CHAPTER 12

Bulbous black eyes. A smushed-in face. Flopped-over ears. A ridiculous curled tail.

Buttercup.

Kayla let out her breath and realized she’d been holding it for quite some time. The dog stared up at her questioningly. He was probably as freaked out as she was. Even though she’d noticed that his saggy face always seemed to have a worried expression on it, the worry was more pronounced than usual now. While he’d never shown much interest in her before, he was wagging his tail ever so slightly, as though seeking reassurance from her, the only other being who seemed to be mobile in that terrible house. Grimly she leaned down and patted his head, and then she opened the door and headed down to the basement.

The stairs creaked as she inched down each one. She couldn’t yet see any kids—frozen or otherwise—but she could hear the music from the karaoke machine blaring and nothing more. That same eerie almost-silence she had experienced upstairs.

She was halfway down the stairs when the lights went out.

If she’d been able to, Kayla would have begun to whimper. But no sounds came from her mouth. The music stopped. The basement was suddenly plunged into darkness. There was no sound. No talking. No movement.

At least it wasn’t pitch black. Alice had put several candles around the room, red for Valentine’s Day, and they cast an eerie, flickering light on the people standing around the room. As Kayla had suspected, everyone was frozen.

She picked up a candle from the table and moved through the room, the flickering flame dimly illuminating one frozen person after another.

There was Alice, her elbows raised above her head, her hands frozen mid-fluff; she’d been running her hands through her hair at the moment she froze. She was standing in the middle of a group of boys, all frozen—she recognized Patrick Morley, Eric Ishak, Andrew Trevenen, Jason Yan. They stared down at her with their unblinking eyes.

There were Jess and Pria, standing close to each other, Jess with her hand cupped next to Pria’s ear, as though stopped in mid-whisper.

There was Nick, standing with Scott and Anthony. Nick was half turned toward the mirrored wall of shelves over the bar area, and Kayla noticed he was flexing his bicep, as though he’d been frozen just as he was checking himself out.

Where was Tom? Was he one of these still, shadowy figures? He’d definitely sipped the punch. She hadn’t gotten to him in time. And no doubt Alice had refilled his punch cup after Kayla had gone upstairs. Kayla moved through the eerie room with its motionless figures, its flickering candles, and went into the next room, where the movie had been running—Alice had carefully picked out goopy love stories, although from the looks of the several frozen kids sitting in the audience, people had been chatting over, rather than watching, the movie. She made her way carefully into the game room. Several kids—all boys, it seemed—were frozen in various positions, holding pool cues, video game controllers, or twirling foosball handles. But no Tom. Where was he?

A sob rose in her throat and stayed there. She felt like it might strangle her. She had to think, think, think.

She had to find Matilda.

She had to find Matilda and make her do something, give Kayla something, to undo this terrible curse, or whatever it was. But how would she find her? She had no idea where Matilda lived, and she remembered how many Warners there had been in the directory. Kayla couldn’t call her anyway—not without a voice.

She’d go to the shop. She could walk there. Maybe, just maybe, she’d find Matilda there. Or the owner of the shop, who might know what to do, or at least how to find Matilda. Then a worried thought popped into her head: What were the chances of someone being at the shop at nine p.m. on a Saturday night, in the middle of a terrible snowstorm? She dismissed the thought. Going to the store and looking for Matilda was her only hope.

She made her way toward the foot of the basement steps, groping her way around frozen people, trying not to touch anyone.

Then she felt a hand on her shoulder.