, and standing onstage with Frankie were all her ghoulfriends and the Fusions.
“The story of Monster High is being written every single day,” Frankie continued. “And as we move forward into the future, we will continue our rich tradition of accepting anybody who walks through those doors, whether they’re vampire or werewolf, creepy or freaky… or Fusion.”
Frankie noticed that Bonita was chewing on her sleeve again. “It’s okay,” she said. “You’re one of us now. Together we are Monster High!”
People in the audience began to clap wildly. Someone cheered. Everyone was on their feet giving Frankie a standing ovation.
“Bravo! Bravo! Bravo!” shouted Mr. Where.
Next to him, Abbey Bominable wrinkled her nose. “You stink like yak fur. This is intentional?”
Frankie held up her hands to silence everyone. “So that’s our little story,” she concluded. “The Fusions have found the home they were looking for. Sparky, er, Grandpa Victor went back to his own time, where he used the secret of the spark to build the family he was looking for… and even though my ghoulfriends aren’t fused together anymore, they’re still pretty much inseparable. Oh, and spending all that time as a Fusion really sparked Clawdeen’s imagination.”
On the screen flashed a shot from one of Clawdeen’s sketchpads showing all kinds of new freaky Fusion fashions.
“How claw-some are those designs?” said Frankie, and the audience was on their feet applauding again. “And as for me? Let’s just say that after a crazy family adventure like that, I had plenty of information for my scaritage project.”
She snapped her fingers, and the screen showed her family album—now filled with photos.
“Check it out,” said Frankie. “That’s the real family photo album. Turns out my parents knew they couldn’t tell me about Grandpa until after we’d met each other and discovered the secret of the spark. Otherwise things wouldn’t have happened the way they were supposed to. Seriously, thinking about all this time-travel logic would make my head spin if it wasn’t sewn on. But hey, this time I got an A on my project.”
In the audience, Mr. Rotter flipped his pencil. It bounced off his head.
Frankie laughed. “Favorite student, right here!”
Frankie noticed that Neighthan was right beside her. She smiled shyly. “So does this mean you’ll stick around for a while?”
He grabbed her hand and pulled her close. “I wouldn’t miss being part of this freaky family!”
Frankie’s bolts shot out sparks. Love was in the air!
Frankie Stein got an A on her scaritage report, Monster High got some voltageous new students, and Ghoulia got a brand-new laboratory. The very next day she moved her things into Hexiciah Steam’s old workshop.
She updated it with modern equipment and laptops and cleaned out most of the cobwebs. Already, she had some experiments she wanted to try out. After a long time scribbling calculations and inputting numbers to her computer, she headed over to the control panel for the time-travel lens.
The lens began spinning, the glowing portal appeared, and just like that, Ghoulia stepped into it and disappeared.
Hours later, the workshop was still and quiet. All of a sudden, the lens began to spin, the vortex appeared, and Ghoulia jumped out. Her clothes were in tatters. She’d ripped off her shirtsleeve and tied it around her head like a headband. Dirt was smeared across her face like war paint. She was carrying a long wooden stick, and on the end of it was a stone arrowhead.
She whirled around.
The head of a giant T-Rex lunged through the portal and snapped at her.
Ghoulia whacked it with her stick and forced it back into the vortex. She slammed her stick onto the control panel and the portal closed.
She wiped her brow and laughed.
Groan! That was close!
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Contents
COVER
TITLE PAGE
WELCOME
CHAPTER 1: A BITE-CENTENNIAL BLUNDER
CHAPTER 2: BACK TO THE BOO-GINNING
CHAPTER 3: CRUSH AT FIRST SIGHT
CHAPTER 4: SCARY SCARITAGE
CHAPTER 5: SNACK ATTACK
CHAPTER 6: CRYPT TRIP
CHAPTER 7: GONE, GHOUL, GONE
CHAPTER 8: FREAKY FLASHBACK!
CHAPTER 9: NORMIE KNOW-HOW
CHAPTER 10: SPARKS FLY
CHAPTER 11: BACK TO THE FUTURE
CHAPTER 12: FUSION CONFUSION!
CHAPTER 13: THE MISSING MAD SCIENTIST
CHAPTER 14: FUSIONS TO THE RESCUE!
CHAPTER 15: SPOOKY SELFIES
CHAPTER 16: MONSTER MAKEOVERS
CHAPTER 17: GETTING TO KNOW BOO
CHAPTER 18: UNDER WRAPS
CHAPTER 19: ATTACK OF THE CREATURE
CHAPTER 20: FRANKIE’S SPECIAL SPARK
CHAPTER 21: A CURRENT OF LOVE!
CHAPTER 22: IN THE SPOTLIGHT
CHAPTER 23: GHOUL-SCAPADES
PHOTOS
COPYRIGHT
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.
Copyright © 2014 Mattel, Inc. All rights reserved.
MONSTER HIGH and associated trademarks are owned by and used under license from Mattel, Inc.
Cover design by Kayleigh McCann
In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the publisher is unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), prior written permission must be obtained by contacting the publisher at [email protected]. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.
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The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher.
First ebook edition: September 2014
ISBN 978-0-316-29709-7
E3