The Mystery of the Mystery Meat (14 page)

The fire was still raging, but Pretty figured Scary should stay and help Freekin and the cheerleaders instead of turning back into a fire hose.

“Go uppy,” she told him.

“Gazeekee zibu,”
Scary-ladder replied, extending back toward the window as Deirdre appeared with Freekin at the broken window, poised for her rescue.

“Okeydoke, Scary, you stay and help cheerleader girls,” Pretty said, her attention on Scary as she caught sight of a firefighter wearing a mask walking toward her. “Here, Mr. Fireman,” she said, holding out the unconscious Lilly. “Fix Lilly, okeydoke?”

The man bent down, took Lilly, and straightened. Lilly’s cute little blue purse fell off her shoulder and landed on the ground. Pretty had retrieved it, preparing to give it to him, when he reached up a gloved hand to his face and lowered his mask.

“Thank you, Miss Pretty,” he said in a familiar voice.

Pretty gasped as she stared at the rotting face of Horatio Snickering III. She made her face go slack. “Yes, master,” she said. “Me obeying master.”

He shook his head, tsk-tsking at her. “Naughty, naughty, Miss Pretty. I know you’re not under my command any longer.”

“Grrr,” Pretty growled, abandoning her pretense as she trundled forward, preparing to make another scene.

“In my disguise as a firefighter, I have been observing your fine rescue attempt…and I have duly noted that your little friend Scary has changed himself into several things, including that ladder. Scary is a very clever shape-shifting phantom, but even he can’t be a ladder
and
an extremely irritating undead boy at the same time.
Therefore, I also know that Freekin is not in a Terror-Induced Coma, as you assured me he was.”

Pretty clacked her fangs and gave Lilly’s purse the tiniest little gnaw. Oooooh, if she could get ahold of him, she would shred him!

“You thinking you so smarty-pants,” she sneered at him. “Freekin hears you! Freekin knows you making more Curiosity! Him knows Henrietta Snickering is bad lady! Him knows everything!”

“Oh, really?” Horatio Snickering replied, raising a brow. “Well, thank you for letting
me
know that.”

Oops. Pretty had a feeling she had just said way too much.

“Think of it, Miss Pretty,” he continued. “If you had not tried to summon a boy monster from the Underworld, I would not have been able to cross back over. This is all your doing. You and you alone deserve the credit—or is it the blame?—for my victory over Snickering Willows! Ha ha ha!” He laughed. “Soon I’ll have all the Curiosity I will ever need!”

“Grrr.” Smoke rose from the top of her head.

“Ah-ah-ah,” he cautioned, pointing to Lilly. “You wouldn’t want to hurt this young lady, would you?”

Pretty didn’t answer that. Once upon a time, she might have even said yes. After all, she was the yucky
human girl who had stolen Freekin’s heart right from under Pretty’s seven eyes. Pretty might even have fried her to get to Horatio Snickering III. But life in the Land of the Living had changed her. Mellowed her. Made her less monsterish.

“I can see that we need to be rid of Franklin once and for all before we proceed,” Horatio Snickering went on. “Tell him to come to the fermented fat factory alone within the hour, or he will never see Lilly Weezbrock alive again.”

He snapped his fingers.

With an ear-piercing squeal of brakes, his black limousine screeched into the chaotic courtyard. Horatio Snickering carried Lilly over to it. The back door swung open; Henrietta’s skeleton-thin hands covered with enormous jeweled rings grabbed Lilly as Horatio practically threw her inside like a sack of Ultra Top Secret Ingredients. Then Mortadella the dog popped her scrawny little puff-topped head through the door.

“Grrr-arf!”
Mortadella’s beady eyes gleamed with canine malice.

“Bad doggie!” Pretty took a step toward the limousine.

“Careful, Miss Pretty,” Horatio Snickering warned her. “We don’t want anything to happen to Miss Weezbrock. Give Freekin my message. One hour.”

He climbed backward into the limo. “Viggo, step on it,” he ordered as he slammed the door.

The limo’s wheels squealed like banshees as it circled and barreled between two fire trucks, narrowly missing two firefighters who were carrying a long hose. The vehicle raced out of the courtyard and flew down the street.

“No!” Pretty cried. “Bad, bad, bad!” She scooted around in a circle, then dizzily wobbled back to Scary as Deirdre, Molly, and Janeece all dropped to the ground from his sturdy little rungs and ran toward the hole in the wall. “Scary,
wazeelili
!” she screamed, waving her arms.

“Zibu!”
Scary replied. Still ladder-shaped, he scooped up Pretty and hoisted her in the air. Slinging Lilly’s purse over her shoulder, she scrabbled up his rungs in record time.

“Freekin! Help! Help!” she cried.

“Pretty?” Freekin stuck his head out the broken window.

“Freekin!” She clung to him. “Him so Horatio Snickering III! Bad man stealing Lilly! Him say, go to fermented fat factory right this minute young man!”

“What?”
Freekin’s face was a mask of horror. “He took her to the fermented fat factory?”

She nodded. “Oh, Freekin, me so sorry! C’mon now, we going—”

“Help!” someone yelled from inside the building. It was Brad Anderwater!

“Grrr. Him so refried being,” Pretty pleaded, but she knew that leaving Brad Anderwater in the burning building was bad behavior.

“Help me!” Brad yelled more loudly, more desperately, more refried-ly.

“Gotta go,” Freekin told her, and he dashed back into the fiery building.

“Him so hero.” Pretty sighed.

Found him!

Freekin located Brad Anderwater slumped down the hall and to the right, in the corner of a locked Juvenile Detention cell. The other cells he passed on the way to Brad were open and empty. Without a moment’s hesitation, he slung his unconscious archrival over his shoulder and headed back toward the room with the broken window, where he knew Scary would be waiting. But the hall leading to the room was raging with flames.

He went down another way, to discover that the door he had used to enter the building was blocked as well.

So he twisted and turned and backtracked with Brad on his back until he burst through the front door of the Juvenile Detention Facility, on the same spot where the mayor and chief of police stood side by side, still facing the crowd of angry parents. Now there were fire trucks,
firefighters, ambulances, paramedics, and a lot of very frightened adults.

“Here,” Freekin said as two paramedics flew up the stairs. Then Freekin laid Brad onto the stretcher they were carrying, while his nemesis stirred and pointed his finger at Freekin.

“Freekin Ripp! He’s the one who started the fire! I saw him do it!” Brad said, coughing.

“He’s the leader of the Curiosity underground!” someone shouted from the crowd. “Get him!”

Freekin turned to race back into the burning building. But a firefighter with a kid over his shoulder blocked his way. He veered to the right and darted along the face of the building, hoping to circle to the back.
Ba-zing!
A bullet whizzed past his ear.
Ka-zoing!
A second one just missed his cheek. The bullets wouldn’t harm him, but they might shoot part of him off, and that would slow him down for sure.

He ran faster, bracing himself for another shot. Instead he heard shouts, lots of them.

“Get him!” someone bellowed.

“Freekin, where’s my son?” That was a parent. A parent,
asking a question!

“Stop, Ripp!”

He turned his head. The parents had broken through
the barricades. They were swarming around the cops, their faces contorted with rage and hatred as they cut off his exit route. They came at him like a swarm of stinging bees.

Freekin hung a U-ie and ran away so fast, he thought his legs would detach any second.

Pretty hurried over to Scary, who was still transformed into a ladder, and squinted upward into the smoky steam. Thanks to the firefighters lined up with real hoses spraying gobs of water at the Juvenile Detention Facility, the fire was guttering out. But Freekin hadn’t appeared at the window with Brad Anderwater, and what was that shouting she heard on the other side of the building?

“Knock knock, Scary,” she called, trundling out of sight around the corner of the building. Scary folded himself up, and when he was sure no one was looking, he turned into his normal phantom shape and joined her.

“Scary is super-secret spy plane,” Pretty commanded, and Scary immediately transformed. Pretty climbed inside, and they silently rose into the air, beneath the glowing full moon. She nervously tapped her fingers on Lilly’s purse. Together the two monsters soared above the building, observing the mob running down the street.

“You so flying,” Pretty urged as they swooped ahead
of the crowd. Who were they so mad at? Who were they chasing?

She could kind of guess.

“Keeping going,” she told Scary, who bobbed his nose in reply. They soared along the towers and spires of Snickering Willows, following the mob, but eventually the people stopped running and started going off in all directions. They had lost Freekin.

“Okay!” Pretty cried, clapping. “Us going to fat factory.”

“Gazeeka?”
Scary asked.

“Where?” Pretty thought a moment. She had no idea where the fermented fat factory was.

They circled for a few minutes. Pretty was aware that their time was ticking away. She started gazing out the window, looking for Freekin’s friends. But it was dark, and the smoke obscured her view, and she suddenly got very panicky. What if Freekin went off to save Lilly by himself and something bad happened? What if Horatio Snickering III ground Freekin into Mystery Meat?

She burst into tears. And then she shrieked and jabbed her finger at the town below.

“Freekin’s house! Freekin’s house!” she cried. “Geronimooooo, Scary!”

Scary plummeted to earth. Pretty flung herself down
the steps and slithered up the tree branch into Freekin’s room. She zoomed over to his study desk and opened his computer files, searching for the phone numbers of his friends. Finally she spied a desktop folder labeled
NUMBERS & ADDYS,
and she double-clicked it open. The first number on the list was for Steve.

“Got ’em!” she told Scary. She snapped her fingers. “Phone!”

Scary immediately transformed into a cell phone. Pretty dialed the number.

“Steve, Steve!” she screamed to the ring tone. She made herself wait for the connection.

“Hello!”

“Me so Pretty! Freekin, him go to the fermented fat factory!”

“Okay,” Steve said. “Well then I should probably meet him there.”

“Yes, yes, yes!”
she cried, bouncing on her tentacles.

“Raven and Tuberculosis are with me. We’re on our way. But we don’t know where it is!” Steve said.

“Um…” She blanched. “Me not knowing.”

“I don’t know, either. Hold on.”

She drummed her tentacles on Freekin’s desk. Then she realized she could do a search on Freekin’s computer! She typed in
FERMENTED FAT FACTORY
and held her breath.

The computer whirled for a moment.