When we got to the bottom of the staircase, I saw that my dungeon comment wasn’t too far from the truth. The basement was damp with a moldy smell, like the smell of my wet clothes when I accidentally leave them in the washing machine too long.
Total grossfest, Ellie thought to me.
Logan clicked on the flashlight and took the lead as we tiptoed through the cavernous room. I didn’t know what we were looking for—perhaps another secret room, door, or sterile chamber like the one Mark was held in.
Poppy, I heard Sabrina say in my head.
And now I was hearing things. Great. But then I realized that Sabrina was trying to communicate with me. She was close by. She had to be.
“They’re down here somewhere,” I said, taking a few steps forward, ignoring the frightened Ellie. But there were no doors, windows, or anything else to indicate another space, so where was Sabrina speaking from? She’s close.
“Look, maybe this was just a bad idea,” Ellie said, her fingernails digging into my arms. I could practically hear her teeth chattering in my ear at this point.
“You made it through the haunted forest last year, Ellie. This is just some musty old basement,” I reminded her.
“You’re right,” she said, but didn’t lessen her grip.
“Over here!” Logan whisper-yelled from the other side of the cavernous room.
Poppy. I heard Sabrina in my head again, but there was no telling where she—and Sam, for that matter—could be. This was a completely empty basement. And then I heard her again. Behind the wall.
Was she serious? Behind the wall? They hid our stuff in some secret shed last year, and now they’ve taken cuspers—real people, real kids—and hidden them behind walls? I thought back to a story our English teacher made us read last year about a man who was trapped behind a wall in a basement, left to … well … a shiver ran up my spine. What kind of Edgar Allan Poe world did we live in?
“I heard it too,” said Ellie, forgetting for a moment that her dominant power was a mind-reading Thursday one.
“Um … does someone wanna let me in on the secret?” Logan said, bumping his shoulder into mine. Sometimes I forgot that he was not a mind-reading Thursday.
“We just heard Sabrina say that she’s behind a wall, but that doesn’t make any sense.”
“Yeah, maybe Mark was just making all that stuff up to mess with us,” Ellie said hopefully. I wished that everything he told us was a lie, but I knew deep down that Mark was telling us the truth. Mayor Masters was kidnapping cuspers out of what, jealousy? Just because her own son was a powerless weekend. I should have paid more attention to her over the past week.
Logan shook his head. “Maybe there is a false wall somewhere around here.”
“Like, how the heck would we know if there is one or not?” Ellie asked, scrunching up her nose.
“Don’t ask me,” Logan shot right back at her.
“You guys. We have things to do. Cuspers to find,” I said, trying to break up their squabble.
“Okay, so each of us needs to take a wall. Knock on it, and if you hear or see something, let the other two know,” Logan said, pushing hair from his face. He was so cute when he took charge.
We split up and started knocking away. I wasn’t entirely sure of what we were looking for but figured that one of us would know if we were onto something.
Poppy, I heard Sabrina’s voice again.
I’m coming, I thought right back to her, knowing that if she were thinking hard enough, she could hear me. But there was something I still didn’t get. How could Sabrina, a child from a weekday dad and a weekend mom, have two powers? I hoped maybe it would all be answered in time.
My knuckles started to throb from all the knocking I was doing on these concrete walls, but then I heard something. “Over here, guys!” I said quietly, knowing my voice would echo in this room.
In an instant, Logan was right next to me, and Ellie had to do the non-teleporting Tuesday thing—walk.
“Listen,” I said. I brought my hand up to the wall and knocked three times.
“It’s hollow,” Logan said.
“They’re behind this one,” I said, gesturing to the wall in front of me. “I’m sure of it,” I said confidently.
We looked around the room for any kind of tool that would help us break through the wall—a hammer, a crowbar, anything—but it was completely deserted.
“What’s that?” Ellie asked, raising a freshly manicured finger toward the ceiling.
Just like in the entrance of N.P.C., there was a blinking black box, but there wasn’t an access card slot on this one.
“Great!” Logan said, throwing his arms up in surrender. “Now we’ll never be able to get in there.”
Poppy! I heard Sabrina say again.
“I hear her too!” Ellie said with excitement.
And that’s when Miss Maggie’s lesson came back to me. “Yes, we will get in,” I said, stepping forward. “Get back.”
Logan and Ellie moved out of the way as I lifted my finger toward the wall. Poppy, I heard Sabrina in my head. Hurry up, they’ll be back.
“We don’t have much time.” I flicked my wrist three times in the direction of the wall, just as I’d seen Miss Maggie do. Nothing.
“What was that about?” Ellie asked, clearly frustrated that whatever I’d tried didn’t work.
“I need you to help me,” I said. “We need to harness super Monday power.”
“What? You’re ridiculous,” she said, laughing.
“No. I’m serious. We are going to flick our wrists three times and concentrate really hard on breaking through the wall. But I need your help.”
“Seriously, Poppy? Do you think that it is actually going to work? Nobody’s Monday power can do that.” She rolled her eyes.
I thought of Miss Maggie and chuckled to myself at how wrong Ellie was, but I wasn’t going to go into that whole story. “Just try, at least.”
“Fine,” she huffed. “But after it doesn’t work, can we please get out of here and tell someone? I don’t wanna get caught!”
“Deal,” I said, crossing my fingers that it wouldn’t resort to that.
“Okay. So here we go.” We lifted our fingers in unison. “And now the flicks. One. Two. Three.”
Nothing. I frowned, certain it should have worked.
“Okay, let’s go,” Ellie said, grabbing my hand and dragging me toward the staircase.
And then we heard it. Crack. Just like that, a line formed down the middle of the wall, and then another.
“Again,” Ellie said.
I rushed to her side.
We lifted our hands in unison. One. Two. Three.
Crack. The line in the wall got larger and then another one appeared. Finally, the cement of the wall crumbled to the ground in a pile of rubble.
“Oh my gosh! We totally just did that!” Ellie shrieked, whipping her head around to me with a huge white grin.
“Shhhh,” I said, reminding her of the situation we were in. “Someone might hear us.”
We crouched down and climbed through the hole we’d just created. I saw Sam, Sabrina, and one other person I didn’t recognize who looked to be a year or two older than us. They were crouched down in the corner of the dirt-covered room. There was a door to their right—I assumed was a bathroom.
Sabrina saw me first. “Poppy,” she said. She stood up and ran to give me a hug. “I knew you’d hear me!” she said with a slight smile.
I looked to my right to see Ellie and Sam hugging as well.
“Uh … hey,” the boy I didn’t recognize said, extending his finger and lighting the entire dirt covered room.
As soon as I saw his face though, I knew him. “Are you the Wed—”
“Wednesday who went missing two years ago?” He finished my sentence and then nodded. “Yes. I’m Mack.”
“So, that story Veronica always tells us is totally true,” Ellie said, lettin
g go of Sam and turning toward Mack.
“Yeah, and as much as I want to tell you what happened, we need to go now,” Mack said, climbing through the hole.
Right before we got to the steps, the door at the top of the stairwell opened and the silhouettes of two men and a woman barreled down the staircase.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Mayor Masters blocked our path. “And just where do you all think you’re going?” she grimaced, taking a step closer. The woman standing in front of us looked nothing like the Mayor Masters I knew. Her cheeks were a blotchy red, and she had changed from her usual formal attire into an outfit that made her appear ready for a workout. Black streaks of mascara were smeared down her cheek.
Ellie and Sabrina, we need to do it again, I thought, knowing we all were on the same page. Simultaneously, the three of us lifted our hands and flicked. One. Two.
As I was about to think three, the two men accompanying Mayor Masters pulled out a black contraption with sparks of electricity running through it.
A Taser, Sam thought to me.
“Come on, now,” Mayor Masters snarled. “Since when does a measly twelve-year-old’s power trump mine?” She asked, looking at the weapon gripped in the man’s hands. She turned her attention back to us. “Did you forget that I run this town?” Mayor Masters snarled. “Just one wrong move, and they’ll launch those in your direction.” Her eyes narrowed on me. “And I think you’ll be the first for my little experiment,” she said, stepping closer to me. Her skeletal fingers ran through my tangled mess of hair.
“Ouch!” I screamed as her boney hand wrapped around chunks of hair. “Get away from me,” I said, pushing her hand from my head. But her grip was tight, so instead of letting go, her fingers wound around my orange strands even tighter.
Using her other hand, she grabbed my wrist and squeezed. “Don’t ever think I wouldn’t break your little wrist. Snap it like the twig you are.” Her eyes seared into mine as her grip became tighter and tighter. “If any of you move,” she said, her eyes frantically whizzing from Ellie to Sam to Sabrina, then to Mack, “it only takes one quick twist of my hand or a nod of my head to use the Tasers,” she threatened.
Ellie’s eyes darted toward the steps, but the two men blocked any path for escape. Hopefully, Logan would be smart enough to disappear the heck out of here. As if he read my mind, he vanished.
Mayor Masters wasn’t even phased by his disappearance. “Now the rest of you, get back in that room,” she said. “And Ernest,” she turned toward one of the men. “You take care of that Friday boy.” Just as fast as Logan disappeared, the man she talked to did as well.
“Now, all of you—go!” she said.
We stumbled through the hole we had just created and back into the small room.
“Yes,” Mayor Masters said again, following us through the craggy wall, standing so close to me I could feel her breath on my neck. “I think we will definitely begin with you, Poppy Rose Mayberry.”
At this point, my thoughts were in a million different places at once. Would I ever see my family or Pickle again? What would happen to Logan once that awful man working for Mayor Masters caught him? Why had I been told lies my entire life?
An evil, crooked smirk formed on Mayor Masters’ face. I had forgotten that she was a mind-reading Thursday, so I was sure she heard the concerned thoughts flying around in my head.
“How did you,” she stepped back, “all of you, deserve powers over my poor little Mark?” She laughed maniacally. “All they needed to do was just give him the powers … tell everyone that he was born on a Friday instead of on a powerless weekend day. That’s all. It would have been so easy.” She looked and spoke to each of us intently, as if we were some jury she needed to convince.
“Nobody …” she continued, “nobody needed to know. And why should prissy little Ellie Preston get a power over my poor Mark? You don’t even deserve it. Your mother doesn’t even deserve it,” she said, now beginning to breathe heavily.
I was scared last summer trying to find Pickle, but that fear was magnified ten times as the crazed Mayor Masters continued. The man standing behind her held his finger on the black device’s trigger, ready to launch volts of electricity through the air at us if we tried any kind of escape.
Mayor Masters shook her head from side to side. “It’s not fair,” she muttered. “It’s never been fair.” Her head dropped to her chest.
I looked up to see the man holding the stun gun slowly bring it down to his side, pointing it away from us and toward the ground. The breath I didn’t realize I’d been holding escaped from my lips.
Suddenly, a silhouette of another figure appeared behind Mayor Masters.
“Mom,” Mark said. “Please. Let them go.” He placed a hand on his mother’s shoulder.
Mayor Masters turned around to face her son. “What do you want?” she said between clenched teeth. Now it appeared that her anger was directed toward him.
“Please, mom,” he begged. “Just let them go.”
“If you were only a weekday, Mark,” she said, looking past him and making the come here motion with her pointer finger. “Do something about him,” Mayor Masters said to the man who had tucked his weapon into a loop on his left hip.
The man stepped forward, and just as he wrapped his hand around Mark’s forearm, a commotion sounded from the top of the steps. The door opened and two men ran down them. One tackled the man who had the Taser while the other, someone I couldn’t not recognize, barreled toward Mayor Masters.
“Dad!” I shouted.
In an instant, light flew from my dad’s fingertips. The brightness temporarily blinded Mayor Masters and she instantly stumbled backward.
Another one of Mayor Masters’ lackeys ran down the stairs.
“Come on, girls!” Ellie said to me and Sabrina.
We pointed to the guard now standing next to Mayor Masters. One. Two. Three. A gush of wind flew from our fingertips and crashed into the large man. He smashed against the cement wall and crumbled to the ground. The Nova City officer with my father rushed over to him and pinned them in place. Not a second later, my father held Mayor Masters’ spindly arms behind her back. I could see her scrunching her face, channeling whatever Monday power she had, but it didn’t work. My father was too strong for her.
“Get back to Power Academy,” my dad shouted to the rest of us. “We’ll take it from here.”
Sabrina disappeared up the stairs first. Ellie and Sam, holding hands, ran up next. I hesitated and ran over to my dad.
“Get to Larriby’s office,” Dad shouted. “I’ll take care of this, Poppy,” he said, his tone angry.
I ran to the top of the stairs and made my way through the maze of hallways through N.P.C. and into, yes, the safety of Headmistress Larriby’s office.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Logan, Ellie, Sam, and I watched through Larriby’s office window as Mayor Masters was escorted out the N.P.C. doors and into the backseat of a police car. I was pretty sure she would be locked up in Nova’s Powerless Prison for many years to come. I watched as Mark got into a car with his father. His head dropped to his chest and he seemed to be in that same trance-like state we had seen him in before.
“Poor guy,” I said, turning back to my friends.
“I guess he’ll no longer be known for picking his nose,” Ellie said, bumping shoulders with me. I smiled slightly and rubbed the place on my head where Mayor Masters held me in her death-like grip not too long ago.
“Poppy! Thank goodness!” my dad said, running through the door and wrapping his huge arms around me. I didn’t know what to expect from him, but this was not the reaction I anticipated.
“Wait? So I’m not in trouble?” I asked, placing his N.P.C. access card in his hand.
“Not at all, Poppy. Thanks to you and your friends, you’ve helped close this case for us.”
“How did you know where to find us?” I asked.
Dad f
lipped his N.P.C. access card over and tugged on the shiny clip that attached the card to the lanyard. He held up the tiny piece of metal.
“Is that a tracking device?” Sam asked, pushing his glasses up his nose, squinting.
“Yes, it is, Sam,” my dad answered. “But now I believe there are some people waiting for you.”
I turned around to see Sam’s mom and dad standing outside Larriby’s office, tears streaming down their faces. “Sammy!” his dad said, pulling the oversized cowboy hat from his own head and hugging his son.
“I’ll be in touch,” my dad said to Sam’s mother as they left.
Ellie ran after Sam and planted a kiss on his cheek.
Sweet, I read from Sam’s mind before he rounded the corner with his parents. I smiled.
“We’ll see you later, too,” Logan said, nodding at Ellie. And right before they were out of the room, Logan mouthed to me, “I’ll text you soon.”
I smiled and glanced up to see my dad giving me a knowing glance. “He seems like a nice boy,” he said, ruffling my hair. Ugh. Dads.
I took the tiny piece of metal from his hand. “So this is how you found us?”
“Yes, I always have my identification badge on the nightstand, ready to grab before I leave in the morning. I woke up last night for a glass of water and noticed it was missing.” He looked at Headmistress Larriby and finished. “So I turned on my computer and tracked it here.” His forehead creased. “I knew something serious must be going on.”
“And it led you right down to the basement of Nova Power Corporation,” Larriby said, finishing his thought.
“Mmhmm. In fact, we’d been hard at work looking for those missing cuspers since well before Sam disappeared,” he said, rubbing his head. “And when we got word of Sabrina, we knew that these disappearances were getting closer together.” Dad scratched his head. “Never did we think they were being held captive in our headquarters all along.” He sighed. “We should have known, though, especially considering the last two disappearances happened next door.”
“How many missing cuspers were there?” I asked.
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