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  For Edwin “Win” Shames.

  I can’t wait to introduce you to your first deli cat.

  a sudden gust of wind pushed through the thick green conifurs lining the edge of campus, curved around the imposing stone and glass facade of Monster High, and finally swept across the backfield. A welcome respite from the intensity of the sun, the breeze delighted the throngs of athletically clad students as Crack and Shield Day got under way.

  “Welcome to the Ghoul’s Cry Jump, a competition to see who could simultaneously jump the highest while shrieking the loudest,” Monster High’s Deputy of Disaster and acting headmistress, Miss Sue Nami, yelled into a bullhorn.

  On the field, eager to participate, were Venus McFlytrap, Robecca Steam, Rochelle Goyle, Scarah Screams, Cleo de Nile, and Toralei Stripe, all of whom were wearing matching Monster High helmets.

  “First up is Rochelle Goyle,” the waterlogged and box-shaped woman barked as she looked over at the petite granite gargoyle with small white wings.

  Upon hearing her name, Rochelle quickly pulled back her long pink hair, brushed aside her turquoise-streaked bangs, and waved hello to the crowd. Acting more like a visiting dignitary than an athlete, she performed a full three-sixty before heading to the starting line. Seconds after she double-checked her helmet and assumed the correct position, the starting gun fired. Rochelle sprinted with all her might, thrust herself into the air, and screamed at the top of her lungs. “Holy mackerel, who knew Rochelle had those kind of pipes?” Robecca Steam muttered as wisps of steam wafted out of her copper-plated ears.

  Crafted from a steam engine by her mad-scientist father, the blue-haired ghoul released steam whenever overcome by a strong emotion, whether it be excitement, fear, or anger.

  “I know, right? If only she could get her granite body a little higher in the air,” Venus, the jade-skinned daughter of the plant monster, replied.

  The long-pink-and-green-haired ghoul then began to stretch her legs while warming up her vocal cords.

  “Do-re-mi-fa-sol-la-ti,” Venus sang quietly as Miss Sue Nami lifted the bullhorn to her mouth.

  “Toralei Stripe and Cleo de Nile, you are disqualified for refusing to unlink your arms. Get off the field!” Miss Sue Nami screeched at the two pouting divas.

  “C’est incroyable! I can’t believe those two are still linking arms,” Rochelle said as she walked up to Robecca and Venus.

  “They think they’re less likely to be kidnapped by the normies if they’re together,” Venus responded, shaking her head incredulously. “It’s crazy how everyone has bought this normie story hook, line, and sinker.”

  Following banshee Scarah Screams’s winning turn in the Cry Jump, Robecca, Rochelle, and Venus decided it was time to track down another ghoul, one who just might prove useful in bringing Monster High’s era of doom and gloom to an end. And so the trio zigzagged through hordes of monsters, their eyes darting from side to side in search of Wydowna Spider.

  “Ghouls? Do you think it will ever be normal at Monster High? Maybe even a little boring?” Robecca asked Venus and Rochelle while moving past a couple of sea creatures mid-stretch.

  “Chérie, I wish I could say yes, but just think of all that’s happened since we arrived at Monster High. First Madame Flapper cast that terrible spell—the Whisper—that robbed all the students and teachers of their ability to think for themselves! Quelle horreur!”

  “I have to say, breaking that spell was not easy,” Venus recalled. “And to think, Miss Flapper just walked away free and clear after claiming that she too had been under a spell! What a load of fertilizer!”

  “It sure was stranger than a bee’s-sneeze-in-a-strong-breeze how quickly everyone went back to business as usual. Why, even the appearance of white kittens and dolls of doom with messages warning of them failed to raise the flag,” Robecca remembered aloud.

  “What flag would that be?” Rochelle inquired curiously.

  “Jeepers, Rochelle! There’s no flag; it’s just a saying,” Robecca explained with a smirk.

  “All these sayings. They really are terribly irksome.”

  “It wasn’t until the graffiti messages about them started popping up that anyone even really paid attention. And then, of course, when Headmistress Bloodgood was kidnapped, things really got out of control,” Venus added.

  “Ah! And that note! That ridiculous note that claimed the normies took Headmistress Bloodgood and that they wouldn’t return her until a wall had been built enclosing Salem.” Rochelle moaned at the absurdity of the story.

  “But everyone thinks it’s true. We’re pretty much the only ones who don’t believe it. The others don’t even suspect that Miss Flapper is working with this secret organization. As a matter of fact, they don’t even know ASOME exists! Not that we know who is behind ASOME or what they’re after…” Venus trailed off.

  “But hopefully Wydowna will tell us,” Rochelle chimed in.

  Wydowna Spider, the daughter of Arachne, had been found living in Monster High’s attic a few weeks earlier. And though at first Scariff Fred Onarrival thought she might be working for the normies as a spy, he soon accepted her story that she was just a stowaway eager to learn. But, alas, that was not the truth.

  Long and lithe with onyx skin, flame-colored hair, and six arms, Wydowna kept her eyes—all six of them—trained on the ground after spotting Robecca, Rochelle, and Venus.

  “We know what you’re doing,” Venus pressed Wydowna. “We know that you are working with Miss Flapper and ASOME. We just don’t understand why you’re doing it.”

  “I don’t know what you mean,” Wydowna uttered nervously.

  “Stop pretending, Wydowna,” Robecca said quietly.

  “I’m not pretending.… I don’t know,” Wydowna whispered as she looked to her pet fly, Shoo.

  “You seem so nice, so genuine. How did you get caught up in something like this? A society that holds some creatures above others? That’s not right and you know it,” Venus pleaded with the ghoul.

  “You don’t understand,” Wydowna babbled as she began to cry. “I thought I was being sent here to help monsters. For the good of the whole monster world. But then I started reading things… things I didn’t like or even understand…”

  “Just tell us who is behind ASOME!” Venus urged the frightened spider ghoul to reveal her secrets.

  “I can’t tell you. It’s too dangerous.”

  “You must tell us! The future of every ghoul and guy at Monster High depends on it!” Rochelle begged. “S’il ghoul plaît, Wydowna.”

  “You don’t understand how powerful they are,” Wydowna insisted.

  “Just tell us who they are! We can handle them!” Venus cried out. Her nerves were completely frayed.

  “You don’t get it. You won’t be able to stop them!” Wydowna argued.

  “We stopped Miss Flapper’s Whisper, and we’re going to stop this too,” Venus stated assuredly.

  “Don’t you see? It’s all part of the same plan.”

  “What plan?” Robecca asked nervously, steam pouring out of her ears.

  “You don’t have a clue how far up this goes, how long this plan has been in the making,” Wydowna said as a loud siren cut through the air.

  Similar to th
at of an air raid, the drawn-out howl seamlessly dissolved the crowd into masses of confusion and fear.

  this is not a drill. I repeat, this is not a drill. All students and staff members are to report to the gymnasium for lockdown!”

  It was the voice of Skultastic Superintendent Petra Fied, a tall and lanky mummy who was as expressionless and blank-faced as ever.

  “Students are to report to the gymnasium now! I repeat, now!” Superintendent Petra continued as pandemonium ripped through the masses of students. Screams, flailing limbs, and even clawing abounded as the monsters fled the field. Never mind that they didn’t know what the siren was for; as far as they were concerned they were running for their lives.

  “Students, there is no time for trifling, walking, or chatting! We are in the throes of a code dead! Not a code yellow! Not a code orange! A code dead!!”

  The use of the term code dead immediately amplified the hysteria, prompting the already frenzied crowd to start running around like bats in the sunlight. But upon closer inspection, one could see that not everyone was responding to the superintendent’s instructions. There, in the midst of all the commotion, stood four serenely still ghouls. Much like the eye of a storm, they were static as everything moved around them.

  Robecca, Venus, and Rochelle were the picture of tranquility as they stared down Wydowna, silently pleading for her to fess up. Clearly agitated, Venus felt her pollens of persuasion starting to rumble. Eager to control them, at least until absolutely necessary, she quickly closed her eyes and took a deep breath. However, just as the ghoul closed her eyes she felt a soft slap to the back of her head. It was the fabric-covered arm of Hoodude Voodoo, a life-size voodoo doll.

  “Frankie!!! Frankie!!!” Hoodude hollered as he charged across the field.

  “Hoodude! Take my hand!” Frankie Stein, Hoodude’s creator and consummate crush, screamed while barreling across the lawn.

  “Wydowna…” Venus started, but quickly found herself drowned out by a booming voice.

  “Move it, zombie!” an impatient werewolf roared as he pushed the slow-moving creature out of the way. “Code dead means there’s no time for slow-pokes!”

  “I’m about ready to pollinate this whole crowd one monster at a time,” Venus said, brimming with frustration.

  “Steamers, that sure would be a whole lot of sneezing,” Robecca muttered to herself as two pumpkin heads passed by, their large orange jack-o’-lantern heads bobbing violently atop their minuscule bodies.

  “Listen to the master and run a bit faster!” the descendants of the Headless Horseman sang.

  “Look around you, Wydowna,” Venus said loudly as she did her absolute best to ignore the near-deafening cries of her classmates. “You helped start this.…”

  “J’ai une idée. It might be plus facile, that is, easier, if you just sneeze on Wydowna. Your pollens of persuasion will surely prompt her to give us the information we need,” Rochelle whispered to Venus in her delightful Scarisian accent.

  “Spider monsters are immune to pollens of persuasion, and as you’ve probably realized by now, we also have extra-sensitive hearing,” Wydowna responded while continuing to stare at the ground.

  Venus’s vines tightened with irritation as she steadied herself against the barrage of creatures bumping into her while fleeing the field.

  “Wydowna, chérie,” Rochelle said with genuine kindness. “Tell us who is behind this. We know you aren’t a bad ghoul.”

  It was an odd thing for the ever-rational Rochelle to say. Especially as she was one for facts above feelings; but in this case Rochelle could not deny what she saw in Wydowna—a good heart. Sure, she had been caught living in the attic, a supposed stowaway looking to advance her education. And sure, Rochelle knew the truth about her, that she had been working with Miss Flapper and some secret organization called ASOME to try to destroy Monster High. And yet still, Rochelle sensed that Wydowna was not the enemy.

  “We need the truth about ASOME in order to stop them. Who are they? Who are you and Miss Flapper working for?” Venus pleaded as she reached out and touched Wydowna’s shimmery black arm.

  “I thought I was helping monsters,” Wydowna uttered emphatically, her six eyes still locked on the ground. “I believed them when they said that I was protecting future generations, securing a brighter future for monsters everywhere.”

  “But now you know that you were not in fact helping monsters, so it’s time to do the right thing,” Rochelle implored Wydowna while tapping her sharp stone claws against her leg.

  “I bet the normies are coming! That’s why they sounded the alarm! Run, monsters, run!” Henry Hunchback hollered as he sprinted hump-first toward Monster High’s main building.

  Robecca, Rochelle, and Venus knew that it was not the normies who had taken Headmistress Bloodgood. They also knew that the normies were not the ones behind the threats of walling off Salem. The only problem was, they couldn’t prove any of it. They needed Wydowna’s help to identify the members of the secret organization pulling the strings.

  “Rochelle!” Deuce Gorgon called out from a swarm of sea creatures. “Come on! I just heard the normies are coming! Word is they’re going to try and kidnap as many of us as possible!”

  “She’ll catch up with you in a second,” Venus replied casually, much to the boy’s surprise.

  “But, but…” Deuce stuttered from behind his ever-present sunglasses.

  “See you soon, D,” Venus said with a friendly wave as the boy with a snake Mohawk disappeared into the crowd.

  “Heavens to batsy, Wydowna! This is your moment! You can stop it before it’s too late!” Robecca hollered, and then flipped the switch to her rocket boots and soared into the air to avoid a manic werewolf headed straight for her.

  “I’m afraid it’s already too late,” Wydowna said while shaking her head.

  “It’s never too late to do the right thing! Absolument jamais!” Rochelle responded sincerely as Robecca returned to the ground.

  “ASOME is powerful, connected in ways you could never imagine, with moles everywhere. They’ll do anything to protect the creature hierarchy that they believe in. Anything.”

  “Let us at least try to save our headmistress, our school, our town from whatever it is that they’re planning,” Rochelle begged.

  Wydowna lifted her head, stared directly at each of the ghouls, and parted her lips to answer. Anticipation immediately seized Rochelle, Robecca, and Venus as they saw that she was finally ready to tell them the truth.

  “ASOME is—” Wydowna said, before being slammed by a river of frantic vampires storming across the lawn.

  At first Wydowna’s onyx skin made it easy to track her in the sea of pale monsters, but as the group moved faster, the trio lost sight of even the smallest swath of black.

  “I’ll follow her in the air!” Robecca offered as she bent down to flip on her boots again.

  “Save your fuel. We know where she’s headed, where all of them are headed,” Venus said as she motioned to start walking.

  “Let’s just hope that Wydowna doesn’t change her mind about telling us who is behind ASOME in the meantime,” Rochelle added.

  upon entering Monster High’s main hall, Robecca, Rochelle, and Venus were greeted by throngs of students leaning limply against the green walls and pink coffin-shaped lockers. Above them in the rafters, clusters of sleeping bats dozed, blissfully unaware of the bedlam below. Directly ahead, rising from the well-polished purple-checkered floor, was a tombstone-shaped sign reminding students that it was against school policy to howl, molt fur, bolt limbs, or wake sleeping bats in the hallways.

  Breezing past their slumped yet still wild-eyed peers, Robecca, Rochelle, and Venus scanned the hall for Wydowna. But there was neither sight nor sound of the spider ghoul.

  “Where is she? I mean, she has six arms and bright red hair, she shouldn’t be that hard to spot,” Venus huffed as the trio neared the gym.

  “Wydowna was pulled away by a very fast-moving
crowd. So it’s possible she’s already inside,” Rochelle stated, and then furrowed her brow. “Or at least that’s what I’m hoping.”

  “We were so close. If only those vampires hadn’t come,” Robecca said as she stomped one of her copper boots against the floor.

  “Robecca,” a soft voice called out from a dimly lit corner of the hall.

  “Cy!” Robecca replied as she threw up her arms in preparation for a hug.

  “I’ve been looking everywhere for you. I was worried you might have been dinged or dented with everyone running around as if the normies were about to invade,” Cy said after giving Robecca a quick pat on the back.

  “Is that supposed to be a joke, Cy?” Venus said with a wry smile as she motioned for him to join them in the gym.

  “That was the idea, but as you know Cyclopes are not well regarded for either their depth perception or their humor,” the shy boy said while sneaking glances at Robecca.

  “Holy hydrocarbons, am I glad to see your eye in one piece. With everyone charging across the field, I was sure you’d have a twig or rock lodged in there by now.”

  “I can’t believe how worked up everyone got by the siren and code dead. But then again, if I actually believed the normies were threatening to wall us in, I guess I would be on edge too,” the one-eyed boy muttered.

  “Cy, you will be pleased to hear that we have convinced Wydowna to tell us who is behind ASOME,” Rochelle said as she nervously clicked her hard claws together. “But, of course, we have to find her first.”

  Cy, Robecca, Rochelle, and Venus entered the gym and immediately began scanning the monsters huddled together on the Casketball court for any sign of Wydowna.

  “I don’t even like shutting my bedroom door. How am I going to live behind a wall? I need to be free to swim in the sea. A landlocked sea monster is like a hairless werewolf or a vegetarian vampire,” sea creature Lagoona Blue groaned to her sometime boyfriend, freshwater-loving Gil Webber.