25

The Goring Steel Mill loomed on the edge of town like a set piece out of Castlevania, huge and sprawling and somehow blacker than the night sky against which it stood. The three fences that circled it were topped with spirals of barbed wire and thin wisps of ensnared plastic bags that fluttered in the breeze like captured ghosts. The main building was surrounded by a network of small sheds, pipes, generators, and any number of garbage piles that had collected there since the business had closed in the 1980s and people had just begun using the spot as a dump.

As she sped down the country road that led to the mill, Fiona thought it looked like some kind of shadowy giant, like Death Himself was loitering just outside of Hamm, silent and patient.

Dread crept into her belly. Silent. Patient.

Something was wrong.

There was nothing unusual about the place—no pounding bass, no blinking lights, not even the drunken laugh of a partier hanging out nearby. She’d planned on ditching her bike at the first fences on the edge of the property, but suddenly she wasn’t sure if she needed to. The gates all hung open, their chains cut…but no one guarded them. No one waited inside of them.

Fiona rode into the shadowy center of the grounds, her eyes scanning the industrial scenery and finding nothing, just deeper and deeper shadows. There were no decorations or graffiti, no lone shoe or half-crushed beer can that would indicate people had just been there. There wasn’t even the electric hum of a generator. The only sounds she could hear were her own heavy breathing and the scurry of some animal in the bushes nearby.

For a moment, she wondered if she’d screwed something up. Was it the right night? Had the person who’d knocked her out warned Peter about her plans? Had Filip succeeded, forcing them to cancel the party? She tried calling him again, but it went directly to voicemail. But even if he had, her phone said it was only 9:20. Would the whole celebration apparatus have left so quickly?

If anyone had been here, they were gone.

Something was terribly wrong.

“Hello?” she said tentatively, her voice tiny in the huge darkness.

A figure stepped out of the shadows, and she spun, brandishing her mace.

“Fiona, right?” said the voice. “Rita’s friend?”

Fiona exhaled, feeling like her heart might explode. Dave Hettenberg, the lacrosse player who Rita had hooked up with at Tess Baron’s party, smiled awkwardly at her with his big lantern-jawed face. His bad cardboard-box robot costume and cell phone flashlight only added to his gumpiness.

“Are you working this thing?” he asked, trotting over to her the best he could. “I thought Tess said you weren’t coming.”

Fiona nodded slowly, trying her best to play along. Dave seemed to have a better grasp of what was happening than she did, so he might be able to clue her in. “Just…seeing where everyone else is.”

“Yeah, totally,” he said. “I was scared that, like, ’cause I was late, there’d be no one left to send me— Oh, shit, I’m sorry.” He pulled the party flyer out of his pocket and presented it to Fiona proudly. “Show-ner-plots show-ner-tag.”

“Sorry?” said Fiona.

Dave lowered the flyer, looking nervous. “Isn’t that the password? Rita told me that I needed to present it at the map point, or I couldn’t find the venue. Where are we going from here, anyway?”

“Map point,” said Fiona.

Map points are for warehouse gigs, Vince had said. Where you don’t want the cops showing up.

She put a hand to her forehead, feeling clammy and shaken as she put two and two together. Of course he hadn’t spun at the old mill. It was too predictable. He was cleverer than that. He knew it wasn’t safe here, given his history with the town. So, he’d put the mill on the flyer, but he’d made it a stop along the way.

He had planned it out ahead of time. Of course he had.

“Sorry, is that not the right password?” asked Dave, suddenly looking deeply nervous. “It did seem weird that it was in German.”

“German,” she repeated.

“Yeah,” he said. “I looked it up, because it’s spelled so funny. It is Schonerplatz Schonertag, right? Beautiful place, beautiful day?”

The reality crashed down on her like a thunderclap.

“Oh God,” she said. She picked up her bike and began frantically riding back toward the front entrance to the mill, leaving Dave Hettenberg yelling after her in confusion.

Just past the fence, light grew in the distance and then flared in the night, stabbing at her eyes. Gravel sprayed as a car careened toward her. She skidded her bike to a halt just as the vehicle pulled up in front of her.

“Fiona!” yelled her father as he yanked open the car door. He scrambled out into the headlights and seized her by the shoulders. “What the hell is going on here?”

“Did you hear from Filip?” she panted.

“Hear what?” asked her dad, his face a total blank.

Filip never called them. He’d never gotten a chance. It was wrong, all wrong. “Dad,” she said, “we need to leave, now.”

“What are you doing?” he yelped, his eyes shiny with tears. “You scare the shit out of your mother, you rush out of the house without a word, and now I follow you here, of all places—”

“He’s back, Dad,” she said. “You were right. He’s taking them. He’s taking all the kids.”

Robert Jones’s face dropped from stricken to slack. “Where?” he said. “Here? Is he inside?”

“The winery,” she said. “He’s at the Hamm Winery.”

…

Something about the Hamm Winery’s abandonment made it creepier than the mill. The mill felt like something out of a doom metal track, dystopian and covered with decades of dust, but the winery was too precious and off the beaten path to fall to the same level of ruin, and so the grounds off of State Road 217 had remained relatively untouched. The cottage where visitors used to sip that year’s newest vintages and eat locally sourced meals was boarded up, and the barn where they’d kept the fermenters now sported some small-time graffiti and empty bottles left by local kids, but overall the place was preserved like a frog in a laboratory jar. It felt eerie, as though the residents had disappeared in an instant; if the mill looked like somewhere five years after the apocalypse, then the winery looked like the world had ended five seconds ago.

It was 9:51 when they arrived. Fiona bolted from the passenger-side door before the car had even stopped, while Robert Jones stayed back at the car calling the last remaining council members. She ran across the grassy grounds; the rolling hills that were supposed to feel pleasant were now just a pain in the ass to get over.

The cottage was dark and silent, but there was a light on in the barn.

Fiona skidded to a halt inside the open barn doors.

No one. Not a soul.

She walked across the wooden floor of the huge empty space lit by a single bare bulb dangling from the ceiling. Her eyes darted around the room, desperately trying to find evidence of the party, a burned-out glow stick or a scrap of neon confetti, but there was nothing. The barn smelled of old wood and cut grass, not cigarettes and sweat and booze.

But she could sense energy in the absence here, like the party’s ghost was haunting the space. She was missing something.

There, on the floor.

In the dust at her feet were footprints. More importantly, shoe prints—the patterned soles of a thousand sneakers making their way across the dirty ground. Chuck Taylors, Timberlands, Vans, Nikes, Doc Martens, Adidas, even a John Varvatos dress shoe or two, swirling and overlapping in the dirt at her feet like instructions for some sort of bizarre waltz.

Dancing. The feet had been dancing. Slowly, she followed their rhythm, trying to understand where they’d gone.

She heard another car roll up outside, then another, then a fourth, but she was too engrossed by the shifting footprints in the dust to notice. The fine print of the party began to show up in her vision—a sticky patch from some spilled drink, a single colored bead. Finally, at the backmost part of the room, she came upon a square patch in the dust with only a single pair of shoeprints leading to and from it. Expensive high-end kicks, their movements limited to a tight margin.

Peter.

“Oh my God,” said Harriet Moss behind her. People rushed into the barn, their frantic footfalls ringing through the huge space like the applause of skeletons.

The entire Hamm town council stared at Fiona Jones. She eyed them back in pity. These adults, who had for so long protected their town, who Fiona had admired since she was a little girl, now looked bedraggled and weak against the gaping maw of the empty building. Her father stood at the middle of the crowd, his hand on his forehead, staring at the dusty sneaker prints at his feet.

“Where are they?” asked Nathan Liddel in his high, whining voice.

“Caroline?” called Darren Fiddler, his voice extra small in the empty room. “Caroline, are you in here?”

“They’re gone,” whispered Robert Jones.

“Gone where?” snapped William Chatsworth, his barber’s mustache seeming to twitch. “Where did they go? Bob? What happened?”

Christine Nye was on her cell phone. “I’m calling the police.”

“Christine, wait,” said Robert, just loudly enough that she could hear. “Just, wait a minute.” Christine lowered her phone instinctively at Robert Jones’s command, but her face wanted to know why.

“Why would he take them away from us?” said Harriet Moss. “We paid him. Why did he do this to us?”

“Who?” asked Bill Chatsworth, still flabbergasted. “Where are they?” shouted Janelle Hokes, barging in and heading straight for Fiona. “Where’d he take them, Fiona? Tell us now!”

“Now, hold on, Janelle,” said Robert Jones. Fiona opened her mouth to speak, but before she could say anything, Janelle’s meaty hands clamped on her shoulders, pulling Fiona close to her sweat-shiny face; Fiona smelled white wine and gasoline.

Janelle’s fingers dug into Fiona’s flesh like steel claws. “Talk!” she bellowed, giving Fiona a hard shake that made her head whip back. The angrier Janelle got, the more the crowd focused their collective fear on Fiona. Slowly, the town council closed in, their shock transforming into rage. “Where’d he take my boys? What did he do to my Edgar?”

“Let me go, Janelle,” Fiona yelped.

The hands tightened, and Fiona squeaked with pain. By now, she was trapped in a circle of adults peering down at her, hungry for answers.

“My husband comes home with his inner ear destroyed, puking for days, can barely stand up, and then this happens, and you don’t think I see the pattern?” shrieked Janelle. “You don’t think I know what’s up, you bitch? What happened?”

“Janelle.”

“You tell us, Fiona, you tell us now or so help me—”

A click, metallic and recognizable, overtook the noise in the barn. The town council’s rage dissipated, and they stepped back defensively.

“Janelle, take your hands off my daughter,” said Robert Jones firmly.

Janelle Hokes released Fiona and took a step back. Fiona’s dad stood with his arm extended, a snub-nosed revolver in his grip. She watched the dumbfounded townsfolk creep back slowly, giving him plenty of room.

“Jesus, Robert,” whined Darren Fiddler, “drop the gun.”

“Anyone who touches my daughter gets shot,” responded Robert Jones. His voice never wavered, though the gun in his hand shivered. The barrel followed Janelle Hokes until she was a good twenty feet away from Fiona.

“Robert, what’s going on?” asked Christine Nye, her phone now at her side.

“He came back,” said Janelle, relishing the chance to reveal the town’s hideous secret. “The Pit Viper, that damn DJ we hired. He took our children, Christine. He lured them here and took them all—”

“But why?” cried Harriet Moss. “We did everything he told us to! We gave him all that money! Why would he do this?”

Silence. Both Fiona’s father and Janelle Hokes stood perfectly still. Only Darren Fiddler shook his head, kneaded his hands, and swore.

“Church basement,” said Robert Jones softly. “We meet there in thirty minutes. Nathan, Joan, you stay here and call the cops fifteen minutes after we leave. Tell them there was a concert here, and our kids are all missing. Tell them you have no idea who took them or why. They need to just use what evidence they have here.

“Fiona,” he continued, “get in the car. You’ve got some questions to answer.”

She nodded and slowly walked to her father, doing her best to avoid the line of fire.

…

Ironically, they stashed her in the old kids’ room, the one with the Golden Books that she’d escaped the night she’d first seen Peter. Now, her father had told her to stay put or else, and one or two other council members had given her hard stares that were meant to be threatening.

Being alone with her thoughts drove Fiona insane. The failure to stop Peter was on her—her indecision, her emotional hangover from the high of being his. If she’d discussed the game plan with Filip earlier that day, they might have had a chance. She could’ve figured out that the mill was only a ruse, but she was too tangled up in her own emotional melodrama to focus. Peter had done what he’d said he was going to do, as much as she’d prayed he wouldn’t. Now it was all a mess—her friends and classmates kidnapped, Filip possibly hurt or worse, Peter completely consumed by his revenge. Janelle Hokes had every right to be bloodthirsty.

Hard as she tried, she couldn’t make out what anyone was saying down the hall, but there were shouts and screams and sobs. The sound of a piece of furniture being knocked over or tossed rang out at one point, so she guessed her father had explained what had actually happened to the money they’d gathered for Peter, and the rest of the council members weren’t pleased.

As she sat on the floor of the moldy room, her back against a wall with a smiling rhino painted on it, Fiona wondered about her classmates. Was there anyone left besides her and Dave Hettenberg, who was probably at home thinking he’d missed the Halloween party to end all Halloween parties (which, technically, it had been)? The only other person she could think of was Filip, but he was nowhere to be found, meaning that Peter might have gotten him.

She kicked herself for letting Filip go it alone. Whoever had chloroformed her had been aware that she might ruin Peter’s master plan, which meant it was well underway now. All signs pointed to Vince, aka Swordfish, with his threats of violence and his broad frame that would be perfect for tackling her. But that hadn’t been his voice whispering in her ear, though it had been familiar. Was there someone else involved? How much did she still not know?

What she did know was it couldn’t be over. Not yet. Peter was out there somewhere. He’d have to do something like what he did to Edgar Hokes on a large scale to wipe their minds so thoroughly, which would take time, patience, discipline. And then, he’d give them to Udo, who would use them for… what? Human slavery? Prostitution, running drugs, manual labor? What would a man like that do with a whole crew of brainwashed teenagers? Nothing good, certainly, given how many of the mill rats had been found dead.

The hideousness of that thought relit the fire under her ass, and she stood, steeling herself. Her friends were gone, but they hadn’t just disappeared. He hadn’t sucked them into another dimension or trapped them inside a gem. Peter had said it himself: he wasn’t a wizard, and this wasn’t a fairy tale. His power—whatever it was—was practical. Her friends were still around somewhere, even if they were under his control.

She could get to them. She could get to Betty. She could fix everything.

Or she could die trying.

But not with the council’s help. They were part of the problem. The adults would go blundering into the situation with blinders on and would find nothing but an empty loft apartment full of broken sound equipment. And even worse, they might get all her friends killed in the process. They didn’t know what they were up against. It was on her to save her classmates, but she had to escape the council first.

She got on her hands and knees and looked under the door, the carpet scraggly and crumby on her cheek. No feet outside the door, just a smell that didn’t belong here— cigarette smoke.

Hope hit her in an overwhelming wave. A chance, slim and unexpected but very, very real. Of course that’s who the council had assigned to guard her. She was locked up here, but breaking a chain was as easy as finding a weak link. And she’d known who that was for years.

Darren Fiddler stood by the water fountain outside the door to the main church basement auditorium, ashing into the drain. As Fiona crept toward him, she considered who Caroline was versus her father. Caroline’s domineering behavior came mostly from her mother, Grace, a clinical hard- ass who had no problem causing a scene at a restaurant or storming the principal’s office if it meant getting her way. Darren, on the other hand, was calm, contemplative, easily worried but perpetually helpless. His presence on the town council had always felt like a gift bestowed by Fiona’s dad, who recognized the gentle good in Darren. But now that they were conducting serious business, Darren had been left outside to watch the door like a servant, ready to summon Fiona whenever the grown-ups told him to.

“Mr. Fiddler.”

Darren spun around, dropping his cigarette. He gaped at her like a child caught stealing seconds on dessert.

“Get back in there, Fiona,” he tried to command. “We need to talk to you.”

“Listen, Mr. Fiddler,” she said, calmly and quietly, worried he’d get so loud that the others would hear them. “I know where he took everyone. I know where he took Caroline. I can get her back, but you need to let me go.”

“They’ve got to— We want to speak…” he gibbered. “No one—we don’t know what’s going on. What happened, Fiona? What happened to my daughter? I just want this over with.” His eyes teared up. “I never meant for things to get so bad that night. We were just doing our jobs—”

“Mr. Fiddler, please,” she said urgently. “I need to leave right now. If you keep me here any longer and waste time questioning me, you’re going to lose them. Caroline’s going to wind up dead.” Darren flinched and shook his head at the last word. “But if you let me go right now, I can guarantee that you’ll get her back.”

He blinked at her with pitiful resignation. A little squeak came out of his mouth. They stood frozen for some time, long enough for Fiona to try taking steps backward, toward the doors to the outside.

“No, wait,” he said, and she froze again.

Nervously, he dug his car keys out of his pocket, squatted down, and placed them on the floor. He looked up at her anxiously.

“Promise me you’re not on his side,” he said, his voice cracking. “Don’t play me for a fool. Don’t do that to me.”

“I promise,” she said. “I’m going to find him, Mr. Fiddler, and I’m going to bring him down. And you’ll get Caroline back.”

Mr. Fiddler kicked the keys over to her. She thanked him as she picked them up and then bolted for the door, leaving the shivering man behind her.